TV News LIES

The only thing our political leaders have learned about war is not how to avoid them, but making certain they never again suffer a national conscription, or draft.

Vietnam taught politicians the PR challenges of holding a fine war with a draft in place:  All of a sudden, everyone and his brother had some real skin in the game, with so broad a population base up for grabs as cannon fodder.

Today, politicians think nothing of narrowing their gun sights, and sharpening the burden to a fine point -- one supported by very few backs.  With a more-or-less volunteer force, you just demand the same small group returns to the battlefield over and over and over -- while promising to look into the puzzling reasons soldier suicides have skyrocketed.

The geniuses of the Republican National Convention have installed a huge banner across the front of the Tampa Convention Center proclaiming "We Built That".

They unconsciously summarized the Obama speech that they are trying to mis-characterize. Even though the convention center sports a corporate sponsor's name, it really was built by government with union labor.

The "branding" of public buildings with corporate names is really a subtle propaganda ploy to make people think that everything good is provided to them by their benevolent corporate overlords. Americans have been conditioned to believe things that come from corporations are free, and that government is expensive. This is the opposite of reality of course.

One year ago today we loaded up a borrowed truck for the last time and in the great tradition of The Grapes of Wrath and The Beverly Hillbillies, rolled on out towards a dream of a better life. The Joads struggled along Route 66 from Oklahoma’s dustbowl through California’s Mojave Desert to get to the Promised Land. Jed Clampett sold his oil-rich swamp in the Ozarks for 25 million and moved his family to the hills of Beverly.

Our move wasn’t as difficult as the Joads' and certainly not as well subsidized as the Clampett’s. It took us 10 years to have the wherewithal to make the two and a half hour drive from our house in Seattle to our new home in Canada. Though we woke up in A New Country … we didn’t have the time to appreciate it for the first three months or so.

Republicans have a real flair for being stupid, ignorant jerks -- and being proud of it.

If they weren't so tragically repugnant and repellently lethal to intelligent and sensitive thought and feeling, it might be suggested they were being kept around as humor relief -- a little something to help the adults take the edge off a hard day of dealing with facts and reality.

Not that many Democrats -- most notably Blue Dogs, perched to the right of Atilla the Hun and Count Dracula in the woeful lurch far, far right in this country -- are not themselves a lost cause for hope.  Within their group are plenty of spineless ditherers who couldn't corral a single, thoughtful decision amongst themselves even if that meant a simple vote to escape a burning building.

Roughly 77 years ago, a move was made to help all Americans -- help especially to those who were older, unlucky, unfortunate, and underage, find a little optimism in their thin soup.

August 14, 1935:  President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law.  It has become one of the country's most successful insurance and retirement programs.

No matter what Republicans might say, these are not entitlements because people have paid premiums into the system, just as they would any other insurance or retirement program.

Willard Romney can't seem to make up his mind about which foot it is he prefers in his mouth, constantly trying one, then the other.

Running mate Paul Ryan can't stop shooting from the hip, shooting off his lip, fatally winging any chance he ever had to be taken seriously by any sane adult whose brains still work somewhat close to spec.

Between one man's random ricochets off mistruths, and the other's routine taste-testing of his own feet, this is one heckuva team, Brownie. It's just a matter of time before one of them panics, accidentally speaking truth, while the other finally accepts his limitations and hires out for more feet.