summer

pBack for a third round of bosses going undercover in their own companies to see what is and isn’t working, Diamond Resorts International CEO Stephen J. Cloobeck was up first on the season premiere of “a href=”http://www.aoltv.com/show/undercover-boss/3561923″ target=”_hplink”Undercover Boss/a” (Sun., 8 p.m. EST on CBS).

div class=”dkimg-c”img src=”http://images1.dailykos.com/i/user/426/1-9-12-4.png” alt=”" height=”370″ width=”294″ //div pA new a href=”http://www.people-press.org/2012/01/09/gop-voters-still-unenthused-about-presidential-field/?src=prc-headline”Pew poll/a notes the problems Republicans are having with their less-than-enrapturing field:/p blockquoteOn the eve of the New Hampshire primary, Republican voters continue to express mixed views of the party’s presidential field.

div id=”uimg_right”img src=”http://www.dailykos.com/i/user/59419/Penn_Flag_275.png” / div id=”uimg_caption”Pennsylvania is quickly becoming a must-watch state/div /div pLooking ahead to the 2012 elections, one of the burning questions has been what will become of the key large states of the industrial Midwest. Ohio and Pennsylvania were central not only to the Obama election in 2008, but the Democratic surge to control of Congress in 2006 and 2008.

pimg src=”http://images.dailykos.com/i/user/28416/APR_11_4.jpg” border=”3″ //p pVisual source: a href=”http://newseum.org”Newseum/a/p pThe a href=”http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501707_162-57317722/boehner-calls-anti-tax-activist-random-person/”Associated Press/a brings us this bit of Boehner hilarity:/p blockquoteTo many members of Congress, Grover Norquist is a force to be reckoned with.

For this Labor Day weekend update on the War on Workers, let’s revisit a video we saw from Change to Win earlier in the summer: Bob Herbert writes: Three to four trillion dollars worth of improvements will be needed over the next decade just to bring the infrastructure into a reasonable state of repair. Meanwhile, we’ve got legions of unemployed construction workers, manufacturing workers, engineers and others who are ready and eager to step into the breach, to take on jobs ranging from infrastructure maintenance and repair to infrastructure design and new construction.

Fifty states in the Union. Which ones will get the most attention next year? Though it rankles some (I can personally recall some scintillating pie fights on the subject during the era of debates over a “50-state strategy” back in the day), it is inevitable that some states will receive more attention than others at election time. Attention can be defined in numerous ways.

HARDCOVER FICTION 1. “Private” by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown) 2. “Sizzling Sixteen” by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s) 3. “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” by Stieg Larsson (Knopf) 4. “The Overton Window” by Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions) 5. “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam/Amy Einhorn) 6. “Foreign Influence: A Thriller” by Brad Thor (Atria) 7. “The Passage” by Justin Cronin (Ballantine) 8. “The Lion” by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central Publishing) 9.

Fifty years ago, in the midst of a fierce political debate surrounding the United States’ immigration policies, a young senator named John F. Kennedy penned an essay called “A Nation of Immigrants.” It was a groundbreaking book, asserting urgently and poignantly that our nation’s greatness owes much to the immigrants among us. As current headlines make clear, Kennedy’s plea is as timely and necessary as ever. The United States is — and always has been — a nation of immigrants, though we continue to struggle to come to terms with the fact.

Robert Gibbs pokes fun at Sarah Palin from his presidential podium. Giving a high profile dig to someone not in office, running for any office, or having any official role anywhere in the country. That’s a lot of attention for someone who supposedly doesn’t matter. The White House getting a little sloppy with their arrogance. It’s not like Sarah’s viability has spiked. A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds her unfavorable numbers at 55%, with her support among Republicans down.

It’s tough getting up to the front of the line of those wanting to call Sarah Palin for the truckload of lies spewed in Going Rogue . Even John McCain has gotten into the act by charging Palin with fabricating a $50,000 bill she claimed she got stuck with for her “vetting” and by praising the two aides targeted by Palin, Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace. Up in Alaska, the line is just as contentious.