TV News LIES

Here is a question for you:  Is America worth your personal investment of a couple hours and some medium-to-moderate thought?  No, it's OK -- this is not a disguised recruitment tool of any kind, nor is this an attempt to sell you aluminum siding.  Your long-distance carrier or digital service plan provider is not involved here, honest.

Although, to be fair, I think this is a pretty good experiment of a couple different kinds.  The primary one is whether you would be willing to spend a couple hours to see if you are sane -- if you're operating on good information that makes sense to you and to some others who are accomplished in such matters.

Put it this way:  I spent the two hours and I have to say, you know, that I'm relieved about a lot of things, and yet troubled about some others.  Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Scientists say evidence of an African environment inhabited by an ancient ape species provides insights into the early diversification of the ape-human lineage.

Knowledge of the environment inhabited by the early ape Proconsul can help in understanding and interpreting the connection between habitat preferences and that diversification, they said.

Proconsul and a primate relative, Dendropithecus, inhabited "a widespread, dense, multistoried, closed canopy" forest on Rusinga Island in Kenya, the researchers report in the journal Nature Communications.

Bombs exploded in predominantly Shia Muslim districts of Baghdad and in the southern city of Hilla on Tuesday, killing at least 49 people, police and hospital sources said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for any of the attacks, but Shia Iraqis are often targeted by radical Sunni groups, which have been regaining ground in Iraq over the past year and overran several towns in recent weeks.

Officials tapped by the Obama administration to lead the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations have received multimillion dollar bonuses from CitiGroup and Bank of America, financial disclosures obtained by Republic Report show.

Stefan Selig, a Bank of America investment banker nominated to become the Under Secretary for International Trade at the Department of Commerce, received more than $9 million in bonus pay as he was nominated to join the administration in November. The bonus pay came in addition to the $5.1 million in incentive pay awarded to Selig last year.

The question isn’t: Will conservatives push to enact laws based on the Bible? We are way beyond that.  The real questions are: 1. How many more of these laws do they want to impose? And, 2. What will our nation look like if their crusade is successful to bring America’s laws into agreement with “God’s law”?

To some on the right, America is a “Christian nation”—like Saudi Arabia is a Muslim nation—meaning that our nation’s laws should be based on their religious text. These forces aren’t moved by Thomas Jefferson’s famous letter in which he spoke of the need to create, "a wall of separation between church and state.” Nor will they be swayed by citing Ronald Reagan’s words, "Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”

Toxic chemicals may be behind the rising number of children with autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, U.S. researchers say.

Co-authors Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and Philip Landrigan, dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, said the study outlines possible links between newly recognized neurotoxicants and negative health effects on children, including:

-- Manganese associated with diminished intellectual function and impaired motor skills.

-- Solvents linked to hyperactivity and aggressive behavior.

-- Certain types of pesticides might cause cognitive delays.

A United Nations panel released a report Monday saying that "unspeakable atrocities" and crimes against humanity have been committed in North Korea and that the U.N. will call for an international criminal investigation, the most serious attempt yet to probe evidence of grave and systematic rights violations in the authoritarian state.

"The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world," the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) said in a statement.

Sometimes, even in the face of cruel and absurd realities, I find myself reaching down to retrieve my buttocks, having laughed them clean off me, and onto the floor.

Hard-working professionals are sometimes responsible for any lingering twitches I may harbor to create LMAO messages that I may still feel inclined, even now, when I know better, to send anywhere:  comedians, screenwriters, authors, actors, and the like.  Other times, it's the accidental, amateur all-stars from the wobbly, wearisome, warlike planets of politics, monetary systems, religious beliefs, and the ongoing unrest over Crockpot chili recipes.

Sometimes, though, it's the innocent, unplanned happenstance of the hapless, of people going about their lives, doing the best they can, pratfalling and deadfalling their way from one stretch of black ice to Crsico patch, only to make their escape jump onto a long slick of axle grease, shooting right into Vaseline Lake.