"Daddy, tell me about the first Thanksgiving."
"Well, kiddo, the Pilgrims were celebrating their successful flight from "unbiblical" socialism a few hundred years before it existed. The Pilgrims were gifted with the Shine."
Sarah Palin's Alaska fell 40% on Sunday night to 3 million viewers.
Not many were in the key adult demo either. Only 885,000 viewers were ages 18-49, dropping 44% from last week.
In fact, the median age of the show is 57 -- that's 15 years older than TLC's average.
After last month's plot to send bombs from Yemen to the United States aboard a cargo plane, former U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's whiskerless visage was ubiquitous on cable news. Solemnly warning that the nation needed stronger security procedures, Chertoff patiently repeated his talking points on ABC News's "World News Tonight", "Fox and Friends", CNBC's "Squawk Box" and Bloomberg TV.
Almost unmentioned in these appearances: Chertoff has a lot to gain financially if some of these measures are adopted. Between his private consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, and seats on the boards of giant defense and security firms, he sits at the heart of the giant security nexus created in the wake of 9/11, in effect creating a shadow homeland security agency.
Chertoff launched his firm just days after President Barack Obama took office, eventually recruiting at least 11 top officials from the Department of Homeland Security, as well as former CIA director General Michael Hayden and other top military brass and security officials.
What's wrong with this picture? The TEXAS OBSERVER reports that the single piece of forensic evidence - a human hair - that resulted in Claude Jones's conviction and eventual execution was found this week through DNA testing to NOT BE HIS. In other news, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia said that the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment.So yay for that.
Those of us who opposed the war in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, find all this all too familiar. Generals are wisely very reluctant to go to war, but once they do, they hate cutting their losses and calling it a day. This is why we must raise our voices. We cannot build a legitimate, effective government in Afghanistan. We should let the people of Afghanistan figure out what kind of government they want. And it is up to Pakistan and India to work out their differences, curb terrorist groups that aim to undermine their regimes. We never could be the world's policeman, and we are less equipped to do so now than we were in more affluent days. Above all, never mind the shamans' excuses. Look at the result, here and now.
The current White House proposal is not merely preposterous, it will be a disaster economically if anything remotely like it is passed. It is a nation running backward in defeat, not looking forward to the challenges of a new century and rising competition around the world.
"...a superficial and purely symbolic crusade that would do more to damage states than it would to cut spending."Replace "states" with "nation," and you could say the same thing about the Social Security-slashing fetish you and yours share, Mr. McConnell.
The full article lays out the numbers. Time to punch a hole in the drywall - peace out.There's no such thing as a free lunch, and there's no such thing as an honest case for extending the Bush tax cuts. Ten years of hard data prove they were a complete failure. They did not work while Bush was in office and they did not work during the first two years of the Obama administration. No wonder theCongressional Budget Office says that the GOP's proposed extension of tax cuts to the rich will reduce future economic growth.To recap:In terms of promoting economic growth, the Bush tax cuts were a complete failure.
"The conservative wing of the Democratic Party just drove it over a cliff, but you'd never know if from reading Matt Bai's latest New York Times piece. It's the latest in a series of Bai paeans to that odd mix of ideologies and opportunism that Washington types persist in calling "centrism," despite its ever-increasing distance from the real center of American opinion."And, too:
"How can it be 'centrist' to defeat the public option, which was supported by 51% of Republicans and a decisive majority of all voters? How can it be 'centrist' to oppose tighter bank regulations when a poll taken earlier this year showed that 69% of voters (and 56% of Republicans) support them? How can it be 'centrist' to support cutting Social Security when that position is not only opposed by most Americans, but by 76% percent of Tea Party supporters???? Yet Matt Bai ghettoizes those who hold these popular positions by calling them 'liberals,' and elevates those who oppose them with the 'centrist' misnomer."
