TV News LIES

"The economy has collapsed! And it's Obama's fault!" That's the rightwing reaction to the 0.1% shrinking of the GDP in the 4th quarter, never mind that the year overall was pretty good considering the Republican agenda.

The reality is that the GDP is being depressed by the loss of exports to Europe because of their idiotic austerity measures, and the reduction in military spending as the endless war on terror is finally coming to an end. That, and the Mitt Romney crowd's practice of closing down high tech factories and shipping them to China, - also the 'job creators who run corporate America are driving down wages.

When there are more years behind than ahead, contemplative stewing and meditative mulling is the operative daily mode.  That process clicks into place and idles away unaided.  It's sneaky, this mental program, having automatically installed itself at some point or other, perhaps when a certain number of breaths has been taken, or something similar.

It's very much like a perpetual motion machine you never knew you had -- one that kicks into gear suddenly and without warning, slipping any and all restraints, unexpectedly puttering and pottering around all by itself.  This latent skill is an intriguing discovery at any age, but especially when you think you've already got yourself fairly well figured out.  By now, you've sort of thought of yourself as pretty well knowing how to be -- and being -- you.

California Assemblyman Phil Ting has proposed AB 19, a bill to require the California Secretary of State to implement an Internet voting pilot project. They tell us Internet voting is secure. It's not. It's not secure, and can't be made secure, but that's not even the point.

The point is it's not transparent. The whole premise in our Constitution is that we self-govern. To do that, the public must be able to see and authenticate essential processes, like who actually voted and the vote count, and that is not possible with Internet voting.

Internet voting transfers all control to whoever runs the server. (The server is just a computer that sits in a room -- and one Internet voting company, Scytl, has its server physically sitting in Spain.)

Remember when the credit card offers came in your mail by the handful? Those days maybe about to return. Credit card debt backed securities (they call them bonds now) are now the hot investment with tens of billions being issued by the big banks.

The reason these new bonds are so popular is that investors are suddenly seeing credit card debt as a safe again. In fact they are so popular that they aren't paying returns all that much better than government bonds that pay hardly anything at all.

The civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is remarkable, as I've noted before on this holiday, how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when commemorating his life (just as his economic views are).

By King's own description, his work against US violence and militarism, not only in Vietnam but generally, was central - indispensable - to his worldview and activism, yet it has been almost completely erased from how he is remembered.

It's a chicken-and-egg sort of a situation, wondering how much language determines thought, and the amount that's the other way around.  Maybe there's no way to know which came first, or whether it's at all relevant -- or if "both" is the correct answer.

Somehow, I find it easy to get distracted by such chicken-and-egg considerations, especially whenever the feathers really get flying at the Congressional chicken coop, and when every besotted member of that prideful roost feels the urgent, imperious need to crow, squawk, cry, or flail around in the dirt and mud.