TV News LIES

One of the problems with any sort of a year-end wrap-up is knowing where to start.  One other problem is knowing when to stop.

Look at it this way:  When faced with a category called Most Objectionable Republican, you know you've got a really long slog ahead of you.  In all fairness, in a case like this, the possibilities really start opening up and the skies are not just the limit, they're the jumping-off point.

Republicans control the Michigan state legislature.  It was the perfect opportunity to push through laws limiting union power and labor rights for public-sector workers.  So, they did. Michigan is now the 24th state out of 50 designated as a "right-to-work" state.

For critics, this act translates into a "right-to-fire-and-treat-workers-anyway-we-want" law. Critics will also know that Republicans and their fat cat constituents are no doubt all smiles with today's action in the House of Representatives, a push they began last week in the Senate.

We're looking in on some of those ubiquitous, Year-End summaries, letting them out of their cages and urging them to stretch their legs -- to take wing a bit early this December.  Call it a seasonal lark.

It's not that we're likely to forget these tales (we have memories like elephants).  There's just a good supply of animal tales squirreled-away in our cache:  Dogs and deer, whales and flies, ducks, cats, elephants, even a sort-of giraffe.

You know how it is:  It's Saturday, and, in your mind's eye, you're vacationing in the tropics, surfing via your motherboard, running fast along topical waves of interest in the vast internet ocean, hooked on something or other you find titanically interesting, when you strike the unexpected iceberg, snapping to a halt with a sickening lurch.

All you can manage to do is stare numbly and in shock at the screen, dead in the water, dumbstruck and adrift in your one-person lifeboat, and without so much as first aid kit, water, rations, or a flare gun.  Or Dramamine.

More jobs were created last month than were expected, with 147,000 created in the private sector and 1,000 public sector jobs lost that need to be subtracted from the number. The unemployment rate continues to fall as that is based on a large household survey, and is down to 7.7%.

While the number of people that reported working didn't change, the rate at which the boomers are retiring is picking up. Some economists estimate that we need as few as 75,000 new jobs per month to keep up with the growing millennium generation. The underemployment rate continues in the high teens, with nearly one million reporting that they are not looking for work as no jobs exist for them.

There must be a rule somewhere that says everything in life must be stranger and more complicated than it really needs to be.

If there is such an ancient edict handed down through the ages, like an amulet that we can't shed, one that's still mysteriously holding sway over us, then our days suddenly go from inexplicable to predictable.

Sometimes The Curse, or whatever, has a sense of humor.  Other times it is as likely to trip you on the way by as it is to sneer and growl at you, no longer playfully waggling its fingers, its thumb parked on its nose.