On the heels of several embarrassing "production errors" that have recently occurred, Fox News Channel this week instituted a new zero tolerance policy.

And while it's probably a little too early to deem this new policy a success, 193% of Republicans surveyed say it's working like gangbusters.

However, not everyone is convinced.

Some wonder whether these snafus make Fox look more like Sesame Street than a real news operation.

This evening's Rescue Rangers are jlms qkw, dadanation, shayera, sunspark says, dopper0189, and YatPundit, with watercarrier4diogenes at the wheel of the Editmobile

The rescued diaries are:

• Giving life to Heraclitus' statement that "No one steps in the same river twice," trail runner erratic explores the impact of reckless urban development on the life both around and within him in What is alive? Running in a doomed forest. (dadanation)
• AKMask tells the tale of little known nuclear accidents at Los Alamos, in 1945 and 1946: Weekend Science: The Demon Core. (dopper0189)
• leftyparent takes on an "archaic system" in Challenging Patriarchy. (YatPundit)
• After a shallow (but as thorough as it deserves), hilarious analysis of the latest Republican 'test', fmrgop has a GREAT idea in The Republican Purity Test (Let's have an election!!!). (watercarrier4diogenes)
• With the "names changed to protect the innocent" dedmonds publishes a personal letter between himself and a devout Christian friend on the issue of homosexuality: On The Negative Effects of "Hating the Sin". (dopper0189)

And as a public service, here's a diary that I hope most of you, especially those with children, will read, comments included:

Jesselyn Radack sounds a very important health care warning about a little known side effect of a popular swine flu drug in 6-Year-Old Daughter Hearing Voices on Tamiflu. (sunspark says)

jotter has provided his usual excellent analysis of a day in the life of Daily Kos diarists in High Impact Diaries: November 27, 2009, while carolita has gathered our nightly dose of Top Comments 11-28-09 – Hoperoots Edition, surely one of the most delightful of Daily Kos features.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread (even if you're the author! Here's where that's actually appreciated). And, of course, since it's an open thread, PLAY NICE, OK? 8^)

Igor Volsky writes about on a new report from the Urban Institute, which concludes that a trigger of a "strong" public option would work better than the current public option provisions in either bill. Igor:

The report says that the Senate and House’s public option provisions (which require the public plan to independently negotiate rates with providers) would have little hope of lowering costs in areas of the country with high provider concentration. In areas where hospitals have "too strong a market presence to be excluded from insurer networks," hospitals could dictate prices, stripping the public plan of its ability to negotiate cheaper rates, the report warns. According to a 2006 study, 86% "of large metropolitan areas were considered to have highly concentrated hospital markets."

Policy makers can overcome the political challenges of enacting strong public option — one which compels Medicare providers to participate and establishes Medicare-like reimbursement rates — by placing the plan behind a trigger mechanism which "would allow private insurers the opportunity to show that they can provide affordable coverage under the new health reform rules."

The report recognizes that "many proponents of a strong public option oppose a compromise relying on triggers because they believe that triggers would never be pulled" and suggests that structuring the trigger around overall growth in national health spending — rather than affordability — would make it more likely that a public plan would be established in the absence of meaningful cost containment.

The policy angle of this argument has been demonstrated. In fact, the robust public option that the Urban Institute is arguing is what the House progressives argued for because it would have resulted in the strongest reform.

What's baffling is that anyone could imagine that a trigger would be enough to mollify the opponents of a robust public option, particularly a trigger that was designed to actually work. The opponents of the public option want just don't want competition for the private insurance industry. Period. They don't want a public option that would work, and a trigger that might actually be pulled could allow that.

The Urban Institute might be right on the policy question here, but they are seriously misreading the politics of it. If there was the political will for a triggered robust public option, the robust public option would have survived in the House.

While most of us were preparing to spend time with family and friends and gorge ourselves on wondrous foodstuffs and televised sporting events, Doug Hoffman was busy laying the groundwork for a political comeback.

In Wednesday's edition of the Polling and Political Wrap, I pointed out that CQ was reporting that Hoffman was eyeing a return engagement in 2010 against newly elected Democratic Congressman Bill Owens, and would probably run this time around as a Republican.

Hoffman himself affirmed that in a message on his campaign website this week, and as TPMDC reports, Hoffman's Ripkenesque streak of jaw-dropping commentary is still intact:

Hoffman laid out his reasons for deciding take on Rep. Bill Owens (D) so soon after he conceded to the freshman Representative for the second time. In short, Hoffman suggests again that the Nov. 3 special election was rigged in Owens' favor -- and then immediately apologizes to elections officials for offending them with the claim.

Indeed, after once again raising the questions about changes in the vote tally and potential "ghosts in the machine" with some of the county tabulation software, Hoffman tells a bald-faced lie in an attempt to make himself appear more conciliatory about the whole process.

HOFFMAN: I would also like to commend those election commission officials who worked tirelessly and may have taken offense to an unfortunate and poorly worded fundraising email that was sent out toward the end of our campaign.  As we tried to make sense of the false vote counts and stories of so/ftware viruses in the voting machines, we never intended to imply the election commissioners had somehow acted improperly. This was never our intention and, on the contrary, the election commissioners went above and beyond to uphold their duty to ensure a fair election took place.

This, of course, is a lie. The flamethrower of an email in question directly questioned the integrity of the election officers, and indeed suggested a conspiracy was afoot. Let's revisit the email in question, taking a trip down Memory Lane in order to expose Hoffman's blatant attempt to rewrite history:

Oswego County elections officials blame the mistakes on "chaos" in their call-in center that included a phone system foul-up, and on inspectors who read numbers incorrectly when phoning in results. This sounds like a tactic right from the ACORN playbook.

Gee, Doug, it's hard to imagine why anyone would dare to suggest that you might be hinting at the fact that election officers acted improperly.

The headline "Stop Another Stolen Election!" might have been a bit of a tip-off, as well.

If one thing has been evident since Republican John McHugh agreed to sign on as Secretary of the Army and set this electoral process in motion, it is that Doug Hoffman is clearly not ready for prime time. That was evident in his classless taunting of DeDe Scozzafava as she was forced out of the race by her own party. It became more evident on Election Day, when he blamed ACORN for a blown tire on a volunteer's car (later sleuthing revealed the culprit was a broken bottle). In the post-election process, he has only embarrassed himself further, most starkly of all with an email that even he now concedes was "unfortunate and poorly worded".

This is one of those rare occasions where it is possible that a high-profile 2010 candidate announcing his intentions might actually be good news for the incumbent.

What's coming up on Sunday Kos ....

• Devilstower will demand that all potential Democratic candidates must meet his 10-point test of purity before they can place a holy donkey next to their names.
• With the recent drama in the New York 23rd, and the news this week about the GOP's new "purity test" for candidates, Steve Singiser will reflect on the current state of the GOP, while wondering what the heck happened to Reagan's 11th Commandment.
• SusanG will review Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.
• David Waldman will provide a primer on the complex reconciliation process, seen as the "magic bullet" that will redeem health care reform.
• DarkSyde will take a brief look at what our closest planetary neighbor can teach us about our own world's future in the "Venus Syndrome."

BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina is getting some unwelcome attention for a recent mailer and robo-calls they deployed to their customers in the state, urging them to call Sen. Kay Hagan and tell her to oppose the public option.

Today, a group of 20 state legislators asked Attorney General Roy Cooper and Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin to probe whether BCBS violated laws restricting robo-calls, as well as whether it engaged in political advocacy using the premiums of its customers.

But the probe the lawmakers are calling for appears to be underway already. "We received an inquiry from the AG's office a couple weeks ago," about whether the campaign violated laws, Lew Borman, a spokesman for BCBS of North Carolina, told TPMmuckraker. "We don't believe we broke any laws," Borman added.

BCBS has been particularly aggressive in trying to push it customers to lobby on its behalf. Remember what they were doing in North Dakota?

They sent out a letter [pdf] to subscribers threatening even bigger rate increases if reform passes:

Your health care costs will rise even faster than they have in the recent past Health care costs have skyrocketed the last several years. With current reform proposals, you’ll see it increase even more dramatically because:

• North Dakotans won’t have the variety of choices they have today. You’ll be forced to buy insurance with richer benefits (i.e. higher price tags) than most of you buy today.
• Not every North Dakotan will be covered because it’s too easy to opt out until they get sick. That leaves the rest of insurance consumers paying more.
• Low-income residents get state-subsidized plans at a reasonable cost, but those who don’t qualify for subsidies will pay outrageous prices.
• Young North Dakota adults will see insurance costs raised by 60 percent to 100 percent—another reason for them not to stay in North Dakota.
• Private insurance rates will increase by 50 percent to 70 percent for small employers.

Nice use of class warfare there, huh? What they are failing to mention is that there isn't a gun being held to the heads of poor insurance company executives to make them increase costs for their customers.

After that story ran, I got an e-mail from a reader and Kossack in Illinois, who shared a couple of e-mails that the company s/he works for received from BCBS Illinois, urging business subscribers to contact Representatives to fight the House bill.

As a business owner who provides health insurance coverage to your employees, you know firsthand how critical it is for health insurance premiums to remain affordable for you and your employees.  Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, a division of Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) is working with stakeholders like you to ensure reforms work by building on today’s employer-based system to extend coverage to everyone, rein in costs and improve the quality of care.

We are now at a critical point in the legislative process and your help is needed to voice concern over the pending legislation in the House of Representatives.  Your help is needed in the next 24 hours to voice concern over the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Tell your Representative to vote "NO" on H.R. 3962.

Health care reform legislation in Congress will unintentionally increase premiums to levels that are unaffordable for individuals, families and small businesses.  Affordability is the most critical factor in extending health care coverage to everyone.

There is no question that changes need to be made to our health care system and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois supports a requirement that health insurance companies offer coverage to all applicants, regardless of pre-existing conditions.  However, this only will work if every American is required to carry health insurance, minimum benefit levels are sensible, young and healthy individuals are encouraged to purchase coverage, and the personal responsibility requirement is enforceable.

<bBlue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois opposes the following measures that are included in pending health care reform legislation:</strong>

A government-run health plan in any form – A government plan in any form is unnecessary, would immediately or eventually underpay providers causing major access issues, would increase cost shifting to private insurance and cause millions of people to lose their existing private coverage.

A weak individual mandate, high minimum benefit designs and narrow age rating bands – These proposals will combine to dramatically increase premiums for individuals, families and employers.

Congress is making decisions that will affect your business now.  I urge you to contact your Members of Congress today on this critically important issue. [emphasis in original]

As in North Dakota, BCBS sent a second e-mail, with the Illinois version of extortion, promising increased costs for customers if reform passed in including their wish list for reform--all centered on maintaining their profits:

Oliver Wyman’s Actuarial and Health and Life Sciences Practice recently provided an analysis for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association (BCBSA). The analysis estimated the effect of the proposed health care reform on insurance premiums and shows the total effect five years after reform is implemented. The intent of the analysis is to demonstrate the impact that these proposals will have on premiums in the states Health Care Service Corporation serves, to provide information that policymakers can use to better shape health care reform legislation and to urge members of Congress to carefully consider the consequences of the proposed legislation. Following is the executive summary that briefly explains the analysis, as well as an attachment containing details of the study. However, here are some key findings:

  * Health care coverage becomes less affordable
   * Premiums increase
   * In Illinois, there could be as much as a 119 percent jump
   * Broad participation is imperative
   * Young and healthy people must participate
   * People can't simply choose to buy insurance when they need it

As a result of this thorough analysis, we are recommending these changes to the current reform proposals:

   * Strengthen the mandate for individuals to obtain insurance, without which many people will not purchase coverage until they need it.
   * Allow greater age discounts for young/healthy people to address the expected increase in their premiums — helping ensure they purchase coverage. We recommend the 5:1 age band included in the original Senate Finance Committee bill.
   * Lower the proposed minimum benefit requirements to the levels currently seen in the marketplace, since richer benefits mean richer premiums.
   * Eliminate the new $6.7 billion annual insurer fee beginning 2010, which will increase individual and family premiums substantially.
   * Include comprehensive medical liability reform, which the Congressional Budget Office states could save $54 billion over 10 years in physician "defensive medicine" practices that increase costs through unnecessary services.

We hope you will find this information helpful in understanding the full impact of these recommendations. As health care reform is debated in Congress, we will keep you informed and may again ask you to contact your elected officials.

Isn't that helpful of BCBS, informing their customers of how they'll gouge them in new and creative ways if reform passes? Thanks, Lieberman, Lincoln, Landrieu, and Nelson, for helping them out.

The stories say "Black Friday" is looking good. Not good if you are one of those who participated in the anti-consumerist, pro-environment Buy Nothing Day. But, rather, good in the sense that shoppers are filling their carts, which may help boost a battered economy and eventually lead to millions of out-of-work Americans finding a job sooner than would otherwise be the case.

It's possible that the cheerful public demeanor from surveyed shop owners and chain managers may truly reflect an improved situation that will carry on throughout this year's holiday season. But it's always wise to be a bit leery of what we're told immediately after Black Friday. The retailers may actually think sales are going gangbusters. Or they may be whistling in the dark. No matter what the reality, as was pointed out before last season's disaster, the day-after message is always upbeat

A few things you can count on every year around this time:

  1. Sales data for Black Friday will be touted by biased interest groups. They are invariably have an upside bias;

  2. Headline writers will get it wrong

  3. Survey data will be taken as the equivalent of actual sales;

  4. Strong forecasts will be subsequently proven wrong.

For instance, check out this bit appearing on November 30, 2008, from the National Retail Federation:

Though the holiday season is far from over, retailers across the country are breathing a collective sigh of relief after shoppers headed to stores and websites in droves over the weekend. According to the National Retail Federation's 2008 Black Friday Weekend survey, conducted by BIGresearch, more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 147 million shoppers last year.

Here's the dive the 2008 holiday sales actually took.

You can find The Wall Street Journal's more tempered view of how things are going this season in the article Aggressive Bargains Lure Hordes of Shoppers, but They're Still Slow to Open Wallets.

As every veteran retailer will explain, whatever the hype, it's the not the sales results on the day after Thanksgiving that matter most, it's those in the last week before Christmas.

Just in case you're wondering how "the biggest shopping day of the year" got its name, Ethan Trex has the skinny:

If you ask most people why the day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday, they’ll explain that the name stems from retailers using the day’s huge receipts as their opportunity to "get in the black" and become profitable for the year. The first recorded uses of the term "Black Friday" are a bit less rosy, though.

According to researchers, the name "Black Friday" dates back to Philadelphia in the mid-1960s. The Friday in question is nestled snugly between Thanksgiving and the traditional Army-Navy football game that’s played in Philadelphia on the following Saturday, so the City of Brotherly Love was always bustling with activity on that day. All of the people were great for retailers, but they were a huge pain for police officers, cab drivers, and anyone who had to negotiate the city’s streets. They started referring to the annual day of commercial bedlam as "Black Friday" to reflect how irritating it was.

So where did the whole "get in the black" story originate?

Apparently storeowners didn’t love having their biggest shopping day saddled with such a negative moniker, so in the early 1980s someone began floating the accounting angle to put a more positive spin on the big day.

Marketing propaganda. Ain't it wonderful?

• Jacob Weisberg on Obama's Brilliant First Year:

  About one thing, left and right seem to agree these days: Obama hasn't done anything yet. ...

  This conventional wisdom about Obama's first year isn't just premature—it's sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn't an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It's a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

• And speaking of President Obama, here's a photograph I'm guessing not many people thought would show up in the official White House Photo Stream over at flickr.
• Amanda Marcotte, who did sensational blogging of Mad Men this season, turns her eye to the character of Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, exploring the question of what's up with the show's political stance. Does it have one? Is it liberal? Why is Liz Lemon character (the liberal?) always giving in to Jack Donaghy (the conservative?)? In an essay that really shows Marcotte's strength as a commentator on that place where politics and popular culture intersect, she writes:

  To really understand what’s going on with "30 Rock", you have to accept two of the show’s most basic premises fully: 1) Liz is a fuck-up and 2) Jack is a master of a world created by people like him for people like him.  These two facts are unrelated in a causal way, but they do go a long way to explaining the characters’ very believable friendship.  More importantly, they explain why it’s both true that Jack is always right and in control, and yet the moral center of the show is still (mostly) liberal.

• Where are they now? Unfortunately, a lot of the members of the Bush administration are flocking back from the shallow political wilderness in which they found themselves for a while, and Dave Weigel has the lowdown on where they're landing.
• The Columbia Journalism Review recounts the busting of the so-called Sudokubomber, who was caught cheating by the Philadelphia Inquirer, sponsor of the Sudoku National Championship. Sherlock Holmes meets math geek expertise.
• What's a vote worth? In the most recent New York City race for mayor, $183.
• Richard Florida, in The Geography of Obesity, looks at BMI's by region and by the occupations most associated with those states. Some findings:

  Obesity is lower in states with higher concentrations of artists, musicians, and entertainers (with a correlation of-.6), those with larger concentrations of gays and lesbians (-.5), and immigrants (-.5). This likely reflects broader structural characteristics of those states, as more highly educated states also tend to be more tolerant and open to diversity.

• One of the eeriest optical illusions I've run across lately.

Rumsfeld! Below the fold.

I had a boss a decade ago who hated the idea of employees working from home. Hated it. Glared at me every time I suggested we let a few of our team work at home at least a couple of days a week. That team mostly comprised editors and, with an Internet hook-up, they could easily have accomplished their tasks in the basement in their jammies, with the Cheetos close at hand, if they so chose. In some cases, it would have saved them a two-hour round-trip commute. And cut down on their dry-cleaning bills.

It was all about control. He was the kind of boss who didn't believe his staff was working unless he could actually see them working. Didn't matter that their tasks had a required level of output whose quantity could be measured by how often deadlines were met or missed and whose quality was randomly scrutinized by us higher-ups, some of whom also could have worked from home. If Timbuktu had broadband, they could have edited from there. Even though my boss was a good deal younger than I, and should have been more with it, he stuck to this cramped, old-management style right up until the day he left the job. Just as he stuck to the view that people would never give up dead-tree newspapers for on-line coverage.

Economic news in the past couple of months has been decidedly mixed, which is why close observers - amateurs and professionals - have spent so much time lately debating what's next: V-shaped recovery or double-dip recession? Positive job growth or continuing massive unemployment? The mixed news applies in the work-from-home market, too. More people are working from home now. But many of them are earning less money than they did previously.

Sue Shellenbarger at The Wall Street Journal reports:

Amid the economy's many ailments, some good news has remained mostly off the radar: The at-home work force is growing, and it is encompassing new occupations ranging from radiology and nursing to auditing and teaching.

The bad news: Fierce competition means your odds of landing one of these jobs are poor. And if you succeed, you will probably take a pay cut.

For companies, home-based employees, independent contractors and freelancers are helping cut costs and improve customer service. Full-time, home-based freelancers and independent contractors in the U.S. are expected to increase by 200,000 workers to 11 million by the end of 2009, says Ray Boggs, a vice president of IDC, Framingham, Mass., a market-research firm; he sees another 200,000-worker increase in 2010.

While that is a mere blip on the radar in an economy that has been losing nearly that many jobs in a month, the trend means a lot to the individuals who are benefiting from it. They are avoiding dreaded commutes, doing volunteer work, pursuing college degrees or caring for family. And they are performing increasingly complex tasks from home, from reading MRIs to helping clients search for Bigfoot, the mythic wilderness monster.

"We are seeing a general broadening of the work-at-home landscape," says Christine Durst, chief executive of a work-at-home Web site and co-author of a new guidebook on the topic.

Applicants are stacking up by the hundreds of thousands, however. Based on my survey of a dozen companies that use home workers, your odds of actually landing one of these positions range from about 25-to-1 to 300-to-1.

Kent Conrad is trying to sell his Social Security/Medicare cutting commission idea to the White House, and they seem to be listening, to a degree. To briefly recap:

Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation....

Among [the panels] chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an "unsustainable" $63 trillion in 2083.

The panel would also have the power to craft legislation that would change the tax code and set limits on government spending.

Conrad and his new bipartisan "gang" which includes Evan Bayh, Diane Feinstein, Joe Lieberman, and Mark Warner want to cede essential power over to this commission for writing tax law by creating a new permanent Senate rule, that any legislation created by it would be subject to an up-or-down vote; it could not be amended. Note that none of this gang is demanding that critical legislation like healthcare reform not be subject to cloture rules.

Here's the bad news:

Top White House officials, including budget director Peter Orszag, met Tuesday with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Kent Conrad to discuss establishing such a commission, which has been pushed by Mr. Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, and his Republican counterpart on the committee, Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.

Senior congressional officials said the idea was gaining traction. Two officials said the White House was likely to make its own proposal for a panel, which could have less power than the proposed Conrad-Gregg commission. White House aides said no final decision had been made.

The idea is to bring Republicans and Democrats together to make tough decisions about how to cut costs or raise revenue in areas including Social Security, Medicare and taxes. For the White House, establishing a commission would show that the Obama administration is serious about tackling the deficit while postponing any real moves until after the 2010 elections.

Hopefully the White House's iteration of this commission, should they insist on it's necessity, will have far less power than the one Conrad and Gregg envision. These Senators know that cutting Social Security and Medicare is political suicide (and how much would Gregg and Republicans love to have a Democratic president and Congress commit that hari-kari?) and want the cover of having an independent commission making them do it. That the "idea is to bring Republicans and Democrats together to make tough decisions about how to cut costs or raise revenue" when we have a body to do that, called Congress, is particularly galling. That's what we elected them to do--make those decisions on our behalf. And if we don't like their decisions, we hire somebody else for the job. Conrad's commission would be unelected, unanswerable to the American people.

The other Congressional body isn't keen on this idea.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) and senior Democrats such as House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin have vociferously opposed delegating tough decisions to outside panels or commissions.

Pelosi is receiving strong support from Campaign for America's Future, which along with a large group of progressive organizations, is organizing to oppose this panel. From the statement they are sending to Reid, Pelosi, and Obama:

We write in strong opposition to proposals to create an entitlements or deficit-reduction commission that would override the normal legislative process and replace it with expedited procedures prohibiting amendments and limiting debate.

Those supporting this circumvention of the normal process have stated openly the desire to avoid political accountability. Americans -- seniors, women, working families, people with disabilities, young adults, children, people of color, veterans, communities of faith and others -- expect their elected representatives to be responsible and accountable for shaping such significant, far-reaching legislation.

Any deficit reduction measures should be carried out in a responsible manner, providing a fairer tax system and strengthening -- rather than slashing -- Social Security, Medicare and other programs that are vital to the middle class. And as unemployment continues to grow, we need a real debate about how to balance the need for economic recovery and productive public investment with the goal of long-term budget responsibility. The American people are likely to view any kind of expedited procedure, where most members are sidelined to a single take-it-or-leave-it vote, as a hidden process aimed at eviscerating vital programs and productive investment.

This fight could reach the boiling point soon, as Conrad and his gang are holding the threat of killing legislation to raise the debt ceiling--must pass legislation before the end of the year, or American defaults on its debts--to get their commission. These "fiscal conservatives" are in a game of chicken--unleash potential economic catastrophe by allowing the the US to default--in order to reach their end goal of slashing Social Security and Medicare. Pelosi needs to hold her ground, and be joined by Reid and Obama, to put an end to this undemocratic and dangerous proposal.

One of the funniest emails I've read in weeks. It's referring to the swift-boat attacks now in play on climate scientists which could soon be the subject of a congressional (Yes, I'm cereal) investigation:

Since you're BFF with that liar Michel Mann [sp?], why don't you explain to him there's this thing called water vapor. Maybe he can take that into account the next time he try to scare everyone.

OK, no problem, I told my buddy Dr. Michael Mann about 'this thing' called water vapor. Based on his reaction, which sounded something like hysterical laughter, I'm pretty sure he already knew about it. But as long as I was visiting the wingnut zone, I also called the head of geology at Exxon-Mobil and explained about this thing called a drill. Maybe they can use one the next time they're looking for oil.

• Jean Williams posted a brief and accurate piece on the CRU email hack and was over run with a horde of overly eager skeptics. I had the same experience. No doubt Hezbollah and Al Qaeda will be heartened to know that conservatives are onboard with Jihad, making sure their pipeline of oil money is available to keep killing innocent people for decades to come.
• In the meantime, climate change projections again outpace all but the more aggressive models:

  A report by a group of leading scientists that global warming is accelerating and that world sea levels could rise at worst by 2 metres by 2100* is grim reading.

• China is teeing up another lunar probe and hopes to send a manned mission to the moon as early as 2017:

  Official newspaper the China Daily said that Chang'e 2 will have a higher resolution camera and will orbit closer to the surface. China is also planning a third mission in 2015 that will land on the Moon, collect samples of rock and return them to Earth.

• Last but certainly not least, the Moonie Times, going under? Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of toadies for a megalomaniacal religious lunatic.

T'was that Saturday after Thanksgiving and all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a Daily Kos editor. But the pundits... ah, the pundits...

Ellen Goodman:  

Is there such a thing as communications malpractice? If so, we might consider the case of Women v. the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

I'm not talking about medical malpractice. The scientists who surveyed the mammogram studies did their job honorably.

Bob Herbert:

The American economy is broken, ruined by the greed and irresponsibility of fabulously wealthy corporate chieftains and their shabby acolytes and enablers in government. While Wall Street is handing out billions in bonuses, American families are struggling with joblessness, home foreclosures and rampant debt. The economic woes are exacting a fierce toll on family life, and children are taking a big hit — emotionally, psychologically and otherwise.

One effect of the Great Recession, according to a recent series in The Times, has been a big jump in the number of runaway children, many of them living in dangerous conditions on the street.

Kathleen Parker:

Some people can't stand prosperity, my father used to say. Today, he might be talking about Republicans, who, in the midst of declining support for President Obama's hope-and-change agenda, are considering a "purity" pledge to weed out undesirables from their ever-shrinking party.

Just when independents and moderates were considering revisiting the GOP tent.

David Ignatius:

The Democrats, in our scary 2010 movie, will be heading toward the midterm elections hoping to preserve their 81-seat margin in the House. Vulnerable incumbents will be clamoring for more economic stimulus, but the Obama administration will be constrained by the huge budget deficits needed to bail out the economy after the 2008 financial crisis.

Trust the Villagers to get around to noticing the obvious. Once they do, you begin to question whether it's as true as they say.

John Tirman:

Two events in the last month have raised the terror alert to red: the killing of 13 soldiers and police at Ford Hood, apparently by a Muslim psychiatrist, and the decision to try high-level 9/11 suspects in a civilian criminal court in New York City.

However, these events are being manipulated by the right wing to bang the alarm bells ever louder. From House Republican leader John Boehner and Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan to former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson and blogger Michelle Malkin, many on the right are grandstanding on both events with such force that it is cultivating terror in the American public.

Robert Read (UK):

Alongside improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and housing, vaccination has practically eliminated infectious diseases as a cause of childhood deaths in industrialised countries. Our children no longer die or are crippled by diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, or polio, to name a few examples. Even in the world's poorer countries that have yet to benefit from infrastructure improvements, vaccination has eradicated smallpox, is on the verge of doing the same for polio, and has cut deaths from measles by three quarters in the past decade alone. The countless millions of lives saved by vaccination are arguably science's greatest triumph.

The anti-vax movement is well organized and not going away. It will look for any opening to get a foot in the door. But Euro vaccine has adjuvant, and it's not as well studied as the rest of the vaccine components. This is one of those cases  (vaccines are evil, buy my all-natural snake oil and make me rich instead; don't do any more studies) where you look at the extremes and say "a pox on both your houses".

Stacy Feldman at SolveClimate writes:

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Green Diary Rescues appear on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The diary rescue begins below and continues in the jump. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it.

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Josh Nelson told us what he said we needed to know about the scandal he said is misnamed in The SwiftHack (ClimateGate): "First of all, this story should never have been called ClimateGate.  Given the similarities between this smear job and the Swift Boat attacks on Senator John Kerry, SwiftHack is a far more appropriate name. ... The scientific consensus that humans are responsible for climate change -- and that we must stabilize concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases at 350 parts per million -- remains overwhelming.  This latest cybercrime and the private emails it revealed do nothing whatsoever to change that."

Eddie C posted An Early Thanksgiving Sunset photo diary.

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Oke has posted the Overnight News Digest.

This evening's Rescue Rangers are watercarrier4diogenes, blank frank, HoosierDeb, mem from somerville, YatPundit and shayera with shayera editing.

• First-time diarist Liberal Lass has a touching story of how Daily Kos saved her Thanksgiving Day in With Thanks to Kos and KINship. Your Rescue Ranger has something in his eye... (Blank Frank)
• michelewln expresses thoughts about a resilient spirit, in more ways than one, with Phoenix Rising. (mem from somerville)
• RLMiller brings us a climate-change conference update in US, China, and India at Copenhagen: a lot like Waxman-Markey. (YatPundit)
• Mother Mags provides a thorough update on every civil libertarian's least-favorite sheriff in Joe Arpaio Spews More Venom. (Blank Frank)
• Frank Cocozzelli brings back an old-fashioned word to discuss a hot contemporary topic in Catholic Remonstrance Now! (YatPundit)
• In a tasty bit of Bushco and GOPwit mockery, WIds exposes yet another DC shocker in Vegegate!. (watercarrier4diogenes)

jotter with High Impact Diaries: November 26, 2009.

emeraldmaiden has Top Comments 11/27/09 - Turkey Hangover.

Enjoy and please promote your own favorite diaries in this open thread.

Every year on the day after Thanksgiving, most of the news seems to be devoted to "Black Friday," the official start of the holiday* shopping season. Personally, I'd rank getting up at the crack of dawn to fight over sales items right up there with getting up at the crack of dawn to sit in a deer stand waiting for a hapless victim to wander by. In other words, neither is ever going to happen -- but that's just me.  

Where do you stand on the post-Thanksgiving shopping lollapalooza? And if you participated this year, how did it go? Great sales and crowds, or not so great?

*just doing my part to wage the war on Christmas