TV News LIES

So, here we are, just about to be slammed up alongside The Big Day, and I haven't a clue what to get you for the advertised Consumption Festival, for the co-opted Pagan Fest, for the sparkly Celebration of Lights, now that we've turned the corner on the darkest day of the year...

If only we could have already turned the corner on the darkest year in some years, too.

Of course, I suppose we should have all been braced for some fine holiday jeer, once Dick Cheney remorselessly rode back into town, sharing with us his trust-less leer and his lopsided sneer, riding in his throne of delusion, high atop a fetid holiday float constructed of bile and manure, throwing out razor-bladed candies for the kiddies, and certificates of replacement freedoms to be made good some day, drawn up on the backs of harrowing sets of torture photos and memos.

It's been widely reported that Wall Street bankers won a guarantee of bailouts from Obama's budget. It's true that they did get the 'Push Out Rule' eliminated from the Dodd - Frank Act so that they can continue to use depositors' money to back risky financial instruments. It was junk like derivatives based on collateralized home loans that crashed the banks in 2008. But, this doesn't guarantee the banks themselves will be bailed out, only that the FDIC will pay out the insurance on deposit accounts up to the legal limit.

There were six other provisions attached to the House Bill that would have gutted Dodd - Frank, but thanks to Senator Elizabeth Warren those were all killed. So if the Wall Street banks crash again the FDIC will be able to take a meat ax to them the way they do to smaller banks. That won't keep crooked bankers from sucking billions from them between now and then, but there is such a thing as 'Claw Back' to recover ill gotten gains when this happens. It just depends on who is in charge at the time, President Warren for example could be such a person.

The horrific deaths of James Foley and Steven Sotloff in Syria brought worldwide attention to the dangers journalists face in war zones. The beheadings reflected an alarming trend in 2014 in which international journalists were increasingly targeted and killed.

There were at least 60 journalists killed globally in connection to their work in 2014, according to an annual report from the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization that advocates for press freedom around the world. The latest death was Afghan cameraman Zubair Hatami, who died Saturday from injuries he sustained in a Taliban attack.

The U.S. economy grew at its quickest pace in 11 years in the third quarter, the strongest sign yet that growth has decisively shifted into higher gear.

The Commerce Department on Tuesday revised up its estimate of gross domestic product growth to a 5.0 percent annual pace, citing stronger consumer and business spending than it had previously assumed.

American taxpayers have shelled out roughly $1.6 trillion on war spending since 9/11, according to a new report from Congress’ nonpartisan research arm. That’s roughly $337 million a day -- or nearly a quarter million dollars a minute -- every single day for 13 years.

The $1.6 trillion estimate, which comes to $14 million per hour since 9/11, from the Congressional Research Service is up roughly half a trillion dollars from its 2010 estimate, which found that the post-9/11 military operations are second only to World War II in terms of financial cost.

There are many ways to compare finances, but perhaps a more holistic measure of financial health looks at household wealth, a comparison of what a family’s assets (home, cars, investments and bank accounts) are worth, versus what they owe. And when it comes to wealth, or net worth, the gap between the richest Americans and everyone else is at an historic high.

For the most part, it’s not necessarily that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. Instead, the data shows that while the rich are seeing their assets grow and increase in value, the middle and lower-classes are seeing financial stagnation, creating a growing economic gulf.

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators.

At the helm of this human experimentation project were two psychologists hired by the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. They designed interrogation and detention protocols that they and others applied to people imprisoned in the agency’s secret “black sites.”

Iran has unveiled a monument to honor Jewish-Iranian soldiers who fell during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

In a ceremony in Tehran on Monday, a senior Iranian parliament member praised the Iranian Jewish community’s ties to the state and its “obedience” to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ruhollah Khomeini before him.