TV News LIES

The count of breathtakingly insane religions, cults, and allied wackos on the scene on any given day is limited only by your ability to use higher numbers.  Members always profess goodness and light, then commit dark and damaging acts.  The claims are high-minded, the deeds are low down.

Religion is an ancient subject and it gets older all the time.  Very old.

Sample just one nutball, a so-called pastor, by name of Terry Jones -- yes, the same one who burned Korans last year, instigating days of intensive rioting in Afghanistan.  This year, he's out to best his record, and has succeeded:  He backed a film providing insults aplenty for Muslims, who say it defames Islam and its holiest figure, Mohammad.

Once again, rioting and death follow this pastor's so-called good works.

It's Sunday, and Elvis's Bible just brought $94,000 at auction.

We are left in the pews wondering what Jesus might have made of that, in light of so many clear instructions and concise admonitions that the wealthy are to give their riches and material possessions to the poor.

There are likely no specific passages in the Bible providing a loophole to hoard wealth in order to buy a spendy celebrity Bible, but the ironies are still striking.

Every time we seem to make any progress as a species, we tend to immediately slump back from the effort, exhausted.  Then, we invent something to take care of the new problem we've created from our initial efforts, and go on with our lives -- satisfied with a job well done.

In other places and times, this might have been called playing to a draw, but in our country, it's usually called Progress.

One of the most hair-raising and intriguing dances is life itself, of course -- although global climate change, religious conflicts and wars of all kinds are spine-chilling, too.  Those dances are all still in continuous motion, as is the case with the most intricate, hypnotic motions.

'Look it up', this is something you'll never, ever hear from the right. They love their talking points that they treat as facts, as they do with any opinion that pops into their heads. Even when they quote an actual real number, they never put it into context.

The big headline today on the rightwing 'news' sites is that the workforce non-participation total is now 89 million. They are implying and hoping you will accept this to mean that there are 89 million unemployed people (all on welfare of course). This is simply nonsense.

You might remember President Obama saying he wanted to look forward, not back.  You may also remember Speaker Pelosi telling all of us that impeachment was off the table.

Memory is a most peculilar thing.

Those forgive-and-forget statements grow more stunning with time.  This is especially true now that Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, has in effect crashed any hopes of holding Bush administration officials accountable for torture and other abuses and crimes.

Incredibly, the Republicans think they can pull a Ronald Reagan stunt and work the 'Morning in America' scam on the voters again. Carter lost a big chunk of the union vote who blamed him for the bad economy caused largely by Nixon, they foolishly believed Reagan to be on their side.

Mitt Romney doesn't pass the smell test for most voters, even with many of those who will vote for him anyway.