August 2010 archive

Well, we found out how Rachel handled it.  Didn’t mention it at all that I noticed.  Maybe tonight.

Now that Keith did a special comment.

I’ll not mention Steven Seagal night on AMC because of all the inarticulate ‘action heros’ out there he’s just about the most inarticulate which would be ok if the action weren’t also derivative and boring.

But you can say the same about Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis.

• ESPN– Yankees @ Rangers
• ABC Family– Raising Helen
• Turner Classic– Walter Matthau night, Bad News Bears and The Odd Couple.  They won’t show his best work which is in my opinion Hopscotch (I didn’t say I don’t like Action movies, just boring and predictable ones).
• Discovery– New Man v. Wild (and they’ve apparently abandoned last season’s format which never worked).
• Travel– Man v. Food

Yup.  When I’m highlighting Man v. Food the pickings are pretty slim, but I’ve already posted the Dr. Strangelove video this week so I’ll spare you.

Later-

Dave still in repeats.  Jon has Laura Linney, Stephen David Finkel.  Alton does baklava (not the most interesting thing to do with phyllo dough, but tasty).

Home Is Where the Hate Is introduces Sergeant Hatred as a major character.  Though this episode follows last night’s, they’re not showing entirely in sequence so I can only imagine that they’re building up to a premier or something.

• AMC– Rubicon repeat, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
• FX– Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (good to sleep through)
• Turner Classic– Plaza Suite (More Matthau doing Simon)
• Travel– Much, much more Man v Food
• USA– Burn Notice (this week’s)

I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m going to take a stand. I’m going to defend it. Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it.

Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP oil spill lawsuits sent to Louisiana, storm delays final well kill

by Matt Davis, AFP

Tue Aug 10, 6:39 pm ET

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Jonathan Cohn’s premise here is that Liberals are unhappy with Obama because he  failed to move a more progressive agenda but the truth is Obama was not a Liberal to start. The major criticism from Liberals comes from the fact that Obama has adopted the most horrendous policies of the Bush administration as his own and expanded them, something the Obama loyalists would be screaming about if the President were McCain.

Jonathan Cohn: What Do Liberals Want From Obama?

Not surprisingly, conservatives are unhappy with President Obama. Somewhat surprisingly, liberals are too–or, at least, a lot of liberal commentators.

On July 4, Robert Kuttner spoke for many of them when he wrote, on the Huffington Post, that “we voted our hopes that events could compel Obama to govern as a progressive. We are still waiting.” Bob was primarily upset about Obama’s failure to push through a new stimulus package. But he also criticized Obama over health care (for not getting passionate about it until the last minute) and the Gulf oil disaster (for not taking a harder line on British Petroleum).

Bob is my old boss and mentor, not to mention a good friend. I share his frustrations over the policies that have (and haven’t) come out of Washington lately. But to suggest that Obama hasn’t governed as a progressive seems pretty wrong to me.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

August 11 is the 223rd day of the year (224th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 142 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1934, the first Federal prisoners arrived at Alcatraz.

A group of federal prisoners classified as “most dangerous” arrives at Alcatraz Island, a 22-acre rocky outcrop situated 1.5 miles offshore in San Francisco Bay. The convicts–the first civilian prisoners to be housed in the new high-security penitentiary–joined a few dozen military prisoners left over from the island’s days as a U.S. military prison.

Alcatraz was an uninhabited seabird haven when it was explored by Spanish Lieutenant Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775. He named it Isla de los Alcatraces, or “Island of the Pelicans.” Fortified by the Spanish, Alcatraz was sold to the United States in 1849. In 1854, it had the distinction of housing the first lighthouse on the coast of California. Beginning in 1859, a U.S. Army detachment was garrisoned there, and from 1868 Alcatraz was used to house military criminals. In addition to recalcitrant U.S. soldiers, prisoners included rebellious Indian scouts, American soldiers fighting in the Philippines who had deserted to the Filipino cause, and Chinese civilians who resisted the U.S. Army during the Boxer Rebellion. In 1907, Alcatraz was designated the Pacific Branch of the United States Military Prison.

In 1934, Alcatraz was fortified into a high-security federal penitentiary designed to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the U.S. penal system, especially those with a penchant for escape attempts. The first shipment of civilian prisoners arrived on August 11, 1934. Later that month, more shiploads arrived, featuring, among other convicts, infamous mobster Al Capone. In September, George “Machine Gun” Kelly, another luminary of organized crime, landed on Alcatraz.

By decision of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the penitentiary was closed on March 21, 1963. It was closed because it was far more expensive to operate than other prisons (nearly $10 per prisoner per day, as opposed to $3 per prisoner per day at Atlanta), half a century of salt water saturation  had severely eroded the buildings, and the bay was being badly polluted by the sewage from the approximately 250 inmates and 60 Bureau of Prisons families on the island. The United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, a traditional land-bound prison, opened that same year to serve as a replacement for Alcatraz.

The entire Alcatraz Island was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and was further declared a National Historic Landmark in 1986. In 1993, the National Park Service published a plan entitled Alcatraz Development Concept and Environmental Assessment.  This plan, approved in 1980, doubled the amount of Alcatraz accessible to the public to enable visitors to enjoy its scenery and bird, marine, and animal life, such as the California slender salamander.

Today American Indian groups such as the International Indian Treaty Council hold ceremonies on the island, most notably, their “Sunrise Gatherings” every Columbus and Thanksgiving Day.

Keith and Rachel.  I don’t know why I’m bothering to post anything else since all you all (that means my vast audience and all their cousins) ‘professional’ lefties will no doubt be fixated on Cable News Liars just as you were when you fired Shirley Sherrod.

Oh wait, that was Obama.

I’ll be particularly interested in how Rachel handles this since except for DADT she’s a consistent Obamabot.

I had the great pleasure today of voting against EVERY SINGLE INCUMBENT in my Democratic Primary because I Vote.

Every Time.

So thanks for the kick in the balls Barack.  It’s a real motivator with real consequences.  I hope you and your pack of 11 Dimensional Chess Masters have a great November.

You’re a bunch of privileged pampered morons.

But here in Real ‘Murica we don’t whore ourselves for a living and we have other interests.

• ESPN– World Series of Poker x 2
• ABC Family– Pretty Little Liars and Make It or Break It (family programming)
• FX– Dwayne Johnson
• SciFi– Warehouse 13 (last week’s .1 Eureka crossover conclusion with Quark and premier)
• Turner Classic– Show Boat (ain’t it neat to beat your feet upon the Mississippi mud), So This Is Love (Musicals)
• Toon– Unnatural History
• USA– White Collar (premier), Covert Affairs

Later-

• AMC– Fallen
• SciFi– Haven x 2
• VH1– Purple Rain

Dave is in re-runs.  Jon has Jason Bateman, Stephen Dylan Ratigan.  Alton does Ice Cream.

The Invisible Hand of Fate.

Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP makes first deposit into Gulf disaster fund

by Michael Mathes, AFP

Mon Aug 9, 7:00 pm ET

Do you really think that with this kind of rhetoric and then the non-apology walk back, that you are going to win the hearts and votes of the Left, the Independents and Moderate Republicans?

Come on, Bob. Do you even recognize the man in the Oval Office as being the same man from the campaign trail? Granted many of us knew damned well he wasn’t a progressive or even a so-called centrist for that matter. He was already reneging on his promises when the instead of filibustering the FISA renewal bill, he voted for it.

For someone who was so critical of Bush’s wars and the Presidential powers that Bush had assumed, he certainly has embraced them now and then some. Bush is probably wishing he could have gotten away with what Obama is doing that is being ignored by his proponents. Wow, targeted assassinations of American citizens, suspending habeus corpis on whim and prosecuting minors for war crimes. Cool. Now he wants unfettered access to private e-mail. Why not just repeal the 4th Amendment.

And how about that Cat Food Commission? Oops, sorry Obama’s supporters don’t like that term for the Deficit Commission that is proposing cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits. Brilliant. Bush never would have gotten away with that.

And wow, not just one woman on the Supreme Court but two. One who has a history of rulings in favor of corporations and the other with no bench experience but a supporter of the unitary executive that was greatly expanded under Bush and explicitly adopted and expanded by Obama.

Yes, Mr. Gibbs, we on the Left are not happy with the corporatist, neoliberal agenda that is coming from your boss. You don’t like the criticism than maybe you’d best listen to what we are saying instead of whining about it. The hallmark of a democratic society is criticism. We are still living in a democratic society so far. Or are we?

Well, thanks for listening to one really pissed off “Leftie”

In a perhaps unintentional and obtuse twist of sardonic wit and possibly complete unawareness of the irony of his own words, Commander of United States Forces – Iraq (USF-I) General Ray Odierno said on Sunday in an interview with ABC’s Christiane Amanpour that the 50,000 US troops that will remain in Iraq along with “a significant civilian presence” after the US ‘withdraws’, will help Iraq thwart “interference from outside countries”.

Really. You can’t make this stuff up. If fiction it wouldn’t qualify as humor.

United States forces under President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in an unprovoked attack in 2003 and have occupied the country since. By some counts more than a million Iraqis have died as a direct result of the US invasion and occupation.

Odierno was former primary military advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from November 2004 to May 2006, and has long argued against withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq. He assumed command of USF-I’s predecessor, Multi-National Force – Iraq on September 16, 2008 and took the reins as Commander of U.S. Forces Iraq on January 1, 2010, under President Barack Obama.

Odierno’s ironic comments in the interview followed only a few days after President Obama publicly backtracked on his 2009 pledge to withdraw all US combat troops from Iraq by September 1, 2010:

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Robert Reich: The Jobs Emergency

Washington’s latest answer to the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression is $26 billion in aid to state and local governments. This still leaves the states and locales more than $62 billion in the hole this fiscal year. And because every state except Vermont has to balance its budget, the likely result is 600,000 to 700,000 more state and local jobs vanishing over the next 12 months (including private contractors and other businesses that depend on state and local governments) according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Say goodbye to even more of the teachers, firefighters, sanitary workers, and police officers we depend on.

In July alone, state and local employment dropped 48,000. Not counting temporary census workers, the federal government shed 11,000. So with private payrolls increasing a paltry 71,000, July’s overall increase in payrolls was just 12,000.

Robert Kuttner: Who Are You Going to Believe — Tim Geithner or Your Own Lying Eyes?

The jobs situation stinks, even as corporate profits keep rising. Another 131,000 jobs were lost to the economy in July, according to the Labor Department’s latest report released Friday. The measured unemployment rate stayed stuck at 9.5 percent.

The only reason it wasn’t worse was because more workers gave up looking for nonexistent jobs, leaving a smaller labor force to measure against the meager supply of work. Small comfort.

Meanwhile, another important government report, by the Social Security Trustees, showed only a trivial improvement in the gap between what Social Security owes the next generation of retirees and the tax receipts that it can expect.

There is, of course, a direct connection between rising unemployment, declining wages, and the condition of Social Security. That’s because Social Security is funded by payroll taxes.

If wages had continued to rise with the growth of the economy’s productivity, instead of profits and bonuses taking an ever larger share, Social Security would be enjoying an endless surplus.

Based on recent trends and a dismally pessimistic projection of our economic future, Social Security’s Trustees assume wage growth of just 1.2 percent a year. But that can be changed by better policies.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

August 10 is the 222nd day of the year (223rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 143 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in  1846, Smithsonian Institution was created. After a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law.

In 1829, James Smithson died in Italy, leaving behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the event that his only nephew died without any heirs, Smithson decreed that the whole of his estate would go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.” Smithson’s curious bequest to a country that he had never visited aroused significant attention on both sides of the Atlantic.

After the nephew died without heirs in 1835, President Andrew Jackson informed Congress of the bequest, which amounted to 104,960 gold sovereigns, or US$500,000 ($10,100,997 in 2008 U.S. dollars after inflation). The money, however, was invested in shaky state bonds that quickly defaulted. After heated debate in Congress, former President John Quincy Adams successfully argued to restore the lost funds with interest.  Congress also debated whether the federal government had the authority to accept the gift. Congress ultimately accepted the legacy bequeathed to the nation and pledged the faith of the United States to the charitable trust July 1, 1836.

Eight years later, Congress passed an act establishing the Smithsonian Institution, a hybrid public/private partnership, and the act was signed into law on August 10, 1846 by James Polk. (See 20 U.S.C. § 41 (Ch. 178, Sec. 1, 9 Stat. 102).) The bill was drafted by Indiana Democratic Congressman Robert Dale Owen, a Socialist and son of Robert Owen, the father of the cooperative movement.