Happy Thanksgiving. Here's an open thread to enjoy along with your turkey.

On yesterday’s installment of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Ali Velshi and Bill Schneider fantasized about talk-show megastar Oprah Winfrey supporting a presidential run by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-New York) in 2008. Clinton and Winfrey met at the International Emmy Award ceremony on Monday, and in Schneider’s words, “had a very interesting and possibly politically significant encounter.” Schneider's view:

"What would a Hillary Clinton-John McCain race look like? The CNN-'USA Today'-Gallup poll pitted the two frontrunners against each other among registered voters nationwide. The result: McCain leads Clinton by 10 points.

"Why? Men. Men give McCain a huge lead over Clinton. Women are divided. Maybe an endorsement from Oprah Winfrey could make a difference. If she were to rally women to support Hillary Clinton, the race could become a lot closer."

What follows is a full transcript of this exchange. 

For those who missed it, the Federal Open Market Committee released minutes from its November 1 meeting on Tuesday, and the stock market rallied as a result. Yet, depending upon which Associated Press story you read, you were either elated or despondent.

For instance, the AP’s Michael J. Martinez began his report: “Stocks extended their rally yesterday after the Fed's latest take on the economy raised hopes that the central bank's string of a dozen interest rate hikes are coming to an end.”

By contrast, Jeannine Aversa began her article: “Worried that high energy costs could spread inflation throughout the economy, Federal Reserve policymakers this month decided they should keep pushing interest rates higher.”

Remember the good old MSM formulation from the days when Newt was Speaker? The notion that slowing the runaway growth of any government program was actually a cut?

Just in time for Thanksgiving, it's back.

My local paper, the Gannett-owned Ithaca Journal, leads with this tear-jerker of a banner headline: "Budget Cuts Would Hit State's Poor Hard". Here is a link to the article.

Gannett News reporter John Machacek writes of thousands of welfare recipients being "squeezed," the poor being dealt a "blow" and the proposals "poking sizeable holes in New York's safety net."

Predictably, the story comes complete with heart-tugging personal stories: a cancer survivor living in a YMCA; a single mother with an asthmatic child, both worried about how the 'cuts' might affect them.

On his Countdown show Wednesday night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann devoted much of one segment to criticizing Vice President Cheney’s November 21 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a speech in which the Vice President took exception with how the Associated Press characterized his attacks on Democratic Senators who have accused President Bush of lying about pre-war intelligence. Even though Cheney’s original speech on November 16 at the Frontiers of Freedom Institute made clear his comments were directed at "some U.S. Senators," rather than anti-war critics in general, the AP ran the headline, "Cheney says war critics dishonest, reprehensible," which gives the false impression Cheney was calling all opponents of the Iraq War "dishonest" and "reprehensible." Cheney’s November 21 statement that "I do have a quarrel with that headline" so offended Olbermann that he characterized Cheney’s well-founded, and relatively polite, complaint as "vitriol" toward the media. The Countdown host proceeded to distort Cheney’s words himself to prove his contention that the Vice President’s complaints were unfounded.

In homes across this country that subscribe to the New York Times, Americans will                                                   wake up on Thanksgiving morning to be told that the land they love is still in some kind of Great Depression. Of course, unemployment is at 5 percent, more Americans own their own homes than ever in history, and the average citizen has a higher net worth – meaning assets minus debt – than ever before, including during the supposed boom years of the late ’90s. Alas, none of that is important to the Times editorial staff...not even on Thanksgiving.

To be sure, this kind of economic mischaracterization is certainly nothing new to the mainstream media. However, stuck in the middle of an editorial about one of the nation’s most cherished holidays, on the very day in question, does make it a little more distasteful than usual: