DISHONEST REPORTING Is Killing The Country

This entire election cycle is turning on one factor – dishonest reporting.  There is no other proper term for it.  DISHONEST REPORTING.

When a candidate lies and the press does not report it as a lie, that is dishonest reporting. When he does it DAILY and HOURLY, and the press does not report the lies as lies, it can only be called dishonest reporting.

When a candidate refuses to produce his tax returns, and the press doesn’t hound him into doing it, that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate can make up shit about the other candidate and the press pretends that such fabrications are not just made-up shit (LIES), then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate can flip-flop hourly about his stance on any – ANY – issue, and the press does not laugh him out of town EVERY TIME, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has spent more than five years calling the President of the USA a Kenyan by birth, and the press lets him get away with it, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has had 3500 lawsuits against him and the press isn’t digging into as many as they can find for DIRT, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has CURRENT and multiple state-driven fraud court cases against him, and the press doesn’t put that as above-the-fold headlines, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has a civil case against him about having sex four times with a 13-year-old back in the 1990s, and the press doesn’t take off on him about it, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate consorts with racists and the press doesn’t hang him with their pens, from February to November, then that is dishonest reporting.

When the press does not refer to him by name as “Donald Trump, the racist candidate” every day, then that is dishonest reporting.

When a candidate has been smeared by the other party with baseless and unprovable allegations that KEEP on proving to be baseless, over and over, and the press goes along with it, then that is dishonest reporting.

The list goes on and on, and what we have is a press that has no principles except selling news – but which is passing on the chance to sell FAR MORE news, simply by driving Donald Trump deep into the racist and lying gutter from whence he came.

I won’t even call it irresponsible reporting, because reporters are beholden to the publishers who sign their checks, not to the public.  So selling more subscriptions is actually responsible, from that POV.

But this is the first and foremost time in American political campaign history that the press – in toto – has been so dishonest, on a daily basis and as a herd.

Is there anything to say but SHAME ON THEM, and what they are inviting to HAPPEN to the country?

And it’s going to HAPPEN, if they don’t start being honest in their reporting.

SILLY THOUGHT #1,587: DO WE REALLY NEED A CONGRESS?

No, there have not been 1,586 previous silly thoughts.  Silly me, I made the number up.

This is something I’ve thought  about for over 15 years. It got a boost in 2001, when The Patriot Act was passed.  The actual bill was printed out in the wee hours of the morning, the middle of the night, on the same day when the U.S. House was supposed to vote on it.  It ran many, many thousands of pages, as I think I heard.  And yet, the Congressmen were supposed to vote on this thing that nthey had not even had a chance to read.

Well, Congressman John Conyers was asked by a young journalist about just this point, during that day – “Congressman, how can all of you vote on something that just got published a few hours ago?  You cannot have had a chance to read it yet.”

This is one time a politician wasn’t lying when his lips moved. Conyers looked him in the eye and said, “Son, do you think that we ever get a chance to read the bills we vote on?”

Now, to me that was a seminal moment.

Strange Thoughts on Politics – Is The GOP Screwed?

I have a strange way of thinking.  It’s a mix of optimism, trust, cynicism, naïvete, education, curiosity, logic, open-mindedness, experience, book learning, principles, and – above all – a belief in the innate goodness and generosity of human beings.

Now most of those can be wrapped up in the first one – optimism.  The one that doesn’t, well, I guess you could call that one – cynicism – pessimism”, if you want to.  But you can see at a glance that the optimism outweighs the pessimism.  By quite a bit.

Though I have to deal with the daily world, like everyone has to, I don’t MAINLY do that.  That is just the “next step”, not the direction nor the goal.  When I am walking down the street, I take one step at a time, and that is the “next step”, but my direction is chosen independently of my means of locomotion, and my goal dictates the direction.  My means of locomotion could be a skateboard (not likely) or a taxi or a bike, etc.  Or it could be typing on the keyboard here, in order to get an idea across that I hope might connect with someone else.  In that case the goal is “idea connection”, and the direction is the sentence structure and paragraph construct (making each step go in the same direction, mostly).  Locomotion in this case would be commonly called writing.

The basic thing is to have a long term goal (e.g., idea connection) and a short term means/activity (e.g., writing or teaching or thinking out loud or making a joke), as well as mastering the steps/skills/methods/protocols/code/talent/techniques.  The latter is the steps, and the middle is the direction, and the former is the goal.

Bear with me on this…  It DOES go somewhere… 🙂

Now, what made me think of any of this is that I was talking with a friend today, about US politics.  That was obvious, wasn’t it?  Hahaha

She was worried that Social Security might not be there when she retires in several years.  The GOP and FOX News have repeated so many untrue things so often that people not only begin to believe they MIGHT be rue, but that they almost certainly ARE TRUE.  Thanks, Josef Göbbels, for teaching the mind fuckers of this world that repetition can make people believe all SORTS of things that aren’t necessarily so. Joe, you got HER, anyway, by way of the GOP and its insane mouthpiece, FOX News.  Joe, you screwed up your Germany, and you screwed up America, even though you were long dead by the time Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and Ronald Reagan and Arthur Laffer twisted the sanity out of the American mind.

A U.S. judge FINALLY rules NSA phone surveillance program is most likely unlawful

Thought you all might like this…

U.S. judge rules phone surveillance program is likely unlawful

Reuters
December 16, 2013

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government’s gathering of Americans’ phone records is likely unlawful, a judge ruled on Monday and ordered the suspension of the collection of data on two phone company customers who sued the Obama administration.

In a significant challenge to U.S. spying authority, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington D.C. wrote that the government’s program likely violated Americans’ right to be free of unreasonable searches.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen,” Leon wrote, citing earlier court precedent….

….Leon expressed skepticism of the program’s value, writing that the government could not cite a single instance in which the bulk data actually stopped an imminent attack.

“I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism,” he wrote.

That is important, he added, because for the program to be lawful, the government must show its effectiveness outweighs privacy interests.

Have a read.

The displayed banner on the Bloomberg news program’s video reads:

JUDGE: PLAINTIFFS CAN PROBABLY SHOW THAT NSA PHONE SURVEILLANCE VIOLATES 4TH AMENDMENT

No duh.

The 4th Amendment reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and PARTICULARLY describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

[emphasis added]

If this global search doesn’t violate this, then what else could possibly rise to that level of violation?

…”papers, and effects” I take to include emails and phone calls, but it is – as everything – subject to the courts to interpret that.  And I am certain that this has been done long ago.  Legal precedence is out there.

…”searches” certainly would apply in the NSA case.

…”PARTICULARLY” means that they MUST be specific.  Fishing expeditions are thus specifically BANNED.  (read the next post…)