Do you love to read the news? I breathe the news everyday — with my breakfast, while driving, amidst the office work, evenings after dinner. But I do it for one thing only. No, not to get riled up. (Well, maybe a little.) Really though, quite the opposite.

It’s not that I’d die without knowing the headlines and the grit. It’s just a mildly obsessive habit, like coffee.

The local daily rag with my morning bagel gets about 11 ½ minutes of kitchen time, for that is about all it’s worth. Then to the talking heads on the radio, who actually shorten time during my local commute. On to peeking at Drudge in the afternoon to cool out the dry wind jets of the afternoon. Finally late evening, I hook up on Facebook to rattle through posts from friends, who tend to be fierce about newsthings. Such is the day, before I deploy my evening landing gear.

Remember, I inhale the news for one thing and one thing only: to keep my bearing as a U.S. citizen.

I know, I know. Kind of stupid when NEWS itself tends to throw one off center. Yet, that’s my point. My life is rooted in values that don’t move, somewhat like a redwood tree trunk. So, listening to the raucous media is like running downstairs with a glass of water without spilling any. It provides a daily lesson to me in how NOT to become an intolerable mess.

The NEWS agitates. It irks. It muddies the soil. It provides reason to worry. It reduces all my personal, looming-large, shark-sized issues down to goldfish size. The NEWS is that attempt by media-dispensers to fluster my muster. To keep me over-worried, unslept, uncomposed. Does that happen to you? Ever get over-whanked by media wankers?

Americans are served a provoking diet of breaking news every 23 minutes or so. Over-the-top, document-ripping, freedom-cuffing alerts that, in their totality, undermine America’s goodness. The land that we love.

So. During my daily jaunt with the crappy news, I will offer you refuge here on my blog. I breathe sanity into the warped report on humanities latest lunge. I do keep abreast of the NEWS like you might do — because I am a concerned American — I just don’t let it jiggle my worry cells.

The fact: NEWS is worldly. Temporary. Flashy. So, I hold my shoulders square against it. I press back with skepticism. Call it stupid composure. Willful guts.

I won’t stoop to get squarmy on my blog. I won’t badger you with more reasons America’s making us into fools. Instead, I choose to remain resolute, assured of the plain good common sense in the American people. I meet a lot of people like you, who know things aren’t right, who realize much must be done, who believe it or not have a similar resolve to hold their ground to the shameful stuff going on. We are simply Americans.

Let’s keep our shoulders square through all the media B.S.  Listen to the crap. Okay. Breathe in. Breathe out. The stench will clear. We’re just smelling the odor associated with the laundry of our country’s free press airing out.