How to be well-rounded: a 10-step program

1. Read dissenting viewpoints (aka Start Thinking For Yourself);
   
2. Don't depend on radio entertainers (Ann Coulter; Al Franken; Rush Limbaugh; Howard Stern) to tell you How to Hate My Neighbor;
   
3. Understand that Fox "News" (aka GOP-TV) is a mouthpiece of the Radical Right death squads;
   
4. Understand that ABC, CBS, and NBC are entertainment networks first, and news organizations second (I can't even remember the last time I watched one of their "newscasts" in its entirety). Hear the jabs that CNN and MSNBC are unwitting tools of the Left Wing baby eating Liberals;
   
5. Put the Sanity Test (simply, does this jibe with what I know from other sources?) to whatever the mainstream US media (network television, big-city newspapers) say;
   
6. Read the Letters to the Editor;
   
7. Read non-traditional sources such as pajama-wearing bloggers;
   
8. Watch as much non-US news on DirecTV channel 366 (includes Canada's Newsworld International; Britain's BBC America and Times Online; German Journal; Japan's NHK; China's CCTV (mostly state propaganda) and even al-Jazeera) as you can find;
   
9. Don't think Michael Moore is much more intelligent than George W. Bush;
   
10. Read some Iraqi blogs (so as to try to figure out what is really going on over there).

Iraqi Blogs:

• a family in Baghdad
  
• back to Iraq
  
• Baghdad burning (especially the Fahrenheit 9/11 entry)
  
• healing Iraq
  
• Iraq the future
  
• Iraq the model
  
• Nabil's blog