Nightly news

James Baker is on CNN (it's a repeat from earlier, I'm sure) saying he agrees with a lot of what Obama is doing about foreign policy. I always have thought - or, well, I've thought for a number of years, anyway - that Baker is generally a pretty reasonable guy, which probably makes him one of those moderates that the Republicans have famously been trying to drive out of the party, doesn't it? Bill Bennett was also on; he did not have as many nice things to say, unsurprisingly. I am almost to the point of having to turn the channel when Bennett comes on, because he's so smug it makes me want to scream. And it seems like he's always on, on one news channel or another.

I know "Bill Bennett is smug" is not exactly news. I think the point may be more that I'm in news overload, really. Except that I'm enjoying a lot of it. I am on an MSNBC tear lately, and am watching less CNN, generally. Politics interests me more than murders and much, much more than celebrity news, which makes MSNBC a much better fit for me. Especially at this moment in history, with the Republican Party pretty much in free-fall, MSNBC is a lot of fun to watch, since they are not at all shy about the mocking - in fact they tend sometimes to go overboard with the mockery, even for my taste. At least Keith Olbermann has recently given up doing his "funny" Sean Hannity voice, which was a relief, since I really like the guy otherwise. (Olbermann, I mean, not Hannity.)

I do most of my news-watching after Rob goes to bed. Before that we mostly watch baseball, this time of year. I've been watching Anderson Cooper for a while and then switching over to MSNBC when I get tired of that. Both networks fill most of the night on weeknights by repeating their prime-time shows. At 4am my time MSNBC switches back over to live news, and I think CNN does so around that same time, too - 5am Eastern is when people start getting up again, I guess. (CNN finally repeats Lou Dobbs' show at 3am, which I can't watch, thus I am unsure about what comes on after it!) I really haven't been going to bed before 4 at all lately, and often it's later than that. Everybody keeps telling me that I'm going to have trouble going back to a "normal" schedule when I get a job again, but my past history is that I slide right back to it pretty easily when I have to. But I am absolutely a natural night person, as you can tell!

I am watching CNN right now instead of MSNBC because the latter changes their late-night programming on the weekends and runs things like "Lockup" and various shows about murders. I can watch a certain amount of that but I definitely don't have the almost-endless taste for it that I do for politics. (One weekend I did get really interested in a series where they were following real-life forensic pathologists around, though.)

Bill Bennett is back on, and I just turned the TV off. I think I have a podcast of last night's "Countdown" I can watch.