You've heard of the piece of chocolate drippings that some workers think resembles the Virgin Mary?  The one that has given at least one employee "renewed faith?" Well exactly where was the chocolate Virgin Mary when this guy needed heavenly chocolate intervention?

You can't tell any more the difference between what's propaganda and what's news.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, talking about television stations' use of "video news releases," items prepared by private entities to look like news, and aired by some stations without any disclaimer that the material is not real news.

It didn't take Republicans long to start muddying the waters on the claim that there is a "culture of corruption" in Republican-controlled DC.  They wasted little time jumping on occasional stories of Democratic financial corruption, like the Congressman Jefferson episode.

Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham are probably the new poster boys for the most obvious form of corruption, but it would be a huge mistake to think of the "culture of corruption" as limited to taking money that you shouldn't have taken or giving money that you shouldn't have given.  You certainly can be corrupt without directly and immediately enriching yourself financially.

Raw Story discusses a piece on life as Duke Cunningham's wife.

Consider it episode 1,000 of soap opera "When the mentally and emotionally unstable win the election."

Can you name the other 999 episodes? Tom DeLay is too easy; he doesn't count.

In case you missed it, the Republicans in Indiana's Allen County recently had this little problem of having 11 candidates disqualified because the party's Executive Director, Doug Foy, forged their signatures on the official filing forms.  Boy, what an odd, unexpected, unforeseeable action by the county party's Executive Director.

It isn't officially part of that Republican invention known as the "American Values Agenda," but good old Sam Brownback has introduced legislation that would make it a crime for doctors in Oregon to prescribe federally controlled drugs in order to help a patient commit suicide, even though doctor-assisted suicide is legal in Oregon, and has been upheld by the Supreme Court.
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If companies will lie about employing the severely disabled in order to get preferences for government contracts, why wouldn't they lie about being owned by disabled military veterans?  They would, of course.

In Bushworld, the economy is bright, jobs are plentiful, and the world itself is smelling very rose-like.

In the news, real average weekly earnings dipped again last month and, by my calculations, are down overall for the period from June of 2005 through the end of July, 2006.  And that rose-like aroma seems suspiciously like a cheap aerosol air freshener concealing something just a little more...pungent.

A piece by Tom Lasseter for McClatchy Newspapers offers a pretty grim view of the current state of, and likely outcome in, Iraq. Yes, Mr. Mehlman, "adapt to win" indeed.

From ++M.J. AKBAR:

Bush and Blair are good at winning a war on the ground. They are experts at losing the battle for the mind. Their firepower is impressive. Their persuasive power is abysmal. There is no mystery in this. No one really believes what they say, because they have made a habit of shifting the truth to define their objectives, or shifting the objective when facts have changed....Bush and Blair perhaps believe that they can survive on the strength of media headlines. Today's headlines are so often tomorrow's boomerangs. Bush and Blair have lost the plot.

++Editor-in-chief of The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle newspapers.

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