TV News LIES

Second-graders who can't tie shoes or zip jackets. Four-year-olds in Pull-Ups diapers. Five-year-olds in strollers. Teens and preteens befuddled by can openers and ice-cube trays. College kids who've never done laundry, taken a bus alone or addressed an envelope.

The issue hit home for me when a visiting 12-year-old took an ice-cube tray out of my freezer, then stared at it helplessly. Raised in a world where refrigerators have push-button ice-makers, he'd never had to get cubes out of a tray -- in the same way that kids growing up with pull-tab cans don't understand can openers.

Could somebody please remind me just what it is that we're achieving in Afghanistan? Don't all speak at once. No, I mean what good things we're accomplishing. Anybody? Hello?

The more we learn about the war -- both from the battlefield and from the White House -- the more depressing it all becomes. The portrait that emerges is of a failing military campaign whose course is being determined by momentum, not by logic. Everyone seems to appreciate this fact, but no one is willing to stop the madness. So on we go.

So...it turns out President Eisenhower wasn't making up all that stuff about the military-industrial complex.

In fact, after you read Woodward's book, you'll split a gut every time you hear a politician or a government teacher talk about "civilian control over the military." The only people really making the decisions about America's wars are across the river from Washington in the Pentagon. They wear uniforms. They have lots of weapons they bought from the corporations they will work for when they retire.

However, there is one morsel of truth that can be found in the aforementioned teaser.  These “issues” certainly “have shaped the first decade of the 21st century.”  But, come on, do they really expect me us believe that it was George W. Bush who made all of those “controversial decisions”? That will require some spin, especially in light of the fact that every move Bush made was in accordance with plans that were written out for him well in advance of his Presidency.

Here’s a news flash for Tel Aviv: it’s not a sign of respect when the bulk of humanity views you as psychopathic.

The concerns of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are misplaced. The legitimacy of Israel is no longer threatened. It’s already lost. Long gone. Kaput.

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch.

The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.