What's Your Read On Things?

Are we moving forward (see the MSNBC promos), staying the same (CNN will let us know if anything really big happens), or backing up (tune into Fox News for further details)? It’s hard to tell, if television is our main source for news, and talking heads are our political gurus.

Television is really good at making us laugh or cry or scaring us half to death for an hour. But, books are better for learning about politics; newspapers are better, magazines are better.

Have you read “The Price of Politics,” by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster), or “Why Romney Lost,” by David Frum (Newsweek), or “It’s Even Worse Than it Looks,” by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (Basic Books), or my favorite read of the year, “The Unwinding,” by George Packer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)?

Do you subscribe to “The Economist” magazine, or “The Week” magazine,” or the bi-monthly, “ Foreign Affairs,” (Council on Foreign Relations)?

No? Okay, you probably read political publications I miss. Please let me know your favorites. I’d almost rather read than eat.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a job, you may work 12 hours a day, come home and zone out in front of the TV. You probably have meetings to go to, kids to take care of – not everybody has time to read. However, if that’s the case, how do you determine who is best to lead the country, the state, our city, or our schools? Making value judgments about people with the power to affect our lives may take more than listening to a talking head or two.

Do we choose our political leaders on how they look, on their race or color? To me, at least one San Diego politician looks like a sex maniac from a Batman movie. How do you judge if they are telling the truth? Unless we know them personally, we have to learn as much about them as possible, on our own. By reading – not just watching! By making up our own minds, and not letting a TV personality make it up for us.

Have you read anything about biodiesel? What’s your opinion – can it save us all?