I wish this was about economics.
It is only tangentially so.
No, this is about the war in Afghanistan.  The FT reports:

Some time in the next two weeks, Mr Obama is likely to bring months of agonised deliberation to a close when he decides h…

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Now that the Obama administration is attempting to take a victory lap on the U.S. economic recovery, claiming the $787-billion stimulus passed earlier this year was what did the trick, despite a cost of $160,000 per ’stimulus’ job, as ABC’s Jake Tapper pointed out, it has come at the cost of the U.S. dollar.

Since then, the stock market has rebounded nicely. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is off a March low of 6,547 points, even topping the 10,000-mark recently. But what has caused this nearly 50-percent jump? According to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow - loose monetary policy by the Federal Reserve, with low interest rates, has made it possible for the markets to rise, with the ‘loose’ money going into the market.

"The funny thing is, Steven, it has gone into stocks - I mean the stock market guys … there’s no real multiplier for the economy, right?" Kudlow said on his Oct. 30 CNBC program. "But it has gone into stocks and the stock market crowd wants to see the Fed to keep pouring the money in no matter what happens to the U.S. dollar."

And CNBC’s senior economics reporter Steve Liesman agreed. But he warned that if policymakers were to intervene to shore up a weakening U.S. dollar, it would send the stock market down. However, Kudlow explained that a stable dollar would put confidence back in the U.S. economy - and that it would be good for stocks in the long run, while not causing the inflationary response associated with propping up a fragile economy by devaluing the U.S. dollar.

"Rick Santelli, what Steve’s got wrong is in the long run, a solid economy, a balanced economy, a non-inflationary economy with a solid dollar - doesn’t have to rise, just solid, stable - would be great for stocks."

"Solid dollar, good fiscal discipline - the dollar and stocks would go up," CNBC CME floor reporter Rick Santelli said.

Liesman, who has championed these interventionist policies by the federal government, insisted that propping up the economy this way would lead to a strengthening dollar.

"You both have it backwards - a solid economy will give you a solid dollar," Liesman said.

That’s smoke and mirrors, according to Santelli. The fact that the market is rising in value means little, unless an individual is actually vested in the market. There are other indicators that show the health of the U.S. economy isn’t where it needs to be - unemployment approaching 10 percent and inflationary signs like the rise in the price of commodities like gold and oil.

"Exactly - and you’re not going to have a solid economy without the government creating a façade through the equity markets and diluted dollars that everything is OK," Santelli said. "Because 50 percent of America, especially those that don’t own stocks or are unemployed - they know what’s going on."

Liesman maintained the Obama and Bush administrations’ line - that under circumstances, loose monetary policy at the cost of the value of the U.S. dollar, is necessary and without it, the economy would be in much worse shape. Santelli disagreed with that argument.

"Just like if we wouldn’t have had all the bailouts, we would have had a Depression," Santelli said. "I’m not buying any of it."

And it’s not a matter of political affiliation, as Kudlow explained. Both President George W. Bush and Obama got it wrong. Who got it right? Presidents Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and Ronald Reagan, a Republican.

"The Bush administration was wrong about the dollar, I’ll say that again for the umpteenth time," Kudlow said. "And this administration is wrong about the dollar and the last president to get the dollar right was Bill Clinton, who had it right, and Ronald Reagan before him."

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As NewsBusters reported Friday, conservative talk radio host will be appearing on "Fox News Sunday":

Host Chris Wallace traveled to Palm Beach, Florida to record the interview with Limbaugh today.

List of air times, by city, for the program on Fox broadcast stations at various times on Sunday morning.

For those chomping at the bit, here’s a brief sneak preview including Limbaugh claiming that if ObamaCare passes, "It’s gonna be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country" (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Breitbart TV):

This is not about insuring the uninsured. This is not about healthcare. This is about stealing one-sixth of the U.S. private sector and putting it under the control of federal government. And when they get this healthcare bill, if they do, that’s the easiest, fastest way for them to be able to regulate every aspect of human behavior, because it’ll all have some related cost to healthcare: what you drive, what you eat, where you live, what you do. And it will be penalties for violating regulations. It’s gonna be the biggest snatch of freedom and liberty that has yet occurred in this country.  

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Fox Television must be getting nervous about keeping "The Simpsons" fresh now that it’s in season 21. This show is so old it’s just about drinking age. But Fox tarted it up in the headlines with nudity and impiety. They put cartoon mom Marge Simpson on the cover of Playboy magazine and mocked Christians by comparing them to cannibalistic zombies.

The Playboy issue came out on October 16. The suggestive "Devil In Marge Simpson" cover isn’t much to write home about – other than the mainstreaming of porn and the sickening corporate symbiosis, with Fox Television lending one of its signature cartoon brands to Playboy, whose circulation is tanking. The "pictorial" inside the issue is a little more pornographic, with one picture giving Marge Simpson a very three-dimensional, anatomically correct chest in a see-through nightie.

Did anyone really "need" this? Other than Hugh Hefner and his declining business?

Two days after the Playboy hit the stands, Fox aired their annual "Treehouse of Horror" episode of "The Simpsons," which is usually the darkest and goriest show of the year. It’s also one of the most-watched: more than eight and a half million people watched this show.

Everyone who’s watched and enjoyed "The Simpsons" know they haven’t typically engaged in religion-bashing. Their satire of the Ned Flanders family, like much of their satire, has a sympathy wrapped inside it. But when it’s time for the "Treehouse of Horror," even Flanders has been transformed into the devil.

This season, in a segment titled "Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind," the people of Springfield become zombies after eating tainted hamburgers. It takes on a religious tone when young Bart Simpson eats a hamburger and isn’t affected. He’s named the "Chosen One" and the Simpsons drive off to find the safe zone where the uninfected are hiding.

When they arrive, a guard says, "Welcome, son. To survive, all we must do is eat your flesh." Marge holds up a rifle and protests, "What kind of civilized people eat the body and blood of their savior?" In case viewers didn’t get the Last Supper-mocking joke, the next shot is the Reverend Lovejoy character tugging nervously at his collar. The segment ends with the antidote solution: Bart sitting naked in a vat of soup.

A few minutes before, as the Simpsons escape zombies in a pickup truck driven by Apu, the vegetarian Kwik-E-Mart merchant, a zombified woman breaks through the windshield. Apu tells Marge to shoot her. "I can’t shoot her. She’s Lisa’s godmother." Apu says: "You can apologize in Hell!" So Marge replies: "I guess I could." With her sense of manners somehow restored – Marge accepts she’s going to Hell? – Marge shoots her.

Fox’s Sunday night animation bloc is now dominated by 90 minutes of militant atheist Seth McFarlane’s cartoons, so it shouldn’t be surprising that "The Simpsons" might try to keep up with the atheist God-mockers next door. So much for keeping the Lord’s day holy.

Some might say the cartoon is merely being "irreverent." But irreverent toward what? Some ideas are treated reverently, like vegetarianism. Within the same cartoon, the hamburgers are tainted because in some twisted satire on meat-eaters, the cows who were made into hamburgers were fed on hamburgers, making them hamburger "squared." Lisa Simpson exclaimed "Cows eating cows! That’s an abomination!" The local news anchor then tells the audience to come down and sample "this delicious crime against nature." There was even a campaign slogan in the title: "Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind."

Vegetarians don’t complain about "The Simpsons." In 2004, the radical vegetarians at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) honored Lisa Simpson by putting her number two on their list of "The Most Animal-Friendly TV Characters of All Time." In a 2006 episode, Lisa actually joined PETA and threw blood on Krusty the Clown for wearing a fur coat.

Lisa’s earnest vegetarianism came straight from the stars. "It’s actually Paul McCartney who was responsible for another permanent change," said David Mirkin, "Simpsons" executive producer. "When I asked him to do the vegetarian episode, he agreed but made me promise to keep Lisa as a vegetarian – and I was happy to comply with that, because I’m a vegetarian too!"

Last year’s "Treehouse of Horror" episode included a crude knockoff of the 1966 cartoon "It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown." The child character Milhouse replaced Linus in believing in the Grand Pumpkin. In the original, Linus compared the Pumpkin to Santa Claus, but "The Simpsons" conflated it to Christianity. Even after Bart Simpson told Milhouse he made the legend up just to mess with him, Milhouse said his "faith" could be tested, and then proclaimed a mangled version of the Apostle’s Creed: "I believe in the Grand Pumpkin, almighty gourd, who was crustified over Pontius pie plate and ascended into oven. He will come again to judge the filling and the bread."

So again and again, Jesus and his followers can be satirized. But when Milhouse told Lisa she had a nice witch costume, she protested, "I’m a Wiccan. Why is it when a woman is confident and powerful, they call her a witch?" Hollywood’s willingness to engage in "irreverence" is a very selective thing. On Fox, Christians are mocked, but Wiccans, vegetarians, and feminists aren’t mocked. They get their talking points offered.

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‘Adult film actor’ Damien Michaels, 53, was found stabbed to death Tuesday in a hotel room in the Woodland Hills area of Los Angeles.
Michaels had been in approximately 50 porno films.
Fox LA News covered the story:

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After a pattern of attacking Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, on a nightly basis, one of the strategies is becoming apparent - MSNBC is in need of a boogeyman to give a face to the opposition of these radical steps being undertaken to fundamentally change health care in the United States.

So rather than attack where the opposition is wrong on a policy level, MSNBC "Countdown" fill-in host Lawrence O’Donnell is going to apply one of the tactics from Saul Alinsky’s "Rules for Radicals" to promote a dramatic shift in the U.S. health care system - "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

"In our number five story on the countdown tonight, the Congressional Budget Office finds that it would leave 18 million people uninsured and the government-run health insurance plan will probably charge consumers premiums that are quote, ‘Somewhat higher, higher than average premiums for the private plans,’ end quote," O’Donnell said. "This is a devastating conclusion for a plan being sold not just as a low-cost option for consumers, especially poor consumers, but as somehow driving private insurance premiums lower."

The target: The usual MSNBC obsession, Bachmann - and they went out of their way with this one, proving they’ll go to any length to villainize her.

"First the politics - Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann responded to the House bill today," O’Donnell said. "The full-screen graphic you will see with the question about Joe Lieberman and the word surprise, "surprised" misspelled is courtesy of the interviewers, not the ‘Countdown’ staff," O’Donnell said. "The Michael Jackson reference is all Bachmann."

Bachmann explained this is the path to "socialization" and encouraged people to call their member of Congress to slow down the Democratic leadership’s efforts to force this so-called health care reform into law.

"This is socialization of America if this bill goes through," Bachmann said. "And after next Friday, it’ll be too late to talk to your member of Congress, so now is the time."

The interviewer asked Bachmann about two Democratic senators that have hinted at siding with the Republican opposition to some of the radical things this health care reform would do to the system and said this was the time to slow its momentum by making a pop culture reference, which for whatever reason O’Donnell thought he should draw attention to.

"You know I’m not because Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are hearing from people back home - real people," Bachmann said. "And that’s what we’re going to show the rest of these members of Congress next week when people, normal American people who love this country, get in their cars and actually come here next week because the American people realize this is it, just like that brand-new Michael Jackson movie that came out, ‘This is It.’ This is it for freedom."

O’Donnell showed he disapproved of the term "socialization" to describe this, with an attempt to be "snarky."

"Regarding Bachmann’s objection to quote, ‘The socialization of America,’" O’Donnell said. "Note to Bachmann’s staff - Dictionary.com."

Acting on behalf of Bachmann’s staff, a look at the Dictionary.com reveals one of the definitions of "socialization" Bachmann wasn’t that far off:

Dictionary.com shows "the act or process of making socialistic: the socialization of industry." And by definition, the action the Democratic leadership in Congress is wanting the government to take - to increase its presence and interrupt the market forces - is "the act of process of making socialistic."

And if O’Donnell and his ilk at MSNBC want to continue to dismiss the notion that this isn’t part of a long term strategy put in place to develop a single-payer health care system in the United States, just take a look at President Barack Obama in his own words from 2003.

"I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program," Obama said. "I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan - and that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

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Yet another example of the folly of assigning liberals to guard duty.

Joining Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show Thursday to vent about that pesky wabbit Joe Lieberman was Fire Dog Lake blogger Jane Hamsher.

Democrats wield considerable leverage over Lieberman, Hamsher opined, to keep him from joining a GOP filibuster of ObamaCare or punish him if he does –

MADDOW: … I think you’re right to point out that other senators sort of gently expressing their disapproval of his proverbial toplessness at this point is a bigger deal than it would be in the real world, that their words do actually sort of calibrate differently. But what leverage can they really bring to bear on him in order to get him to get in line?

HAMSHER: Well, as you say, there are people who do have influence over Joe Lieberman. Joe has his committee chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee, that’s his power base in the Senate. He’s a very vain man and were that to be stripped from him, he would be like Rumpelstiltskin putting his foot through the floor. And the Democrats have the power to do that. So again, the Harkin, Conrad comments today were to the effect of, you know, let’s, let’s remember, you’re here at our good graces, Joe.

But, you know, he also needs the sub base at Groton, which is, you know, the submarine version of the F-22, in order to stay in the good graces of Connecticut’s citizens while he does stuff like this, and that’s something that could, you know, potentially go as well.

Silly me, thinking such decisions, you know, should be based on national security considerations and not, you know, vindictive partisan politics. You know?

Hamsher does deserve credit, however. At least she’s willing to state aloud what Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod will utter only behind closed doors.

Earlier in the segment, Hamsher made a revealing slip that suggests where she sees herself in the order of the universe –

HAMSHER: Well, I think it’s a mistake to think of the Senate as an august body, possibly the most powerful deliberative body in the world, and instead think of us as it being in day four of a beauty pageant.

What’s this "us" stuff, paleface?

Day four of a beauty pageant in which the blinding blonde stumbles off the catwalk.

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Happy Hal Levine everybody. I do love the Jewish holiday season.
As is tradition, my fiends (and friends) and I will be attending the freak show in West Hollywood, followed by an awesome after party. For the first time in years, I will going stag. I will not have arm candy dressed in a slutty costume. [...]

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HotAir covered Steven Crowder’s Halloween hilarity.  Ed wrote,
“Happy Halloween, everyone — and just remember, the scariest things aren’t found under your bed or in your basement.  They’re found on Capitol Hill and inside the Beltway.”
We couldn’t agree more!  Happy Halloween.  Check it out:
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Early Saturday morning, 7Online.com, the website for ABC’s New York affiliate WABC-TV, reported the previous night’s arrest of Jason Shih, an alleged campaign worker for Governor Jon Corzine (D-NJ) charged with "possession of a controlled narcotic and paraphernalia that is used for distribution."

Although the headline "Corzine campaign worker arrested" shows up in a Google News search, the page is no longer available: "We are sorry, but the URL you requested could not be found. The page you are looking for may have been renamed, moved, or deleted."

A search of "Jason Shih" and "Corzine" at 7Online.com did not produce a new article concerning Shih’s arrest.

[UPDATE, 1pm EDT: According to the New York Post: "Corzine spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said Shih is not on the payroll of the campaign or the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, and that the campaign doesn't know who he is."]

Fortunately, the website Drug Policy Central captured the 7Online report for its readers (h/t Twitter follower NYfitter):

US: Corzine campaign worker arrested

Found: Sat Oct 31 06:33:06 2009 PDT
Webpage: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=…
Newshawk: http://drugpolicycentral.com/bot/

Corzine campaign worker arrested Corzine campaign worker arrested - 10/31/09 - New York News and Tri-State News - 7online.com

WABC-TV New York, NY

Eyewitness News

Politics & Elections

Corzine campaign worker arrested

New Jersey Senate President Richard J. Codey, right, D-West Orange and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr., D-Camden, listen as Gov. Jon S. Corzine, center, delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the Assembly and Senate in the Assembly chambers of the Statehouse Tuesday Jan. 13, 2009, in Trenton, N.J. During his annual address, the Democratic governor also braced the Democratic-controlled Legislature for a new round of budget cuts on top of $1.4 billion already cut this fiscal year. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)

EAST RUTHERFORD, NJ (WABC) — Jason Shih, an Assistant Deputy Director to the campaign of NJ Gov. Jon Corzine was arrested last night on drug charges.

East Rutherford police say they pulled over the 25-year-old on Route 17 for driving while using a cell phone.

Police say they found 19 ecstasy pills and several hundred glassine envelopes.

He was charged with possession of a controlled narcotic and paraphernalia that is used for distribution.

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He was released on $15,000 bail.

(Copyright (c)2009 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

For the record, the New York Post has also reported Shih’s arrest, with a denial from a Corzine spokeswoman of his employment by the campaign:

Corzine spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith said Shih is not on the payroll of the campaign or the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, and that the campaign doesn’t know who he is.

The 7Online report said Shih was "an Assistant Deputy Director."

If that’s not the case, should they have removed the article completely or issued a correction?

Stay tuned. 

*****Update: Someone posted this 7Online piece at the message board of the website Broker Outpost. 

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