TV News LIES

Closely watching the news can become a bleak deal, trying to follow and figure what's behind headlines, trying to see what may be written between the lines.  Nature of the evolved beast called news:  We want to know what went sideways, and how bad it got.  Not what went right.

Still, for good mental hygiene, balance is recommended -- not that we're about to burst into song and dance here.  Goodness knows those "happy news" attempts made decades ago crashed and burned, but, we can try to be a bit less dismal.

It was just another, typical, ho-hum, routine, Republican day at the Congressional office:  Republicans doing nothing whatsoever for the average American, but fighting tooth, nail, claw, skin, and fur to protect the rights of corporations and the obscenely rich. "Don't tread on us?"  Oh, man -- that is sooo rich.  What a hoot!

Don't expect any of this to make the news, stated clearly, or show up at the water cooler in chit-chat, of course.  This yawner-material is the new normal -- has been, since ignorance was declared the new genius, since banks have been too big to fail, since theft was made the new success, and since astroturf groups like Teabaggers sprang up to do the artificial grassroots business of billionaires.

Some businesses have figured out a way to make a go of it, even in tight times:  Just do business like the Pentagon and its contractors.

Say you're out in the country, seeing the sights, when you spot a nondescript place with a giant, neon sign that screams, "EAT!" in three colors.  You pull in, go inside, order a 'burger, fries, and a pop -- the penultimate American meal.

No one really thought it would work, a reality teevee show about government spending.  And it didn't, not at first.  Understandably.

It started out as "Let's Pretend We Care About Spending!"  It was a once-in-a-while program on cable access teevee -- a standard talking-heads, earnest round-table discussion, sprinkled with flat, mic-in-the-audience-of-five comments.

Initial unemployment claims dropped by 26,000 this week to a relatively low number of 350,000. If you weren't aware of that, it is to be forgiven as the main stream media wasn't really interested in telling you about it. They thought you would be more interested in being teased with the idea that Condoleezza Rice was actually being considered as Romney's VP, it's more likely Willard would dig up the corpse of Sarah Palin and run it.

JP Morgan Chase's stock price jumped driving up the stock market, supposedly on "news" that the losses on its derivative trading were "only" 5.8 billion instead of the 9 billion that has been reported.

The United States has experienced the biggest political upheaval in its recent history:  the transformation of a burgeoning welfare state into a rapidly expanding, highly intrusive and deeply entrenched police state, linked to the most developed technological innovations.

The ‘Great Transformation’ was not a single event but a process of the accumulation of powers, via executive fiats, supported and approved by compliant Congressional leaders.  At no time in the recent and distant past has this nation witnessed the growth of such repressive powers and the proliferation of so many policing agencies engaged in so many areas of life over such a prolonged period of time (a time of virtually no internal mass dissent).  Never has the executive branch of government secured so many powers to detain, interrogate, kidnap and assassinate its own citizens without judicial restraint.