A few bloggers have highlighted yesterday’s piece by Delaney and Grim at the Huffington Post, many of them concentrating on the Dickensian conditions that prevailed before Social Security and the New Deal-

The talk of taking Green’s children was no vacant threat. In most states, children were not allowed to live in poorhouses. Families forced into them would be split up, with children either bound for orphanages, foster homes or apprenticeships. Pennsylvania, which banned poorhouses from hosting children between the ages of two and 16, was typical. Hundreds of children in just one home, the Chester County Poorhouse, were “bounded out” — given to other families — in the middle of the 19th Century, according to an archive of their names that survives.

In 1936 a woman’s aunt and uncle hoped to extract their niece and her new baby from a poorhouse in New Hampshire. They sent a letter to a county commissioner saying they would take care of the hapless pair at their home, but the commissioner wouldn’t allow it, according to Wagner. The commissioner didn’t doubt their ability to provide, but he figured the woman would have another burdensome baby. “If I am presented with definite proof from the Merrimack County Farm, that [she] has had a sterile operation, I have no objection to her going to live in your home.”

The unemployed who were denied outdoor relief by the city had another option: To be auctioned off to the lowest bidder and live as a boarder. The city would reimburse the homeowner for the specified amount in exchange for putting the pauper up. The jobless person was expected to work without pay in exchange.

And there are lots of stories like that in it, but I’d like to draw your attention to some of the more modern events they are reporting-

The Poorhouse: Aunt Winnie, Glenn Beck, And The Politics Of The New Deal

Arthur Delaney and  Ryan Grim, The Huffington Post

12-29-10 10:08 PM

Though Republican hostility to the New Deal isn’t new, the Democratic embrace of language that has long been used to undermine belief in government is. Announcing a pay freeze for federal workers, Obama reasoned that “small businesses and families are tightening their belts. Their government should, too.” With nearly one in ten people unable to find work, Democrats compete with Republicans over who can sound more concerned about the debt and deficit, despite a longstanding economic consensus that a deficit is a good thing to have in times of slow growth and high unemployment.

What is dangerous about Social Security is that it works. It is evidence that people can do a better job insuring against life’s cruel downturns by working together and pooling resources than by going it alone in the market. If the financial market and its representatives in Washington succeed in undermining Social Security, they will not only have access to trillions of dollars, but will have dealt a blow to a leading symbol of the potential collective action. It’s no coincidence that cutting Social Security is often described as a “signal” to financial markets. Even Obama, after his election, echoed such language. “We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s,” Obama said before his inauguration.

…

During a meeting with progressive bloggers, Obama was asked to defend his administration’s failure to stem the foreclosure tide. The president’s worry, he said, was that his anti-foreclosure program might accidentally help people who didn’t deserve it. “The biggest challenge is how do you make sure that you are helping those who really deserve help, and, if they get some temporary help, can get back on their feet,” Obama said, specifically adding that he didn’t want the effort to assist “people who through no fault of their own just can’t afford their house anymore because of the change in housing values or their incomes don’t support it.”

…

Obama’s confusion about Social Security’s origins would seem mundane if it weren’t for the payroll tax holiday he pushed, the deficit commission targeting Social Security he created, and the reports that he’ll call for cuts to the program in his State of the Union address.

Social Security reform is necessary, the program’s opponents say, because its future solvency is in question: As a result of the Baby Boom and advances in medicine, more people are living longer. But the actuaries who set up Social Security in the 1930s forecast with an eerie exactitude how much life expectancies would increase — a detail that is always ignored. And the system was reformed by the Greenspan Commission in 1983, when the first Boomers were nearly forty years old. Nancy Altman, a boomer herself, served as a top aide to that commission, and said that it very specifically took into account the coming wave of retirements, which explains why it can pay full benefits through 2037, a quarter century after the first Boomer hits early retirement.

Social Security’s actuaries reported this fall that after 2037, payroll taxes would be sufficient to pay nearly four-fifths of benefits through 2084. The payroll tax stops, however, at a little over $106,000. The shortfall could be made up entirely by applying the payroll tax to more income above that threshold.

CNN Poll: Plurality say Obama’s policies will likely fail

Sixty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they hope the president’s policies will succeed.

“That’s a fairly robust number but it’s down 10 points since last December,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Twelve months ago a majority of the public said that they thought Obama’s policies would succeed; now that number has dropped to 44 percent, with a plurality predicting that his policies will likely fail.”

Obama to blink first on Social Security

By ROBERT KUTTNER, Politico

12/16/10 9:24 AM EST

(N)ow being teed up by the White House and key Senate Democrats, is a scheme for the president to embrace much of the Bowles-Simpson plan – including cuts in Social Security. This is to be unveiled, according to well-placed sources, in the president’s State of the Union address.

The idea is to pre-empt an even more draconian set of budget cuts likely to be proposed by the incoming House Budget Committee chairman, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), as a condition of extending the debt ceiling. This is expected to hit in April.

…

How to put this politely? For a Democratic president, this approach is bad economics and worse politics.

For starters, cutting Social Security as part of a deficit reduction deal is needless – since Social Security is in surplus for the next 27 years. The move also gives away the single most potent distinction between Democrats and Republicans – Democrats defend your Social Security, and Republicans keep trying to undermine it.

If you think the Democratic base feels betrayed by Obama’s tax-cut deal, just imagine the mayhem when Obama proposes to cut the Democrats’ signature program.

…

Beltway Washington – the editorial writers, columnists, centrist policy organizations, Blue Dogs and, of course, the Obama administration and its Wall Street advisers – has become an echo chamber of bad advice.

As paradox at The Left Coaster puts it-

It has been stated here before, and is equally true today, that should any cut of any Social Security element proposed by the Democratic Obama Administration the United States is unequivocally, screamingly in the utter throes of a shock doctrine evolution. Social Security is abundantly, vastly in surplus by generations of over-taxation, there’s a $120 billion annual war on with incredible tax cuts just passed, it is beyond lunacy for Social Security to be cut, it’s outright theft, an act of amazing arrogance and contempt that could only happen by the enormous distraction and manipulation of unemployment. Times are tough, we all have to sacrifice, that’s what the thieves will seriously say.

…

Leaks are extremely useful in a variety of ways: they coddle and ensnare the reporter to a clubby insider status, they manipulate various political actors, they offer reaction gauges to proposed ideas, and steer the political conversation of the Village (DC) in a desired direction. Given this, just why would the Obama Administration leak that cutting Social Security story to Politico?

Where Do We Go from Here?

Paul Krugman and Robin Wells, The New York Review of Books

January 13, 2011

Despite what optimists within the White House may believe, the odds are not good for a repeat of 1996, when Bill Clinton made a startling political comeback after suffering a drubbing in the previous midterm elections. Clinton, after all, presided over a booming economy: in the two years prior to the 1996 election, the US economy added more than 5 million jobs, and by November 1996 the unemployment rate was only 5.4 percent. In contrast, Obama presides over an economy that has suffered a severe financial crisis-and recovery from a severe financial crisis is almost always slow and painful, with very high unemployment persisting for years. Professional forecasters surveyed by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve now predict an average unemployment rate of 8.7 percent in 2012, awful news for a president seeking reelection.

A tough, skillful political team might be able to win even in the face of such economic weakness. But the Obama team has demonstrated neither toughness nor skill. The trouble was apparent right from the beginning. After the 2008 election, Obama had the political winds at his back. Yet rather than bargaining from a position of strength and demanding an economic program adequate to the scale of the economy’s problems, Obama made his goal the working out of a cooperative political process-accommodation and the fantasy of bipartisanship.

And despite warnings from many economists (ourselves included) that the stimulus package that resulted was much too small, Obama engaged in premature triumphalism. In February 2009, he said of the plan:

It is the right size, it is the right scope. Broadly speaking it has the right priorities to create jobs that will jump-start our economy and transform it for the twenty-first century.

The only thing missing was a “Mission Accomplished” banner.

…

(Democrats can not count) on Obama himself to lead a comeback. In a dispiriting 60 Minutes interview given after the midterms, he actually seemed to accept Republican smears-blaming himself, not the GOP, for the failure to “maintain the kind of tone that says we can disagree without being disagreeable.” And it’s truly astonishing that as corporate profits hit new records despite mass unemployment, Obama apparently takes seriously accusations that his administration is antibusiness.

Even if Obama were suddenly to find an inner FDR, would anyone notice? His aloofness has become so indelibly registered in voters’ minds that if he tried to change style-even if he wanted to, a big “if”-this would immediately come across as opportunistic. Having trusted and been disappointed by Obama once before, they are very unlikely to give him another chance.

…

And this brings us to our last point. Democrats need to make it clear that if Obama isn’t going to be the leader of the Democratic agenda-and all indications are that he can’t or won’t-they will advance that agenda anyway, with or without his help. They have to be ready to delink their political fate from Obama, and make it clear that they won’t tolerate further undermining of their goals by deluded calls for bipartisanship.

…

How far should delinking from Obama go? There is no obvious contender to mount a primary challenge, which is in itself a testimony to Democratic weakness. But the possibility is clearly there, and both will and should become a reality if Obama follows a path of capitulation.

Broadcast?  Bwahhahhahhahhah.

A good night to write diaries.

I foresee two possibilities. One, coming face to face with herself 30 years older would put her into shock and she’d simply pass out. Or two, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space time continuum, and destroy the entire universe! Granted, that’s a worse case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.

• ABC Family– Gone in Sixty Seconds
• AMC– Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part 2
• Bravo– Top Chef marathon
• Discovery– Mythbusters marathon
• ESPN– College Throwball, Texas Bowl: Baylor v. Illinois, Alamo Bowl: Arizona v. Oklahoma State
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Georgetown @ Notre Dame, Marquette @ Vanderbilt
• Food– Dinner Impossible
• FX– S.W.A.T. x 2
• History– Modern Marvels (premier)
• Lifetime– Raising Helen
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer marathon
• Nick– Curious George
• Oxygen– Practical Magic x 2
• Style– When a Man Loves a Woman
• Turner Classic– The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit
• TNT– Bones marathon
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (with premier thank goodness)
• USA– Juno

Later-

• AMC– Back to the Future Part 3
• Comedy– Bender’s Big Score
• Oxygen– The Craft
• Turner Classic– The Ladykillers, Kind Hearts and Coronets

Dave in repeats from 12/16.  Conan in repeats from 11/16.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Biff Tannen Museum! Dedicated to Hill Valley’s #1 Citizen. And America’s greatest living folk hero. The one and only Biff Tannen. Of course we’ve all heard the legend, but who is the man? Inside you will learn how Biff Tannen became one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Learn the amazing history of the Tannen family, starting with his great-grandfather, Buford ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen, fastest gun in the West. See Biff’s humble beginnings and how a trip to the race track on his 21st Birthday made him a millionaire overnight. Share in the excitement of a fabulous winning streak that earned him the nickname “The Luckiest Man on Earth.” Learn how Biff parlayed that lucky winning streak into the vast empire called Biffco. Discover how, in 1979, Biff successfully lobbied to legalize gambling and turned Hill Valley’s dilapidated courthouse into a beautiful casino-hotel!

I just wanna say one thing! God Bless America.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Bloomberg takes flak over New York storm response

by Paola Messana, AFP

Wed Dec 29, 12:33 pm ET

Today’s Top Story is dedicated to TheMomCat.

Sometimes it seems to me that all I write about is Economics, but I do have other interests.  Alas, pitchers and catchers don’t report until February 13th and no Formula One until March 11th.

But there are other things happening that we shouldn’t forget, indeed that’s one of the things the Versailles Villagers count on is our having a short attention span.  Fortunately the Tubz are here to remind us of the dim distant past, say April 20th, 2010.

Taint Part 1.

Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

‘It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,’ toxicologist says

By Kari Huus, MSNBC

12/27/2010 6:04:49 AM ET

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing – examining fewer samples but more comprehensively – shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.

…

“What we have found is that FDA simply overlooked an important aspect of safety in their protocol,” contends William Sawyer, a Florida-based toxicologist on Smith’s team. “We now have a sufficient number of samples to provide FDA with probable cause to include such testing, really. They need to go back and test some of their archived samples as well.”

…

Their approach draws on the work of scientists from industry, government and academia who banded together in the 1990s to develop guidelines for public health officials and environmental engineers faced with petroleum-related exposure and contamination. The work of the U.S.-funded Total Petroleum Hydrocarbon Criteria Working Group was part of a flurry of research that occurred in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.

…

“What gives us confidence that we are finding oil in these samples is that we are using multiple lines of evidence,” he said. “We are finding – even in metabolized samples – a lot of matches to BP oil.”

Sawyer and Kaltofen began finding high levels of TPH in seawater and sediment in June. Many scientists had previously expressed concerns that the heavy use of chemical dispersants by BP to break up giant oil slicks would lock the contaminants in the water column, making them more available to marine life.

“From there you can reasonably predict that there are going to be more and more findings in the food chain,” said Susan Shaw, a marine toxicologist at the Marine Environmental Research Institute. Shaw, who is not a member of Smith’s scientific team, is one of 14 scientists tapped for the independent DOI Strategic Sciences Working Group to dissect the oil spill consequences and make policy recommendations to the agencies. She has been a vocal opponent of the heavy use of dispersants throughout the response.

“What we’re seeing now is plausible evidence from independent labs that – just as we thought – there’s oil in the food web, and here’s where we’re finding it,” said Shaw.

…

“We are taking this situation seriously,” said Roy Crabtree, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service southeast region. “Our primary concerns are public safety and ensuring the integrity of the gulf’s seafood supply.”

Bullshit.

The New York Times recently published a lengthy piece on the final hours of the BP Deepwater Blowout Disaster, which the whiney Galtian Gatekeepers at Associated Press claim is not a scoop though they don’t dispute it’s original reporting.

Who cares you crybabies?

Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours

By DAVID BARSTOW, DAVID ROHDE and STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times

Published: December 25, 2010

It has been eight months since the Macondo well erupted below the Deepwater Horizon, creating one of the worst environmental catastrophes in United States history. With government inquiries under way and billions of dollars in environmental fines at stake, most of the attention has focused on what caused the blowout. Investigators have dissected BP’s well design and Halliburton’s cementing work, uncovering problem after problem.

…

What emerges is a stark and singular fact: crew members died and suffered terrible injuries because every one of the Horizon’s defenses failed on April 20. Some were deployed but did not work. Some were activated too late, after they had almost certainly been damaged by fire or explosions. Some were never deployed at all.

…

The paralysis had two main sources, the examination by The Times shows. The first was a failure to train for the worst. The Horizon was like a Gulf Coast town that regularly rehearsed for Category 1 hurricanes but never contemplated the hundred-year storm. The crew members, though expert in responding to the usual range of well problems, were unprepared for a major blowout followed by explosions, fires and a total loss of power.

They were also frozen by the sheer complexity of the Horizon’s defenses, and by the policies that explained when they were to be deployed.

Finally, I mentioned earlier that Shareholder Democracy is a joke.  The only way to assert your Contract Rights as a Shareholder is to sue-

New York, Ohio Pensions to Lead Plaintiffs in BP Investor Case Over Spill

By Laurel Brubaker Calkins and Margaret Cronin Fisk, Bloomberg News

Dec 29, 2010 12:01 AM ET

U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison in Houston named New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Ohio State Attorney General Richard Cordray, who head their states’ public employee pension funds, as lead plaintiffs for investors who bought either BP common stock or American depositary receipts from June 2005 to June 2010.

Ellison also named four individual investors as lead plaintiffs for a smaller class of investors who bought common shares of London-based BP or ADRs from March 2009 to April 20 of this year, the date the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, sparking the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

While the sub-class of investors claim that BP’s leadership made misleading statements about drilling safety in the Gulf of Mexico in the months before the rig explosion, the state pension funds “argue more generally that BP made fraudulent statements between 2005 and 2010 about its safety precautions in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere,” Ellison said in yesterday’s order.

The New York and Ohio funds also claim substantial losses from BP ADRs purchased several weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, a timeframe not covered by the complaint of the smaller group of investors, Ellison said. For six weeks after the blast, the funds claim “BP intentionally understated the oil flow rate in an attempt” to diminish harm to the company, lawyers for one of the institutional funds said in court papers.

Good, because you’re arrogant, greedy, narcissistic, assholes who broke the law and should be in jail.  Grow up you crybaby Galts.

Obama & Wall St.: Still Venus & Mars

By: Ben White, Politico

December 28, 2010 04:33 AM EST

(P)olls suggest most Americans believe Obama has handled the titans of Wall Street with an exceedingly light touch. He supported the deeply unpopular $700-billion bank bailout, pushed a financial reform package that stopped short of breaking up the biggest behemoths and, just this month, signed off on tax cuts for the wealthiest and continued low rates on capital gains and dividends.

And, of course, big-time bonuses at bailed-out banks are back, even as average Americans continue to get tossed out of their homes, corporate America has turned in its most profitable quarter in history and the stock market is at a two-year high.

…

Their complaints fell along similar lines: Obama and the White House don’t understand how capital markets work, don’t like people who make a lot of money and relish using Wall Street as a whipping boy to score points with the left.

…

“You would really have to go back to 1934 to find a time when Wall Street was this angry at an administration following a crisis that was largely of Wall Street’s own making,” said Charles Geisst, a financial historian and professor at Manhattan College. “Back then, Wall Street basically went on strike and would not issue bonds for corporations. They stomped their feet like little kids. The same thing is happening now.”

But, as Geisst noted, this is not 1934. Not even close. Big banks are not getting broken up. Nothing Obama has done equates to having created the Securities and Exchange Commission.

…

(W)hat about the fact that “community organizer” Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, rammed through an extension of all the Bush tax cuts over howls from the left and is just as much a card-carrying member of the bohemian bourgeoisie as any Wall Street banker?

…

But Geisst also suggested the shock and disdain is something of a pose, a feint to fight off greater re-regulation.

“Their best defense here has been incredulity,” he said. “Wall Street just pretends they don’t understand what all the fuss is about and can’t believe how they are being talked about and hope that their incredulity will translate into softer treatment, which is exactly what happened here.”

Out of Lehman’s Ashes Wall Street Gets Most of What It Wants

By Christine Harper, Bloomberg News

Dec 28, 2010 12:01 AM ET

The U.S. government, promising to make the system safer, buckled under many of the financial industry’s protests. Lawmakers spurned changes that would wall off deposit-taking banks from riskier trading. They declined to limit the size of lenders or ban any form of derivatives. Higher capital and liquidity requirements agreed to by regulators worldwide have been delayed for years to aid economic recovery.

“We continue to listen to the same people whose errors in judgment were central to the problem,” said John Reed, 71, a former co-chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc., who estimated only 25 percent of needed changes have been enacted. “I’m astounded because we basically dropped the world’s biggest economy because of an error in bank management.”

…

U.S. President Barack Obama was elected in 2008, weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in the largest bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve and government provided unprecedented support to insurance company American International Group Inc. as well as nine of the largest banks. Obama, who raised $15 million on Wall Street, promised that his administration would “crack down on the culture of greed and scheming” that he said led to the financial crisis.

While Obama vowed to change the system, he filled his economic team with people who helped create it.

….

Even when changes were advocated by people who couldn’t be characterized as radical populists, their ideas were dismissed as unrealistic, misinformed, advancing ulterior motives or damaging to U.S. competitiveness.

Such tactics helped bat back suggestions from billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Vice Chairman Charles Munger that regulators ban purchases of so-called naked credit-default swaps — contracts that allow speculators to profit if a debt issuer defaults.

…

A suggestion that banks deemed too big to fail should be broken up or made small enough to fail — an idea backed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King and hedge-fund manager David Einhorn — also failed to win support from U.S. policy makers, as bank executives argued that size alone didn’t make a company risky and that it could be essential for banks to compete.

…

Even before Obama took office in January 2009, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker, an economic adviser to the president-elect, was calling for clear distinctions between banks that take deposits and make loans and those that engage in riskier capital markets businesses. The recommendation, a modern version of Glass-Steagall, was put forward in a report by the Group of 30, an organization of current and former central bankers, financial ministers, economists and financiers whose board Volcker chairs.

…

(I)n areas that weren’t technical, such as bonuses, the financial industry was able to resist tough regulation.

With polls showing strong popular support for limits on pay, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pressed for a tax on banker bonuses and one on financial transactions to deter speculative trading.

Obama didn’t go that far. Instead, the administration appointed Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to review pay for the 100 top executives at firms receiving “exceptional assistance” from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Feinberg ordered cuts at Bank of America, Citigroup and AIG, as well as at two bankrupt car companies and their finance divisions.

…

In a Bloomberg News National Poll conducted Dec. 4 through Dec. 7, 71 percent of Americans said big bonuses should be banned this year at Wall Street firms that took taxpayer bailouts, and 17 percent said bonuses above $400,000 should be subject to a one-time 50 percent tax. Only 7 percent of the respondents said they consider bonuses a reflection of Wall Street’s return to health and an appropriate incentive.

…

Reed, the former Citigroup executive, said he didn’t understand why lawmakers gave so much credit to arguments made by financial-industry participants whose job it is to put the interests of their shareholders above any concern for the safety of the financial system.

“I’m surprised that the people in Washington think that the stockholders are the people that they should protect,” Reed said. “It would seem to me that the people who should be protected are the overall banking system and the many, many, many companies that depend on it.”

And the fact of the matter is that their fraudulent criminal practices DON’T benefit the shareholders whose concerns are routinely ignored and overidden by Boards of Directors composed entirely of cronies of Management.  Shareholder Democracy is a joke.

These thieves don’t care about anyone but themselves.

33rd Kennedy Center- Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman, Bill T. Jones, Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey.  I think I’ll pass.  Throwball- Vikings @ Eagles finally.  New Nova.  No LoDo (and there was much rejoicing).

A good night for movies.

You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it’s me, I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?

• ABC Family– Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Cheaper by the Dozen
• AMC– Back to the Future, Back to the Future Part II
• Disney– Eloise at the Plaza
• Discovery– Dirty Jobs, Auction Kings (premiers)
• ESPN– College Throwball, Champs Sports Bowl: North Carolina State v. West Virginia, Insight Bowl: Iowa v. Missouri
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Minnesota @ Wisconsin, North Carolina @ Rutgers
• ESPN Classic– #89
• FX– Jumper x 2
• Lifetime– Sixteen Candles
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer marathon
• Oxygen– The Wedding Planner x 2
• Sci Fi– Casino Royale (Craig), Serenity
• Speed– Monster Jam (premier)
• Spike– GoodFellas
• Style– The Bridges of Madison County
• TBS– Family Guy marathon, Glory Daze (premier)
• Turner Classic– A Connecticut Yankee, Dr. Bull
• TLC– What Not to Wear x 2 (premiers)
• TNT– Four Brothers
• Toon– Tower Prep (premier)
• USA– Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
• Vs.– Bruins @ Lightning
• VH1– The Temptations

Come a day there won’t be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don’t push me, and I won’t push you. Dong le ma?

Later-

• AMC– Back to the Future Part III, Road House
• Comedy– Beerfest
• FX– The Replacement Killers
• Sci Fi– Equilibrium
• Turner Classic– Doubting Thomas, In Old Kentucky
• USA– Psych (last week’s)

Dave in repeats from 11/23.  Conan in repeats from 11/10.

Let us not, dear friends, forget our dear friends the cuttlefish… flipping glorious little sausages. Pen them up together, and they will devour each other without a second thought… Human nature, in’it? Ooor… fish nature… So yes… we could hold up here, well-provisioned and well-armed, and half of us would be dead within the month! Which seems grim to me any way you slice it! Or… ahh… as my learned colleague so naively suggests, we can release Calypso, and we can pray that she will be merciful… I rather doubt it. Can we, in fact, pretend that she is anything other than a woman scorned, like which fury Hell hath no? We cannot. Res ipsa loquitur, tabula in naufragio, we are left with but one option. I agree with, and I cannot believe the words are coming out of me mouth… Captain Swann. We must fight.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo faces West African ultimatum

by Christophe Koffi, AFP

58 mins ago