Pangloss

Interesting news today that the President's commission on deficit reduction, formed earlier in the year, is just about ready to issue its report. The commission is bipartisan, headed by a Democrat and a Republican:

The proposals issued Wednesday were from the commission's co-chairmen, Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to ex-President Bill Clinton, and Alan Simpson, a former Republican senator from Wyoming.

 

"I ask the American people to take a look," Simpson said. "This is not the usual stuff. It's all out there. We have harpooned every whale in the ocean."

Reaction to the proposal from the press today was overwhelming -- you'd have thought that the pair was advocating the immediate sale of every home in America and the immediate departure from cities to living in caves. But in fact the proposal only calls for a cut of $200 billion from military and domestic spending by 2015. It does allegedly produce $4 trillion in overall deficit reduction by 2020, but it mainly does that through tax increases of various kinds.

As examples of possible spending cuts, the report advises reducing overseas military bases by one-third, freezing federal salaries, eliminating a quarter-million nondefense government contractors, and doing away with all spending earmarks — pet projects put forward by lawmakers and approved with little scrutiny.

Regarding the tax changes:

The report aims to simplify the federal tax code while expanding the tax base, by eliminating all tax deductions including those for state and local taxes, dependent children and interest on mortgage payments.

 

The plan would increase taxes paid to the federal government by $751 billion from 2012 to 2020.

 

Doing away with the deductions would allow marginal tax rates to be simplified and reduced across the board. The lowest rate would drop to 8% from 10% and the top rate would go to 23% from 35%. The tax rate paid by corporations would be reduced to 26% from 35%.

 

Another recommendation is a 15-cent increase in the gas tax starting in 2013, with the revenue going toward transportation projects.

That bit about deductions and bracket changes is interesting -- some reasonable give-and-take there, which seems like it might even lead to some savings due to increased efficiency while lessening the direct impact on taxpayers.

But the proposed cuts were the main focus today, because they sent almost every single politician and special interest group scrambling for the nearest microphone. Check this one out:

The authors say their goal is making the system solvent and preventing a 22% cut projected in 2037. One option laid out is to increase the age at which full retirement benefits begin to 68 in 2050, and 69 in 2075. The proposal would allow a hardship exemption for people who are physically unable to work beyond the age of 62.

 

Now, full benefits kick in between ages 65 and 67, depending on the year of birth.

 

One member of the commission, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), called the Social Security proposal "a nonstarter."

EGAD! It's a "nonstarter" to discuss raising the retirement age 40-65 YEARS from now?! OMFG!

And it gets worse:

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said: "The chairmen of the deficit commission just told working Americans to drop dead. Especially in these tough economic times, it is unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines for working people — Social Security and Medicare."

Rofl! Nice sound bite, but what a jackass. But this sure seems to underscore the point that it's going to be flat impossible for our elected officials to come together on serious budget cuts. What do you all think?

Most of these quotes are from an LA Times story which may be found here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-deficit-commission-20101111,0,5670646.story

A John Stossel interview last night on O'Reilly got me thinking about this, and it turns out to have a history going back a few years. The idea is that a group (typically conservative) will set up a "bake sale" on a college campus, but it will have some unusual pricing -- blacks pay less than whites for the same food or beverage. This pricing gives people pause, which allows the operators to point out that their campus is doing exactly the same thing by giving preferential treatment in admissions based on race (an action which the Supreme Court ruled in favor of in 2003).

Some background here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_bake_sale

And a typical example from YouTube:

I think it's a fine idea, more power to 'em. What do you all think?

By making intelligent observations about current political events. He was regularly accused of being an idiot, just as Clinton was, but Clinton was able to turn that around after leaving office by involving himself in world events.

Still, at the moment I don't really see Bush doing that. He's actually saying more to the contrary, really, expressing a desire to stay out of politics.

I don't think Palin is going to reinvent W. I wondered if he might be reinventing himself.

That's fine, if I've read too much out of context with Angle then maybe she does believe that. It's a small part of my point above.

I don't understand what you're saying about the New Jersey judge. Did I link the wrong story?

Read the exact statement - she isn't taking about judges making rare screw-ups. She is taking about Sharia law taking hold in municipality or government situations and she can't understand how that happened. Past tense.

 

She also said, in the bit Maddow quoted, that that kind of sharia law doesn't hold true anywhere in the US.

I don't disagree that some politicians on both the right and the left have made great political hay out of (as you said earlier) fear, uncertainty and doubt. What I object to is the characterization of the right as "worse", followed by the immediate piling-on by other members. I felt obliged to respond to that.

I haven't heard anyone quoting Air America

In this forum quotations have been posted recently from Rachel Maddow, MSNBC, various left-wing blogs, and many of the same from the right, including Free Republic, etc.

I've never actually heard the phrase "Bush Lied Kids Died" before - though I have heard fringers going on about 9-11 and alien NWO conspiracies, but that is distant fringe.

It's a reference to WMDs, and the "lie" allegation has been put forth and defended by members of this community.

I honestly don't know where these frantic liberals are.

They're right here. Though I absolutely agree that the kind of reactions and discussions we have here at SFN are far from the kind of outraged idiocy we often see coming from the right wing these days. My only contention is that the left is no better. Just smaller, because it's a smaller group of people. THIS is a very intelligent community (just not always fully aware, including myself), but there are stupid people in every ideological grouping.

I think the main concern on the left from people like me at least, is that every liberal I know does look at multiple news sources, and doesn't consider anything as beyond reproach - but when so many conservatives do lean on Fox News as "their primary news source" us on the left have no way of interjecting into the conservative dialogue and say "check your facts" because they are so well isolated.

 

These people vote based on misinformation.

You don't know that. Just because someone votes for a Republican candidate does not mean that they are voting based on "misinformation". Maybe they vote Republican regardless (hardly better, but the percentage that does this for Democrats is almost the same). Maybe they have a serious problem with the opponent in a specific race.

Bascule said that he voted for a Republican in a local race over a Democrat because he didn't like that Democrat. Was he voting based on misinformation?

I'm sure it happens that people see something stupid and erroneous on Fox News or MSNBC and then vote for a Republican or Democrat based on that information. But I don't think that's the big picture from the election -- I think that is a larger sense of disatisfaction and rage based on the economy and a sense of Obama pushing a secular-progressive agenda that they don't support.

They didn't need prompting from Fox News to start the Tea Party movement. They didn't need prompting from Fox News to hate Obamacare. They didn't need prompting from Fox News to discover the immigration problem.

And you know what? If and when they do need Fox News, that says something awful about the rest of the media. How many times has Fox News been the ONLY source for information that the secular-progressive news doesn't WANT the right to hear about? Liberals seem to have this notion that conservatives need to be controled, manipulated, coerced into doing the right thing. What the heck kind of country DOES that?

Are you saying that liberals some how manipulated the entire Hollywood film industry into sending out actual lies and disinformation?

I'm saying that in my opionion Hollywood is dominated BY liberals -- the people who work in the industry heavily skew to the left -- and that they generally/frequently make their professional decisions (producing work that we view) based on that ideological lean.

And since there is a commonly accepted trait of movies "based on real events" that they can extrapolate all sorts of untrue facts (accepted as "movie logic"), yes, they do end up propagating actual lies. And the left eats them up and churns movie-theater-"facts" into hatred for the right.

While i honestly think it's wrong from either side i don't think the liberals ever had or even dreamed of as much control over the message that modern conservative media currently have.

And I'm sure there are many conservatives who watch Fox News and think that conservatives have never even dreamed of having as much control over the message, for so long, as the left has had.

-----------------

I want to expand a bit on this idea that voting Republican is based on "misinformation". It's not just padren -- I think it's what a lot of you believe.

What would happen if the President signed a bill authorizing a tax increase intended to bring down the deficit? One result of such an action would be a lower approval rating by the bulk of the American electorate. What I'm hearing here is that many of you believe that that reaction would be based on "misinformation". You're saying that the people don't understand that the deficit needs to be lowered, and that spending cannot be cut or is good spending, so the only way to fix the problem is increasing revenue.

I think that's wrong. The people DO understand that the deficit needs to be lowered. They DO understand that the deficit COULD be reduced by increasing revnue, but they refuse to accept that spending cannot be lowered.

They're also holding the president to his promise not to raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000/year. IMO that's a perfectly fair and normal thing to do. And if you go through the month-to-month process that has lead to President Obama's steadily-falling approval rating, you will see that it matches with decision after decision that is disagreed-with by the majority of American voters. So they're going to have that reaction regardless of what Fox News does or doesn't say. It's not "misinformation".

I've seen notifications come in at wonky times, but I just chalked that up to the vagaries of SMTP/POP and Internet routing. Duplication does seem odd, though.

I wonder how that's affected by moderation actions. For example, if someone posts a reply, and then one of the mods/admins deletes it, notification may have already sent it out to recipients. I also wonder if editing could play a role here -- if someone edits a post right after it goes up, maybe you get notified twice?

Edit (did this produce another notification?): I think I turned off most notifications because of the spam; now I just get them for Reported Posts.

I would imagine, and this is just my own speculation, that being president gives you a perspective that transcends party lines and allows you to ignore them too.

I think that's a good observation. It's one of the slicker moves by the framers to set things up so that the president needs to work with a wide variety of political representations in order to get something done, and I'm sure that has an influence on any president's thinking.

I'm also always glad to see the former presidents mainly getting along. It's a pretty elite club, of course, but it's also for good reasons and with good motivations. I imagine nothing wakes you up from partisanship faster than being handed a little card with some numbers on it that can kill everyone in the entire world.

(Of course if you're Clinton you leave it in a pocket and forget about if for months, but that's another story.)

I found results of this breaking on Nov 2nd, and I found Bill calling it BS from the 5th, but I am glad to see he did apparently assign a few seconds to it. It would be nice if he took on the rest of the Fox News Machine for promoting that BS, which you have to admit made a very aggressive effort to get their viewers to swallow it.

I don't trust Media Matters for America any more than I trust the Media Research Center, but I think your point is correct.

She said yes - these places are under Constitutional law and not Sharia Law, but clearly states that she doesn't understand how that happened (past tense!) in the United States.

 

Is there another way to interpret that, other than "an event" happened (past tense) despite the fact that legally, those cities are under US law and not Sharia law? This "happened" when, and what is the "this" if not the "allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation?"

If you folks wonder why conservative Americans are concerned by the various "sharia law" discussions taking place around the country, you really have to look a little deeper than Rachel Maddow.

Oklahoma passed a ban on the use of Sharia Law on election day. Redundant, you might say? An unnecessary reaction to partisanship? How could sharia law possibly be used in American jurisprudence? Conservatives are just over-reacting to the ground-zero mosque controversy?

And yet yesterday a judge put a stay order on the execution of that new law, saying that it might violate the constitutional rights of Muslims. No, really.

In other words, her court is actually going to consider the possibility that a man can physically abuse his wife as punishment for non-obedience because that's what his faith tells him to do. This judge is actually going to look at that argument, and so seriously does she (yeah it's a woman judge!) consider the merits of the argument that she actually put a stay order on the implementation of the law.

Some background on the law:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/oklahoma-sharia-ban-may-conflict-with-u-s-constitution/

On the judge's order:

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/judge_issues_temporary_injunction_against_okla_sha.php?ref=fpblg

MY POINT HERE IS NOT THAT THE US IS ABOUT TO IMPLEMENT SHARIA LAW.

(Just wanted to be clear on that!)

My point rather is that this sort of consideration -- the fact that it's actually taking place in spite of what Rachel Maddow wants you to think -- is what concerns conservatives.

You realize those were included as a demonstration of why believing and repeating unsourced stories is reaaaally dumb. If you took at is a claim that these stories are repeated and accepted as fact, you missed the point.

No, I don't think I did. Those clips were edited into the same montage with far less egregious stories that were actually reported on by Fox News.

Can you demonstrate some examples of equal scale?

You don't think liberals have political brain candy just like conservatives do? You don't think liberals feed at the Hollywood, Air America, MSNBC trough and then run around screaming at each other about rendition and religion and Bush Lied Kids Died and the evils of a military and so on and so on and so on? Come on.

If the volume is lower I would suggest that it is ONLY because there are half as many self-proclaimed liberals as there are self-proclaimed conservatives. But I don't think it's lower.

Everyone lies - but that isn't exactly build a defense case for the Abramoff's of the world.

(Edit: In reviewing this I'm not sure I understood your point here correctly, so I took this part of my reply out.)

The claim should be "there is so little debunking of the conservative media that it's effect is negligible."

Perhaps there's something to that, in the sense that the conservative media is perceived as being louder at the moment. I think it ignores decades of liberal control over Hollywood and mainstream news, but I don't disagree that the right has ratcheted it up a notch.

That's the problem with partisanship -- it produces more partisanship. So instead of condemning conservatives for feeding at this trough, we should be condemning anybody who feeds at this trough -- including people watching and responding to Rachel Maddow.

This happens when you click the button that's supposed to show you the first new post in a thread?

Sure, if we can critique them for accuracy, that should be lots of fun...

You could start by critiquing Rachel Maddow for accuracy. As you can see from my post above, there are significant issues with her statements. But if that's what you folks want, if you want Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity videos populating SFN Politics threads, we can make that happen. I don't understand it, but I guess if that's what the community wants we can take a look at it.

But what you can expect me to post are a lot more videos from ilk like Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and so on. I love exposing false heroes to their mindless followers.

I just think that would be a sad place for SFN Politics to go. I thought we were better than this sort of thing. But maybe that's just the centrist in me talking; sometimes I get hung up on common ground and moderacy, and I know that's not something that everyone agrees on. If y'all would rather have a battle over which extreme ideology is correct/better, if that's really what you want, I'll support it.

Ok, so I watched your 15 minute video of liberal extremist Rachel Maddow. And I think she is what she hates. She's doing exactly what she accuses her enemies of doing. Some specific reactions:

- On the $200mil/day thing, I think the right-wing media did grab on to this and blew it, and they deserve to be attacked over that. Though I think it's interesting that Bill O'Reilly blew that claim out of the water the very next day after it appeared, and it stopped immediately thereafter in general Fox News reporting as well.

- She claims that the right says that the Census will be used to round up Americans and put them in internment camps, but then she plays a clip that doesn't support that claim (in fact the commentator says the opposite).

- She claims that Sharron Angle stated that Sharia Law exists in the United States, and then plays a clip that shows Sharron Angle saying that Sharia Law doesn't exist in the United States! What the hell? She's clearly trying to imply that Sharron Angle is trying to scare people, but one thing is for sure: That's EXACTLY what Rachel Maddow is doing.

- Accusations that Rachel Maddow is a vampire have not been widely reported on the right-wing media.

- An old Internet clip from Christine O'Donnell saying something stupid is not the same thing as that claim being propagated by the right-wing media.

- Liberals believe stupid stuff they hear on the Internet too.

- There's a "left-wing media universe" too.

- The "self-contained" accusation about the right-wing media is no different from what the left-wing media does.

- The claim that there is no debunking of the conservative media world is ridiculous. Stupid claims are debunked. What Rachel Maddow doesn't like is that people watch Fox News more than they watch her show.

---------

Just to be clear, I don't disagree with her point that partisan media is a problem in this country right now.

What I have a problem with is her claim that this is exclusively and unarguably a right-wing problem. Her own words prove that to be a lie. And it's a particularly heinous one at that, feeding misinformation and deception to people who don't know any better. Gee, where have we seen THAT practice before?

I can't believe this sort of thing still comes up. The left doesn't lie as much as the right does? Really? That's where you want to go?

Come on, y'all are just frustrated. Do you really want the conservative members to start posting videos from Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh? Seriously?

Government needs smarter/wiser spenders, not clueless penny-pinchers.

Or government needs smarter/wiser penny-pinchers, not clueless spenders. Honestly, I'd take either dynamic.

According to the link below, Bush mentions Obama 10 times in his book, apparently favorably each time. He has a lot of criticism for McCain, and only a single word for Sarah Palin: "Unqualified."

He's apparently not a fan of the Tea Party Movement either. Check out this quote, which comes from a recent interview with the Times of London, the subject being "right-wing populism":

"Here is what I am most concerned about: isolationism, protectionism, and nativism, the evil triplets that occasionally hold hands in America."

Nice line. I can't help but wonder if we may be headed toward a post-White House reinvention of ol' W, much as we saw with Clinton.

http://www.thenation.com/blog/155939/obama-finally-gets-some-love-george-w-bush

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44895.html

I love this. If at first you don't succeed, right?

Greene, the unlikely Democratic Senate nominee in South Carolina who lost overwhelmingly to Republican Sen. Jim DeMint last week, called the state Democratic Party on Tuesday to ask how much it would cost to run for president.

Like I said before, I hope you don't. But I'm getting tired of this passive-aggressive thing. You won't tell me what your problem is, you won't tell anyone else what your problem is, and you keep emo-dumping on the Politics forum.

Please stop.

I thought that this video brought up an interesting point...where is the accountability of the spreading of misinformation for the rightwing media? Where does the debunking of misinformation happen when the information center is self-contained?

 

I would like to hear you all's thoughts on this, since many of us are in a field where peer review is required.

I don't understand. How is that any different from those parts of the media that are left-wing?

Good lord, you're defending this guy?

That is not what I said.

I'm certainly feeling the purposelessness of posting here again, both here in the politics forum and in the climate science forum.

That is neither my fault nor my problem.

And Pangloss totally ignores all of the ridiculous things that are coming out of this guy's mouth and jumps on me for "making hay"...

That is not what I did. I am allowed to challenge your opinion on Eric Cantor's statement (in fact you invited me to do so), just as you are allowed to challenge my opinion that Democrats have "failed to compromise".

But don't worry. I'm not going to threaten to leave if you don't agree with me.

Have you ever been to a developing or underdeveloped nation? One big difference between those countries and the developed world is a lack of stability in the developing/underdeveloped nations. We are seeing just the slightest hint of that instability in our country right now. Many companies are stockpiling money rather than building products. One problem is they haven't the foggiest idea what the future has in store for them. Magnify that by multiple orders of magnitude and voila! you have the third world. The standard solution to this instability problem in third world nations is a military coup.

 

The mandatory spending represents hard-fought efforts on the part of Congress and the people. If anything, more of our spending should be mandatory. Making multi-year R&D efforts the annual whim of the current Congress doesn't make much sense. Besides, Congress does have a simple way to address the issue of mandatory spending: Grow a pair and modify the laws that mandate that spending.

This is a far more ideological concept than you represent. Not only is the degree of "stability" control that is exerted by mandatory (I guess "entitlement" is considered pejorative?) spending debatable, it's also in the budget for ideological reasons, not stability reasons (can we be honest about what we're spending money on, please?).

The degree to which the economy needs to be controlled is highly debatable, and on top of that there is more than one way to control it.

So I think this argument that "mandatory" spending is necessary to avoid becoming a third world nation and fall to a coup is a particularly dangerous form of FUD. I do, however, agree with your final point.

However, if there is a large scale non nuclear conflict there is much wisdom in the US having large forces. You can't be invaded and you won't be attacked much. Your NATO Allies will, during the start of the conflict have boots on the ground and their airfields and factories will cop a pasting. There is wisdom in having a large, well armed force that is immune to the initial assault for use in the counter attack.

There's also a pretty good school of thought that the only reason we haven't had another large-scale non-nuclear conflict is because of the long arm of the American military. South Korea? Taiwan? Israel? Would those places even exist today if there weren't somebody around to respond to neighbor aggression? Look what happened when Saddam invaded Kuwait -- we weren't afraid to go over there and do what absolutely EVERYONE (who matters) agrees was the right thing to do (even if Kuwait is a little greedy and pretentious).

People make fun of "ya'll" but its actually quite functional.

I agree! It fills a totally bizarre and completely unnecessary void in the English language.

He wants Democrats and Republicans to "come together and agree" on the Republican opinion that increasing taxes on the rich is bad. Great. And he won't accept a compromise like temporarily extending the tax cuts. Must be permanent!

You're making hay out of standard political starting positions. We don't know where they'll end up. The President hasn't offered a compromise on this issue, he's offered an extension. That's not middle ground, it's just putting off another fight. That's his starting position, Cantor's is "make them permanent".

This is a better image for politics in progress:

Would that still hold if they realised that morality has nothing to do with religion?

As far as the American electorate is concerned, I've always felt that their religion question is mostly about predicting a candidate's behavior. To put it in scientific terms, a candidate's religious status operationalizes the morality variable, providing a measurable quantity that voters can use to inform their choice.

And don't think the details on that front go un-noticed. I'm quite sure that many religious Americans are familiar with President Obama's sparse church attendance record.

Note that I'm not saying that any of this makes good sense. It makes some sense, in a very limited way, but IMO it's not a very useful way to measure a candidate.

A. The Arkansas State Constitution, Article XIX, Section 1. "No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any court."

Because of the witness thing that sounds like one of those unenforced laws you always hear about.

Defense, medicare, medicaid, and social security all must be cut if we ever want to balance the budget or not default on our international debt:

I agree, and nice posts.

Cut the scope of the mission to merely defensive and UN ordered. Cut the recruiting quotas and attrition will cut the people for you.

"UN ordered"? Interesting choice of words. ;-)

But yes, I think this is the best process, because it represents a gradual build-down and hopefully minimizes the impact on jobs and the economy.

It's not up to me. The question is "How many do you think you need?"

While I like the idea of a carrier in every region, ready to respond to emergencies and help people out even if they're not Americans, I don't think we can afford that capability anymore, and I'm sick and tired of being accused of colonial behavior by people around the world who should know better. I'd go with two carrier battle groups in the Atlantic and two in the Pacific, both operating out of domestic ports.

I don't think that's going to happen, though. If President Obama can't cut defense spending (in fact increasing it), it's a foregone conclusion that neither House Republicans nor any Senator are going to agree to cut it during the next two years. It's an interesting discussion, but of course in the end we're all tilting at the same windmill here.

On the whole "World Police" thing. Americans are kind to a fault. If there is a natural disaster anywhere, you are amoung the first there and if you're not the first, it's only because someone else was closer. Your ships and helicopters bring water, food and medical aid as fast as they can be loaded and flown. If there is a shortfall somewhere, you take the attitude of "Well hell, somebodys got to do it" and step up to the line. In many ways the ROW plays on this. While you maintain fleets of heavy lift aircraft the other nations don't need to, because they can always rely on American kindness. For all the bitching about America "assuming" the role of world police, the simple fact is that the other nations are quite happy for you to do it because it means that they don't have to carry the load or pull their weight.

 

Other nations play on this in a number of ways. I mentioned politics as the reason we don't have a carrier. If the US were to tell the Australian govt that you were reducing your carrier fleet and so we couldn't count on a Super Carrier getting here in two days if needed and that it might be a good idea to have one of our own "just in case", then after the screaming the political will would change and we would buy one. Similarly we keep enough munitions on hand for about 3 days all out combat. Why? Because that's how long it will take the Americans to deliver more munitions. Why should we stockpile when we can use yours? And you carry the cost. The flip side of the coin is that you can count on us to back your plays. We'd probably agree anyway 90% of the time, but the dependance on your forces adds the extra 10%.

Exactly.

I believe we should be much more independent than we are, especially in regard to munitions. I do like americans and I don't like the way we are playing you for suckers. Especially since we are close Allies and should remain so. Call it any way you want, but the US and Australia are the only "Western" nations with any sort of military presence in the entire Pacific region. (Canada seems more geared towards its East Coast and New Zealands rowing boat sank.) On that basis, Australia should shoulder more of the regional load. And the other developed nations should remove some of the load from the Americans shoulders. The yanks have pretty broad shoulders, but it's unreasonable to expect them to continue doing everything.

I agree.

I see. Well I've said before that that's perfectly fine with me. IMO you'll be screaming for that support to be returned and cursing us for hoarding our money when you need something done. But by all means, that's absolutely fine with me. I'm sick and tired of being damned-if-we-do-and-damned-if-we-don't. Most of our critics are two-faced liars just looking for local political advantage, and I can't WAIT to see what happens when they lose their favorite bogeyman. At least if we dismantle the military we can't solve your problems even when you do come crying for help.

This is irrelevant, btw:

Aircraft carriers are useless against terrorism...

They play many useful roles, as I've indicated above. You can ignore the substance of my post if you wish, but it hasn't gone anywhere.

And so is this:

the American economy in ruins

It's actually growing at a rate of a bit under 2%, with over 90% of the work force gainfully employed. Hardly "ruins".

Just thought I'd mention that Olbermann returns to work on Tuesday.

With higher ratings, no doubt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/business/media/08olbermann.html?partner=rss&emc=rss