SAR #15168

The propaganda machine to worry about is ours, not theirs.

The Damned Boat Leaks: It has come to the IMF's attention that the economic trickle down theory is a bunch of hokum, and that the stagnant incomes of the poor and middle classes are a significant part of the lack of economic growth. Now (at long last) the IMF says that governments should concentrate their efforts on helping the poorest 20% of their citizens. Except in Greece. 
 
It's Come To This: 212 Republican senators accused the Democrats of weakening US armed forces because Democrats led the Senate in passing a bill to prohibit the military from using torture.

Perspective: Now that Pope Francis is rallying 1.2 billion Catholics to support efforts to slow or stop man-made global warming (and the Pope made it clear global climate change is man's mischief, not an Act of God), young Jebbie says Francis is wrong and should stick to trying “to make us better as people” as though good people aren't a big part of the problem.

Good Question: How will passing the TPP improve people's lives by raising the cost of drugs and increasing the prices on music and old movies and such? Twenty words or less, neatness counts.

Deadline: The US Food and Drug Administration has ordered the food industry to phase out the use of trans fats within three years. Providing, of course, that the TPP does not pass, for the food manufactures could sue for the profits they might lose due to this regulation.

Odds On: A black baby boy born today has a one-in-three chance of ending up in jail. That's not genetics.

Judge Not: A court has ruled that the US government had no legal right to seize AIG and bail it out, but that in doing so the government did not harm the plaintiff (the ungrateful bastard whose company was saved by taxpayer dollars) because without the illegally supplied funds, AIG would have gone belly up and been worthless. Nothing in the ruling appears raise a significant impediment to the repeat of such illegal actions on the part of the government. 
 
Moderation: The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that websites can be held responsible (fiscally, criminally) for defamatory comments that anonymous readers leave in the comments section of the website. 
 
Troublemaker: The Pope's been reading the New Testament again and taking Jesus' message to heart, especially the part about giving your money to the poor, working to heal the sick and comforting the afflicted. The Lesson for the day: “Poverty is precisely at the heart of the Gospel." 
 
An Ounce Of Prevention: The Centers for Disease Control has determined, after extensive experimentation, that if you do not engage in sex you are unlikely to contract a sexually transmitted disease. Research into the efficacy of starvation as an solution to the obesity epidemic has stalled for the lack of volunteer subjects.