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Turns out Keith Olbermann's fans may not be willing to follow him to the ends of the earth. Or in this case Current TV. The Daily News reports that Olbermann's show has lost nearly half its viewers since its June Debut. Current doesn't make Olbermann's ratings public (unless the show has a particularly good week as it did in the last week of August), but the NYDN got its hands on some numbers and they're not great.

This is yet another example of why it’s tough to calculate the actual job-stimulating benefits of the stimulus plan. The Recovery Act’s success is typically measured by looking at how many jobs have been created. But there’s also job “shifting,” which happens when a business uses stimulus funds to hire someone who was already employed at another company. And according to a new study from George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, that’s been the case with nearly half of the workers hired under the Recovery Act:

Sony has announced via its webpage the development of a new type of LCD display that uses either half as much power as current same-size LCD displays, or the same amount of power, but doubles the brightness. Called WhiteMagic, the new LCD screen, currently just 3 inches diagonally, achieves these results by employing a third, white pixel to create images on a screen. For the most part, most LCD displays use just three backlit pixels - Red, Green and Blue (RGB) to create one dot of color on the screen; the various colors are produced by filtering the light that...

The campaign fundraising efforts of President Obama raised $86 million in the past three months from 500,000 people — but at least $35 million of it can be traced to just 244 well-connected supporters who collected contributions from wealthy friends. Just 634 donations from people giving $30,000 or more to the Obama Victory Fund comprise $23 million, while the 1,335 donations the fund received from those giving $250 add up to about $336,000, a Washington Times analysis shows. The campaign has branded itself as a new type of political operation and touted its reliance on a grassroots network

He's made his name with a controversial show that catches would-be internet sex perverts in televised stings. But now Chris Hansen has found himself on the receiving end of his own hidden camera tactics, after the married NBC anchor was secretly filmed on an illicit date with a blonde television reporter 20 years his junior. Hansen, 51, has allegedly been having an affair with Kristyn Caddell, a 30-year-old Florida journalist, for the last four months. Last weekend he was recorded taking Miss Caddell on a romantic dinner at the exclusive Ritz-Carlton hotel in Manalapan, before spending the night at her...

Yesterday during his press conference, the Chairman uttered his latest lie: "We have asked the banks to essentially do stress tests and ask, looking at all their positions, all their hedges, what would the effect on their capital be if -- if Greece defaulted...The answer is that the effects are very small.” Enter Aflac to prove that the half life of Bernanke's lies is now under 24 hours. From Bloomberg: "Aflac Inc. (AFL), the largest seller of supplemental health insurance, may issue as much as 100 billion yen ($1.24 billion) in debt as it records losses tied to investments in...

Video of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s consultation with his most trusted aides immediately after President Barack Obama’s speech to AIPAC Sunday shows that kippah-wearers comprise half of the inner circle. Netanyahu was in Washington Sunday but did not attend the speech. Channel 2 television quoted a source in his bureau as saying that no meaning should be read into this fact, and that Netanyahu’s schedule had originally called for him to be in New York during the speech. Netanyahu’s bureau released soundless video of his consultation, immediately after Obama’s speech, with top aides including former Ambassador to the U.S. Dore...

DETROIT – According to a new report, 47 percent of Detroiters are ”functionally illiterate.” The alarming new statistics were released by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund on Wednesday. WWJ Newsradio 950 spoke with the Fund’s Director, Karen Tyler-Ruiz, who explained exactly what this means. “Not able to fill out basic forms, for getting a job — those types of basic everyday (things). Reading a prescription; what’s on the bottle, how many you should take… just your basic everyday tasks,” she said. “I don’t really know how they get by, but they do.

If it is allowed to be implemented, Obamacare will eventually do deep and irreparable harm to our nation’s budget deficit. But while Obamacare is more of a long-term threat to fiscal health at the federal level, it is a clear and present danger to the states. Of the 34 million Americans who gain health insurance through Obamacare, over half (18 million) will receive it through Medicaid. While Obamacare will pay for all of the benefit expansion for the first three years of the law, and 90% of it after that, Obamacare never pays for any of the state administrative costs...

The White House Briefing Room was half empty when President Barack Obama delivered a statement Monday afternoon on a Senate vote related to the tax cuts legislation he's pushing. Reporters filled the first three rows for the president's appearance -- though a few were taking vacant seats. And almost every seat in the back four rows was empty. That kind of sparse attendance for a president's personal appearance is unusual, particularly for a president in his first term and one engaged in a high stales tax debate with Congress. Perhaps it was the short notice and late hour.

Via Glenn Reynolds, Rich Lowry drops this amazing statistic into his column today: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we’d have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe “stimulus” wouldn’t be such a dirty word. What does Austin know that Washington doesn’t? At its simplest: Don’t overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers

Half the Israeli public wants the Holy Temple (Beit HaMikdash) to be rebuilt. This is the main finding of a poll commissioned by the Knesset Television Channel and carried out by the Panels Institute. The poll was taken in advance of this Tuesday’s national day of mourning, known as Tisha B’Av, on which the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed, 2,000 and 2,500 years ago, respectively. Forty nine percent said they want the rebuilding of the Holy Temple, while 23% said they do not. The remainder said they were unsure.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- More than half of all homeowners with modified mortgages fell at least two months behind in their payments a year after the adjustment was made, according to a federal report released Wednesday. However, the data also shows that modifications made in 2009, which emphasized reduced monthly payments, may perform better. Only 40.7% of loans modified in the second quarter last year were delinquent after nine months, compared to 51.6% of those adjusted at the end of 2008, according to the report, published by the Office of Thrift Supervision and Comptroller of the Currency.

descent into irrelevancy...on King's inability (much the same as his fellow CNN hosts) to compete in the ratings with Fox News and MSNBC. At 9 p.m., the time slot King used to dominate, he's a "distant third" behind Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. King now averages 725,000 viewers—that's about half the audience he had during the most recent presidential election; he was drawing 1.34 million in the first quarter of 2009. CNN president Jonathan Klein declined to comment on King's contract, which is up for renewal next June.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2007 – Improvised-explosive-device, mortar and rocket attacks have declined by 50 percent since the height of the troop surge in April, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman said today. Related to this dramatic decrease is a rise in the number of weapons caches uncovered by coalition forces, Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith told reporters during a news conference in Baghdad. “In April, when the majority of the surge forces had arrived in Iraq, the number of caches found spiked considerably, and in the ensuing months we’ve seen a steady increase,” Smith said of the 20,000 troop increase...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2007 – Coalition forces are in control of more than 50 percent of Baghdad and are making progress in the rest, the coalition’s military commander in the city said today. Army Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr. spoke to Pentagon reporters from his command post at Camp Liberty, Iraq. He commands the Multinational Division Baghdad. The coalition strategy starts with disrupting the enemy in Baghdad neighborhoods and moves through clearance, controlling, retention and finally transitions to wholly Iraqi security forces control. There are 474 mahalas – neighborhoods – in Baghdad, and coalition forces track progress in each,...

(IsraelNN.com) Arab terrorists have killed 864 Israelis and wounded more than 14,000 others since they launched the Oslo War, also known as the Second Intifada, in October 2000. The number of terrorism fatalities represents half of the 1,635 citizens who died in terrorist attacks since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The statistics were reported Thursday by the National Insurance Institute (Bituach Leumi) in a press release ahead of Memorial Day, which falls on Monday. Arab terrorists have killed 864 Israelis and wounded more than 14,000. The Almagor terror victims' organization also recently released figures showing that...

GOP Congresswoman: “Iran is Going to Get Half of Iraq” Freshman GOP Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann - (MN), claimed in an interview that a plan is already worked out that will give Iran control of half of Iraq ( see here : http://www.startribune.com/blogs/bigquestion/) : U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claims to know of a plan, already worked out with a line drawn on the map, for the partition of Iraq in which Iran will control half of the country and set it up as a “a terrorist safe haven zone” and a staging area for attacks around the Middle East and on...

'Half-human half-animal' found By Sebastien Berger, South East Asia Correspondent Last Updated: 7:47pm GMT 18/01/2007 A Cambodian who emerged naked from the jungle to scavenge for food is thought to have lived in the wild for almost 20 years and to have learnt to live like an animal. Villagers in Rattanakiri province, close to the Vietnamese border, spotted the woman trying to steal food and after she was captured last Saturday a policeman identified her as his long-lost daughter. Her father, Sal Lou, 45, claimed he recognised Rochom P'ngieng by her facial features and a scar. She disappeared in 1988...

BISBEE — A Mexican man pleaded no contest Tuesday to charges he stole a pickup truck and dragged a Sheriff’s deputy during a March traffic stop in Huachuca City, breaking the deputy’s ankle in the process. Hugo Rodr’guez Pelagio, 24, of Tangancicuaro, Michoacan state, will serve three years in prison and pay up to $200 in restitution as part of a plea agreement with the state. According to an arrest report from the Sheriff’s Department, Rodr’guez Pelagio was stopped at about 2:38 a.m. on March 21 as he was driving with an unidentified passenger along Highway 90 northbound in a...