or, How The Financial Press Lies With Numbers

The Dow Jones Industrial Average just hit a "milestone" by passing 14,000. Great, right?

On July 10 and 12, I had the singular "honor" of being "Hannitized" on Faux Nooz. While the subject was new, and intimately known to me, the technique recalled the fate of many that had come before

Like, f'r instance, Ward Churchill ...

Propaganda is the ring of Sauron.

Those who read THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, or, perhaps, saw the movies, will recall that the Ring is a ring of power, and that it is, finally, always evil.

Today is that forgotten holiday, Flag Day.

Established by Woodrow Wilson, by proclamation in 1916, Congress enshrined "National Flag Day" in 1949.

On this day in 1777, the Congress adopted our flag (which has been modified over time). This is "Old Glory"s Two Hundred and Thirtieth (and no/100s) birthday.

As you may have noticed, it is our forgotten holiday ...

My faith in American justice is restored. For a moment, as if in a fever dream, shimmering and dancing like a heat mirage on the highway, a celebrity was nearly treated like a normal person.

This morning, thankfully, that situation has been rectified; God is in his heaven, all is right with the world.

For those who read blogs, the screaming red flag has been raised by the casual dismissal by Monica Goodling of the term "caging list" as just "a direct mail term," last week during her congressional testimony.

Caging is a felony, and Goodling essentially admitted that said felony was engaged in by officials of the Justice Department.

Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their clichés.
            —Eugène Ionesco

There's a reason that Right Wingers do so poorly on forums like "Real Time with Bill Maher." It's because they are so used to only "debating" in scream-friendly forums like Faux Nooz and Rushing (to) Limbo that their "fair debate muscles" are atrophied.

It's less that they are lightweights than that they've been weightless.

(Speaking of some of our more prominent mothers ...)

The Alberto Gonzales testimony before the House Judiciary Committee didn’t approach the astonishing spectacle of our Attorney General forgetting 72 times -- by the count of that patriotic American who sat behind Gonzo, keeping a running tally at the hearings -- in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Well, all day the sound bites of Alberto Gonzales serving to pleasure the "president" have been running on the radio.

I'm sorry: Serving at the "pleasure" of the "president."

With apologies to Ray Ring, who yesterday or today won a Polk Award for his High Country News reporting on the Howie Rich gang in Montana (http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=16409), this article was already in the works. Onward:

Yesterday we set the metaphor: that the "600 year Golden Pig Year" is a con to sell souvenirs and baby gear. That "Presidents Day" is a distortion made up by department stores as an excuse for more white sales.

I bet you’ve heard the tales. I had heard that this was the Chinese Year of the Fire Pig. (As a Wood Ram, I understand something about the Chinese Zodiac, but that’s not important right now. And stop calling me "Shirley.")

And I thought, well, the year of the Flaming Pig ought surely to be Howie Rich’s signature year.

Here’s a dollar figure to choke on: $4 million dollars in two contributions to a stealth PAC called "ALL CHILDREN MATTER." Oh. I mean $4 million dollars in two contributions in the last weeks of the 2006 election, with one timed to show up in the last electoral reporting period, and the OTHER two million timed to show up only AFTER the election.

Pretty slick, huh?

Even slicker: the donations came from the hand of a dead man

It isn't even Christmas. The last wood and cardboard lawn signs haven't yet been fed into cabin stoves. The last of the wood pellets haven't been laid up for winter, although there seems to be a major blizzard underway in the Rockies.

The last of the nativity scenes have pretty much all gone up, or been taken down, according to which side of the anti-Santa door you're swinging on.

Who Gives A Shit?

Paul Jacob had a thought while taking a shit the other day. I apologize for the frank nature of the language here, but given the pettifoggery and mendacity usually evinced by Jacob's allegedly self-written weekly column cum radio spot "Common Sense," some plain speaking ought to be welcomed, even if it means calling a spade a spade, or, in this case, a turd a turd.

Who is Paul Jacob? you might ask. Good question. Howie Rich's brother-in-law is heard on "over 100 stations" every week on his commentary spot produced by "Americans for Limited Government*" (Howard Rich, President)

Tonight has been a DISASTER for Howard Rich & Friends.

Rich losses:

(OLD had already lost prior to the election):

If you don't know who Howard Rich is, stop reading right here.

This just hit this weekend. It would seem that THE STATE newspaper in South Carolina, and the Portland OREGONIAN have transgressed by pointing out the Howie Rich connection. So, semi-anonymously, two shadowy "smears" appeared, each of which used the same "talking" point:

Howard Rich has been busy, and he's been nasty. Breaking news in Missouri, South Carolina, Florida and elsewhere.

We find the last Trojan Horse, perhaps of the electoral season, and it's not where anyone would expect. And why, finally, the blogs are the only media actually on this story.

Thursday, in Montana, the state Supreme Court ruled unanimously to let stand the lower court determination that "pervasive fraud" and other shenanigans reached such a level that three ballot initiatives should be thrown out.

And today in Denver, the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS broke the story of Howard Rich money behind a judicial term limits initiative. Secret out-of-state funding, etc. Sound familiar? "Secret donors funding bulk of campaign to limit judges" reads the headline...