TV News LIES

Over the weekend, a horrific fire swept through a Bangladesh clothing factory, killing more than 100 workers, many of whose bodies were burnt so badly that they could not be identified. In its gruesome particulars — locked doors, no emergency exits, workers leaping to their deaths — the blaze seems a ghastly centennial reenactment of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, when 146 workers similarly jumped to their deaths or were incinerated after they found the exit doors were locked.

The signal difference between the two fires is location. The Triangle building was located directly off New York’s Washington Square. Thousands watched the appalling spectacle of young workers leaping to the sidewalks 10 stories down; reporters and photographers were quickly on the scene.

The numbers are up:  We now have 50 million people in our country who are poor -- while online sales on Black Friday busted one billion bucks for the first time.

The increased stats on the poor stem from a new census measure that considers medical costs and work-related expenses. The new formula also means there are more people now living below the poverty line than in 2010 -- about 16% of the population.

Interestingly, online sales from November 1st this year are also up 16%  -- from the same period last year -- while the number of Americans visiting online shops this Black Friday was 57.3 million, an increase of 18%.  Cyber Monday sales were expected to push past 1.5 billion dollars.

Major tobacco companies that spent decades denying they lied to the U.S. public about the dangers of cigarettes must spend their own money on a public advertising campaign saying they did lie, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday.

The ruling sets out what might be the harshest sanction to come out of a historic case that the Justice Department brought in 1999 accusing the tobacco companies of racketeering. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler wrote that the new advertising campaign would be an appropriate counterweight to the companies' "past deception" dating to at least 1964.

The advertisements are to be published in various media for as long as two years.

Led by Dr. David O. Carpenter, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany’s School of Public Health, a number of health experts launched a new initiative, Concerned Health Professionals of New York, to outline the health risks of fracking and to renew their call for an independent, comprehensive Health Impact Assessment.

The health experts in Albany spoke on behalf of the broad medical and scientific community in New York State, where hundreds of medical professionals and scientists have been outspoken about concerns that fracking poses a threat to public health.

There's reason to hope that the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel will lead to an easing of Israel's suffocating economic blockade of Gaza. The ceasefire text said that "opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods... shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire." But, more than 100 hours later, we're still waiting for word of actual progress.

Meanwhile, if you're wondering where to turn for background information about the blockade, I have this guidance: stay as far away from mainstream media as possible.

Thawing permafrost covering almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere could "significantly amplify global warming" at a time when the world is already struggling to reign in rising greenhouse gases, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.

The warning comes as United Nations climate negotiations enter a second day, with the focus on the Kyoto Protocol - a legally-binding emissions cap that expires this year and remains the most significant international achievement in the fight against global warming. Countries are hoping to negotiate an extension to the pact that runs until at least 2020.

The return to work -- Monday, after a long, holiday weekend:  This is such a grim, dour moment in life that there's only one known antidote.  And with that, we hereby Break Glass and Pull Switch In Case of Emergency -- and are rewarded with underpants news.

The good news:  There is actually some underwear news.  The not-so-good news:  There wasn't much.  News, that is -- although, now that you mention it, unmentionables are getting so tiny anymore that there's not much of them in that sense, either.

Well, to paraphrase a war criminal:  You go to work the Monday following a long holiday weekend with the underwear you have, not the underwear you wish you had.

Selected numbers appear to show consumer spending is way up, thanks to the 'black' days, cyber day, and on and on with the hype. A closer looks suggests it's really more like a one or two percent increase for the quarter; it's really all about building up a shopping frenzy. Are consumers really spending more at all? Or are they simply desperate to stretch their ever declining incomes to meet pent up demand to replace worn out consumer goods?

Then there is the gnawing need to provide the American dream for yourself and your family. It's not that people really feel the need to buy more junk from China, it's that they know deep down that they're in trouble. And they want so badly to kid themselves that they are still middle class. The evidence for this is that consumer debt is way up. The business channel folks actually point to this increase in debt as proof that the economy is turning around, and there is a certain amount of truth to that, in the same way a soap bubble is a new house.