TV News LIES

When all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.

Rounded, of course, that would put the final tally at 51-47. Anticipating this moment, Markos Moulitsas has inaugurated the “Romney 47 percent watch.”

Hisham El Farra is 24 years old and in his final year at university where he studies social education. After graduation, though, he’d like to be a businessman, working with imports and exports. Travel is high on his wish list. One place he wants to visit is Spain, primarily to check out the women, he admits with an embarrassed youthful smile. “They are flawless,” he says.

But leaving his home in Gaza may not be possible. Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the territory has been under an Israeli-led blockade and, like Farra, an entire generation of Gazan youth has come of age without interaction with the outside world. The effect on their outlook on their own lives and that of the country around them is palpable.

As we approach our national day of giving thanks, we have some real doozies to celebrate this year.  It's unclear exactly how we'll provide ourselves ample black-slapping gratitude on our good work -- although I expect a couple pieces of pie fit into the equation somehow.

And so, a grateful nation groans and pushes itself back from the table, creaking every joint in its chair, its fingers crossed, in support of the hope that this rickety seat won't pop all its seams, right this instant, and dump us sprawling onto the floor.

Let us all in the Glassy-Eyed Tryptophan Brigade fondly seek out the Couch of Contentment in great sighs of relief, giving thanks for landing safely somewhere soft and stuffed, feeling much the same, too.

Two-thirds of high-street garments tested in a study by Greenpeace contained potentially harmful chemicals, the group said Tuesday, highlighting the findings with a "toxic" fashion show in Beijing.

The environmental campaign group is pushing for fashion brands to commit to "zero discharge of all hazardous chemicals" by 2020 and to require suppliers to publicise any toxic chemicals they release into the environment.

There’s an orphan planet roaming our galactic neighborhood.

It’s a globe of gas about the size of Jupiter, astronomers say. And it’s out there by its lonesome, untethered to any star, drifting about 100 light-years from Earth. (In astronomical terms, that’s close.)

Astronomers have spied lonely planets before. But this newest object, seen near the southern constellation Dorado, is the closest to Earth yet found.

The State University of New York at Buffalo announced Monday that it was closing down its newly formed Shale Resources and Society Institute, which was devoted to the study of hydraulic fracturing, citing “a cloud of uncertainty over its work.”

The institute’s first study, released in May, drew sharp criticism for being biased in favor of the oil and gas industry.

In a letter addressed to the “university community,” President Satish K. Tripathi said he was closing the institute after an internal assessment that determined that it lacked “sufficient” faculty presence, that it was not consistent enough in disclosing its financial interests and that the credibility of its research was compromised because of questions over its financing.

The U.S. Health and Human Services Department released new rules Tuesday requiring health insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions.

Besides implementing provisions that would make it illegal, beginning in 2014, for insurance companies to discriminate against people with pre-existing or chronic conditions, the new regulations for the Affordable Care Act would make it easier for consumers to compare health plans and employers to promote and encourage employee wellness, the department said in a release.

Mitt Romney would approve of the current business meme:  When management executives decide to stage a feeding frenzy on a company's wealth, ala Bain, it's best to chum the waters first, letting everyone know it's really someone else's fault.  Labor unions, say.

If you look hard enough, in fact, you'll eventually see that labor unions are the cause of global climate change, Hurricane Sandy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Dubya- and Reagan-era federal deficit spending sprees, rising gas prices, Fukushima, fracking, the BP disaster in the Gulf, unhelpful phases of the moon...