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

Murdered for texting his three-year-old daughter.

Yes, that is what happened. A retired police officer named Curtis Reeves got so mad about young father Chad Oulson texting his young daughter during a movie, he shot the poor guy and his wife. Mr. Oulson was unarmed and is now dead, because he loved his daughter and texted her while he and his wife went out on a short date.

The murderer in this case was a highly trained public safety professional, and on the face of it would seem an unlikely person to just up and kill a man over such a petty thing as texting. That being the case, we all might want to think very hard about carrying guns with us in public places. Had Mister Reeves been carrying, say, mace instead of a .380, he would have been just as safe, and Mister Oulson’s daughter would still have her daddy.

But because Curtis Reeves is like so many Americans (cowardly little wussies who are too s***-scared to go to a friggin’ movie without a cannon jammed down their trousers), a cute young preschooler will have to live the rest of her life without her father, and her mother will have to raise her alone. All for no good reason.

The lesson here, friends, is that a “well-regulated militia” does not = a “bunch of idiots running around with handguns 24/7”. There ARE places in our country in which one would be advised to have a weapon; but a movie theatre during a matinee in a good neighborhood is not one of them. We have the right to keep and bear arms, and we also have the obligation to use that right responsibly.

And because some scaredy-cat old coot did NOT use his Second Amendment rights in a responsible manner, a grieving widow and her toddler are weeping over the loss of the man they loved. A loss that should not have happened. A loss that would not have happened if the old fart had been a good citizen, used his brain, and left his handgun locked up in the gun safe.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky