Power of the Media

The totalitarian media (omnipresent; encompassing the totality of most people's lives) would have us believe the economy is in full-scale collapse. More panic earlier today on Wall Street, as retail sales figures "plummeted," "worst decline in years," according to media reports.

How far down were sales, do you think?

10%? 20%? 40%?!

No. Sales were down 1.2%. Not quite a collapse.
********************************
The populace is being played, in order to justify a further melding of government and big business interests, even though the centralization of the financial system is what caused banking problems in the first place. Call it Socialism or call it Fascism, it's the same economic animal.

The clownish Balloon Economy is being sustained by huge injections of manufactured money into the banking system.

But who's being sustained? Is it not those on the top end of the economic scale?

There's great irony in what's happening. The housing crisis for the lower classes of society occurred because housing, thanks to the distortions of the Balloon Economy, became too expensive for many people.

Now, rather than allow the market to make natural adjustments-- to allow the cost of housing to be cut in half-- every effort is being made to sidestep the natural market and sustain the artificially high price. The problem for the bottom half of society is that the cost of EVERYTHING is too high; education, health care, transportation.

On one side of the balloon, air escapes from proliferating holes, while on the other end Clownmaster Henry J. Paulsen mans a bicycle tire pump, furiously trying to pump more air into the overinflated red bursting thing of nothing.
**********************************
People ARE hurting in this country, for real, but it's not a three-week phenomenon, they've been hurting in places like the industrial heartland for years, except the distorted media and the distortion of government figures for years have been covering this reality up.
**********************************
With so much media noise occurring right now, the trick for the nonaligned observer is to keep one's head-- to ignore the magician's misdirections to spot where the coin or rabbit is actually going.

Curious, isn't it, that the privileged media class, representatives of plutocrats (or plutocrats themselves like Arianna Huffington, Tina Brown, Katrina vanden Heuvel, et.al), is nearly 100% in the Obama camp? Even bow-tie conservatives, sons of privilege like George Will, William Kristol, and Christopher Buckley, have abandoned the decrepit McCain campaign wagon. Ultra-snob Buckley cites much-scorned Sarah Palin as the reason.

Do we know what's happening?
********************************
Since the media is a circus, its coverage of the circus election should become even more clown-like. I suggest that instead of another unbearably boring debate between the two men, Alex Trebek be brought in and the two candidates compete against the "Jeopardy" game board. Then again, with his war-mangled hands, it might be a problem for McCain.

"Afghanistan for 400, Alex," Obama confidently declares.

A panel flips; an answer given, to which must be matched a question. McCain doggedly and futilely attempts to buzz in.

"Dol-gurned thing!" McCain mutters under his breath as he struggles with the device, red-faced, as his opponent, "Errr, ahhh, errr," begins his fumbled response.