TV News LIES

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.

There's a stand-up party game out, the traditional standby of social interaction in groups. Details have leaked: The game is from the Guild of Lazing Rich Old Buggerers (GLORB) -- the leisure service unit of Global Adherents of Special Persons' Protections (GASPP), itself a subsidiary of parent corporation HAVOCC, the House of Avaricious, Villainous, Oafish, Charlatan Capitalists.

It'll be a blast, as this is the same bunch behind Enron, the Exxon Valdez, fracking, GMOs, the BP oil volcano in the Gulf, mortgage crises, the credit crunch, bets on derivatives' bets, the hapless need for red-alert bank bailouts, inter-linked LIBOR manipulations, with even more in the pipeline, so to say, for the really lean years ahead.

It seems we've only seen the tip of the iceberg with the Barclays Bank prosecution for rigging the LIBOR (London Interbank Offer Rate). It seems that they are cooperating to avoid jail time. Bob Diamond who headed the bank until recently said "he was sickened when he saw the emails."

What he means is that he was sickened that his underlings were stupid enough to leave a paper trail. His nausea will be somewhat soothed by the $3.5 million he gets as a golden parachute. This, however, is about a tenth of what he expected to get. How will he make the payments on his Rolls?