Alternative Super Bowl programming.

Welcome to Super Bowl Sunday.

As far as disrupting TV programming is concerned this is almost as big a holiday as Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s.  Much bigger than the 4th of July though St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day are bigger than the 4th too.

The hype on Faux starts at 2 pm so you have 4 hours of pre-game if you can stand it.  If you’re interested in something else you can check my listings below.  I’ll remind you that we’ll be live blogging Puppy Bowl VII at 2:45 pm and starting our XLV live blog at 5:45 pm.

Expect updates.  This edition good until 1 pm.  Now 7 pm.  Now 9 pm.  6 am, have a good night!

New Tools.  Previous entries.  Instant gratification-

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Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
  

• Muse in the Morning by Robyn
• Six In The Morning by mishima

Featured Essays for February 4, 2011-

• Is Mubarak in De Nile – or is he in Tel Aviv yet? by RUKind
• Social Security: Where’s Our Tahrir Square? by fake consultant
• The Video That Sparked Egypt’s Revolution by Edger
• "The True Face of Hosni Mubarak" is Now Being Televised Across the World by Edger
• World Wide Tahrir coming to a street near you. by dharmasyd
• Reporting the Revolution: The Day of Departure Update:1800 hrs EST by TheMomCat
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to Honduras: Stop the Killings of Transwomen by Robyn
• The Most Common Mosquito-Borne Virus: Dengue by TheMomCat
• Original v. Cover — #64 in a Series by curmudgeon

DocuDharma

Almost solid premiers, must be a sweeps month.  You may find better uses for your time (unless you’re a Smallville fan.

No Fate.

• AMC– Terminator 2: Judgment Day x 2 (my personal favorite of the series, along with Aliens it makes up my action women of the 80s double feature)
• Bravo– The Green Mile x 2 (I understand some people like this movie)
• Disney– Wizards of Waverly Place, Fish Hooks (premiers), Phineas and Ferb
• Discovery– Gold Rush (last week’s and new), Flying Wild (premier)
• E!– The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Hoopies, Mavs @ Celtics, Jazz @ Nuggets
• FX– The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Oxygen– Grease Sing-A-Long x 4
• Sci Fi– Merlin (premier)
• Style– One Fine Day
• TBS– The House Bunny x 2
• Turner Classic– The Heiress, The Bridge on the River Kwai
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with premier)
• TNT– Speed 2: Cruise Control
• Toon– Generator Rex (premier), Clone Wars (Part 2 of the Mortis Trilogy, premier)

You’re already dead, Silberman. Everybody dies. You know I believe it so don’t fuck with me!

Later-

The hardest thing is deciding what I should tell you and what not to. Well, anyway, I’ve got a while yet before you’re old enough to understand the tapes. They’re more for me at this point… to help get it all straight.

• AMC– The Terminator (not so good)
• Disney– Phineas and Ferb Rollercoaster: The Musical
• Sci Fi– Being Human (this week’s), Merlin (Instapeat)
• TBS– Spanglish
• Turner Classic– Ryan’s Daughter
• TNT– The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, D.O.A.: Dead or Alive
• TV Land– Hot in Cleveland marathon
• Vs.– Skiing, FIS Freestyle World Championships
• VH1– New Jack City

Dave hosts Justin Bieber, Martha Stewart, and Robert Plant.

The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 48 Top Stories.

1 Mubarak stays put on ‘departure day’

by Ali Khalil, AFP

15 mins ago

Long story short- Samuelson Economics is science.  It’s predictive and the predictions are confirmed by observation.

Voodoo Economics is just that.  A bunch of rattle shaking shamen dancing around you shouting and chanting in tongues motivated by vanity, greed, and the academic desire for novelty.

Let’s start with Bloomberg shall we?

Conservative Austerity Idea Is Failing: David G. Blanchflower

By David Blanchflower, Bloomberg News

Jan 27, 2011 10:15 PM ET

Fiscal austerity has already been started in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, and this seems to be pushing all of them back into recession. Over the last four quarters, growth in Greece was negative and falling, and bond investors are once more demanding sky-high returns to compensate their risk. The excuse in these countries was that they have little choice because they are stuck in the European monetary union and don’t have the ability to depreciate their exchange rate.

The U.K. may be a purer case of the harm austerity at the wrong time can inflict. Britain now looks as if it is headed back into recession on fear about the damage that will be done by massive spending cuts and tax increases, which haven’t even gone into effect yet. Government ministers with their talk of austerity have already smashed confidence.

…

Despite the government’s claims that its intent was to raise confidence, consumer and business confidence tumbled right after the new government took office.

Businesses and consumers know what is coming and have cut back accordingly. Retail spending has flat-lined. The balance of trade is deteriorating. Unemployment is rising, and house prices have started to fall again.

The Great British austerity experiment

With deficit hawks poised in the US, we watch with great interest UK economic policy. It’s not looking an enviable example so far

Dean Baker, The Guardian

Tuesday 1 February 2011 21.00 GMT

The elite media and the politicians whom they promote would love to see the United States follow the austerity path of the UK’s new government. However, if this path takes the UK into dangerous economic waters, it could provide a powerful warning to the public in the United States before we make the same mistake.

The British economy looks like it is doing its part. The fourth-quarter GDP report showing that the economy went into reverse and shrank at a 2.0% annual rate is exactly the sort of warning that many of us here were expecting. Weather-related factors may have slowed growth some, but you would have to do some serious violence to the data to paint a positive picture. Of course, the austerity in the UK is just beginning. There will likely be much worse pain to come, with a real possibility that the country will experience a double-dip recession, or at least a prolonged period of stagnation.

…

The takeaway lesson should be “austerity does not work; don’t go there.” Unfortunately, in the land of faith-based economics, evidence does not count for much. The UK may pursue a disastrous austerity path and those of us in the United States may still have to follow the same road anyhow. But we opponents of that course all appreciate the willingness of the UK to demonstrate the foolishness of this action.

McCaskill Leads Democratic Rush Toward Austerity

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday February 2, 2011 11:08 am

You could simply not accomplish the cuts in this proposal without massive reductions to Social Security and Medicare. And the fact that this puts those programs “on-budget,” despite their dedicated funding source, is the real tell here. That means that it would be part of the automatic cuts from OMB.

Harry Reid opposes this bill and will fight efforts to put it into action. But it’s only one of multiple efforts where Democrats are crossing the aisle in a bid for austerity. Mark Udall pledged support for a balanced budget amendment, introducing the bill with Richard Shelby. Kent Conrad – who finds McCaskill-Corker unacceptable because it does nothing on the revenue side, which just shows you how extreme a proposal it is – has been working to revive the Bowles-Simpson cat food plan on the Senate Budget Committee. Jeanne Shaheen and Johnny Isakson’s proposal for a two-year budget cycle is perhaps the most inoffensive of these plans (I’d actually go along with that one).

The point is that, with a struggle over the new budget and the debt limit looming, and with conservative activists rallying their representatives to stand firm, you have multiple Democrats perfectly to cut and cap spending, reduce Social Security benefits, and basically drown the government in the bathtub the way that conservatives have always wanted.

Almost solid premiers, though the only notable one is NBC’s Community (yes, I DM, thank you for asking).

And as if to prove all I have said, here is one of the first to go! A lad who sat before me on these very benches, who gave up all to serve in the first year of the war. One of the iron youth who have made Germany invincible in the field! Look at him. Sturdy and bronze and clear-eyed! The kind of soldier every one of you should envy! Paul, lad, you must speak to them. You must tell them what it means to serve your fatherland.

• ABC Family– Good Burger
• AMC– Ghost x 2
• Animal Planet– Planet Earth marathon
• Disney– The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl
• Discovery– Survivalist Mashup (premier), Sr. v. Jr. (Forclosure, I must have missed this episode)
• ESPN– College Hoopies, Michigan @ Ohio State, Notre Dame @ DePaul
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Georgia Tech @ Miami, Tennessee @ Auburn
• Food– Ace of Cakes (premier)
• FX– Archer (premier)
• History– Aliens!, Conspiracy Theories! (Season Finale premier), Swamp People (no, they actually exist)
• Lifetime– Notting Hill
• National Geographic– Naked Science
• Sci Fi– Lake Placid 2, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (again)
• TBS– The Wedding Planner
• Turner Classic– The Love Parade, All Quiet on the Western Front
• TNT– Hoopies, Heat @ Magic, Spurs @ Lakers
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness)
• USA– Royal Pains x 2, Fairly Legal x 2 (premiers + Instapeats)

We used to think you knew. The first bombardment taught us better. It’s dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country it’s better not to die at all! There are millions out there dying for their countries, and what good is it?

Later-

We’ve no use talking like this. You won’t know what I mean. Only, it’s been a long while since we enlisted out of this classroom. So long, I thought maybe the whole world had learned by this time. Only now they’re sending babies, and they won’t last a week! I shouldn’t have come on leave. Up at the front you’re alive or you’re dead and that’s all. You can’t fool anybody about that very long. And up there we know we’re lost and done for whether we’re dead or alive. Three years we’ve had of it, four years! And every day a year, and every night a century! And our bodies are earth, and our thoughts are clay, and we sleep and eat with death! And we’re done for because you *can’t* live that way and keep anything inside you! I shouldn’t have come on leave. I’ll go back tomorrow. I’ve got four days more, but I can’t stand it here! I’ll go back tomorrow! I’m sorry.

• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Gonzaga @ Portland
• FX– Date Movie
• Sci Fi– Supergator (with volcanos!)
• Turner Classic– The Big House
• Toon– Eagleheart (Series Premier)
• USA– White Collar (this week’s)

Dave hosts Howard Stern and Naughty by Nature.  Jon has Michael Mullen (more Michaels), Stephen Jane McGonigal.  Conan hosts Lisa Kudrow, Mike O’Malley, and Interpol.

I’ll tell you how it should all be done. Whenever there’s a big war comin’ on, you should rope off a big field and on the big day, you should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put ’em in the center dressed in their underpants, and let ’em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Ruling party candidate out of Haiti race

by Clarens Renois, AFP

1 hr 6 mins ago