You've worked hard your whole life. It was a tough job with grueling hours, intense pressure, and dangerous working conditions, but you never gave up. You sacrificed everything to do the best you could.

As retirement nears, all you want is recognition for your distinguished service and a small nest egg with which to enjoy your twilight years.

At Dagblog Autocrat Consulting Services, we recognize your impressive accomplishments and appreciate your desire for an honorable legacy. That's why we've put together a full-service retirement program that will enable you to make a graceful exit and retire in comfort.

Friends, we have been betrayed. A blogger whom you have long trusted to deliver information untainted by the slightest hint of conservative doctrine, a liberal's liberal, a progressive's progressive, a man so far to the left that he has been compared to Mao Tze-tung, Che Guevara, and Susan Sarandon, is working for the king of right-wing propaganda: Rupert Murdoch.

I am sad to report that the Department of Homeland Security has announced plans to scrap the beloved five-level, color-coded terrorism advisory system in favor of a new two-tiered system that may or may not have colors.

To many Americans, the Homeland Security Advisory System has long been a force of comfort and guidance.

For the past nine years, I have woken up each day and immediately raced to the computer to find out if the security level had finally dropped from yellow (significant risk of terrorist attacks) to blue (general risk of terrorist attacks).

I have a bottle of champagne and some blow horns prepared for the occasion. I used to have blue helium balloons, too, but they shriveled back in 2004. Of course, I never expected to reach green (low risk of terrorist attacks) in my lifetime. Green is a utopian ideal to aspire toward like world peace or a cure for baldness.

Read the full article at CNN.com

Readers,

Talking Points Memo Cafe is hosting a book club for Blowing Smoke. A couple of dagblog regulars, including Michael Maiello (destor23) and Michael Orion Powell (Orion) will be participating along with a few other experts in the field, so it should be a great discussion.

The book club will run until Friday. Please join the conversation at http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/tpmcafe-book-club/.

And don't forget to give the articles a rec for old times sake.

We need to reclaim our American system of limited government, low taxes, reasonable regulations, and sound money, which has blessed us with unprecedented prosperity. And it has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed. That's the real secret to job creation -- not borrowing and spending more money in Washington. Limited government and free enterprise have helped make America the greatest nation on earth.

-- Paul Ryan, 2011

By adherence to the principles of decentralization, self-government, ordered liberty, and opportunity and freedom to the individual our American experiment has yielded a degree of well-being unparalleled in all the world. It has come nearer to the abolition of poverty, to the abolition of fear of want that humanity has ever reached before. Progress of the past seven years is the proof of it.

-- Herbert Hoover, 1928

Great minds think alike.

As news of Keith Olbermann's departure from MSNBC stormed through the blogosphere like a hyperactive Nor'easter, distraught liberals took heart in the return of another beloved hero from self-imposed exile. Genghis is back!

Hello folks, you've probably noticed the new Facebook Like buttons at the top of each post. We added these to facilitate social sharing of dagblog content. If you click a post's Like button, your recommendation will appear on your Facebook news feed, and hopefully, a few of your friends will check it out. Ideally, if the piece is really good, some of your friends will also click the Like button, and it will go viral.

I'm not a Christian, but like many Jews, I've envied Christmas since childhood. I like the twinkly lights, pink-cheeked carolers, heartwarming television specials, and exuberantly ho-ho-ho-ing Santa Clauses ... pretty much everything except the endless renditions of "Jingle Bells" warbling from every audio speaker in the country.

Most of all, I love the spirit of good will associated with Christmas -- smiles from strangers, charitable giving and other acts of kindness. We Jews have a holiday called Purim for spreading joy and charity, but Purim also involves raucously cheering the murder of 75,000 Persians, which is somewhat low on the good will meter.

In recent years, however, I've been dismayed that the Christmas spirit I admire has come under attack. Angry people have been exploiting the holiday as an opportunity to vilify their opponents. Vilifying opponents is also low on the good will meter, albeit not as low as murdering Persians.

Read the full story at CNN.com

Keeping it virtual is great, but tomorrow, New Yorkers and other denizens of the Tri-State Area will have an opportunity to see Genghis live, uncut, uncensored, unplugged, and undressed. (Update: Upon advice from his lawyer, his publicist, and his mother, Genghis will remind dressed.)

Come listen to him read from his critically acclaimed, mindblowingly brilliant, mouthwaterlingy scrumptious masterpiece Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual.

Hello folks. By now you've probably seen the new In the News section on the right sidebar. If you haven't tried it out, here are some tips:

• Hold the mouse over a link to see a summary description of the article
• Click the link to go directly to the article
• Click "Add link" to contribute a link yourself
• Click "more" to see a full list of news articles

What do you think of it? Is it useful? How can we improve it?

To get you started: