OK, that was an annoying headline, I fully admit. It was annoying to type out, and I can only imagine how annoying it must be to read.

Which should only serve to warn you, this is going to be an annoying column all around. Don't say you haven't been warned, in other words.

Or, as the young'uns would have said, "IOW." Ahem.

I'm writing this column today because I am approaching two milestones in social networking.

And to get in the spirit of the thing, no paragraph today will be longer than 140 characters.

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There's an upcoming debate on taxes and tax cuts which is likely going to define the rest of the 2010 midterm election season. This will be reported on and commented on by a wide array of people in the media, from all sides of the political landscape. But why is it that media "full disclosure" rules seem to be completely ignored during such debate by the punditry? Because by all rights, anyone in the media talking about raising income tax rates on the top two income brackets should have to disclose their possible conflict of interest in the debate. It wouldn't take much, just a simple declaration: "Full disclosure, I fall into the top tax bracket myself, so I would personally be affected by changing this rate."

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America (as, likely, everywhere else) always has a seamy underside, crawling with metaphoric maggots, to anything that is mostly seen as good by the majority of the populace. One of those maggots crawled out this week in the religious world, down in Florida. Its proper name is bigotry, or perhaps hatred. It is the direct descendent of Kristallnacht, and of the Ku Klux Klan. And, of course, all of that makes for good television, as far as the media is concerned.

Using what I would call "the Balloon Boy effect," a pastor with a very small flock managed to get his face pretty much in every media outlet which currently exists. There's a lesson to be drawn from all of this, and it is an ugly one which will likely happen repeatedly, until the media figures out how badly it is being "played" -- threatening to burn a Quran all but guarantees you worldwide media attention. Other hate-filled religious leaders (of which, sadly, America has more than just one) will likely figure this out fairly soon. In other words, even after tomorrow, this could become a much bigger problem.

Which is why I've been refusing to acknowledge the guy, or otherwise write about him. He doesn't deserve it, what he deserves is to be quickly forgotten.

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President Obama may be on the verge of a significant announcement -- the nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the newly-formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is pure conjecture on my part, I have to admit right up front. But politically, it would indeed give the president a boost right when he needs it most, heading into the midterm election season.

Elizabeth Warren would be a logical choice for the job, and not only because the entire idea of a consumer financial protection agency was hers to begin with. She's got the credentials and is well-qualified to take the job on, should Obama appoint her. And politically, it would go a long way towards energizing the Democratic Party's base. Because she is the Left's favorite choice for the job, by a wide margin.

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President Barack Obama gave a wowser of a speech today. In it, he signaled that he's completely over his obsession with chasing the non-existent pipe dream of bipartisanship from Republicans. Obama dove into the 2010 election season fray with this speech, and appeared much more like the "Candidate Obama" that so many of his supporters have been missing for so long. In a speech that was touted as an announcement of a legislative package to get the economy moving faster, Obama not only rolled out his economic ideas, but also did a better job of defining the Democratic narrative than he's done in quite a while.

This is exactly what Obama needed to do, and what Democratic political analysts have been calling on him to do. It really was a good speech all the way around, where Obama not only strongly stood up for his policy ideas, but also defined both his position and his opponents' position by including them in a larger narrative about what his party stands for and why their values are superior to the Republicans.

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The news today that has all of Washington a-twitter (and, although I have not checked, also likely "a-Twitter") is that the mayor of Chicago has decided he will refrain from running for a seventh (!) term. This opens up the field, and the reason why it may become national news is that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has long expressed a desire to run for this particular office, should the current mayor decide against running again. Which has now happened.

So I'd like to send a plea to Rahm Emanuel: Please, please run for mayor of Chicago, Rahm. Please.

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I am not normally a theater critic. I should just say that right up front. But on this Labor Day, I thought it would be appropriate to write about a play I saw this summer. I was invited (by fellow Huffington Post blogger Michael Gene Sullivan) to a performance of the San Francisco Mime Troupe's recent production, POSIBILIDAD, or Death of the Worker a few weeks ago, and caught their performance in a local park. The play, written by Sullivan, is a brilliant work, combining tragedy and humor to make a very pointed argument for thinking outside the box on the state of Labor and jobs today.

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Last week, I heard an interesting take on the political scene: that both parties seem to be trying mightily to lose the upcoming midterm elections. Republicans, in a natural Republican cycle, are nominating some candidates who are so extreme they may lose races which should have been easy Republican wins. Democrats seem paralyzed with fear, even though populist anger should be working to their advantage, since Republicans have never met a Wall Street bank or gigantic corporation that they couldn't love and carry water for. Both parties are registering record low approval rates from the public -- Democrats in the low 30s, and Republicans even worse in the low 20s. This being the American political system, though, there's really only two choices, and right now the public isn't getting behind either of them.

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The problem of illegal immigration, as everyone knows, is bad and getting worse. Ask anyone, they'll tell you -- the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to secure the borders, and as a result more and more illegal immigrants cross the border every year. As everyone knows.

There's only one problem with this -- it's not true anymore.

However, these statements lose nothing of their "truthiness." As Stephen Colbert defined this term, this means that it doesn't matter if it is true or not, because it sounds so true that everyone believes it anyway, because they want to believe it's true. [Official Colbert definition (there are actually many Colbert quotes on the subject to choose from): "Truthiness is 'What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.' "]

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Dog days of August

Augusts, to be frank, are not President Obama's friend. The past month was no different, at least as measured by public opinion polling. Obama was on a downswing heading into the month, and his numbers reflect this in a stark way. In other words, it was a bad month for Obama.

As I pointed out last month, "Augusts, to put it mildly, haven't been very kind to Obama. He's got some sort of Augustine Jinx happening, or something. Two years ago, August was 'Reverend Wright' month for Obama on the campaign trail. Last year, August was 'death panel' month at the town hall meetings from Hell."

By that measure, at least, this past August wasn't actually all that bad. Given the choice of reliving the past month versus August 2009 or 2008, I'd be willing to bet Obama would choose this year's dog days in a heartbeat.

But, while Obama's poll numbers last month were pretty bad, there was some good news at the end. In keeping with this, we're going to present the bad news here first, and save the silver lining for the end of today's article.

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