Ah Festivus, that holiday for the rest of us.  Break out your Aluminium Poles.  Time for the airing of the grievances of which one constant on my list is the laziness and vapidity of TV programming.

I’m not kidding when I say I consider these pieces a public service.  They take a ton of research (an average Prime Time takes 90 minutes and has 40+ links).

And you have to keep your blog busy and readers distracted.

I’m trying new Tools which will hopefully keep things a little more organized but I’m not expecting much.

It’s a fairly normal Thursday night so we’ll be picking it up at 6 am for early risers and running 24 hours.

As always-

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.

You may notice not a lot from the broadcast and other networks.  That’s because they’re going with regular programming (except for maybe Holiday Episodes) as far as I can tell.  The usual tools are available for broader choices-

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

This edition good until Noon.  Now 8 pm.  Now to 11 pm.  Done until dawn, but get to bed early so Santa can come.

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (TV), Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Film).  We can only hope this is the Last Word from Lawrence O’Donnell in 2010.

When I was your age, television was called books. And this is a special book. It was the book my father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father. And today I’m gonna read it to you.

Has it got any sports in it?

Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…

Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try to stay awake.

Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

• ABC Family– The Santa Clause, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
• AMC– The Princess Bride x 2, Nanny McPhee
• Bravo– Real Housewives marathon (with premier)
• Disney– The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause
• Discovery– Christmas Special (premier), Sr. v. Jr. (this week’s), Oddities (premier)
• ESPN– College Throwball, San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl: Navy v. San Diego State
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Georgetown at Memphis, another game
• ESPN Classic– #89, just in case you want to see it again
• FX– Night at the Museum x 2
• History– Aliens! and Conspiracy Theories (with premiers)
• National Geographic– Nazis!
• Nick– Glenn Martin, DDS x 2 (premiers)
• Sci Fi– The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
• Style– Chasing Liberty
• Turner Classic– The Human Comedy, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mickey Rooney night)
• TNT– Hoopies, Spurs @ Magic, Heat @ Suns
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness)
• USA– Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Bourne Ultimatum
• Vs.– Rocky IV x 2
• VH1– SNL marathon

Later-

• Comedy– The Futurama Holiday Spectacular
• Sci Fi– The Golden Compass
• Turner Classic– Boys Town (more Mickey)
• VH1– The Color of Money

Dave hosts Amanda Peet, Jay Thomas, and Darlene Love.  Jon and Stephen in repeats, 12/13 & 12/14.  Pre-empted next week.  Conan hosts Jason Segel and Reggie Watts.

This ain’t pool. This is for bangers. Straight pool is pool. This is like hand-ball, or cribbage, or something. Straight pool, you gotta be a real surgeon to get ’em, you know? It’s all finesse. Now, everything is nine-ball, ’cause it’s fast, good for T.V., good for a lot of break shots… Oh, well. What the hell. Checkers sells more than chess.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 UN demands halt to Ivory Coast killings

by Dave Clark, AFP

1 hr 14 mins ago

Inspirational adoptions.  Country Music.  Ugh.

A good night to write.

• ABC Family– The Santa Clause, The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (No 700 Club)
• AMC– Open Range
• Bravo– Top Chef marathon (with premier)
• Disney– The Polar Express
• Discovery– Mythbusters marathon (Holiday Special, last week’s Green Hornet, premier)
• ESPN– College Throwball, Maaco Bowl Las Vegas: Boise State v. Utah
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Texas @ Michigan State, Missouri @ Illinois
• Food– Throwdown (premier)
• FX– Alvin and the Chipmunks x 2
• Lifetime– The Christmas Hope
• Nick– Glenn Martin DDS
• Oxygen– You, Me and Dupree x 2
• Turner Classic– True Grit (the ‘I hesitate to call it good’ 1969 version), Rio Lobo (Marion night)
• TNT– Bones marathon
• Travel– Man v. Food marathon (thank goodness, with premier)
• USA– Psych (premier)
• Vs.– Rocky III x 2, Rocky V

Later-

• AMC– Hidalgo
• FX– Someone Like You
• Oxygen– The Skeleton Key
• Sci Fi– The Bone Snatcher
• Spike– Bad Santa
• Turner Classic– McLintock! (more Marion)
• USA– Burn Notice (this week’s), Psych (Instapeat)

Dave hosts Denis Leary and Grace Potter & the Nocturnals.  Jon and Stephen in repeats, 12/7 & 12/13.  Conan hosts Jack Black, Erika Nelson, and Jimmie Vaughan.

Boondocks– The Lovely Ebony Brown

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Ivory Coast: Ouattara camp urges force to oust Gbagbo

by Dave Clark, AFP

1 hr 7 mins ago

In the 3rd and final part of his series on The Title Fraud Smoking Gun (my treatments of Part 1 and Part 2), L. Randall Wray offers a partial explanation of the deterioration of the US Economy that does not, I think, go quite far enough.

The problem is money.

Specifically that the Tax Policy of this country is not sufficiently redistributive to put it in the hands of people (and Governments) who will use it to buy goods and services instead of people who buy fraudulent fictional financial instruments.

Many people think only the Federal Reserve can coin money, but that’s not true.  By using Leverage a pile of money can get magically multipled by limits set only by the credulousness of the market.  Literally ‘What it will bear’.  Recently as much as 30 to 1 has been customary, but there is no theoretical limit actually.

High (some would call them ‘progressive’) Marginal Tax Rates on Businesses and Individuals reduces the perverse incentive to draw out as much cash as you can, wave your magic multiplier wand, and find some kind of Ponzi Pyramid Scheme to get out in front of.

As always, it is DEMAND that is driving Supply and not the other way round.

Anatomy of Mortgage Fraud, Part III: MERS’S Role in Facilitating the Mother of All Frauds

L. Randall Wray, Huffington Post

Posted: December 16, 2010 09:29 AM

In this piece, let us step back and examine the big picture to answer the question: Why did Wall Street create this crisis? For the answer, we have got to go back several decades. I do not want to give a long-winded history lesson, but it is necessary to understand the transformation that has taken place since the 1960s. Back then, the financial system was small, simple, regulated and relatively unimportant. Banks made commercial loans; thrifts made home loans; and Wall Street handled investment finance. Households had jobs and rising wages so they didn’t need to go into debt to finance rising consumption. With robust economic growth, each generation could expect to have roughly twice the living standard of the previous generation.

Things began to change in the 1970s, and especially in the 1980s as growth slowed, as median real wages stopped rising, and as financial institutions were unleashed to expand activities into new areas. At first households coped with stagnant incomes by putting more family members to work (especially women), but gradually they began to rely on debt. Banks created new kinds of credit and gradually expanded their views as to who is creditworthy. I can still remember one conference I attended at which someone from the financial sector proudly announced that the banks had discovered an untapped market for credit cards — the “mentally retarded”. The argument was that this group would be just as safe as college students, since parents would bail them out in order to avoid having their kids’ credit ratings suffer. This was not a joke — it was a business model.

…

Banks became giant one-stop casinos that facilitated every kind of crazy bet. They would make a loan to you, but then simultaneously securitize it to sell-on to an investor plus place a bet that you would default on your loan so that the security would go bad. For a fee, they’d let a hedge fund manager choose the riskiest loans to bundle into a sure-to-fail financial product that they would then sell to their own customers. And then they’d join the hedge fund in betting against their customers. The more loans they made, the more fees they collected; the more bad loans they made, the more bets they would win. The more debt they piled on households, the greater their profits; riskier debt meant even higher fees and more defaults and thus greater wins from gambling. Prospective death was a booming good business for our undertakers.

America became “Bubbleonia” — with a “bubblicious” economy that moved from one bubble and crash to another: A commercial real estate bubble and crash in the 1980s that killed the thrifts; a series of developing country debt bubbles and crashes in the 1980s and 1990s fueled in part by American banks; a US stock market bubble and crash in 1987; the dot-com bubble and crash at the end of the 1990s; and then the US real estate and global commodities markets bubbles and crashes this decade.

Increasingly, the bubbles were managed cooperatively by Wall Street and Washington. Chairman Greenspan and President Clinton made a pact with Robert Rubin’s Wall Street to pump up “new economy” internet stocks through “irrational exuberance”. When that failed, Greenspan extolled the benefits of adjustable rate mortgages, while President Bush hawked the “ownership society”. Wall Street turned America’s residential real estate sector into the world’s biggest casino — $20 trillion worth of property that could serve as the basis for many tens of trillions of dollars of bets. Bernanke promoted the bubble by assuring markets that America was enjoying the “great moderation” — a new era in which stability dominates — and that in any case, the Fed would protect markets in the case of any hiccups.

Title Fraud is just a symptom of the underlying problem with the Economy which is concentration of wealth.

SNL Special, Alec Baldwin, Steve Martin and Justin Timberlake (repeat).

The important thing is the rhythm. Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.

• ABC Family– Miracle on 34th Street (not the good 1947 version), The Polar Express
• AMC– Road House
• Disney– Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas
• Discovery– Dirty Jobs (last week’s Holiday Special and new), Auction Kings (premier)
• ESPN– College Throwball, Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl: Louisville v. Southern Mississippi
• ESPN2– Women’s College Hoopies, Florida State @ Connecticut (Sorry Wooden, #89), College Hoopies, UNLV @ Kansas State
• Food– Cupcake Wars (premier)
• FX– Christmas With the Kranks, Deck the Halls x 2
• Lifetime– Undercover Christmas
• National Geographic– All Jesus, all the time (premiers)
• Nick– Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh, Glenn Martin, DDS (premier)
• Oxygen– The Sing-Off x 2
• Sci Fi– Alice (not as good as Tin Man)
• Speed– Monster Jam
• TBS– Family Guy marathon, Glory Daze (premier)
• Turner Classic– Sunny Side Up, Swing Time
• TLC– What Not To Wear x 2 (premiers)
• TNT– A Christmas Carol
• Toon– Tower Prep x 2 (premiers)
• USA– Gone in Sixty Seconds x 2
• Vs.– Devils @ Caps

Later-

• AMC– Tremors
• Sci Fi– Headless Horseman, Eureka (Holiday Special repeat)
• Turner Classic– The Thin Man, Adam’s Rib

Dave hosts Jamie Foxx and Sofia Vergara.  Jon and Stephen in repeats, 12/8 and 12/9.  Conan hosts Kevin Spacey, Kristen Schaal, and Los Lobos.

Boondocks– The Fund Raiser.

How many drinks have you had?

This will make six Martinis.

All right. Will you bring me five more Martinis, Leo? Line them right up here.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Gbagbo defies UN, insists ‘I am president of Ivory Coast’

by Dave Clark, AFP

12 mins ago

You know, I’m not one of those bloggers who makes my fame out of bashing Republicans.

Don’t get me wrong.  The modern Republican Party is composed of Fascist, Racist, Theocratic Morons and Wall Street Greedheads (also Morons), but it’s so obvious that it’s hardly worth pointing out except in the context of how much the Versailles Village and the Institutional Democratic Party support and cover for them instead of crushing them like these 26% on the amoral idiot end of the Bell Curve deserve.

Today’s context is the unfortunate exposure of the Southern Racism of Haley Barbour (not that he isn’t also a Theocratic Fascist Greedhead)-

The Barbour Of Yazoo City

by Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic

21 Dec 2010 01:24 pm

I’ve got an observation about race, the conservative movement, and its political fortunes: the strange place we find ourselves is that being accused of racism can actually help a Republican candidate these days. Jonathan Chait gets it: “His past is not racist enough to disqualify him, but it is murky enough to spur the liberal media to raise questions. And thus Barbour will be in the position of being the white conservative attacked by liberals for his alleged racism… it will surely make Republicans rally to Barbour.”

…

Over the years, social norms in America have shifted such that being labaled a racist is tremensoulsy damaging to one’s social standing and career prospects. On the whole, that’s a good thing. We ought to abhor racists. But an unintended consequence is that false accusations of racism can be used to cynically accrue power. Compared to actual instances of racism, this sort of thing doesn’t occur very often.

…

Lots of white people fear that they’re going to be wrongly labeled racist, and it provokes the same anxiety experienced when people fear, without particular reason to do so, that they’re going to be attacked by a shark or have their identity stolen or that they’re suffering from the deadly disease they came across on Web M.D.

Umm… what lambert likes to call a ‘Category Error’.

These people ARE RACISTS!

Barbour Mistakes Black for White

by Cynic, The Atlantic

Dec 21 2010, 1:10 PM ET

In 1954, the NAACP determined to bring five test cases to force integration in the Mississippi public schools. Yazoo County exhibited some of the worst disparities in the state, spending $245.55 on every white child, but only $2.92 per black pupil. So the NAACP gathered fifty-three signatures of leading black citizens of Yazoo City, the county seat, on a petition calling for integration.

Their courage was met with outrage. Sixteen of the town’s most prominent men called for a public meeting, to form a White Citizens’ Council and respond to the petition. Several hundred turned out on a hot June night, including journalist Willie Morris, who watched in mute disbelief as the best men of the town outlined their response:

Those petitioners who rented houses would immediately be evicted by their landlords. White grocers would refuse to sell food to any of them. Negro grocers who had signed would no longer get any groceries from the wholesale stores. “Let’s just stomp ’em!” someone shouted from the back, but the chairman said, no, violence would be deplored; this was much the more effective method. Public opinion needed to be mobilized behind the plan right away.

…

The craftsmen could not find work. Those with jobs were fired. So were their spouses. Merchants refused to sell them groceries or supplies. The three black merchants who had signed were cut off by their wholesalers. The grocer had his account closed by the bank. One by one, they took their names off the petition. It did no good. Soon enough, 51 names were deleted from the petition. The other two had fled town before withdrawing.

…

If Barbour wants to praise the good people of Yazoo City for their extraordinary restraint in not employing violence as they hounded from their community those black parents brave enough to demand a decent education for their children; to laud their public disavowal of the local Klan even as they turned a blind eye to its activities; or to extol their grudging cession of the inevitability of court-ordered integration after fifteen years of stalling, for its absence of lynchings or riots, that’s his prerogative. For the rest of us, though, Yazoo City should serve as a poignant reminder that the civil rights struggle really was “that bad.”

Update: And about the Versailles Villagers, no better expression of it than this-

Haley Barbour: How he hurt himself (and how he can come back)

By Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post

Posted at 1:27 PM ET, 12/21/2010

While all candidates — including Barbour — will dismiss the importance of “buzz” among the Washington insider crowd, it does matter. The presidential race is like a glacier — most of it moves under the surface, away from the eyes of the average voter. Unless Barbour can get out from under the race storyline, he might not ever make it to the point where voters have a chance to assess him or, if he does make it, he could be badly damaged enough that voters will dismiss his candidacy out of hand.

(A sidebar: Barbour’s good relationships with the press have always been chalked up as a positive for a potential presidential bid. But, Barbour’s ease with the press also creates situations like the one in the Weekly Standard piece — a breeziness about a serious issue that plays far less well in print than it might in casual conversation. Barbour has to realize that his relations with the press will change fundamentally now that he is a potential presidential candidate and adjust accordingly.)