Fox News has set up an on-line news web site they’re calling “Fox Nation” according to the Washington Post. The writer of the article, Howard Kurtz, quotes Fox as saying “It’s Time to Say NO to Biased Media and Say YES to Fair Play and Free Speech”. WOW! About the only truth in that statement is the “free speech” part. Kurtz says Fox admits to supporting the Bush White House and attacking the Obama White House. That’s certainly “unbiased” and “fair play”, wouldn’t you say? The only problem I have with Fox News is them disguising themselves as a news outlet when they and the entire world know their objective is to promote the far right neo-conservative agenda.
Ooop’s — you mean Abu Zubaida really wasn’t “chief of operations” and a “trusted associate” of Osama bin Laden? Not even an official member of al-Qaeda? And “not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of his tortured confessions”? But the useful information he did give was before he was tortured with waterboarding? Mercy! But he did cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in that investigators were running all over the world chasing those bogus leads he gave while under duress. Obviously, Zubaida is a very bad person, contributed significantly to terrorism, and probably deserved what he got. But it appears the torture wasn’t necessary and didn’t help at all.
Swiss banks feared investors would panic and withdraw some of the estimated $2 trillion in foreign assets from their banks if the bank revealed the names of wealthy Americans who were using Swiss accounts to hide money from the IRS. They relied so heavily on those kinds of accounts that the country even passed a law saying tax evasion is not a criminal offense. Ok, here’s a clue for you Swiss bankers — when you build your empire on dirty money, continue to rely on the infusion of dirty money for your existence, you must expect it to collapse some day. That day is here — well, maybe not. That much money (owned by American crooks) carries an awful lot of stroke and power.
“More than a third of private-sector workers belonged to unions in the early 1950s; today, less than 8 percent do. As unions declined in the past three decades,wages have lagged behind rising productivity” [bold added], so says a report quoted by this Washington Post article. (Notice the reference to “the past three decades”. When did Reagan become President starting the rise to power of the neoconservatives?) I wrote this post in September of last year pointing out that wages fell $2000 per year for workers while productivity rose 18% from 2000 through 2007. That increase in productivity helped CEO’s pay rise to 344 times the workers pay. The decline in workers wages is a direct result of unions being driven out. Today our elected officials are driving the last nail in the coffin of unions with the blackmail of the auto industry — much to the pleasure of those automakers I’m sure. Yeahhhh free market!!
USA Today (among others) reported that the national average for gasoline rose above $2 this week. As I pointed out to my friend over at Cynical Synapse, the beginning of the rise in oil prices just coincidentally coincided with the day treasury secretary Tim Geithner announced he was going to hand over another $1.2 trillion of taxpayer money to Wall Street. Over the next few days the price of oil increased 31%. That on top of much lower consumption and increased inventory numbers. Leave it up to those greedy bastards that caused our financial collapse to throw a monkey wrench into the cogs of economic recovery.
Finally, the “startling news” just keeps coming out. USA Today reported that “hundreds of killer whales are seen in the Gulf of Mexico“. Experts have been saying for years that killer whales will not come into the warm waters of the GOM. Bulllllll S#*%! Those of us who have been flying around & over the GOM for decades have seen and reported killer whales there. But that was just impossible, so said those same experts. Obviously we “didn’t know what a killer whale looked like”. Besides, “it takes an expert to recognize one”. Ok. And we don’t understand finance well enough either to know what’s good for Wall Street and what’s not good for Wall Street. So lets just leave it up to the “experts” — you know — the ones who got us here?
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Random Thoughts on Other Notable Headlines of the Day – Issue VI
March 31, 2009