Fred Kaplan on the end of the war in Afghanistan. And you can also read what he has to say about the hostage drama in Algeria.

Forgive the time code on this but it's too good to pass up. Here are two of my favorite singers — Jimmy Durante and Shirley Bassey — singing one of Jimmy's big hits…

You may have heard that Obama "signed 23 executive orders" this week. He didn't. That's just your mainstream media getting it wrong again.

And by the way, here's another pet peeve of mine. We have this strange fixation with numbers that don't mean anything. Politicians accuse their opponents of being responsible for X number of taxes or X number of tax hikes. I remember Michael Dukakis when he ran for president being accused of some horrifying number of tax hikes and most folks never knew that some of them were for a few pennies and only applied to a few people. If you're determined to vote against those who raise your taxes, you oughta be more militant about the guy who raised them once by three hundred bucks than the guy who raised them five times by twenty bucks. But a certain segment of our population only looks at the number of increases, not the amounts.

In the same sense, we have this hysteria that Barack Obama "signed 23 executive orders." Even if he had, doesn't it matter what's in those executive orders? Maybe some are trivial. Maybe some are things are things his detractors had proposed…and some were. But we have this Fox News narrative going that Obama is power-mad, dictatorial, Hitleresque, etc. So anything he does has to be spun as an outta-control Chief Exec.

If I were Obama, I think I'd start signing executive orders like crazy. Like when it was time for twenty-seven members of my staff to go to lunch, I'd sign twenty-seven executive orders that they go to lunch. I'd "sign" (i.e., have the autopen sign) hundreds a day and watch Sean Hannity go berserk screaming, "This Marxist president is now ordering government officials that they don't have to drink coffee on their coffee breaks if they don't want to." It wouldn't be good for the country but then nothing that's likely to be done in tandem with Congress these days does much good for the country. So the president might as well have a little fun.

NBC and ABC are out with dueling press releases, each claiming the "win" last week for their 11:35 PM show. The politicos who inhabit Spin Alley after a presidential debate, declaring their guy the winner and denying the moments when he got bitch-slapped, have nothing on the folks who write these press releases about ratings.

Here's the bottom line. There are two main ways in which the numbers are measured for shows like this. One is overall viewers. In this regard, looking just at the four nights when Leno, Letterman and Kimmel were all on opposite each other, Leno averaged 3.526 million viewers, Letterman had 3.135 million and Kimmel had 3.017. So if you were NBC, you could cite those numbers and claim your boy Jay won the week.

But then there's the 18-49 age bracket, which is the one most advertisers want to reach. In most cases, it's way more important. In that category, Kimmel had 1.074 million, Leno had 1.064 million and Letterman had 846,000. So if you were ABC, you could point at those and crown Jimmy the King of Late Night, at least for those four days. Or if you were NBC, you could claim a big win on total viewers and a near-tie in 18-49 and argue for Jay.

If you weren't a TV network, you'd probably just say Jay and Jimmy were neck-and-neck with Dave in a respectable third place. The three 12:35 shows — Fallon, Ferguson and Nightline — were even closer.

Judging by the numbers for the previous three days, this week's ratings should come in around the same…though tomorrow night, Kimmel has a clip show made up of the best moments from earlier in the week. So who knows how that'll do? Next week, Jay has a pretty decent lineup of guests in all new shows, Jimmy has decent guests but a rerun on Monday, and Dave is in repeats all week.

On the set of the 1966 Batman TV show…

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Many political type forums are reporting today that 64% of all registered Republicans believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Justin Green points out that this is not exactly what the survey said. It merely asked if they thought Obama was hiding something about his past.

I have this belief that when most people are quizzed by a pollster, they feel momentarily empowered and what goes through their mind is not, "What is the most accurate answer?" It's more like, "What answer should I give that will most help my side?" That may or may not be the same reply. I can well believe that 64% of registered Republicans hate Obama, wish he'd never been elected and maybe even fantasize that something will come out that will retroactively void or at least tarnish his victories. And yes, Democrats no doubt do this too though Democrats never hated George W. Bush for as many imaginary, theoretical actions as Republicans have against Obama.

Last night, a batch of June Foray's friends gathered at the new screening room at the Dreamworks Studio for the world premiere of a new documentary called (I think) The One and Only June Foray. This is not a Dreamworks project. It was the long-time effort of an artist and filmmaker named Gavin Freitas. You may recall that we previewed it back here.

Gavin did a Herculean job assembling audio and video clips of June's marathon career, telling the story of a sweet little girl from Springfield, Massachusetts who grew up to become the preeminent female voice artist of film and television. As some of you may know, I assisted June in writing her autobiography. She asked me because she figured I knew more about her career than anyone else alive. And even if that was true…well, once we got into the book, I became aware of so much I hadn't known about all the work she's done.

The documentary covers all the major points. It would have to be about ten hours to cover everything. Narrated expertly by Gary Owens, it's quite a love letter to the First Lady of Cartoon Voices, and you should have the opportunity to see it soon.

Those who saw it last night had a grand time…and June, of course, was there. She recently sustained an injury to her arm and shoulder but she's an amazing trooper and so was present to feel the love. In the mob of folks from the animation community last evening, there sure was a lot of it.

William Saletan argues that regardless of their stated concerns for reducing "unnecessary" deaths and murders, if you look at the actions of the N.R.A., they have a very simple goal: To make sure no American is ever unable to have as many guns of any kind as he wants and to make sure no seller or manufacturer of those guns ever misses out on a sale.

And while you're programming your DVR or VCR, you might want to note that overnight, Saturday into Sunday, Turner is showing an awful lot of movies that Danny Kaye was in: Up in Arms, Merry Andrew, The Kid From Brooklyn, The Inspector General, Me and the Colonel, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Hans Christian Andersen, The Court Jester, A Song is Born, Wonder Man and The Man From the Diner's Club.

It kicks off at 3 AM with a 1963 episode of The Danny Kaye Show, the star's variety series that I enjoyed so much back then. I believe they're running one with Gene Kelly and Michele Lee but don't hold me to that. Later in the mix, TCM is sharing a 90-minute episode of The Dick Cavett Show with Mr. Kaye…and then there are all those movies, some of which are quite splendid. If you have to pick just one to watch, go with The Court Jester. If you don't love him in that, there's no point trying any other Danny Kaye movie.

Speaking of being a jester: At the Danny Kaye tribute at the Paley Center last month, I got to meet David Koenig, author of an expertly-researched new book on the man, King of Jesters. There are a number of books around that make Kaye out to be a pretty miserable human being…and indeed, a lot of those who worked with him reported great conflict. They loved the guy when performing and loathed him when not performing. Koenig's book seems to me to strike a good balance and to give its subject the benefit of most doubts while not attempting to whitewash his shortcomings. Here's an Amazon link to order a copy if you'd like to read what may be the best book anyone will ever write about the wondrous (if mercurial) talents of Danny Kaye.

And while we're at it: Monday night, TCM is running five Dick Van Dyke movies. You've no doubt seen Bye Bye Birdie and perhaps Cold Turkey. Ah, but have you seen Divorce American Style? Or Fitzwilly? How about Some Kind of Nut? Well, now you can. The last two aren't quite worthy of their star but they have their moments…

Jimmy Carter, the best ex-president this country has ever had, pens an article on why after six decades of faithful adherence, he is distancing himself from the Southern Baptist Convention. It's because its leaders persist in mispresenting scripture to sell their idea that women must be second-class citizens of the world. I didn't always agree with President Carter's principles but I think he had more of them than anyone we ever put in the Oval Office.

A friend of mine named David Jablin produced this around '83 or '84…and if that name seems familiar, it's because he was also the producer of Mastergate, which I linked to here and which a lot of you told me you enjoyed. The little film below was created by David Wechter, who I believe was more recently one of the folks behind Penn & Teller: Bullshit and several other reality-type shows.

What you're about to see, assuming you click, was done for Likely Stories, an early made-for-cable series that showcased a number of very clever short comedy films. I loved about 80% of what was on it and wish there had been more episodes than there were.

This film — School, Girls and You — runs 15 minutes and is recommended for mature audiences due to brief nudity, the appearance of a singing cartoon penis and a surplus of jokes about masturbation. But it's very funny and it features a familiar voice — Dick Tufeld as the narrator — and some familiar faces. The faces include those of Paul Reubens not playing Pee-wee Herman and Patrick Macnee not playing John Steed. Mr. Reubens might have done well to heed some of its cautions.

Here's another one of those examples of how foods you eat in restaurants often have a lot more calories than you imagine. Is there anything on the Cheesecake Factory menu that's under 2000? I think the Diet Coke may be a bit under if you get it with enough ice.

For lunch today, I just microwaved a Lean Cuisine frozen Four Cheese Pizza…350 calories, 6 grams of fat, 19 grams of protein and I'm quite full. Hard to believe that if I'd somehow eaten eight of these, I'd still have gotten less calories than are in one serving of the Cheesecake Factory's Bistro Shrimp Pasta.