Thanksgiving Leftovers

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeAfter a week of stuffing your face and cleaning out what's left of your bank account, it's back to reality.  Here's what's happened during that time:

• All the media commotion over new security procedures at the airport, painting employees of the Transportation Safety Administration as taxpayer-funded perverts, fizzled when passengers--who had a choice between being body scanned or being patted down--apparently decided against the more time-consuming method of being publicly fondled so they could get home quicker.  Until somebody comes up with a way to protect passengers without violating their personal space, we have two words:  Just drive.
• A 19-year old Somali-born college student was arrested by federal authorities for allegedly attempting to car-bomb a holiday lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon.  The Somali community can claim up and down that violence is not part of their culture, having escaped a homeland that's drowning in it.  But had this man been successful in carrying out his alleged plot, no amount of apologies would have been enough for the victims, which would have numbered in the hundreds.  You can bet that, starting now, holiday ceremonies will either have restricted access, or be canceled altogether.
• The end of America's role in the occupation of Afghanistan keeps getting pushed back, with the number of dead soldiers now around 1300.  This time, instead of sometime next year, NATO says its troops will leave the country in 2014.  That's time enough to turn peasants into a Taliban-fighting police force, right?  As military leaders create new excuses to stay in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama's credibility in this area is looking smaller by the minute.
• The recount to see who will be Minnesota's next governor has begun as we speak.  Representatives for Democrat Mark Dayton and Republican Tom Emmer are looking over the shoulders of the ballot-counters, eagerly determining which votes for their men are genuine, and which ones aren't.  Dayton currently has an 8000-vote lead over Emmer, which is considerably more than when Norm Coleman led Al Franken before the 2008 Senate recount.  But that's not going to stop the state GOP from using legal tactics to delay the inevitable.
• Right now, WCCO-TV (Channel 4) is promoting itself as Minnesota's most-watched news station.  The latest ratings for November, which you can find in MinnPost's Braublog (http://www.minnpost.com/), seem to bear that out.  Gee, could it have something to do with Don Shelby anchoring his final week of newscasts?  Or do we even have to ask?