TV News LIES

Any quick sprint to round up news is getting tougher all the time -- the media insists on keeping us all tangled up in kudzu, stuffed full of manure, and kept in the dark.  It's nearly enough to make one reach for the Roundup.  (Here, we'll get sidetracked right away,  to help give you an immediate flavor of the razor-sharp focus of the rest to come.)

So, um, why do the Scotts Miracle-Gro people have such a fixation on death?  One look at their website is a cross between promises of horrific, hair-blazing nuclear Armageddon and folksy, trail-blazing, shucks-M'am, old-West wanted posters.

Nothingness is not a void:  It is something on its own, and something all its own, too. Feel as though you've fallen down a philosophical rabbit hole?  You're in good company.

Perhaps this question will help shed some light on the matter:  Is Zero an odd or even number?  (Most people require a bit to work this one out.  Go ahead -- take your time and puzzle it out, herding your arguments both for and against...)

OK, ready?  Zero is an even number.

For such a visual world, we humans sure have problems distinguishing between and among vision, sight, and seeing.

Chip in some added challenges from interpretation, translation, or point of view, and coming to grips with the world around us becomes quite a balancing act.  There's more to understanding what's going on than just taking a snapshot of the view.

Unlike cameras, human try to make sense of what it all means, from the infamous Big Picture down to the smallest detail.  When the light hits the medium in a camera, the camera's work is done.  But, when light enters the human eye, the work has only just begun.

Anyone halfway intelligent and alert can pay attention to current events, put the pieces together for themselves, thereby triggering hundreds of emotional responses ranging from idle, bemused concerned to stark terror and utter fear.

It may be that anyone who is completely, fully intelligent never dwells in the vast middle, but operates only at either end of the spectrum -- either completely tuned out and disinterested, or wealthy as all-get out, and out buying their own reality, somewhere pleasant.

The US does nothing to punish those guilty of war crimes or Wall Street fraud, yet demonises the whistleblower.

Over the past two and a half years, all of which he has spent in a military prison, much has been said about Bradley Manning, but nothing has been heard from him. That changed on Thursday, when the 23-year-old US army private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks testified at his court martial proceeding about the conditions of his detention.

The oppressive, borderline-torturous measures to which he was subjected, including prolonged solitary confinement and forced nudity, have been known for some time. A formal UN investigation denounced those conditions as "cruel and inhuman". President Obama's state department spokesman, retired air force colonel PJ Crowley, resigned after publicly condemning Manning's treatment. A prison psychologist testified this week that Manning's conditions were more damaging than those found on death row, or at Guantánamo Bay.

Some people on the left are alarmed that Treasury Sec Timothy Geithner is leading negotiations to deal with the Fiscal Cliff (or the Fiscal Bunny Slope) being held between the Obama administration and the Congress. Okay, he wouldn't be my pick, but he does have the expertise and the staff to deal with it.

Let's clear up a couple of things, Geithner never worked for a Wall Street bank. He was Governor of the NY Fed, which is largely responsible for riding herd on the the Wall Street banks, but that business was completely out of control before he got the job.