Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 41 Top Stories.

1 Tunisia to shake up cabinet as US presses for vote

by Ines Bel Aiba and Hassan El Fekih, AFP

52 mins ago

Lots of premiers.  No Keith day one.  Frankly I can’t think of a single reason to watch the Prison Porn channel anymore.

A good night to read a book or write a diary.

I don’t belong here, I feel it, don’t you think I feel it. I can’t do any of these vile things and I wouldn’t WANT to. Oh, my life is like death. My children are the spawn of hell, and you’re the devil. Oh God.

But baby, we LIKE you.

• ABC Family– Pretty Little Liars x 2 (premier and Instapeat), [Greek (just a premier)
• AMC– The Brave One x 2 (again and again)
• Comedy– Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia marathon (evidently someone at Zap2it or Comedy Central has noticed that these 4 year old episodes are not new)
• Disney– Hannah Montana: The Movie
• Discovery– Sr. v. Jr. (last week’s and new)
• ESPN– College Hoopies, Notre Dame @ Pittsburgh, Baylor @ Kansas State
• ESPN2– Women’s College Basketball, Iowa @ Ohio State, Australian Open
• Food– Triple D (premier)
• FX– Forgetting Sarah Marshall x 2
• History– Pawn Stars and Pickers (premiers)
• Lifetime– Final Sale
• National Geographic– Aliens! and Cannibals
• Sci Fi– Being Human marathon (actually they think they have a premier in there, but it looks like the one Series Premier  episode in an endless loop to me)
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Member of the Wedding (Carson McCullers night)
• TLC– Cake Boss marathon (last week’s penultimate and Season Finale)
• Toon– Regular Show (premier)
• Travel– Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations marathon
• Vs.– Rangers @ Caps

Later-

• AMC– Overboard
• Sci Fi– Saw IV
• Spike– Barbershop
• Turner Classic– The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (more Carson)

Dave in repeats from 1/6.  Jon has Anand Giridharadas (get a Wiki page!), Stephen Charlie Rose.  Alton does Grilling and Barbecue.  Conan hosts Shaun White and Iron & Wine.

My children are in need of medical assistance! And you can sit here and smugly lecture me on the importance of tests? Tests which exist to pigeonhole childrens potential, a thing which cannot *possibly* be measured, least of all by anal compulsive HUNS! And my husband may be a “large child,” but that’s none of your business! And my children may be rotten, but they’re MINE. And I think that they’re bright, and sensitive, so I have no doubts whatsoever about their intelligence. I do however have *serious* doubts about YOURS.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 60 Top Stories.

1 Tunisia readies cabinet shake-up as army speaks out

by Ines Bel Aiba and Kaouther Larbi, AFP

2 hrs 6 mins ago

Much News now.  Editorial later.

1 Elites to tackle ‘fundamentally changed’ world at Davos

by Hui Min Neo, AFP

Sun Jan 23, 9:15 pm ET

Faux is taking a run at Steelers/Jets with new episodes of Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers (Coach McGuirk), and Cleveland.

I have something to show you all! Those of you with weak stomachs should leave now! What you are about to see is a nightmare, inexplicably torn from the pages of Kafka!

Holy crap! What happened?

Apparently this is the reward I get for years of screwing with super-science. In short, I pissed in God’s eye – and He blinked.

I love those moments.  I like to wave at them as they pass by.

• ABC Family– Mean Girls 2 x 2
• AMC– The Brave One x 2 (rather new)
• Bravo– Real Housewives marathon (with premier)
• Disney– Good Luck Charlie, Shake It Up (premiers)
• Discovery– Gold Rush, Hogs Gone Wild (I’m not kidding, premier)
• ESPN– Poker
• ESPN2– Australian Open
• Food– Challenge, Worst, Iron Chef America (all premiers)
• FX– Iron Man, Hancock
• History– Ax Men (last week’s and new), Top Gear (premier)
• Lifetime– The Bodyguard (horrible)
• Mational Geographic– 9 /11
• Sci Fi– Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• Speed– Grand Am: 24 Hours at Daytona (premier)
• TBS– Mamma Mia x 2 (again)
• Turner Classic– Black Narcissus, Lost Horizon
• TNT– The Dark Knight
• Toon– Young Justice League (this week’s actual new one), Clone Wars (Part 3 of the Nightsisters Trilogy repeat)
• Vs.– Bullriding

The Venture Brothers– Ice Station Impossible, Midlife Chrysalis

Later-

• AMC– The Bone Collector
• FX– The 25th Hour
• Lifetime– Nine Months
• TBS– What Women Want
• Turner Classic– Tide of Empire (shhhh)
• TNT– The Matrix Revolutions
• Toon– Robot Chicken (premier), Mongo Wrestling (Series Premier)
• USA– Being Human (Series Premier repeat)

Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?

Because I choose to.

2011 Throwball Playoffs

This time through we get excited about the early game on Fox at 3 pm.

Despite over 180 regular season meetings the Bears and the Packers have met just twice in the post season and I’m not as sanguine as my dad about the Packers’ ability to prevail as I was before watching the Bears dismantle the Seahawks last week.

A reminder of why you should be rooting for the Packers–

The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues. Typically, a team is owned by one person, partnership, or corporate entity, i.e., a “team owner.” The lack of a dominant owner has been stated as one of the reasons the Green Bay Packers have never been moved from the city of Green Bay, a city of only 102,313 people as of the 2000 census.

…

As of June 8, 2005, 112,015 people (representing 4,750,934 shares) can lay claim to a franchise ownership interest. Shares of stock include voting rights, but the redemption price is minimal, no dividends are ever paid, the stock cannot appreciate in value – though private sales often exceed the face value of the stock, and stock ownership brings no season ticket privileges. No shareholder may own over 200,000 shares, a safeguard to ensure that no individual can assume control of the club. To run the corporation, a board of directors is elected by the stockholders.

…

Green Bay is the only team with this form of ownership structure in the NFL; such ownership is in direct violation of current league rules, which stipulate a limit of 32 owners of one team and one of those owners having a minimum 30% stake. However, the Packers corporation was grandfathered when the NFL’s current ownership policy was established in the 1980s, and are thus exempt. The Packers are also the only American major-league sports franchise to release its financial balance sheet every year.

Another old school matchup is Jets @ Steelers on CBS at 6:30 pm.  Last week I told you why the Jets were pretty loathsome and my opinion hasn’t mellowed in the 7 days since.

Plus the Steelers are a better team.

This is the end of the CBS broadcast season.

Former Spy With Agenda Operates a Private C.I.A.

By MARK MAZZETTI, The New York Times

Published: January 22, 2011

Over the past two years, he has fielded operatives in the mountains of Pakistan and the desert badlands of Afghanistan. Since the United States military cut off his funding in May, he has relied on like-minded private donors to pay his agents to continue gathering information about militant fighters, Taliban leaders and the secrets of Kabul’s ruling class.

Hatching schemes that are something of a cross between a Graham Greene novel and Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy,” Mr. Clarridge has sought to discredit Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Kandahar power broker who has long been on the C.I.A. payroll, and planned to set spies on his half brother, the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, in hopes of collecting beard trimmings or other DNA samples that might prove Mr. Clarridge’s suspicions that the Afghan leader was a heroin addict, associates say.

Mr. Clarridge, 78, who was indicted on charges of lying to Congress in the Iran-contra scandal and later pardoned, is described by those who have worked with him as driven by the conviction that Washington is bloated with bureaucrats and lawyers who impede American troops in fighting adversaries and that leaders are overly reliant on mercurial allies.

His dispatches – an amalgam of fact, rumor, analysis and uncorroborated reports – have been sent to military officials who, until last spring at least, found some credible enough to be used in planning strikes against militants in Afghanistan. They are also fed to conservative commentators, including Oliver L. North, a compatriot from the Iran-contra days and now a Fox News analyst, and Brad Thor, an author of military thrillers and a frequent guest of Glenn Beck.

For all of the can-you-top-this qualities to Mr. Clarridge’s operation, it is a startling demonstration of how private citizens can exploit the chaos of combat zones and rivalries inside the American government to carry out their own agenda.

The latest rumor circulating about Keith (not that I’m star struck or anything, but he did in fact take the time to respond to a post of mine once, so it’s just professional courtesy) is that like Howard Fineman, Tucker Carlson, and others, he’s seeking his next fortune in the world of new media.

Did Keith Olbermann Bolt MSNBC to Create Media Empire?

By Dominic Patten & Sharon Waxman, TheWrap.com via HuffPo

Published: January 21, 2011 @ 6:13 pm

With two years left on his $7 million a year contract, Olbermann was seeking a full exit package but he really has his eye on creating his own media empire in the style of Huffington Post, according to the individual. That way, Olbermann would control his own brand and, in his view, potentially earn far more as an owner.

Umm…

Here’s a bit of free advice which, I’m afraid, is all I can afford.

I’ve heard that it’s possible to make money from blogging, but that’s certainly not my experience.

If you want to crosspost, you’re more than welcome to register.  I’d be grateful for your content.

Since this is a TV diary I should address Keith’s departure and I will at some point, but right now I’m still trying to gather information and process the implications so I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little off topic.

What it does point out is something I’ve long advocated.

If you want to change THE media you have to change YOUR media and in my own little way what I’m trying to demonstrate with these trivial pieces is that you have a lot of choices.

The only thing these assholes understand is ratings and the only things they care about are money (ratings) and their pouty diva cewebwity feewings (also ratings, but in addition ‘Fan’ mail and public criticism so a mite more activist).

At the very least you can avert your eyes.

PBS is premiering Austin City Limits with Sonic Youth and The Black Keys.

• ABC Family– Mean Girls, Enchanted
• Bravo– House marathon
• Discovery– Xenophobic Porn, not kidding and entirely disappointed
• ESPN– College Hoopies, Michigan State @ Purdue
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Memphis @ Alabama-Birmingham, Australian Open
• FX– The Punisher
• History– Hitler!  So we can pretend that it was all just him
• Lifetime– Unanswered Prayers, The Truth About Cats & Dogs
• Nick– iCarly marathon
• Oxygen– The Notebook x 2
• Sci Fi– Category 7: The End of the World
• TBS– Mama Mia (again), You’ve Got Mail
• Turner Classic– The Sea Hawk, The Uninvited
• TLC– Sarah Palin’s Alaska marathon (worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet)
• TNT– The Dark Knight
• Toon– Garfield’s Fun Fest, God, the Devil and Bob
• USA– NCIS marathon
• Vs.– Bull Riding

Later-

I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing… why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us, Neo. It’s the question that brought you here.

• FX– Grand Am: 24 Hours at Daytona (premier)
• Sci Fi– Megafault, Tornado: Nature Unleashed
• TBS– Fool’s Gold
• Turner Classic– Challenge to Lassie, Knute Rockne, All American
• TNT– The Matrix
• Vs.– NBA D-League Basketball, Toros @ Flash

SNL from 12/4/10.

Boondocks– The Story of Gangstalicious, The Itis

Do you know how long I wanted to own my own restaurant?

Three weeks. At Sunday dinner, that was the first time you mentioned it. And you only started doin’ the stupid Sunday dinner thing because you saw Soul Food on cable.

We’re gonna pause this for the benefit of all ya’ll that never saw Soul Food. Soul Food is a movie about a big, humongous, black grandmother, aptly named Big Mama. Big Mama demonstrates her love by feeding herself and her offspring enormous amounts of pig lard. Then – get this – Big Mama’s arteries are so clogged, they gotta amputate her arm.

It was her leg!

Right, OK, whatever, leg. Then, she dies from a heart attack or another stroke or somethin’. And what does the family do after she dies? They get together for a Sunday dinner and eat the same food that just killed Big Mama. The *same* food. They didn’t learn a lesson, nobody went on a diet, and that’s the end of the movie.

Sunday dinners was my idea! They got that from me.

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Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Irish PM quits as party leader

by Andrew Bushe, AFP

1 hr 49 mins ago