Labor Day Weekend

Tuesday starts the real campaign season so then we'll be back with some previews. I noticed Nate the Great hasn't given us his House choices. So we enter the weekend with Republicans taking over the House, pledging to close down the Government until healthcare is defunded. Actually, it's more that Boehner can't put in real working hours. Republicans are making noise that they can take the Senate also. Republican strategists are already saying there will be a war among Republicans over the leadership. It might be useful for the Democrats to start playing some of the clips of republicans bragging about what they want to do--virtually reverse anything positive that has been done. Maybe progressives will take the weekend to sober up about what's at stake in this mid-term election.

I don't have the energy to write about the sans culottes today. We have some choice tidbits about the teabagger candidate in Delaware and more goodies from Ken Buck and Sharron Angle we'll get to next week.

After my Beckian posts this past week, open warfare has opened between evangelical Christians and Momonism. Also, lapsed Mormons have opined about Beck. The evangelicals are saying that the Mormons believe that Christianity after the first generation entered into a period of the Great Apostasy until the divine revelations came to Joseph Smith. That's actually true. Today, one evangelical preacher posted on his blog about how Mormonism was like Islam. Watch this space because this feud is going to heat up.

While anti-Muslim sentiment is being whipped up, it's useful to remember the FBI statistics just released that hate crimes against Jews have increased to some 7,000 this year.

Next week brings us Arianna Huffington's Third World America, an accurate concept. We'll wait to see how she executes, particularly since she vacationed in Italy and hung out with Newt Gingrich , her old soulmate.

The American Spectator is bragging that they got the first interview with Todd Palin. Whoop-de-do.

The think-tank for the German military just leaked a report that this is the year of Peak Oil and the results of which will be dire to the developed economies within a very short time.

And yes, the Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to meet every two weeks until they reach the framework for a permanent solution. Expect a few Hamas efforts to disrupt over the next year but the lack of publicity and commentary so far is encouraging.

And Barack Obama hit 50% approval in the CNN poll just released. This was after his Iraq speech, which re-inforces the New York Times' editorial urging him to address the nation more. Apparently next Friday he will have a press conference. But that's not the same. As of Labor Day weekend, Obama's poll numbers are above Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton for this time in their term.

I'm off this weekend on a fieldtrip to the heartland to feel the pulse of America. That's when I get off the internet and listen to right-wing and Christian radio stations. Maybe I'll hear more about Glenn beck. I'll be travelling through the Tan Man's district, which has suffered from devastating unemployment for over a decade. He seems to have ignored it.