Overnight - A roundup of news items that you might have missed

There is one upside to a down economy the nursing shortage that our healthcare system has been struggling with has been alleviated somewhat as people who had left the job are returning to the field for various (mostly economic) reasons. "We are seeing a temporary lessening of the nursing shortage," says Jane Llewellyn, vice president of clinical nursing affairs at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. But, she says, "as soon as the economy turns up we'll see them staying home again."

The super-rich see what aWol refuses to...the US is in a recession. That was the finding of the Annual Survey of Affluence and Wealth in America. “Results demonstrate that America’s ‘leadership cadre’ and successful households believe strongly that we are in a recession. Moreover, confidence in themselves and America’s prospects have fallen six or seven percentage points since December and over 30 points in the past three years,” said Jim Taylor, vice chairman of Harrison Group, a market research and strategy firm in Waterbury, Conn.....Four in five polled in the survey, which examined the opinions of 638 households representing the wealthiest 10% of the U.S., said this perceived recession resulted from the “free and easy” availability of debt, with Wall Street and Washington equally to blame.

Four hundred bucks for hand towels? Embattled OCS director and loyal Bushie Scott Bloch spent that princely sum on monogrammed hand towels for his office washroom. A mouthpiece attempted to justify the opulent expense. "Scott, as a presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed member of the administration gets an allowance for things," spokesman Jim Mitchell explained. "He paid about $300 for some towels that had the OSC seal on it. He took a couple home, which he paid for himself." Besides, Scott is such a regular guy and thrifty fellow that he shunned the car and driver that are perks of the job.

The pundit class might want to actually check a source or three if they are going to attack the "reality based community" That is exactly what James Kirchick didn't do when he wrote an op-ed for the Politico yesterday, in which he confidently asserted that "[T]he “reality-based community,” as self-satisfied liberal bloggers call themselves, was a term created in direct response to the “faith-based community,” what the Bush administration called recipients of money from its Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives." Well, Mr. Kirchick, the actual source of that quote was an unnamed Bush aide, interviewed for a New York Times Sunday Magazine article by Ron Suskind, and it was meant to be derisive of those of us who like our reality, well, real: The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (H/T Think Progress)

Another American Soldier has been killed in Anbar. The military offered no other details. It was the seventh American fatality in recent days after months of a restive "pseudo peace" brought about by the formation of "awakening councils" that were funded, formed and armed by the American forces in Iraq.

One of these things is not like the other Max boot thinks that the concrete walls that the American military is installing around neighborhoods are comparable to gated communities in the United States. Max Boot is a fuckwit extraordinaire, no matter what country he wakes up in.

If there is a bigger douchebag than Max Boot, it's Mike Pence (Chickenhawk, Indiana) In a hearing convened by the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties to look into the authorization of torture by the aWol administration, Pence derided non-coercive methods as "Oprah Winfrey methods" and pretty much implied that if you ain't in favor of torturin' them there moozlims, yer just a big ole pussy. His bio lists no military experience, so his ass has never been on the line, so it's real easy for him to chuck convention and throw the doors wide open for captured American personnel to be tortured. When that happens, and it will, I suggest we take all these putrid fucks and recreate what our personnel were subjected to because bloodthirsty, sadistic pussies like Pence are in favor of torture.

Corporations find that Olympic sponsorship is a double-edged sword They play it up in China and play it down in the west, hoping to avoid inflaming a citizenry prone to product boycotts.

Maybe McSame should, you know, try paying attention? Speaking to a crowd in Rochester, Michigan this morning, John McCain went on a rant about human trafficking and said he would assemble a task force to combat the problem. Just one hitch in his git-along...there has been a task force on human trafficking has been in effect since 2000. Not only that - in 2001 McCain opposed the earmark that funded the panel.

Maybe because I had Letterman on while I was surfing around looking for items to round out this roundup, when I came across "John McCain's top-ten out-of-touch moments" at Crooks & Liars, I called it a night - once I was done laughing hysterically.