at least they are honest about it

Additional fun stuff found on boingboing, this time about the UAE and how they plan to ban any negative reporting on the economy. Apparently the UAE is hurting economically as property values plummet in Dubai and the government is trying to ease the collapse into a more tolerable slide. With a law like that possibly on it's way to the UAE, it's easy to complain about how undemocratic a place like that is. Certainly a free society would never allow that to happen. But at least they are honest about it. We don't so much introduce legislation to curtail negative reporting here, we just offer up distractions from the important news. Remember just a few months ago when our economy was crumbling( it still is). Did we hear about it on the nightly news? Yes, to a degree, but we also heard a lot about the election, which was acceptable because elections are important, and we also heard a lot about some idiot in Illinois who tried to sell the current presidents Senate seat. And while there are some lessons to be learned there, it really wasn't that big of a deal, and it certainly didn't outweigh the importance of a collapsing economy. I'd almost rather we just ban negative reporting on the economy instead of playing this stupid game of "what's more shocking than our country going to shit oh yeah some douchebags corruption scandal don't look over here look over there wink wink" bull shit.