Date Line — 19 April 2023

Wow. The “news” today is startling in several ways.(1)

Fox News has agreed to pay $767 million for “false news reporting” charges (47% of the damages requested), against a maker of voting machines for implying that they are crooked. Part of the report reflects back to previous articles that demonstrating a significant difference between FOX’s internal dialog and what they actually put on the air. Internal dialog was penetrating, thoughtful and data-rich.

I’ll leave the rest of this to thee, reader, to fill in as thee wish.(3)

UFO probe in Congress “amid an up tick in unresolved sightings … posing risks to training pilots” Wow. Geez… So many of them up there that trainee pilots are at hazard????  And, once again, the reason is “national security,” as the famous book Above Top Secret showed years and year ago this was the reason for the official interest in “UFOs” by the government and military of all nations. That is, no interest in aliens, but in finding out which nation is actually filling the skies with advanced surveillance equipment and watch our secrets. Geez. Seriously, no one needs physical surveillance equipment any more, what with billions of cameras attached to the internet. So an increase in “UFOs” (actually known as “UAPs” — unidentified aerial phenonena” to distinguish it from “alien space craft” which is what the colloquial meaning of UFO has now become, though the original meaning was simple something unknown in the sky) is likely either civilian junk (drones and such) and/or aliens.(2)

80 years and they still just spin their wheels in the same way.

Religious rights violations at the workplace brought to the Supreme Court, that work place being the Post Office, fer Gossakes. A worker needs his Sundays for his religious practice. The PO alleges this causes undue hardship on his fellow workers. Really? Really? Then hire another employee! You can’t step on some one’s religious rights.

Here’s what struck me about all this: Is it the 1960s again?

1. Mostly the “news” is far from startling any more. They’re in a rut just selling adrenalin and fear instead of reporting the facts, which is the very most that news should be doing. The sillies…

2. I haven’t forgotten about China’s “weather balloon” shot down a month or two ago, nor the 100s of other such that have been and are floating all over the planet. If they truly are surveillance balloons put up there by China, and given the billions of cameras and microphones attached to the Internet, plus all the equipment that runs the Internet that was mostly made by China [with who knows what back doors planted in them], then China is looking for something specific, something not attached to the Internet and it leaves one wondering what it might be, doesn’t it? Or is China simply being stupid? That does seem to be a major factor of the Human Race at this moment in time, doesn’t it? Or… is China being extremely clever here?

3. Oh, and BTW… the size of the law suit brought against FOX actually suggests that FOX hit a sensitive nerve in the compainant. $1.6 billion for a false news report? Not a simple “correction and apology?” That’s all the “truth in news” laws required, back when those laws were still laws. (The last vestige of honest reporting requirements were removed in 2007 — there is no legal requirement to only report true news.)

Really, the idea that American voting machines are corrupt is a VERY easily defended position and would be extremely difficult to prove otherwise, maybe impossible. Really, they’d have been better simply issuing a press release of their own and forgetting about it. The size of this law suit places it into more minds. Mine, for instance, since I missed that initial “news” item, this suit has now introduced me to the very allegation they were objecting to, which otherwise would have just run off their backs, if they’d allowed it to.