The Problem is: it’s Perfectly Legal for Them to Lie to Us.

This always surprises people: the Courts have ruled that news organizations can tell lies whenever they choose. Freedom of speech, don’tcha know. Jane Akre, an award-winning Journalist, was hired by Fox News affiliate WTVT to be, well, a journalist. You know, someone who reports news.

To Fox’s surprise, she and her team found some news. News that one of Fox’s sponsors did not like at all. So Fox ordered her to put some lies in the broadcast, to keep the sponsors happy and the money rolling in. Ms. Akre refused, on grounds of professional ethics.

Fox then fired her and her husband; they sued, and the court’s ruling, incredibly, made it clear that there was no law requiring that news organizations provide truthful content. None. Nada. Zippo. Zilch. Lies are A-OK for those upon whom we rely for accurate reporting.

That ruling, as we look back, opened the Falsehood Floodgates the rest of the way for politicians and their BFFs in the Infotainment Industry. One may still sue for libel, although it is very hard to win and takes years. One may sue over a false advertisement, but those cases are likewise hard to win and take years as well.

Meanwhile, Fox and their compadres repeat their lies so often in the interim, the lies wind up being believed to be true by a large majority of Americans. A few recent examples: Benghazi, Obama’s birth certificate, and much of the Michael Brown coverage.

This writer loves him some First Amendment, yes he does. However, there is no reason not to be able to require that news providers at least put a label on lies: call ’em “editorials”, or “speculative”, or “unproved”. It would be better to make the lies illegal, but the Roberts court ain’t gonna outlaw lies. Not with the current load of Bushbots and Reaganistas forming the majority, anyway.

So, Gentle Reader, remember that you really CAN’T trust anything you read in the papers or see on the TeeVee. You are being lied to 24/7/365 by at least some of the “news” sources you have heretofore relied upon for information. You’ll have to keep a line open to Snopes, FactCheck, Politifact, and other such sources before you can believe Thing One the newsies tell you.

Because in modern America, it’s legal for rich corporations, “news” outlets and politicians to lie to you whenever they want, about whatever they want, however they want.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Lowest of the low: Repubs are stealing Dem campaign donations.

And they are doing it a LOT. In the game of ethical Limbo that is American politics, the GOPee has gone as low as anyone can go.
The scam works like this:

The National Republican Congressional Committee has launched a series of websites that look like they support a Democratic candidate for Congress, but instead direct contributions to the Republican Party instead.
The Tampa Bay Times interviews one donor who thought he was giving to Alex Sink’s (D) congressional campaign. It even used the same blue and green color scheme as the candidate’s official website.

Said the donor: “It looked legitimate and had a smiling face of Sink and all the trappings of a legitimate site.”

However, it was actually a website for the candidate’s “Republican” opponent, set up to con Dems into unknowingly giving money to Repubs. Stealing. Dirty tricks have now become filthy tricks.

And it turns out that this started in December. The Elephant Asses are using the current gridlock at the Federal Election Commission to their advantage, since it will take months or perhaps years before any action might be taken. So they are lying, deceiving, and stealing the while. And it’s not just a few bad apples: the national party is running the scam.

Tell us again, why you would ever support such a party. Because if you do, you support criminals. If you vote Red, you are telling all of us that you are pro-robbery. And frankly, I wouldn’t trust such a scumbucket around my daughters, my wallet, or even my piggy bank.

Repubs: thieves, plain and simple. Since no one will throw these crooks in jail, let’s at least vote them out of office.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Remember who the real enemy is”. Day One: Our lapdog media.

Another day, another lying, anti-ObamaCare hit piece. This one on NPR, “showing” how it would hurt Dems in the next election. Lots of readers would be surprised to hear that NPR is participating in the anti-ACA witch-hunts that litter the mediascape like so many bloated buzzards, because NPR is supposedly a “liberal” outlet. But that is no longer the case, and hasn’t been for quite some time.

The truth is, 95% of the American “news” media is neither liberal nor conservative: they are driven by revenue, not ideology. NBC and Fox, for example, get paid by their advertisers and owners to put out stories that make more people watch their networks, because that makes more money for them. NPR does the same thing, except they call their paymasters “underwriters”. Same thing, different labels.

Back in the day (the 60’s and the 70’s), we used to say, “remember who the real enemy is”: it wasn’t the soldiers or the National Guard, it was the politicians and Military-Industrial Complex that gave the orders. Orders meant to increase the wealth and power of a very few, at the expense of the rest of us. So it was then, so it has always been, and so it is now. The real enemy is the class of powerful, wealthy, power-hungry motherf***ers who manipulate our politicians and media outlets in order to manipulate us.

“Remember who the real enemy is”. It is a truth that bears repeating. And this writer was pleased to hear it in the Dystopian allegory du jour (“The Hunger Games”), because a helluva lot of people need reminding. Generations of humans have been herded like cattle, and used in much the same way. We are NOT cattle, however; and we needn’t and shouldn’t compliantly chew our cud, being used up and milked of all our resources while we live, and eventually getting it where the livestock gets it.

Whenever you hear the “news” media harping on a single theme in near-unison, you can bet someone is paying for that chorus to sing those notes and recite those lyrics. Maybe the lyrics are lies, maybe they are selected bits of truth, but they are all chosen to deliver the message of our enemy. And that enemy has no single skin color, political affiliation, location, sexual orientation or gender: it is defined only by its ruthless rapacity and relentless creativity in fooling the foolish, gulling the gullible, and screwing the screwable.

And the Media take their silver and play their scripted part, making them (if not the enemy themselves), at least the willing accomplices of that enemy.

Tomorrow: trickle-down economics, and how successful it has been in robbing and dividing us.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky