November 2010 archive

N. Korea warns of retaliation; Seoul orders security beefed up

S. Korea government in emergency meeting; joint exercises with U.S. move ahead

msnbc.com news services

INCHEON, South Korea – South Korea’s president vowed Thursday to boost security around islands near the site of this week’s artillery attack by North Korea.

His order to beef up security came as North Korea warned of more “retaliation” if Seoul carries out “reckless military provocations.”

“We should not let our guard down in preparation for another possible North Korean provocation,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said at an emergency government meeting Thursday.

Well, it’s that holiday time of year again when all you want is some mindless entertainment to spare you from dealing with your relatives and TV programmers screw with you by replacing all your familiar favorites with sappy specials and marathons of your least liked shows made more inpenetrable by the one line crawl of uselessness that TV Guide channel has become.

Thank goodness kindly uncle ek is here to highlight a few moments of blessed distraction as well as some of the potential pitfalls to be avoided.

I look on it as a public service.

My job is made a little easier because of a neat little network ‘day at a glance’ feature of Zap2it TV Listings.  Click on the channel name.  I’m going midnight to Paid Programming since you might be busy with late night preparations and early morning celebrations or shopping trips.  I’m putting the main meat below the fold because the table is too long for the Front Page.  It’s arranged by time and marathons (4 half hour episodes, 3 hour episodes, double features, themes, and Instapeats) may be noted earlier than you expect, but they do also include the running time so you know when they end.

Nothing like watching A Christmas Story 25 times in a row.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Folks, tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.  I shall not go onto the history of it, since everyone has her or his own interpretation, and the pundits have theirs.  The Big Bloviator promised to repeat his distorted idea of it again today on his foul radio program.  I made it a point to miss it.

However, it is important to reflect back on the previous year and consider the things for which one gives thanks, and actually to give those thanks.  I do not care if your thanks goes to a deity, to other people, or to communities like these.  The important is that one thinks about the good things that have happened during the past year and thanks someone other than one’s self for them.

Some premiers.  Rachel has a special- The Assassination of Dr. Tiller.

If any form of pleasure is exhibited, report to me and it will be prohibited! I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be… this is the land of the free! The last man nearly ruined this place he didn’t know what to do with it. If you think this country’s bad off now, just wait till I get through with it! The country’s taxes must be fixed, and I know what to do with it. If you think you’re paying too much now, just wait till I get through with it!

I’d be unworthy of the high trust that’s been placed in me if I didn’t do everything in my power to keep our beloved Freedonia in peace with the world. I’d be only too happy to meet with Ambassador Trentino, and offer him on behalf of my country the right hand of good fellowship. And I feel sure he will accept this gesture in the spirit of which it is offered. But suppose he doesn’t. A fine thing that’ll be. I hold out my hand and he refuses to accept. That’ll add a lot to my prestige, won’t it? Me, the head of a country, snubbed by a foreign ambassador. Who does he think he is, that he can come here, and make a sap of me in front of all my people? Think of it – I hold out my hand and that hyena refuses to accept. Why, the cheap four-flushing swine, he’ll never get away with it I tell you, he’ll never get away with it.

• ABC Family– Beauty and the Beast
• AMC– Open Range x 2
• Comedy– Futurama, Holiday Spectacular (this week’s)
• Discovery– Mythbusters (last week’s and new), Storm Chasers (premier)
• ESPN– Hoopies, LeBrons @ Magic, College Hoopies
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Tennessee v. Virginia Commonwealth, UCLA v. Villanova
• FX– Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Terriers x 3 (premier and Instapeats)
• Lifetime– Notting Hill
• Oxygen– 50 First Dates
• Turner Classic– It Happened One Night
• Toon– Firebreather
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (with premier, thank goodness)
• USA– NCIS marathon
• Vs.– Blues @ Predators

Later-

• Sci Fi– Licence to Kill (Dalton)
• Turner Classic– Duck Soup, Top Hat

Dave hosts Salvatore Giunta and Sahara Smith (get a wiki page!).  Jon and Stephen in repeats, 11/9, 11/16.  Conan hosts Eva Mendes, Bob Saget, and Neon Trees.

Boondocks– The S Word.

Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.

Monday we watch-a Firefly’s house, but he no come he wasn’t home. Tuesday we go to the ball game, but he fool us: he no show up. Wednesday HE go to the ball game, but we fool him, WE no show up. Thursday it was a double-header, nobody show up. Friday it rained all day, there was no ball game, so we stayed home, we listen to it over the radio.

You’re a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you’re out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we’ll be in be in here thinking what a sucker you are.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Ireland unveils 15-bln-euro austerity plan to secure bailout

by Loic Vennin and Andrew Bushe, AFP

1 hr 28 mins ago

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Mike Lux: The Heart of Darkness

Democrats are still reeling from our political losses, and the DC political class is still obsessed with the re-positioning dance, but at the heart of everything else, at the center of everything that matters, are these bleak economic facts driving our politics. The sooner Democrats stop worrying about being center or left, and start focusing on how to get the middle class out of its economic black hole, the sooner our politics start getting fixed. Period. End of story. The heart of our political darkness is the heart of the middle class’ economic darkness.

Valerie Plame Wilson: START Treaty Must Not Be Derailed

For me, the most bittersweet moment watching the new movie Fair Game comes when it shows my clandestine CIA work involving nuclear counterproliferation. I remain passionate about the issue of preventing rogue states and terrorist organizations from ever procuring a nuclear weapon. Since resigning from the agency however, I realize that much of what I had been doing may only have served to delay the inevitable. My thinking on proliferation has therefore evolved considerably, and I now believe that the best way to ensure our national security for the long term is to move to achieve the goal of total, global elimination of nuclear weapons.

Laura Flanders: Solving the Irish Crisis

The financial crisis in Ireland is leading to a political crisis on the heels of a bailout and more “austerity measures.” The coalition that currently rules is falling apart, the Green Party detaching from the prime minister’s Fianna Fail party, and elections loom.

But just as in colonial days, the “Irish problem” is really a problem from outside. Ireland wouldn’t need “help” if it hadn’t been robbed by multinationals.

To be fair, its own government turned over its pockets to be picked. Ireland’s corporate tax rates are some of the lowest in the EU and its loopholes allow foreign companies to use Ireland’s well-educated and health-insured workforce, while giving the least possible back. Americans are linked to the problem — every time we GOOGLE we’re using a company that’s avoiding taxes at home in the United States and in other, higher-rate European countries by setting up in Ireland, and shuttling profits in and almost tax-free out.

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

November 24 is the 328th day of the year (329th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 37 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin’s theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called “natural selection.” In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. For the sixth edition of 1872, the short title was changed to The Origin of Species. Darwin’s book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent[ through a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(science) branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.

Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream.

The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T.H. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During the “eclipse of Darwinism” from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin’s concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to  modern evolutionary theory, now the unifying concept of the life sciences.

Now that we are done with cooking directions for the big day, time to pick the beverage that will not just accompany this spectacular meal but compliment the main course, the sides and deserts.

My usual choices for the wine is to have choices, serving both reds and whites. Cabernets and Sauvignon Blanc can be respectively too heavy and too acidic while the Chardonnays can be too oaky.

Don’t be afraid to ask the your wine merchant for suggestions. There are many very fine wines for those on a budget. Here are some of my suggestions:

Beaujolais Nouveau is the “first wine of the harvest” and the 2010 has just been released, This is a very “young” wine that spends little time in the cask between picking  and bottling. It is traditionally released on November 21 with great fan fare among wine around the world. It is light and fruity, should be served chilled. It goes well with not just the turkey but  everything from the appetizer cheese course to sweet potatoes and dressing to that pesky once a year veggie, Brussel Sprouts, not an easy feat. It is also inexpensive at less than $10 a bottle, the magnum is usually even more economical.

Pinot Noir is another good choice but not easy to find one that has some flavor and can be a little “pricey”, although there good ones in the $10 range.

For the whites there are two that I choose from Pinot Grigio or a slightly sweeter Riesling.

Pinot Grigio or Pinto Gris is a young fruity wine and depending on the region can be full bodied and “floral” to lighter, “spritszy” and a little acidic. I suggest the former and fond that the Pinot from Barefoot Cellars fits the bill and the pocketbook.

Riesling can be found in the German section and look for a Gewurztraminer or a slightly sweeter Spätlese.

The there is beer for those who prefer some foam and fizz. These are the suggestions from the Brewers Association:

   * Traditional Turkey – Amber ale or a lager like Oktoberfest, brown ale or a strong golden ale like triple

   * Smoked Turkey – a hoppy brown ale, Scotch ale or porter

   * Pumpkin pie – Spiced ale, winter warmer or old ale

Your last chance to vote against Bristol.  Mostly premiers.

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place… It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten – savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses… his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man’s life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say “guilt,” gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She’s committed no crime – she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a Negro. She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption… the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable Negro, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people’s! The defendant is not guilty – but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system – that’s no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe… Tom Robinson.

• ABC Family– Aladdin
• Disney– Ratatouille
• Discovery– Dirty Jobs, Auction Kings (premiers)
• ESPN– College Hoopies
• ESPN 2– College Throwball, Temple @ Miami (Ohio), AND Hoopies
• FX– What Happens in Vegas
• Sci Fi– Stargate Universe (premier)
• Speed– Monster Jam
• TBS– Family Guy, Glory Daze (premier)
• Turner Classic– Atticus Finch, Boys Town
• TNT– The Bucket List
• Toon– The School of Rock, Tower Prep (premier)
• Vs.– Point Break

Later-

• AMC– Inside Man
• Food– Private Chefs of Beverly Hills (premier)
• Sci Fi– Stargate Universe (Instapeat), The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb
• Turner Classic– Sounder
• USA– Psych, Burn Notice (this week’s)

Dave hosts Jerry Seinfeld and Colin Firth.  Jon and Stephen in repeats, 11/17 and 11/9.  Conan hosts Christina Applegate, Patton Oswalt, and Maroon5.

Boondocks– The Invasion of the Katrinas

The 11 Commandments–

1. Inertia shall prevail.
2. Nothing is sacred.
3. Hate thy neighbor.
4. No good ever comes from helping one’s fellow man.
5. Worship a higher power.
6. Look to the past for inspiration.
7. Death be not bad.
8. Work hard at not working.
9. No reason is too trivial for ending a relationship.
10. A short, stocky, slow-witted, bald man can be a chick magnet.
11. The craziest person is the sanest of all.