The magazines mentioned are not supported economically by their readers as the cover price contributes a relatively small portion of their revenue. They are supported by advertisers and in many ways controlled by them as well. It's not just the magalogs. Most of the magazines mentioned have more pages of ads than content and even the content is advertising driven. Like it or not, the advertisers have had significant sway over every inch of these magazines.

So the question is, how long will advertisers tolerate magazine content that encourages readers to curb spending, shun luxuries and avoid many of the goods and services that the advertisers provide? Retailers from Saks to JC Penney are facing declining advertising budgets and will likely take a good hard look at placing their ads in magazines alongside content that advises readers not to shop.

These issues aren't new. You will rarely, if ever, find a car review in a car magazine that says anything negative about the products at risk of alienating the advertising base. Nevertheless, these magazines have managed to strike a balance. It will be interesting to see how these lifestyle magazines do this.

The list doesn't bother me that much. The money is targeting reasonable and important areas. But this is no stimulus. It seems that the biggest spending areas are health care and education. Areas of concern, yes. But not areas that create jobs and economic growth across the economy.

This is looking more and more like an appropriations bill and the party in power is spending money on the types of things it wanted to spend money on anyway and trying to push it through in the name of stimulating the economy. Obama is better than this. Unfortunately, we got didn't vote for "change" in the legislative branch.

As an aside, I'm not sure what type of stimulus would actually work given the make up of our economy. In the past, we could pump money into the economy and it would flow through all the way down to a solid manufacturing base. We no longer have this base so money gets pumped into the economy and large percentages of what gets spent ends up overseas. Not sure what the solution is here.

This is the first detailed reporting on this subject that I've seen. From the comments it appears that many of us are in the same boat. As such, it would be nice (and responsible) if the details were accompanied by a little more supporting evidence.

That said, is any of this relevance to the key question of the day which is around Holder's judgement? As I understand it, Holder was asked for an opinion on Rich and he provided it. I think he's better off saying it was a lapse in judgement. The alternative is to tell the committee that, when asked for his opinion, he considered the pressure that Ehud Barak and others were placing on Clinton. Did Bill Clinton surround himself with such "yes men" who, when the president was under pressure, would tell him whatever he wanted to hear? Was Holder one of these "yes men?" See, he's better off saying he screwed up which is, more realistically, what he probably did.

Also, Clinton (and other presidents) seem to use their last days, and their pardons specifically, to take actions that are not driven by outside political pressures. Clinton was at a point where his ability to provide and gain from major favors was about to be significantly reduced. It wasn't really the time to make political and strategic deals. The deals he had iin his future were mostly financial and it's much more realistic to envision that he pardoned Rich in order to raise money for himself and his foundation than it is to believe that he made such a controversial move in order to get Israel to show up at a meeting.