“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Ms. Amanpour will speak to some of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords‘ friends and colleagues including Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, and the chair or the New Democratic Coalition Rep. Jeff Crowley. Plus, up-to-the-minute reports from ABC News’ team of correspondents from Tucson, Arizona to Washington, DC. Also, a roundtable discussion with George Will, Donna Brazile and Freedom Works Chairman Dick Armey.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer will also discuss the latest on the Tucson shootings with his guests Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ). Also reporting will be CBS News’ Nancy Cordes, Jan Crawford and Bob Orr

The Chris Matthews Show: This weeks panel will be Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent, John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent, Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent and Alex Wagner, Politics Daily White House Correspondent

Meet the Press with David Gregory: There will be more on the latest on the Arizona shootings, plus an exclusive interview with Sen. Harry Reid

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: The brazen shooting of a U.S. congresswoman. A nine-year-old girl and a federal judge are among the six dead. One dozen more are wounded. A suspect is in custody as a country searches for answers.

We’ll bring you the very latest from Tucson, Arizona from CNN’s full spate of resources.

We’ll also discuss the still developing story with our previously booked guests: Sens. Lamar Alexander, Dick Durbin and Mike Lee; and two former White House counselors, Ed Gillespie and John Podesta.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: George Clooney talks to Fareed from South Sudan. Residents there will vote — starting on Sunday — on whether to become an independent nation. Clooney and activist John Prendergast are worried the referendum could bring war back to this nation where war never seems to end. Their novel solution to avoid war and mass murder involves satellite surveillance. Tune in and hear them explain how they hope to become the “anti-genocide paparazzi”.

Also, what does 2011 hold? Will it be better than 2010? Fareed gives you his “take” on the New Year.

Then, an all-star GPS panel featuring CNN host Eliot Spitzer, David Remnick of the New Yorker, Wall Street Journalist columnist Bret Stephens, and Chrystia Freeland of Reuters, offer their own “takes” on 2011 — from DC politics to world politics, from dollars and cents to war and peace.

Next up, what in the world? A new kind of cold front is emerging…in Baghdad.

Then, peril in Pakistan. A progressive politician killed in cold blood. What effect will the assassination have on the future of not only that country, but American efforts in the region? Fareed speaks to one of Pakistan’s leading journalists, who was also a key associate of the slain governor.

And finally a last look at how much it might cost to buy a big white house in Washington D.C. Prices are dropping!

Marty Kaplan: The “Lock and Load” Rhetoric of American Politics Isn’t Just a Metaphor

I’m not saying that putting a bullseye on Arizona Democrat Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ congressional race – as Sarah Palin did – was an explicit or intentional invitation to violence. Nor am I saying that the “Get on Target for Victory” events held by the guy Giffords beat – “Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly” – was the reason her assassin went after her. This tragedy is still unfolding, and the questions of motive and incitement will be argued about for a long time to come.

But I am saying that the “lock and load”/”take up your arms” rhetoric of American politics isn’t just an overheated metaphor. For years, the language of sports has dominated political journalism, and discourse about hardball and the horserace and the rest of the macho athletic lexicon has been a factor in the trivialization of our public sphere. This has helped dumb down democracy, making a serious national discussion about anything important too wonky for words.

The “second amendment solution,” though, does something worse than make politics a branch of entertainment. It makes it a blood sport. I know politics ain’t beanbag. But words have consequences, rhetoric shapes reality, and much as we like to believe that we are creatures of reason, there is something about our species’ limbic system and lizard brainstems that makes us susceptible to irrational fantasies.

Frank Rich: Let Obama’s Reagan Revolution Begin

Barack Obama’s Christmas resurrection was so miraculous that even a birther or two may start believing the guy is a Christian.  

Nothing captured the president’s sudden reversal of fortune more vividly than the Linda Blair-like head spin of the conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, who pronounced the Obama agenda “dead” on Fox News on Nov. 3 only to lead the bipartisan media hordes anointing him “the new comeback kid” six weeks later. Last week Obama’s Gallup job approval rating fleetingly hit 50 percent for the first time in eight months. Even in post-shellacking mid-December, polls found that Americans still trusted him more than Washington’s Republican leaders to fix the nation’s ills – health care included, according to the ABC News-Washington Post survey on that question.

As the do-something lame-duck Congress’s triumphs were toted up, the White House pointedly floated the news that the president was meeting with Reagan administration veterans (David Gergen, Ken Duberstein) and taking Lou Cannon’s authoritative biography “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime” on vacation. Reagan, of course, was also pummeled (though a bit less so) in his maiden midterms of 1982, then carried 49 states in his 1984 re-election landslide. In January 1983, Reagan’s approval rating was much worse than Obama’s – 35 percent. So was the unemployment rate (10.4 percent vs. our current 9.4 percent) as Americans struggled to recover from what was then the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.

John Nichols: You Say Sarah Palin’s Just Not Extreme Enough? How About Michele Bachmann for President?

It is no secret that the most enthusiastic encouragement of a presidential bid by Sarah Palin comes from the Obama White House. No Republican with her level of name recognition polls worse than Palin in a head-to-head race with the Democratic president. Indeed, fresh surveys by Public Policy Polling suggest that in much of the country Palin “would would lose by the biggest margin of any Republican Presidential nominee since Barry Goldwater.”

This, of course, only makes Palin more appealing to the true believers on the Republican right.

But what if the former governor of Alaska decides she would rather peddle ghostwritten books and plot a career as the Arctic Oprah?

Where could conservative crackpots turn? Would the whacked-out right be left without a presidential prospect of its own?

Not necessarily.

Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, the wild-eyed Minnesotan who is so extreme that members of the House Republican Caucus rejected her for a leadership position in the new Congress, makes the GOP’s 2008 vice presidential nominee look like a mainstream moderate. And Bachmann is dramatically more ambitious than the Grizzly Grandma.

To Bad Those Who Incite Will Never Take Responsibility  



In Attack’s Wake, Political Repercussions

TUCSON – Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 18 others were shot Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents.

Six of the victims died, among them John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl, the Pima County sheriff, Clarence W. Dupnik, said.

Ms. Giffords, 40, whom the authorities called the target of the attack, was said to be in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons.

Clip Clip Clip  

 

Young Chinese go crazy for shopping discount coupons

Ding Can is obsessed with bargains. Her purse is crammed with more than 30 discount cards and dozens of coupons. Her apartment is packed with freebies, from cosmetic samples to key chains. She often lines up before dawn for tickets to discounted movies.

Her yen for savings isn’t out of necessity. The software testing engineer, 32, is relatively well off. She says, simply, “I’ve never come across a good deal I didn’t like.” More than a craze, discount shopping is becoming a way of life for young Chinese. Known as the “coupon generation”, they are changing the way business is done in the world’s second largest economy.

A New Nation To Be Born    



Southern Sudan votes on independence



The week-long vote is widely expected to result in Africa’s largest country being split in two.

As people flocked to the polls, South Sudanese leader Salva Kiir said: “This is an historic moment the people of Southern Sudan have been waiting for.”

The poll was agreed as part of the 2005 peace dead which ended the two-decade north-south civil war.

The leaders of the mainly Muslim north have promised to allow the potential new country, with its mainly Christian population, to secede peacefully.

The Sky Is Falling  



Dead birds, fish kills prompt doomsday theories, but scientists say they’re natural

It’s death on a wide scale, biblical-type stuff: Millions of spot fish died last week in the Chesapeake Bay; red-winged blackbirds tumbled from the skies by the thousands in Arkansas and Kentucky over the holidays; and tens of thousands of pogies, drum fish, crab and shrimp went belly up in the summer in a Louisiana bayou.

For an explanation of these mysterious events, some have turned to Scripture or to the Mayan calendar, which suggests the world will end in 2012. But wildlife experts say these massive wildlife kills were not the result of a man-made disaster or a spooky sign of the apocalypse.

She Was A Tiny Dacner  

 

‘Baby of hope’ shot dead by gunman

Nine-year-old Tuscon girl Christina Taylor Green was fatally shot after her neighbours invited her to go along to a political meeting.

Christina was one of six people killed when a man opened fire at US congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s meeting in Tuscon, Arizona.

The Arizona Republic website reported that a neighbour asked if Christina along to the event because she thought she would enjoy it her uncle Greg Segalini said.

Stand By Your Press Repression  



Zimbabwe stands by media fees policy

Foreign media outlets are now required to pay $6 000 to register in the country, up from $2 500. Zimbabwean journalists working for the foreign press need to pay an accreditation fee of $400 — up from $100.

‘Shocking and retributive’

The deadline for payment was Friday, but Godfrey Majonga, who heads the government-appointed Zimbabwe Media Commission, said there might be some leeway in the payment date.

“We will not reduce the fees. Probably we will extend the period a little,” he said, noting that the government wants to promote the media industry in Zimbabwe.

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In rummaging around the bogosphere, I passed through a diary by Julie Gulden at Daily Kos venting her feelings about the shootings in Tuscon. Ms. Gulden lamented that not one Republican or Tea Partier condemned the “lock and load” rhetoric that may have fueled a young man to commit this horrendous crime and called for at least one of them to stand up and say, “this is just wrong”.

In it she linked to an Op-Ed from New York Times columnist Frank Rich from February 27, 2010 that more accurately predicted that tragic event that cost the lives of six people that included a nine year old born on 9/11 and a Federal Judge, put a Congresswoman in the fight for her life and injured eleven others.

Mr. Rich’s column was about the murder/suicide crash into an Austin, TX IRS building by a deranged tax payer and the lack of condemnation from Republicans and the right wing.

No one knows what history will make of the present – least of all journalists, who can at best write history’s sloppy first draft. But if I were to place an incautious bet on which political event will prove the most significant of February 2010, I wouldn’t choose the kabuki health care summit that generated all the ink and 24/7 cable chatter in Washington. I’d put my money instead on the murder-suicide of Andrew Joseph Stack III, the tax protester who flew a plane into an office building housing Internal Revenue Service employees in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 18. It was a flare with the dark afterlife of an omen.

What made that kamikaze mission eventful was less the deranged act itself than the curious reaction of politicians on the right who gave it a pass – or, worse, flirted with condoning it.

(emphasis mine)

And what did prominent Republicans say? Iowa Republican Rep Steve King said “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.”

Rich goes on to point out that the new “grass roots” leadership of the right that includes Palin, Beck, and Ron Paul

have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism.

(emphasis mine)

It has now amped up from flying a plane into a building, killing a Viet Nam veteran that worked there, to mass shooting that most likely targeted a congresswoman.

Where are the Republicans to condemn the rhetoric that calls for target practice with machine guns to gear up for an election, or maps that use target to locate opponents or the calls for the “second amendment solution”?  A lot of words without meaning.

Who could have known?

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik

Transcript below the fold

Finally tonight, as promised, a Special Comment on the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. We need to put the guns down. Just as importantly we need to put the gun metaphors away and permanently.

Left, right, middle – politicians and citizens – sane and insane. This morning in Arizona, this age in which this country would accept  “targeting” of political opponents and putting bullseyes over their faces and of the dangerous blurring between political rallies and gun shows, ended.

This morning in Arizona, this time of the ever-escalating, borderline-ecstatic invocation of violence in fact or in fantasy in our political discourse, closed. It is essential tonight not to demand revenge, but to demand justice; to insist not upon payback against those politicians and commentators who have so irresponsibly brought us to this time of domestic terrorism, but to work to change the minds of them and their supporters – or if those minds tonight are too closed, or if those minds tonight are too unmoved, or if those minds tonight are too triumphant, to make sure by peaceful means that those politicians and commentators and supporters have no further place in our system of government.

If Sarah Palin, whose website put and today scrubbed bullseye targets on 20 Representatives including Gabby Giffords, does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics – she must be repudiated by the members of her own party, and if they fail to do so, each one of them must be judged to have silently defended this tactic that today proved so awfully foretelling, and they must in turn be dismissed by the responsible members of their own party.

If Jesse Kelly, whose campaign against Congresswoman Giffords included an event in which he encouraged his supporters to join him firing machine guns, does not repudiate this, and does not admit that even if it was solely indirectly, or solely coincidentally, it contributed to the black cloud of violence that has envellopped our politics, he must be repudiated by Arizona’s Republican Party.

If Congressman Allen West, who during his successful campaign told his supporters that they should make his opponent afraid to come out of his home, does not repudiate those remarks and all other suggestions of violence and forced fear, he should be repudiated by his constituents and the Republican Congressional Caucus.

If Sharron Angle, who spoke of “Second Amendment solutions,” does not repudiate that remark and urge her supporters to think anew of the terrible reality of what her words implied, she must be repudiated by her supporters in Nevada.

If the Tea Party leaders who took out of context a Jefferson quote about blood and tyranny and the tree of liberty do not understand – do not understand tonight, now what that really means, and these leaders do not tell their followers to abhor violence and all threat of violence, then those Tea Party leaders must be repudiated by the Republican Party.

If Glenn Beck, who obsesses nearly as strangely as Mr. Loughner did about gold and debt and who wistfully joked about killing Michael Moore, and Bill O’Reilly, who blithely repeated “Tiller the Killer” until the phrase was burned into the minds of his viewers, do not begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies for ever turning to the death-fantasies and the dreams of bloodlust, for ever having provided just the oxygen to those deep in madness to whom violence is an acceptable solution, then those commentators and the others must be repudiated by their viewers, and by all politicians, and by sponsors, and by the networks that employ them.

And if those of us considered to be “on the left” do not re-dedicate ourselves to our vigilance to eliminate all our own suggestions of violence – how ever inadvertent they might have been then we too deserve the repudiation of the more sober and peaceful of our politicians and our viewers and our networks.

Here, once, in a clumsy metaphor, I made such an unintended statement about the candidacy of then-Senator Clinton. It sounded as if it was a call to physical violence. It was wrong, then. It is even more wrong tonight. I apologize for it again, and I urge politicians and commentators and citizens of every political conviction to use my comment as a means to recognize the insidiousness of violent imagery, that if it can go so easily slip into the comments of one as opposed to violence as me, how easily, how pervasively, how disastrously can it slip into the already-violent or deranged mind?

For tonight we stand at one of the clichéd crossroads of American history. Even if the alleged terrorist Jared Lee Loughner was merely shooting into a political crowd because he wanted to shoot into a political crowd, even if he somehow was unaware who was in the crowd, we have nevertheless  for years been building up to a moment like this.

Assume the details are coincidence. The violence is not. The rhetoric has devolved and descended, past the ugly and past the threatening and past the fantastic and into the imminently murderous.

We will not return to the 1850s, when a pro-slavery Congressman nearly beat to death an anti-slavery Senator; when an anti-slavery madman cut to death with broadswords pro-slavery advocates.

We will not return to the 1960s, when with rationalizations of an insane desire for fame, or of hatred, or of political opposition, a President was assassinated and an ultra-Conservative would-be president was paralyzed, and a leader of peace was murdered on a balcony.

We will not.

Because tonight, what Mrs. Palin, and what Mr. Kelly, and what Congressman West, and what Ms. Angle, and what Mr. Beck, and what Mr. O’Reilly, and what you and I must understand, was that the man who fired today did not fire at a Democratic Congresswoman and her supporters.

He was not just a mad-man incited by a thousand daily temptations by slightly less-mad-men to do things they would not rationally condone.

He fired today into our liberty and our rights to live and to agree or disagree in safety and in freedom from fear that our support or opposition will cost us our lives or our health or our sense of safety. The bullseye might just as well have been on Mrs. Palin, or Mr. Kelly, or you, or me. The wrong, the horror, would have been – could still be just as real and just as unacceptable.

At a time of such urgency and impact, we as Americans – conservative or liberal – should pour our hearts and souls into politics. We should not – none of us, not Gabby Giffords and not any Conservative – ever have to pour our blood. And every politician and commentator who hints otherwise, or worse still stays silent now, should have no place in our political system, and should be denied that place, not by violence, but by being shunned and ignored.

It is a simple pledge, it is to the point, and it is essential that every American politician and commentator and activist and partisan take it and take it now, I say it first, and freely:

Violence, or the threat of violence, has no place in our Democracy, and I apologize for and repudiate any act or any thing in my past that may have even inadvertently encouraged violence. Because for whatever else each of us may be, we all are Americans

Well of course the big news is Throwball which will get bumped in due course, but if you’re looking for alternate programming you might start with Austin City Limits (premier).

Excuse me. Everyone, I have a brief announcement to make. Jesus was black, Ronald Reagan was the devil, and the government is lying about 9/11. Thank you for your time and good night.

• ABC Family– Aladdin, Cheaper by the Dozen
• AMC– True Grit (the old one, it’s hard to call it better)
• Bravo– House marathon
• Discovery– Mythbusters marathon
• E!– The Princess Diaries
• Food– Iron Chef America marathon
• FX– Jumper
• History– Conspiracy Theories and Aliens! (evidently right wing JFK slime fests don’t meet their exacting standards of truthiness)
• Lifetime– The Boy She Met Online, The Craigslist Killer
• Nick– Big Time Rush, Victorious (premiers), House of Anubis (Series Premier repeat)
• Oxygen– Pretty Woman x 2
• Sci Fi– FeardotCom, Ghost Ship
• Spike– The Exorcist, Hannibal Rising
• TBS– Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Legally Blonde
• Turner Classic– Road to Morocco, The Prince and the Showgirl
• TNT– Gumped, A Time to Kill
• Toon– Jungle 2 Jungle
• USA– Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Street Kings
• Vs.– Bull Riding

Later-

• AMC– El Dorado
• Sci Fi– Silent Hill, Ghost Voyage
• Spike– The Hills Have Eyes
• TBS– Bring It On: In It to Win It
• Turner Classic– The Swan, Mrs. Brown (a little recent for Turner Classic)
• TNT– Lakeview Terrace
• USA– Shoot ‘Em Up
• VH!– Take the Lead, Shall We Dance

SNL– Jim Carrey and the Black Keys (premier).

Boondocks– Garden Party (Series Premier repeat), Granddad’s Fight

GitS: SAC 2nd Gig– Transparent (Episode 18), Chain Reaction (Episode 19)

How many times have I told you you bet’ not even dream of tellin’ white folk the truth? You understand me? Shoot… makin’ white people riot. You better learn how to lie like me. I’m gonna find me a white man and lie to him right now!

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 South Sudan leader wants ‘coexistence’ with north

by Steve Kirby, AFP

1 hr 2 mins ago

2 Sadr calls on Iraqis to resist US ‘occupiers’

by Hassan Abdul Zahra, AFP

Sat Jan 8, 11:18 am ET

3 Global fears rise over German meat

by Frederic Happe, AFP

2 hrs 3 mins ago

4 Renault says target of international spy ring

by Alix Rickjaert, AFP

Sat Jan 8, 1:15 pm ET

5 Robots massage, clean, and amuse at CES

by Glenn Chapman, AFP

Sat Jan 8, 12:02 pm ET

6 US probe targets WikiLeaks Twitter accounts

by Rita Devlin Marier, AFP

Sat Jan 8, 12:57 pm ET

7 Sadr urges Iraqis to oppose U.S.

By Muhanad Mohammed and Khaled Farhan, Reuters

Sat Jan 8, 11:00 am ET

8 U.S. orders Twitter to hand over WikiLeaks records

By Anthony Boadle, Reuters

Sat Jan 8, 1:51 pm ET

9 Jobs growth disappoints, but jobless rate falls

By Lucia Mutikani, Reuters

Fri Jan 7, 4:57 pm ET

10 Six killed in Southern Sudan clashes before referendum

By Jason Benham and Jeremy Clarke, Reuters

2 hrs 12 mins ago

11 WikiLeaks subpoenas spill out into public realm

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER and PETE YOST, Associated Press

1 hr 2 mins ago

12 New, big challenges confront Obama the candidate

By LIZ “Sprinkles” SIDOTI, AP National Political Writer

Sat Jan 8, 10:27 am ET

13 At least 9 die in S.Sudan attacks ahead of vote

By MAGGIE FICK and JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press

1 hr 44 mins ago

14 George Clooney uses Hollywood starpower in S.Sudan

By JASON STRAZIUSO and MAGGIE FICK, Associated Press

Sat Jan 8, 12:31 pm ET

15 Al-Sadr hammers anti-US message in 1st Iraq speech

By REBECCA SANTANA, Associated Press

21 mins ago

16 Fiery package in DC triggers memories of anthrax

By BRETT ZONGKER, Associated Press

17 mins ago

17 Report: US to increase help for Pakistan

Associated Press

Sat Jan 8, 1:47 pm ET

18 History network pulls plug on Kennedy project

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

Sat Jan 8, 1:26 pm ET

19 Gates tries to improve military ties with China

By ANNE GEARAN, AP National Security Writer Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer – Sat Jan 8, 3:22 am ET

20 Tablets crowd gadget show, chasing iPad’s tail

By RACHEL METZ, AP Technology Writer

Sat Jan 8, 2:25 am ET

21 House takes symbolic step to repeal health law

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press

Sat Jan 8, 2:25 am ET

22 US says too much fluoride causing splotchy teeth

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

Fri Jan 7, 10:18 pm ET

23 Court rules against banks in pivotal mortgage case

By DENISE LAVOIE and MICHELLE CONLIN, Associated Press

Fri Jan 7, 10:18 pm ET

24 NH farmer is folk hero for gun rights advocates

By LYNNE TUOHY, Associated Press

2 hrs 32 mins ago

25 Guns in kids’ bedrooms? Ohio hunting town approves

By MEGHAN BARR, Associated Press

2 hrs 36 mins ago

26 San Fran mayor post would be coup for Asian pols

By ROBIN HINDERY, Associated Press

Sat Jan 8, 2:33 pm ET

27 For minorities, new ‘digital divide’ seen

By JESSE WASHINGTON, AP National Writer

Sat Jan 8, 2:32 pm ET

28 AP Interview: New Calif. AG breaks barriers

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press

Sat Jan 8, 12:30 pm ET

29 Linguists vote ‘app’ Word of the Year

By JOE MANDAK, Associated Press

Fri Jan 7, 8:34 pm ET

30 101st Airborne begins returning after deadly tour

By KRISTIN M. HALL, Associated Press

Fri Jan 7, 8:19 pm ET

31 Texas panel re-examines arson execution case

By MICHAEL GRACZYK, Associated Press

Fri Jan 7, 7:29 pm ET

Today’s games are both on NBC and represent the end of this season’s Throwball schedule for them.  The early game at 4:30 pm pits the Who ‘Dats @ Seahawks, the late one at 8 pm features the Jets @ Bolts.

Now since I don’t care much about Throwball (the season is half over by the time the Series is), I make my post season picks based purely on sentimentality and loathing.  Take the Who ‘Dats, they had another tough year down on the bayou what with BP spewing up Billions of Barrels of Crude through a combination of incompetence and greed and the Obama administration is still busily covering it up, so I’m rooting for them.

Sorry Seahawks.  Have a Grande Mocha Latte on me (I’ll have a double Redeye, black as my soul).

As for loathing, there’s no easier team to hate than the Bolts.  Over Irsay?  I don’t think I’ll ever get over Irsay, Elaine.  The Jets also have the virtue of playing in the Tri-State Area which appeals to my inner Doofenschmirtz.

This is a live blog (for both games) which means I’ll kinda sorta be paying attention while I’m actually doing something else entirely and if I do impart some useful information you can console yourself with the knowledge that it’s just an accident.

OFFICIAL OVERSIGHT

A woman in Fukuoka sued Google after she discovered that the company’s Street View service showed a photo of her underwear hanging on the veranda.

LDP lawmaker Hiroshi Nagai found himself in hot water after ordering Prince Akishino and his wife to sit down during a ceremony marking the 120th anniversary of the opening of the Diet.

It was reported that a fire sergeant in Hiroshima had been driving emergency vehicles for the past 14 years even though he didn’t have a driver’s license.

The mayor of Utazu in Kagawa Prefecture was rebuffed in his plan to work for the entire year without a salary. Instead, the city council offered to halve his pay for the next two years.

A junior high school teacher in Aomori Prefecture was in trouble with the education board after posting a list of “foolish” students in the school corridor. Then doing it again.

Stats

$2.2 billion

Annual amount Japan will pay to host US troops through fiscal 2016

$50,000

Price of the winning bid at an auction in Doha, Qatar, for a work of Islamic calligraphy by a Japanese art professor

29

Rank of Japan’s national soccer team in FIFA’s final 2010 standings

43

Rank of Japan in 2009

MOMMY’S LITTLE BOYS

A survey by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research found that a whopping 79.4 percent of Japanese men aged 20-24 still live with their parents.

For guys aged 25-29, the figure was 64.2 percent; for 30-34-year-olds, 47.9 percent; and for men aged 35-39, 41.6 percent still live with their mommies and daddies.

After the resort town of Shibu Onsen in Nagano “remodeled” itself to look like Yukumo Village from the videogame Monster Hunter Portable 3rd, a year-end holiday stay plan sold out in just ten minutes.

Headline of the Week: “Saitama Geeks Freak After ‘Otaku’ Matchmaking Party Deluged by Applicants” (via Kyodo)

Runner-up: “Lovelorn Lasses Dress their Futon for Success in Love

We Have A Leader

Who’s A Moron

Never Sleep

At The Public Bath

The Key To This

Is The Camera  

Film by 14-year-old director from Okinawa to hit cinemas



Saturday 08th January    

A film directed by a 14-year-old boy has gained such popularity in his native Okinawa Prefecture that it will be commercially screened at theaters on the mainland beginning with three cinemas in Tokyo and Yokohama this weekend.

The feature film titled ”Yagi no Boken” (adventure of a goat) by Ryugo Nakamura, a third-year student at Okinawa Higashi Junior High School in Okinawa City, has drawn 40,000 viewers during screenings at community centers in the prefecture last year, leading to the upcoming theatrical release.

The film depicts lives of local boys and other people in the Yambaru area in the northern part of Okinawa Island through the escape of a goat kept for food.

Language teachers to go to U.S. for exchanges



Kyodo News Saturday, Jan. 8, 2011

Japan will beef up people-to-people exchanges with the United States this year by dispatching young teachers of the Japanese language and English to the country, government officials said Friday.

Tokyo will launch new programs to send those teachers in the fiscal year starting in April amid concerns that bilateral ties could weaken with declines in the number of Japanese students enrolled at U.S. universities and cuts in the Japanese budget for a project to invite American and other foreign university graduates to teach English at Japanese schools.