Ludicrous Headline Du Jour

by Retta Fontana 

Exclusive to STR

Contenders for this dubious award are from Friday, June 16^th 2006 , but they could be from any politico pie hole, on any given day.   

In one corner we have this featherweight champion: “U.S. inflation may be worse than what is showing up in government data.  Since 1913, the U.S. Dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power.  We have yet to hear the government say so, or admit anything close to it. 

Define Money

In 1800 a loaf of bread cost two cents.  In 1900 a loaf of bread still cost two cents. 

Today I pay $4.50 for a good loaf of fresh, whole grain bread.  Is it because today’s bread is so much better than it was in 1800?  What I buy now is not unlike artisan bread of the past – fresh, high quality ingredients, handmade daily.   

Back then the U.S. Dollar was redeemable in gold, which everyone knew to be real money.  Gold was the bit in the mouth of the bureaucratic beast, rendering it unable to sink its fangs of inflationary theft into our collective backsides.  Alan Greenspan said as much in his essay entitled, “Gold and Economic Freedom” in 1967 before he was seduced by the temptation to power and fame by the Federal Reserve.  The thieves in Washington , having detached our money from a gold standard, chewed the collar of restraint off from around their necks, making the sky the limit for inflation.  

They continue to add millions more dollars into circulation every year, pulling them from thin air.  In fact, the amount of dollars added into the economy each year was becoming embarrassing.  (Politicians can blush, and you thought they weren’t human!  Excuse me, Mr. Bureaucrat, sir, but your asininity is showing.)  Did they decide to cut back on the feeding frenzy?  No, the government announced that it had decided to simply stop reporting aggregate money supply (M3) this spring!  Dollars formerly backed by gold are now backed by nothing but debt, and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President William Poole, with a straight face, tells us that inflation may be worse than what they’ve been telling us, and makes headlines saying so?  

Politicians only lie when their lips are moving.  If the understatement of this headline weren’t so blatantly obvious so as to barely be worth putting ink on paper (lest we have no material for today’s discussion) it may have earned more than an honorable mention.  Dollar bills are little more than ink on paper, well, uh, other than a lifetime of indebted servitude, but I digress!   

This ridiculous headline is a display of how the watchdog media keeps politicians honest?  What wealth government hasn’t grabbed through taxation, it destroys via inflation with complicity of the media.  What little savings Americans have been able to put aside is worth less and falling every year after factoring in this three-headed carnivore.

The government has learned very well the value of minutiae.  Soldiers march along, seemingly in battle together.  The lead soldier marching is most at risk, but not necessarily because of some enemy in front of him.  Those behind him can remove one small item at a time from their own burden and quietly tack in on to the pack of the unsuspecting man in front.  Over time, the fellow in front becomes weighted down with a double burden, but is completely unaware of it because it happened so slowly as to be imperceptible.  In this slight-of-hand manner does the U.S. government deceive taxpayers, proclaiming “stay the course,” while morphing them into donkeys: deaf and dumb beasts of burden.  “Four legs good, two legs baaaad!”

Define Unemployment

Government has been manipulating economic data for decades.  For instance, is there anyone who really believes that unemployment numbers have any basis in reality? Unemployment in America is claimed currently to be running about 5%.  Chris Mayer from The Daily Reckoning explains, “The government, since the time of the Kennedy administration, has been changing the definition of ‘unemployed.’”  According to John Williams’ “Shadow Government Statistics,”  “if you back out the changes, you get an unemployment number closer to 12%!”  Beyond that, there are lots of people I know who are looking for work who have never even been among the “counted,” so their existence can’t even be bureaucratically nullified.

Define Enemy

The winner of my “Ludicrous Headline Du Jour” award goes to: “House GOP nears vote on Iraq withdrawal.”  Pay no attention to the scramble for re-election going on in the GOP. Pay no attention to multi-billion dollar emergency spending bills for the ‘Warp’ on Terror.  Pay no attention to the several football-stadium-sized permanent military bases being built in Iraq , complete with apartments, gyms and swimming pools.  Pay no attention to the billions of dollars Congress borrows to hand over to the administration’s friends in the old boy’s defense contracting business to build American detention camps.  Look, over there, it’s a terrorist!  No, no, not me, over there, the fellow with the brown skin!  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Define Sex

“Shock and Awe” was rape committed by an American Trojan Horse, a self-proclaimed Christian one, at that.  If they’d only thought to use a military condom, the GOP wouldn’t have to feign interest in pulling out of Iraq .  (Fundamentalists never were very big on family planning.)  Now our seeds of tyranny, murder and mayhem are scattered all over the Middle East , bringing forth killers from heretofore virgin wombs, and multiplying them exponentially.  We could at least have had the decency to kiss them first.  

It’s a damn good thing Mama Bush only agreed to the most recent invasions in the Middle East on condition that photos of dead American GI’s were to be kept out of the media.  That ensures that we’ll have many more future invasions without any obstacles whatsoever, creating an uninterrupted supply of enemies to fight against, ludicrous, “watchdog” headlines to entertain us, and donkeys to carry the debt load that pays for it all.