I really do think the Obama Campaign is going to run GOP Debate moments, unedited, through November. Open thread below....

TV On The Radio's Nine Types of Light was one of my favorite records of last year, and this song is a standout. Did you have a favorite in 2011?

Nine Types of Light
	Artist: TV on the Radio Price: $9.90 (As of 01/02/12 04:50 pm details)

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Starting off the year with an 18 day howl.

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A Recession was looming with indicators not being optimistic in light of news that consumers just weren't spending any money.

AT&T was poised to lay off 30,000 workers, hot on the heels of the 6,000 who lost their jobs just recently.

Some good news came from the direction of Science where the gene responsible for Heart Arrhythmia had been discovered. A sigh of relief all around.

The Chiapas Rebels were celebrating their 2nd anniversary by converting to a political force, rather than an armed one.

The Madonna Stalking Trial was set to begin with questions being raised over whether or not The Material Girl was going to show up and testify.

And the James Jordan (father of Michael Jordan) Murder Trial was set to resume.

Not an earth shattering day in history, but one still guaranteed to have you reaching for the Prilosec anyway.

And that's the way it went on January 2nd 1996 from the CBS World News Roundup.

Actress Ellen Barkin - born and raised in New York - tweeted early Sunday morning about a disturbing encounter she witnessed between the NYPD, and a young girl she tried to help as she was being arrested. The video above shows Barkin, confronted by an NYPD officer who physically moves her back on to the sidewalk, and then walks away from her as she questions his actions.

"I was trying 2 make my way 2 young girl they had thrown in2 the van.She was not a protester.Was not drunk.She was walking home," she wrote.

Later in the day, she had this to say about the actions of the NYPD, "I have never been afraid of a NY policeman until last nite.What I saw was random & senseless arrests and unnecessarily threatening behavior."

Barkin is an outspoken progressive and advocate of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

"Dear Mr. President" was written for the Occupy movement, by Gabriel Quinn Andreas of Occupy Santa Barbara. He expresses a common sentiment in the occupys, many supporters of President Obama feel he’s failed them with the whole hope-y change-y thing: "We gave you a fair chance and this is how it went. Signed sincerely yours, The Other Ninety-Nine Percent."

Michelle Bachmann's appearance yesterday on This Week with Jake Tapper was one of her more cringe-inducing performances. Not because she isn't someone incapable of delivering lines and staying on message, but because the content of her message is so obviously boilerplate campaignspeak from someone who's so clearly sliding too far down, too fast to win. Instead, she's promising a "miracle:"

TAPPER: My next guest sounds just as confident, but her path forward is a lot more murky. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann joins me from Des Moines.

Congresswoman, thanks for joining us, and happy new year.

BACHMANN: Happy new year to you. Great to be on with you this morning, Jake.

TAPPER: So the last time you and I spoke, you had just won the Iowa straw poll. The Des Moines Register poll had you tied for first place with Mitt Romney with 22 percent of the vote. Now that same poll has you with 7 percent of the vote. What happened to your campaign?

BACHMANN: Well, we've had a very good campaign. And I think what's happened is, a lot of candidates have come in, and Iowa voters and national voters have taken a look at all of the other candidates. But we have done I think what no other candidate has done, and that is, after the last debate, we've gone across all of Iowa, all 99 counties, and we've actually done heavy, heavy retail politics where we've gone into cafes and into living rooms of Iowans, and we've made a very strong connection with a lot of people.

And if you look at the polls, it's upwards of 40 percent to 50 percent of Iowans haven't made their decision yet. And I think the polls, what they're reflecting will be very different from what we're seeing on Tuesday night, because people make their decision, quite honestly, in the caucus room. Iowa is very different. People gather in living rooms. They gather in elementary schools and churches, and they make their decision on the spot with their neighbors. And we have done, like I said, what no other candidate has done the last two weeks. We've put over -- almost 7,000 miles on our bus, and we've literally gone from town to town to town meeting with people directly. And we saw thousands of people switch their vote just in the last couple of weeks, so we think there's going to be a very profound shift that people see on Tuesday night.

TAPPER: Well, one of the -- one of the dilemmas that you've had is that a lot of the voters that you are competing for, conservative voters, Christian evangelicals in some cases, are also being wooed by Rick Santorum and Rick Perry. And Santorum has momentum right now. He is at third place in the Des Moines Register poll. And if you look at the last two days, he's in second place. He has strong social conservative credentials. He's fluent in foreign affairs. He won statewide twice in a key swing state, Pennsylvania. So why should voters go for you and not him?

BACHMANN: Well, because I'm the strongest core conservative in this race. There is no comparison with all of the other candidates and my credentials. No other candidate has current national security experience in the race. I sit on the House Intelligence Committee. I am daily involved with the issue of national security. No other candidate is.

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Mother Jones caught this tidbit from Newt Gingrich on the campaign trail this Saturday -- On Global Warming, Gingrich Cites His Own Expertise on Dinosaurs:

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was challenged by supporters at an event at a Coca Cola bottling plant in Atlantic, Iowa on Saturday, on issues ranging from faith to his consulting work for Freddie Mac to his brief support for cap-and-trade. Gingrich, flanked by his wife, Callista, his daughter Jackie, and a 20-foot-high stack of Mello Yello, told voters that anyone who accuses him of taxing carbon as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is "dishonest" (evidence to the contrary notwithstanding), and then issued a curious explanation for why he doesn't trust the science on global warming: He's a scientist himself, and he knows better. [...]

"I'm an amateur paleontologist, so I've spent a lot of time looking at the earth's temperature over a very long time," Gingrich said. "I'm a lot harder to convince than just by looking at a computer model."

We've chronicled Gingrich's passion for dinosaurs. In addition to keeping a T-Rex skull in his congressional office (loaned from the Smithsonian), he twice debated famed Montana State paleontologist Jack Horner on the feeding habits of the T-Rex, with Gingrich arguing that the king of dinosaurs could not have been a scavenger because "I saw Jurassic Park and he ate a lawyer and it wasn't a dead lawyer." So while not professionally trained, his paleontological analysis clearly does carry a lot of weight.

Full transcript below the fold.

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So much for being the party that's "pro-life." On this week's Meet the Press, after some hedging and trying to change the subject after being asked what he would do differently than the current administration of whom he's been very critical of, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum said that he would order airstrikes on Iran in order to keep them from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Here's the end of the back and forth where Gregory finally pinned him down:

GREGORY: But I asked you about disarming Iran. There is no material difference in terms of how the Bush administration sought to disarm Iran and what the Obama administration has done.

SANTORUM: There's a material difference in, in this respect. Number one, the Bush administration worked with me in passing the Iran Freedom Support Act, which I authored, which imposed tough sanctions on the Iranian nuclear program and provided funding for the prodemocracy movement. When President Obama came into office, he cut that funding. President Obama did not provide funding into Iran to help those folks who wanted to overthrow this democracy. And when the time came to support them, he chose not to. That is a substantive difference between my policy, which I was a leader on in the Senate, and what President Bush tried to do when he was president.

GREGORY: The reality is, there is no good option to disarm Iran.

SANTORUM: Yes, there is.

GREGORY: The Bush administration knew that, this administration knows that. Tell me what you would do differently, then.

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Credit: Occupy Oakland credit: JR

Yet Fox was alone among the cable news networks in losing viewers — down 8 percent in prime time and 5 percent for the full day, Nielsen said. The 2010 midterm election year was particularly engaging for Republicans, who make up a big part of Fox's audience.

CNN was up 17 percent in prime-time viewership with a revamped lineup that includes a double dose of Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan replacing Larry King. CNN is third behind Fox and MSNBC in prime time but second for the day as a whole.

CNN's rivals acknowledge its gains but are quick to point out that last year represented CNN's worst year ever in the ratings.

MSNBC can take pride in surviving the exit of its most popular prime time personality, Keith Olbermann, who defected to Current. The network is up 2 percent over last year in its prime-time average, Nielsen said.

An 8% loss for prime time translates to a lot of money for the big advertising time slots. It would be interesting to see a deeper analysis of what could be the cause here. Fox has maintained the same prime time line-up for quiet awhile now, so perhaps people are just getting tired of hearing the same old Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. On the other hand, perhaps people are just finally getting tired of being spoon fed a bunch of b.s.?

There was one other loss worth mentioning here. MSNBC did see their 8:00 time slot drop 11% after the departure of Keith Olbermann. They still managed to fair well though with Rachel Maddow continuing her rise and the 10:00 hour no longer being a rerun of Countdown.

All this makes you wonder what we might see in 2012. I'm sure the ratings overall will increase with the election upon us, but will CNN and MSNBC see a bigger increase than FOX? We'll find out this time next year.

In a great example of a proactive way to deal with unemployment, the Laborers' International Union of North America (LiUNA) partnered with Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs to give job training in the construction trades to unemployed workers. In a sharp contrast to the developers in Baltimore who are receiving massive tax breaks, the faith-based coalition requested help from the labor union in helping get unemployed workers the skills they need to get back into the workforce.

From the press release about Thursday's event:

"As a long-time Baltimore resident I am appalled that members of our communities, who are willing and able to work, are routinely left out of conversations with developers when it comes to local jobs," said David Stokes, a local LiUNA! trainer. "We have hundreds of workers who have reached out to us from throughout Baltimore who are willing to be trained so that they can help rebuild their own communities."

Currently, Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs is working to bring attention to EBDI to hear the community's cry for local job opportunities. Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs is calling on (EBDI) to implement a Community Workforce Agreement with the following provisions:



• Goal of 50% Baltimore city residents with aggressive recruitment from the communities directly affected by the project


• Goal for apprentices and new entry-level workers to be 20% of total workforce



Community Churches United for Baltimore Jobs is a faith-based alliance comprised of congregations whose goal is to uplift the community by helping residents attain their full potential through local job training and spiritual guidance.