Fake News is supposed to be OUR business!

You know, I enjoy “fake news” as much as anybody. The Daily Show on Comedy Central is my favorite tv show, in fact. And lots of great fake news sites abound on the internet, like GiantNapkin.com and UnconfirmedSources.com, etc. Heck, we even have our own fake news section in our Humor Times publication, called “Faux News.” It’s a very entertaining form of political satire, and a great way to make fun of the corporate news sources we’ve come to love to hate, with their “if it bleeds it leads” format and their “all terror all the time” fear-mongering (because, after all, fear sells). It’s also a great way to lampoon politicians and their phony concern for real issues, as they continue to shill for their corporate sponsors.

Reading and viewing these “news” sources, we know it’s just for fun. However, when the government gets into the fake news act, it’s a travesty. (Even if it does make for fertile ground for more great satire.) And this administration has taken the practice to new heights of arrogance and deception (like it tends to do with everything).

We’ve endured slick tv “news” spots produced by the government and distributed to news outlets around the country, reporting glowingly about administration initiatives, with no indication of it’s source. The New York Times has reported that “In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show.” The stations broadcasting this nonsense are just as guilty deception, of course.

We were treated to a staged photo-op crowd when Hussein’s statue was toppled early in the Iraq war, a precursor of many more lies on the war to come. White House-credentialed fake news reporter “Jeff Gannon” was revealed to be James Guckert, who ran gay porn sites and a gay escort service when he wasn’t tossing softball questions to Mr. Bush and remarking about how Democratic Senators are “divorced from reality.” Shills like Armstrong Williams have been paid by the administration to report favorably on their policies.

Of course, you know the latest. FEMA just held a “press conference” regarding the California fires. They wanted to show the world how much they learned since Katrina. Problem is, they used their own employees as “reporters!” They let real reporters listen in, but not ask questions. Heckuva job, FEMA!

Never fear, FEMA has adopted new guidelines that look suspiciously like the old guidelines they should have been following in the first place.

And now we’re asked to believe it when the White House feigns indignation. They are so shocked! Uh-huh. Yeah, right.

The entire reign of the Bush administration has been based on lies. They’ve been doing it so long, they probably don’t even know they’re lying anymore. But you gotta admit, once you’re onto the game, it can be awfully funny at times.

Tell us another one, George!

The rich get richer, and you know the rest

As Holly Sklar notes in her recent article Billionaires up, America down on Daily Camera Online, America is producing a record number of billionaires, and a record amount of debt and record poverty. If you're one of the 482 billionaires, the news is good, if you're just about anyone else, things are getting worse.

A few gems from her article:

We have a record 482 billionaires — and record foreclosures, a record 47
million people without any health insurance and 5 million more people living
below the poverty line.

Between 1983 and 2004, the average wealth of the top 1 percent of
households grew by 78 percent, reports Edward Wolff, professor of economics at
New York University. The bottom 40 percent lost 59 percent.

The top 1 percent of households — average income $1.5 million — will
save a collective $79.5 billion on their 2008 taxes, reports Citizens for Tax
Justice. That's more than the combined budgets of the Transportation Department,
Small Business Administration, Environmental Protection Agency and Consumer
Product Safety Commission.

Tax cuts will save the top 1 percent a projected $715 billion between
2001 and 2010. And cost us $715 billion in mounting national debt plus
interest.

Many of the new billionaires made their fortunes on the backs of Americans' misery – namely, with hedge funds short-selling subprime credit this summer. As hard-working Americans who were just trying to get a slice of the "American Dream" fall by the wayside, losing their homes, the sleazeballs in the subprime hedge fund market, with their special tax breaks intact, rake in billions. What is wrong with this picture? Plenty.

It is eerily similar to the inequality and the stock market euphoria of the 1920's – and we all know where that led.

As California burns, where is our National Guard? Oh, yeah...

We knew it would come back to bite us, and now it has, hard. We need our California National Guard HERE, where they are supposed to be, to help, well guard our state, and fight these terrible fires.

Now the prez is going to do a flyover and spout some sympathetic words. Spare me. Send us back our Guard! There should be about 20,000 National Guardsmen in California, but too many are currently in Iraq, fighting in the midst of a civil war, in an unwinnable situation, just so Bush can leave office without admitting defeat. Go away, chickenhawk-warmonger-for-profit-in-chief, we don't need your fake sympathy. Declare these charred counties a disaster area, and then SEND OUR NATIONAL GUARD HOME!

The Progressive Democrats of America have put out a call for people to insist Governor Schwarzenegger demand that our Guard be brought back home. Call him today, at 916-445-2841, or send an email. If you call, pick option 5 or 7, not '3' – which is for info on Maria Shriver – an all-important item, we know, but one which can take a back seat for now!

Freedom of Speech?

So, let me get this straight - as far as what we read in our newspapers goes, it's ok for the State Department's report of last month's incident, in which Blackwater guards were accused of killing Iraqi civilians, to be actually written by a Blackwater contractor working in the embassy security detail, but it's not ok for a peace group to place an ad criticizing a general for trying to tell us everything is just peachy keen over there.

That's right, according to CNN, "A source involved in diplomatic security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said a Blackwater contractor, Darren Hanner, drafted the two-page 'spot report' on the letterhead of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security for the embassy's Tactical Operations Center. That office - which tracks and monitors all incidents and movements involving diplomatic security missions - has outsourced positions to Blackwater and another private firm."

But let's not criticize the war effort. No, that would be unpatriotic. Let's slap the critical ad with a Congressional Resolution even, but let's not even bother to investigate the out-of-control corporate "security" force. After all, the mercenary army must not be called what it is, and by the way, let's let them provide their own oversight.

First of all, starting a war without a declaration of war from Congress is unconstitutional, a small little detail our government has decided isn't worth the effort, I suppose. Then launching the war on a lie and planning and managing it in just about the worse way possible, getting thousands of our troops killed, not to mention killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, is horrific. But privatizing the army even one bit, to me, is approaching treasonous. And not having any trace of accountability for this mercenary force? Well, that's letting killers run loose in our name, and that's just asking for abject failure of any mission we thought we were "accomplishing," to put it mildly.

There have been many reports from various sources inside Iraq, despite the effort to sanitize everything, claiming the "private soldiers" have indiscriminately fired not only at Iraqi civilians, but also in at least one instance, at U.S. Marines, and there was even a report of a supervisor who liked to engage in "joy-ride shooting" of Iraqis. But no charges were brought in any of these cases.

So, we're supposed to be outraged that an organization promoting peace has criticized a military officer for basically covering up these atrocities by putting a rosy face on the war, but not by a mercenary army, that we pay for with our tax dollars, gone wild?

And we pay for their services at a rate many times what it would cost us to do the work the old fashioned way, with our own soldiers. But hey, that's always been this administration's M.O. - give out as many huge, no bid, unsupervised contracts as possible to their supporters, making a few CEO's very rich and putting the rest of the country in deep, deep debt.

January 2009 can't come soon enough.