Monday Night Throwball?!!  WTF!?  At least these are 2 teams that are a passing distraction to me (Jets/Giants).  I’d liveblog them all, but looking at the schedule there are only 6 games I have even a minor interest in-

And by minor, I mean Jets/Patriots is hardly going to keep me up any longer than my Mom, Emily, who although a huge Patriots fan goes to bed at 9 pm.

Seriously.

The door is open for anyone who wants to step up.

• AMC– Nanny McPhee, last night’s Rubicon
• ABC Family– Secret Life of the American Teenager (premier, for Caribou Barbie)
• FX– The Devil Wears Prada (so does the Pope)
• History– Pawn Stars, American Pickers (Season Premier)
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– The Mortal Storm, The Tarnished Angels
• Discovery– Ultimate Car Build-Off (Spy Cars, premier)
• TNT– The Closer (last week and premier)
• Toon– Adventure Time With Finn & Jake, Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Total Drama World Tour, Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated (mostly premiers)
• Spike– Blade: Trinity
• Travel– Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (premier)
• TLC– Cake Boss

Later-

• AMC– Last night’s Mad Men, Nanny McPhee again
• FX– The Girl Next Door
• Turner Classics– Airplane! (why I was thinking about The Spinning News)

Dave is still in repeats.  Jon has Emma Thompson, Stephen Richard Clarke and John Fetterman.  Alton does Trout.  What Goes Down Must Come Up.

I think you’re the greatest, but my dad says you don’t work hard enough on defense. And he says that lots of times, you don’t even run down court. And that you don’t really try… except during the playoffs.

The hell I don’t. LISTEN KID. I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Technical twists delay timing of BP final well kill

By Kristen Hays and Anna Driver, Reuters

27 mins ago

“The thing a bigot most desires is the ability to express their bigotry in public and be applauded.”—  ek hornbeck

Islam in Two Americas

By ROSS DOUTHAT, The New York Times

Published: August 15, 2010

There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims.

But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora – and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.

Unmotherfucking believable.

We are governed by motherfucking idiots.

Or amoral greedheads, take your pick; but even the Nazi supporting Henry Ford understood you have to have someone to sell cars to.

Except we don’t sell cars anymore.  What we sell is Ponzi scams, pyramid schemes, and multi-level marketing and all the shouters on CNBC think they got in at the top, but they’re really just bottom feeders like the rest of us.

Perhaps the coming Hindenberg Crash will convince them.

Or maybe they really are stupid.

Forget a Double Dip. We’re Still in One Long Big Dipper.

Robert Reich

Saturday, August 14, 2010

The central problem is lack of demand – and that’s what has to be tackled.

Three of the four sources of demand have stopped working. (1) Consumers can’t and won’t buy because they’re still under a huge debt load, can’t get more credit, are afraid of losing their jobs (or already have), depend on two wage earners at least one of whom is working part-time and pulling in less, or have to save. (2) Businesses won’t invest and spend on creating more jobs if they don’t see consumers willing to buy more. (3) Exports are stalled because the dollar is so high they cost too much, much of the rest of the world is still struggling with recession, and American firms can make things for sale abroad more cheaply abroad.

That leaves only one remaining source of demand – government. We need a giant jobs program to hire people and put money in their pockets that they’ll spend and thereby create more jobs. Put ideology aside and recognize this fact. If it makes you more comfortable call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again.

…

If we let the deficit hawks and government haters dominate this debate, as they have, the Big Dipper will continue for years. The Great Depression lasted twelve.

Attacking Social Security

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: August 15, 2010

So where do claims of crisis come from? To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count – because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget – while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable – because hey, the program has to stand on its own.

It would be easy to dismiss this bait-and-switch as obvious nonsense, except for one thing: many influential people – including Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the president’s deficit commission – are peddling this nonsense.

…

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.

1 China overshadows Japan economy as growth slows

by David Watkins, AFP

52 mins ago

D-d-d-d-d-Dora.  If I’ve not properly transcribed the stuttering I apologize for my horrible human hands.  As with Phineas and Ferb the format is fairly rigid, like a poem.  I can sing the Map Song and the Back Pack Song.  I know how to stop Swiper from swiping.

“Swiper! No Swiping!”

Louder!

“Swiper! No Swiping!”

Oh, man!

We did it!  What part did you like best?  I liked that part too.

• AMC– Rubicon, Mad Men (premiers)
• ESPN– Phillies @ Mets
• ABC Family– Remember the Titans
• Food– Next Food Network Star (last week’s and new), The Great Food Truck Race (Series Premier)
• History– Top Shot (Season Finale)
• Nick– Dora 10th Anniversary
• SciFi– Eragon
• TBS– Legally Blonde
• Turner Classics– The Secret Garden, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
• Discovery– Mythbusters Retrospective
• Toon– Unnatural History, Childrens Hospital, Delocated
• USA– Burn Notice marathon
• Spike– No Country for Old Men
• FX– X2: X-Men United

Later-

Later.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Obama swims in Gulf, says beaches open for business

By Ross Colvin, Reuters

Sun Aug 15, 6:57 am ET

229 Stories served.  32 per day.

This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time.  It should be a Sunday morning feature.

• Sunday 8/8
• Monday 8/9
• Tuesday 8/10
• Wednesday 8/11
• Thursday 8/12
• Friday 8/13
• Saturday 8/14

Small world.  Gary Burghoff is from Bristol.  I’ve been many times and there are parts of it I don’t know at all.  When you get off I-84 at Exit 31 you make a right (if you’re coming from Hartford) and about the first things you see are ESPN’s antenna farm and the Otis Elevator test building.  Turn left if you want to visit Lake Compounce, North America’s oldest continually operating amusement park (sure, some years it was just the one day, but it’s the thought that counts).

To get to the A. Bartlett Giamatti Center you drive on Rt. 229 for what seems like a year until you get to Rt. 6.  It’s really much easier from Exit 38, but then you would miss the sights.  Good luck to the Fairfield All-Stars.

• Spike– The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
• A&E– The Perfect Storm
• AMC– The Cowboys (Marion Morrison)
• Bravo– The 40-Year-Old Virgin x 2 (who do you think should replace Steve Carell)
• ESPN– Little League Baseball, New England Regional Finals and Northwest Regional Finals
• Food– Triple D marathon
• History– Top Shot marathon (finale tomorrow)
• FX– Ghost Rider
• Oxygen– Juno
• Lifetime– Something’s Gotta Give
• SciFi– Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (not even as good as you think)
• Turner Classic– Leave Her to Heaven, Dragonwyck (Gene Tierney night)
• TNT– Ocean’s Eleven

Later-

• Spike– Aliens
• AMC–The Shootist (Marion’s finale)
• TBS– Drumline (I played in a Marching Band, what can I say?)
• Turner Classic– That Wonderful Urge
• TNT– Sahara

Adult Swim has Boondocks, The Story of Catcher Freeman and The Color Ruckus.  No Mobile Armored Riot Police, instead Bleach movies Memories of Nobody and The DiamondDust Rebellion.  I’m not into Bleach so much as I figure I have a large enough obscure Japanese Anime addiction.

I would like to say a few words about Aliens.  It rocks.

Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Hong Kong film-makers aim to be first in 3D porn

by Peter Brieger, AFP

Sat Aug 14, 2:31 am ET

No Boys.  Only the one crack at Keith and Rachel because it’s all Maricopa County and Joe Arpaio all the time on MSNBC during the weekend.

AMC has M*A*S*H x 2, the movie with all the minor characters who got cut from the TV Series like the Painless Pole (without whom the ‘Suicide is Painless‘ theme song doesn’t make much sense) and Spearchucker Jones and Duke (who’s absence, since he’s the second lead while Trapper John McIntyre only makes his appearance halfway through, is pretty puzzling).  Only Gary Burghoff is the same.

Yes, I did read all 3 novels by Rchard Hooker.  Why do you ask?

• ESPN– Little League Baseball, Southeast Region Final
• Oxygen– Monster-in-Law which, although it has J-Lo, also has Jane Fonda
• SciFi– Eureka’s Warehouse 13 crossover episode (imaginatively titled Crossing Over).
  
  Oh, and premiers of that and Haven.
• TBS– Diary of a Mad Black Woman (why Tyler Perry is famous)
• Turner Classic– The Boy with Green Hair, The Set-Up (Robert Ryan night)
• Discovery– Odd Couple survival night
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon
• TNT– A Few Good Men
• Toon– Ben 10 and Generator Rex premiers, Clone Wars bounty hunter episodes

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinburg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

Later-

Alton has all you’d ever want to know about pressure-cooking broth.  Toon has new Children’s Hospital (new link), Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman (memorable), and Look Around You does Sports (Darts and Fencing become ‘Dencing’, though I can perhaps think of another fusion).

• FX– Bedazzled
• Oxygen– Shall We Dance? (more J-Lo, but also Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon)
• TBS– The Truman Show (prescient and disturbing)
• TNT– The Fugitive
• USA– Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
• Disney– Summer Belongs To You

There will come a time when you have a chance to do the right thing.

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