TV News LIES

Hurricane Sandy might be fresh in the American public's memory, but for advocates seeking action on climate change time is running out. At a recent event, engineering, disaster preparation and climate science professors at Columbia University urged lawmakers to take advantage of the public's post Hurricane Sandy interest in global warming and push through bold policies.

"Memory fades very fast," said civil engineering professor George Deodatis at the university event Monday. "The next six months to a year will be critical."

It gets harder to concentrate, the closer a holiday comes.  For lack of a better term, I call this the Haze Factor -- that inverse relationship of decreased work focus and attention span with the increased nearness of friends, family, free time, and fun.

If the Haze is conjuring up banks of fog moving through your area, and/or your own mind, welcome to the club.  (For my part, it's taken ten minutes to write three sentences.)  With everyone likewise debilitated today, we'll attempt only one bit of serious business here, then amble over to a transition piece, and finally wander up to the sideboard of those fluffy meringue and cream pies, and puff pastries.

There’s a war going on that you know nothing about between a coalition of great powers and a small insurgent movement.  It’s a secret war being waged in the shadows while you go about your everyday life.

In the end, this conflict may matter more than those in Iraq and Afghanistan ever did.  And yet it’s taking place far from newspaper front pages and with hardly a notice on the nightly news.  Nor is it being fought in Yemen or Pakistan or Somalia, but in small hamlets in upstate New York.  There, a loose network of activists is waging a guerrilla campaign not with improvised explosive devices or rocket-propelled grenades, but with zoning ordinances and petitions.

The growing use of routine mammograms over the past 30 years has done little to lower the death rate from breast cancer but has sharply increased the number of women who are wrongly diagnosed with the disease, a new study reported.

The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is sure to intensify the already fierce debate over how often women should get mammograms, a controversy that has embroiled policymakers, politicians and physicians — not to mention their female patients.

United Airlines bears no responsibility for suspected security lapses at a Maine airport that allowed hijackers onto the American Airlines plane that crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, a federal judge ruled.

TVNL Comment: Why would hijackers risk making a connecting flight in Maine when there are three airports within minutes of downtown Manhattan?  Think about it.

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When all the votes are counted, could Mitt Romney really end up achieving perfect poetic justice by finishing with 47 percent of the national vote? Yup. Dave Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report says new votes in from Maryland put Romney at 47.56 percent. He predicts with certainty that with all of New York and California counted, Romney will end up below 47.5 percent of the vote.

Rounded, of course, that would put the final tally at 51-47. Anticipating this moment, Markos Moulitsas has inaugurated the “Romney 47 percent watch.”

Hisham El Farra is 24 years old and in his final year at university where he studies social education. After graduation, though, he’d like to be a businessman, working with imports and exports. Travel is high on his wish list. One place he wants to visit is Spain, primarily to check out the women, he admits with an embarrassed youthful smile. “They are flawless,” he says.

But leaving his home in Gaza may not be possible. Since the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007, the territory has been under an Israeli-led blockade and, like Farra, an entire generation of Gazan youth has come of age without interaction with the outside world. The effect on their outlook on their own lives and that of the country around them is palpable.

As we approach our national day of giving thanks, we have some real doozies to celebrate this year.  It's unclear exactly how we'll provide ourselves ample black-slapping gratitude on our good work -- although I expect a couple pieces of pie fit into the equation somehow.

And so, a grateful nation groans and pushes itself back from the table, creaking every joint in its chair, its fingers crossed, in support of the hope that this rickety seat won't pop all its seams, right this instant, and dump us sprawling onto the floor.

Let us all in the Glassy-Eyed Tryptophan Brigade fondly seek out the Couch of Contentment in great sighs of relief, giving thanks for landing safely somewhere soft and stuffed, feeling much the same, too.