Month: October 2008

Slouching Toward Washington

by dday

Can you believe the nerve of this guy?

In a conference call with Connecticut reporters on Friday, Lieberman bristled at the media’s coverage of the McCain campaign’s negativity. “You guys are going down a road, you have contributed to the demeaning of our politics by this kind of focus,” Lieberman said. “I mean, give me a break. Have any of you been out listening to me?”

“When I go out, I say, ‘I have a lot of respect for Sen. Obama. He’s bright. He’s eloquent.’ Someday, I might even support him for president,” Lieberman told a conference call of Connecticut reporters. “But now in the midst of this series of crises, John McCain is simply so much better prepared that that’s who I am proud to support.”

Lieberman also said that if McCain doesn’t, “I’m going to do everything I can to be bringing people … together across party lines to support the new president so he can succeed.”

Actually, sure I can. Lieberman is a suck-up to power as much as the rest of them. But the revisionism – a week before the election – is a little too much to take. He has spent the entire election questioning Obama’s patriotism and pushing the basest smears and lies.

The chairmanship that Lieberman now holds has the authority to conduct oversight on the federal government. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Lieberman wouldn’t abuse that power in the event of an Obama Administration. Regardless of the number of Democrats in the Senate, there is no way that Lieberman should be allowed to maintain that chairmanship. His choice of caucus partners is his decision. But his seniority should be gone. This weasel move to get back in everybody’s good graces is pathetic.

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War ’09

by tristero

Looks like there’s been a rollout of two new “products” by the Bush administration when no one was looking: Air wars in Pakistan and Syria.

I can’t help but wonder whether these may be just rehearsals for an air attack on Iran, a test not only of the strategies and tactics but also an attempt to gauge world reaction. At the very least, Bush’s attempts to expand the American wars in the Middle East and Central Asia are a deliberate attempt to make it as difficult as possible for the next president to withdraw from either conflict.

Proposition Hate: Armageddon?

by tristero

NY Times on the anti-marriage amendment in California known as Proposition 8 (aka Prop Hate):

“This vote on whether we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,” said Charles W. Colson, the founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries and an eminent evangelical voice, speaking to pastors in a video promoting Proposition 8. “We lose this, we are going to lose in a lot of other ways…

Let’s hope so.

Vote NO on Prop Hate.

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Note: If you click on the link, you’ll discover that I left out the final clause of Colson’s rant. That’s because there is no basis in reality for his hysterical and ludicrous assertion that “freedom of religion” is endangered by permitting people who love each other to marry. Unlike the NY Times, I see no reason to confer status on ignorant, extremist fear-mongering by repeating it.

Special note to the rightwing and others having difficulty comprehending the English language: Of course I support freedom of, and from, religion. I have a long public history of that support.

Sovereignty

by digby

July 28 on CNN’s “Larry King Live.”

King asked: “If you were president and knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan, you know where, would you have U.S. forces go in after him?”

McCain replied: “Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation.”

What about this, maverick?

U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.”

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach.

“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official told The Associated Press in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity

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Boo Hoo Hoo

by digby

So the wingnuts are turning on the rats who are deserting the sinking ship. And the rats don’t like it. And it’s all Sarah W. Palin and John McCain’s fault. Here’s Peggy Noonan:

In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics. It’s no good, not for conservatism and not for the country. And yes, it is a mark against John McCain, against his judgment and idealism.

Noonan has been fluttering about rudeness for some time now. You’ll recall that she famously blamed liberals for all this because they booed Trent Lott at a memorial rally for Paul Wellstone. Who could forget her having the unadulterated cojones to pretend to speak for the great liberal in heaven as he lectured Democrats on their vulgar behavior:

You hurt a lot of people. You didn’t mean to, you meant to be Happy Warriors. But you offended and hurt and antagonized more than half the country. And you have to think about why. Here, I think, is the reason: a dulling of the senses, a kind of despair that has led you to let politics completely take over your lives. That’s the reason you treated a reflective and loving occasion as . . . well, as a big vulgar whomp-’em-stomp-’em rally with jeers and cheers and my casket as the stump from which you lambasted the foe. This is what I feel you have to think about. You can make your life sick and small, you can fill it with poison, when you turn everything into politics. And what makes me sad is not that you used my death to get out the vote. It’s not that you were cold. It’s that the only way you could show any warmth was through politics. That memorial was the triumph of politics at the expense of the personal. At the expense of what makes you human.

See, liberals were inhuman for booing Trent Lott, even as he laughed it off and carried on without even blinking. This behavior was, at the time, sold as the most despicable, disgusting form of indecent public behavior since the drawing and quartering of William Wallace.

And it was, you’ll also recall, in the final weeks of a hard fought mid-term election where the Republicans were comparing war heroes to Saddam Hussein and the majority leader to Osama bin laden. No matter — the liberals were vulgar and wanted to win too much for booing Trent Lott.

Peggy spent the next few years casually smearing Democrats and liberals in her patented unctuous prose:

The Democratic nominee in 2004 could win the election. There may be something to the idea that Democrats in general want to get rid of George W. Bush more than Republicans in general want to keep him. One of the men running in New Hampshire tonight could become the next president, and lead the war on terror. And our country cannot afford a bit of a nut. Which get us of course to Howard Dean. But not for long. I do not know how Democrats in New Hampshire will judge him today, but I can say with confidence that the American people will not choose him as president, because they will not want him near the nuclear arsenal. Which gets me to Wesley Clark. Forgive me, but he seems to be another first class strange-o.

Then liberals were “in love with death,” and were leading the country on a low road that ends up in Auschwitz:

Terri Schiavo may well die. No good will come of it. Those who are half in love with death will only become more red-fanged and ravenous. And those who are still learning–our children–oh, what terrible lessons they’re learning. What terrible stories are shaping them. They’re witnessing the Schiavo drama on television and hearing it on radio. They are seeing a society–their society, their people–on the verge of famously accepting, even embracing, the idea that a damaged life is a throwaway life. Our children have been reared in the age of abortion, and are coming of age in a time when seemingly respectable people are enthusiastic for euthanasia. It cannot be good for our children, and the world they will make, that they are given this new lesson that human life is not precious, not touched by the divine, not of infinite value. Once you “know” that–that human life is not so special after all–then everything is possible, and none of it is good. When a society comes to believe that human life is not inherently worth living, it is a slippery slope to the gas chamber. You wind up on a low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz. Today that road runs through Pinellas Park, Fla.

Nothing vulgar about that.

Recently, we had Noonan “wincing” when her good friend Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot, to lusty applause.

Our country now puts less of an emphasis on public decorum, courtliness, self-discipline, decency. America no longer says, “That’s not nice.” It doesn’t want to make value judgments on “good” and “bad.” We have come to rely on censorship to maintain decorum. We are very good at letting people know that if they say something we don’t like, we’ll shame them and shun them, even ruin them.

But censorship doesn’t make people improve themselves; it makes people want to rebel. It tells them to toe the line or pay a price. People who are urged in the right direction and taught in the right direction will usually try to discipline and improve themselves from within. But they do not enjoy censorship from without. They fight back. They are rude in order to show they are unbroken.

This is human. And Grandma would have understood this, too.

I think the atmosphere of political correctness is now experienced by normal people — not people who speak on TV, but normal people — as so oppressive, so demanding of constant self-policing, that when someone says something in public that is truly not nice, not nice at all, they can’t help but feel that they are witnessing a prison break.

As long as political correctness reigns, the more antic among us will try to break out with great streams of Tourette’s-like forbidden words and ideas.

We should forbid less and demand more. We should exert less pressure from without and encourage more discipline from within. We should ask people to be dignified, hope they’ll be generous, expect them to be fair. When they’re not, we should correct them. But we shouldn’t beat them to a pulp. Because that’s not nice.

And then there was this. Good old Peggy, creating the very meme she now denounces as vulgar:

His problem was, is, his wife’s words, not his, the speech in which she said that for the first time in her adult life she is proud of her country, because Obama is winning. She later repeated it, then tried to explain it, saying of course she loves her country. But damage was done. Why? Because her statement focused attention on what I suspect are some basic and elementary questions that were starting to bubble out there anyway.

Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs? Do they understand America? Are they of it? Did anyone at their Ivy League universities school them in why one should love America? Do they confuse patriotism with nationalism, or nativism? Are they more inspired by abstractions like “international justice” than by old visions of America as the city on a hill, which is how John Winthrop saw it, and Ronald Reagan and JFK spoke of it? Have they been, throughout their adulthood, so pampered and praised–so raised in the liberal cocoon–that they are essentially unaware of what and how normal Americans think? And are they, in this, like those cosseted yuppies, the Clintons? Why is all this actually not a distraction but a real issue? Because Americans have common sense and are bottom line. They think like this. If the president and his first lady are not loyal first to America and its interests, who will be? The president of France? But it’s his job to love France, and protect its interests. If America’s leaders don’t love America tenderly, who will? And there is a context. So many Americans right now fear they are losing their country, that the old America is slipping away and being replaced by something worse, something formless and hollowed out. They can see we are giving up our sovereignty, that our leaders will not control our borders, that we don’t teach the young the old-fashioned love of America, that the government has taken to itself such power, and made things so complex, and at the end of the day when they count up sales tax, property tax, state tax, federal tax they are paying a lot of money to lose the place they loved. And if you feel you’re losing America, you really don’t want a couple in the White House whose rope of affection to the country seems lightly held, casual, provisional. America is backing Barack at the moment, so America is good. When it becomes angry with President Barack, will that mean America is bad?

What a nice way of saying that Obama isn’t a real American. Good thing it isn’t vulgar.

Noonan writes in elegant prose, but the meaning of her words are no different than what Sarah palin and the crazies at the McCain-Palin rallies are spewing. She’s spent the last couple of decades helping to create this vulgar political world and now she’s trying to separate herself from what she’s done. And that’s yet another way in which she’s just a typical conservative like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh — when her vulgar politics catch up with her, instead of standing tall and taking responsibility she pretends that she was somewhere else.

I hope that people don’t get so caught up with these late breaking “conversions” to the one true faith that they forget that these people are not heretics or apostates. They are opportunistic cowards, pure and simple — rats deserting a sinking ship — and they will never, ever change.

Trust ’em? Not for a minute.

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Blocking All Roads Into Town

by digby

I’ve been writing for a very long time that the minute a Democratic president is sworn in, the Village cries for bipartisanship are going to be deafening. They did it after 2006 — imagine what they’ll do now. Just last week, Broder laid down the gauntlet. Now Obama fan (and former Bush sycophant) Howard Fineman is starting to get nervous:

This is the engine room of a novel grass-roots machine that may soon have another purpose: to help Obama govern the country. If he wins, it also could cause him headaches…’His supporters have sky-high expectations and expect to be involved,’ says Will Marshall, who studied the Obama organization for the Democratic Leadership Council. ‘They are loyal but not easy to control.’…

It could also cause Obama problems. Much of America may be gung-ho about putting more troops into Afghanistan, but it’s not clear Obamaworld is; he could run into opposition if he seriously pursues it. On the other hand, initiating talks with Iranian and Venezuelan dictators enjoys more support on his e-mail lists than in the rest of the country. If the Democrats win bigger majorities in the House and Senate, they (if not Obama) may well be eager to exact vengeance on Republicans, or at least cram Democratic ideas down GOP throats. Obama supporters might prefer more reaching-out. As Marshall sees it, most of them want a “transpartisan” approach that jettisons the old labels. “These people feel a close, personal tie to Obama, just as conservatives did to Reagan,” he says. “But if and when he starts governing, he is going to start disappointing them.”

He sounds awfully sure of himself.

Here’s David Sirota correctly assessing the real meaning of all this:

To the Village, it would be horrible – catastrophic even – if Obama supporters dared to expect Obama to actually pursue a true progressive agenda. Obama supporters are therefore depicted as a wild-eyed, bewildered herd of lunatic leftists that, as the corporate-backed DLC says, are – gasp! – “not easy to control.”

This is a portrayal designed to press Obama to immediately shun his base, capitulate to conservatives (in the spirit of “transpartisanship”), reject “cramming Democratic ideas down GOP throats” (even though Obama campaigned on Democratic ideas), and bow down to the Serious and Respected Villagers after the election. Of course, these are the same Villagers whose neoconservatism got us into Iraq and whose free-market fundamentalism drove the country to the bring of economic disaster – all under the guise of “transpartisanship.” Now, these same Villagers are making it clear that the Serious and Responsible thing for Obama to do is deliberately “disappoint” the people who elected him.

Indeed, disappointing the people who elected him is the only way that he can be taken seriously. It’s a right of passage for Democrats and if he doesn’t do it himself, they’ll bring in some elders to push hard in the press. (Here’s where our new best friends like Colin Powell will come in handy for the villagers. He may have been a good soldier for Bush, but his history is one of stabbing Democrats in the back.)

Predictably, establishment Dems are helping them:

Democrats said they were well aware of the mistakes of the past and the overconfidence exhibited during one-party rule of the Clinton and Bush administrations that led to Democrats’ losing control of the House in 1994 and to Republicans’ experiencing a similar defeat in 2006.

Chastened by their years in exile, Democrats said they were determined to avoid those pitfalls should voters deliver them control of the White House and Congress.

The nature of the Democratic majority, expanded partly through the election of centrists and even conservatives, would also temper Democratic zeal to pursue an overly ideological agenda, Democrats said.

“We are going to get new members with a clear understanding that the reason they won is appealing to independents and disaffected Republicans, and they are going to want to continue to do that,” said the House majority leader, Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland.

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Good to know we won’t have to deal with any crazy stunts like universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq or badly needed economic investment to counter the recession and the banking crisis. Steny’s going to save us from all that left-wing nuttiness. (Tax cuts, that’s the ticket. More tax cuts. More war.)

The Republicans, who ruled like a marauding horde of Vikings, agree with Steny that Real Americans want them to govern us from the opposition:

“I think the Senate operates best when it makes things happen in the middle, and that happens when you have 41 or more people who resist an idea to the point where you can compromise,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and a lawmaker whose own seat is at risk. “I think there will be enough Republicans plus discerning Democrats in the Senate after January to keep a kind of far-left agenda from steamrolling through the Senate like it often does through the House.”

Oh Thank God. The Republicans will almost certainly have enough “discerning Democrats” to continue to run the country as effectively as they have the last eight years. Whew.

I don’t know where Obama stands in all of this, but I assume he knows that the success of his presidency rests on his ability to relieve this free floating anxiety out in the land about America’s future. More people than ever before think America’s best days are behind it and that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. And they are not just “whining.” The nation is facing some very, very serious challenges that require bold action: the economy is in serious trouble, we are dealing with an energy crisis so acute that we are fighting wars over it, and the planet it in grave, near term danger from global warming. Oh, and there are a bunch of religious fundamentalist terrorists still running around and Americans can’t afford to get sick anymore without losing everything. Worrying about whether or not David Broder and Howard Fineman think it’s “serious” to take these things seriously is a recipe for failure.

Let’s hope Obama can either finesse them or ignore them. In the meantime it’s incumbent upon all of us latte sipping freaks to make sure that the Democrats know who brung them. One way to do that is to vote in some real progressives to balance out the “Discerning Democrats” who are really Republicans in sheep’s clothing. Blue America is backing a whole slate of them. If you live in or near on of their districts, volunteer to help in this last week. Some of these races are very, very close.

And you can still buy ads in their districts through SayMe. (Click the Blue America ad to your left.) It could mean the difference between having Steny and the boyz take credit for this win and making it a true progressive victory.

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Two Really Bad Ideas From The Department Of Really Bad Ideas

by tristero

From the International Division of the Department Of Really Bad Ideas:

Civil rights campaigners are angry that ministers have approved plans to allow Sharia councils in Britain the right to settle disputes regarding money, property and access to children.

They say such tribunals are institutions for male domination which treat women like second-class citizens.

Couples who choose to use the Sharia system must get the ruling rubber-stamped by a judge sitting in an ordinary family court.

But neither party has to attend this hearing and approval can be obtained by filling in a two-page application.

The endorsement of Sharia was announced to MPs by Bridget Prentice, a junior minister, in answer to a parliamentary question.
She said Sharia councils would still have no jurisdiction in England, and rulings by religious authorities would have no legal force.

But she added: “If, in a family dispute dealing with money or children, the parties to a judgement in Sharia council wish to have this recognised by English authorities, they are at liberty to draft a consent order embodying the terms of the agreement and submit it to an English court. This allows English judges to scrutinise it to ensure that it complies with English legal tenets.”

Campaigners condemned the plans as unacceptable and said that the rulings were not compatible with English law, while the Conservatives insisted that should be safeguards for women.

Nick Herbert, the shadow justice secretary, said: “There can be no place for parallel legal systems in our country.

One would hope so.

From The American division:

What is known, however, is that Ms. Palin has had long associations with religious leaders who practice a particularly assertive and urgent brand of Pentecostalism known as “spiritual warfare.”

Its adherents believe that demonic forces can colonize specific geographic areas and individuals, and that “spiritual warriors” must “battle” them to assert God’s control, using prayer and evangelism. The movement’s fixation on demons, its aggressiveness and its leaders’ claims to exalted spiritual authority have troubled even some Pentecostal Christians.

Ms. Palin delivered an enthusiastic graduation speech for a class of young spiritual warriors in June at the Wasilla Assembly of God, the church in which she was raised.

As governor, Ms. Palin appointed Patrick Donelson, a pastor and fishing guide who helped found a spiritual warfare ministry, to the only seat reserved for members of the clergy on the state’s Suicide Prevention Council.

Bishop Thomas Muthee, the Kenyan preacher shown on the YouTube video anointing her as she ran for governor, is celebrated internationally as an effective spiritual warrior who led a prayer movement that drove a witch out of his town in Kenya. The removal of the witch, Bishop Muthee says, resulted in a drop in crime, alcoholism and traffic accidents.

Religious leaders in Alaska, including Mr. Donelson, declined interviews, with several saying they had been told by the McCain-Palin campaign not to talk to members of the news media.

Russell P. Spittler, provost emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and an eminent scholar of Pentecostalism, said, “Most Christians would accept the view that there are forces and powers in the world that oppose Christian virtues.” But, Mr. Spittler added, “Spiritual warfare makes a religion of identifying demons by names and ZIP codes.”

Y’mean, like, “Beelzebub, 07078?”

Critics say the goal of the spiritual warfare movement is to create a theocracy. Bruce Wilson, a researcher for Talk2Action , a Web site that tracks religious groups, said: “One of the imperatives of the movement is to achieve worldly power, including political control. Then you can more effectively drive out the demons. The ultimate goal is to purify the earth.”

The article does assure us that it sounds scarier than it is. After the brouhaha over Terri Schiavo, which included a confrontation between the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the local sheriff, that is no reassurance at all.

Down To Pennsylvania

by dday

Now I’m going to have to call all my relatives. Thanks a lot, McCain campaign!

Pennsylvania will see a lot of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin next week.

The scheduling reflects McCain’s tough electoral math. With some — though by no means all — advisers all but conceding Colorado, McCain would be forced to win a blue state in order to recoup the electoral votes. New Hampshire wouldn’t give him enough, and Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign believes, is the most brittle of the remaining states. Public and private polls give Obama a double digit lead in the state, but McCain advisers believe that Obama is underperforming in the suburbs and exurban counties around Pittsburgh. Tensions between the two campaigns in the state is acute.

Pennsylvania doesn’t have early voting, meaning that the McCain campaign is not starting from a deficit like in other states, and it’s 82% white, a fairly high percentage, as well as one of the older states in the union (15%-plus over 65).

And so the dirtiest of dirty tricks are all manifesting themselves in Pennsylvania. The “B” lady who failed in her race-baiting effort to blame an assault on an African-American Obama supporter was in Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania GOP – not an outside group, but the state REpublican Party – sent out this mailer aimed squarely at my grandparents:

“Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008,” the e-mail reads. “Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year!”

A copy of the e-mail, provided by Democratic officials, says it was “Paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA – Victory 2008.”

It warns “Fellow Jewish Voters” of the danger of a second Holocaust due to the threats to Israel from its neighbors and touts Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s qualifications over those of Obama.

The same spokesperson who’s distancing himself from this mailer is the one who was feeding reporters the story of the campaign worker mugging.

And then, from the furthest stretches of Outer Wingnuttia, there’s this:

A federal judge in Philadelphia last night threw out a complaint by a Montgomery County lawyer who claimed that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was not qualified to be president and that his name should be removed from the Nov. 4 ballot.

Philip J. Berg alleged in a complaint filed in federal district court on Aug. 21 against Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission, that Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya.

Berg claimed that the Democratic presidential standardbearer is not even an American citizen but a citizen of Indonesia and therefore ineligible to be president.

He alleged that if Obama was permitted to run for president and subsequently found to be ineligible, he and other voters would be disenfranchised […]

Surrick ruled that Berg’s attempts to use certain laws to gain standing to pursue his claim that Obama was not a natural-born citizen were “frivolous and not worthy of discussion.”

This guy was all over the map. He said Obama was born in Kenya AND an Indonesian citizen.

And previously, the state GOP sued the Secretary of State and ACORN, claiming that a clean election cannot be assured.

If you’re looking for the trends reflecting the worst of the Republican Party, check out Pennsylvania for the next ten days.

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Divas On Parade

by digby

I’m sure you have all heard by now that McCain loyalists are already out there dissing Palin for ruining everything.

But this one made me chuckle a bit:

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign. “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone,” said this McCain adviser. “She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else. “Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom.”

My goodness,somebody is just all upset. Get that diva a chill pill.

Palin shouldn’t feel too upset by this. In fact, it should (but won’t) make her a little bit less critical of Obama, who the McCain campaign spent the summer belittling as a “celebrity.” She should be glad they didn’t call her what McCain calls his wife. perhaps that will have to wait until after the election.

Meanwhile, I’m hard pressed to hold Palin completely responsible for this:

“Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic,” said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the “hardest” to get her “up to speed than any candidate in history.”

I discussed this earlier. They didn’t even ask if she knew anything. They chose her because she spoke to Charlie Rose like and automaton and because she looked good. They have only themselves to blame if she was completely unschooled on issues and political politesse. She delivered everything they were asking for.

On the other hand, it does take a real diva to accept a job for which you are completely unqualified and then blame the people who chose you for failing to properly prepare you for the job. I know it’s anti-American to turn down a big opportunity, but the stakes were damned high and she could have done it. Lot’s of people do. In fact, on the Republican side there was a long line of them.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

So…what’s on your DVR? (Slight return)

By Dennis Hartley

At the risk of instigating a public stoning, I thought I would take a bit of a departure this week and switch over to the (gulp!) small screen. So if you’re a TV snob, you might want to tune out now and spare us the eye-rolling and the predictable “Jesus, why don’t you people try reading a book?” admonishments in the comment section, mmmkay?

For those still with me (both of you), I now submit an unabashedly subjective Top Ten list for your perusal of shows (in no ranking order) that I currently find to be compelling enough to earn the “priority” nod on my DVR. I shared a similar list here last year; you may spot a few “re-runs”, but hey-there’s no accounting for some people’s taste, eh?

Boston Legal(ABC) Denny Crane! Sadly, it’s the farewell season for creator David E. Kelley’s extremely entertaining courtroom dramedy about a prestigious Boston law firm. Leading a fine cast, James Spader, William Shatner, Candice Bergen and John Larroquette have cemented well as TV’s Dream Team; it’s a shame to see them break up the band, as it were. Sure, some of the ongoing plot points are admittedly silly and things do tend to get a bit too precious at times (especially when characters go smashing through the Fourth Wall like bulls in the proverbial china shop) but there is one thing I’m going to miss more than anything else, and that’s Alan Shore’s closing arguments. Well, for the sake of the narrative, they are called “closing arguments”, but I think we all know they are in reality some of the most incisive, intelligently written, “stand up and cheer” progressive political rants you’ll ever hear on a mainstream network TV show (on second thought-anywhere this side of the blogosphere). Paddy Chayefsky would be proud. Don’t despair, BTW- since this season breaks 100 episodes, syndicated perpetuity is assured.

Breaking Bad (American Movie Classics) I will admit upfront that I missed this one during its initial run back in January of this year (I don’t think it initially got a lot of press or much viewer buzz) but like many people, my interest was piqued when Bryan Cranston picked up an Emmy for his starring role. AMC has been replaying the first season, and I’m hooked. Cranston gives a full-blooded performance as Walter White, a middle-aged chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer. Infused with a desperate sense of urgency to build up a nest egg for his pregnant wife and cerebral palsy-afflicted son, he partners up with a former student-turned drug dealer and applies his knowledge of chemistry to cook up some award-winning crystal meth. Having a brother-in-law in the DEA complicates his situation, as one might expect. Yes, it is reminiscent of Weeds , but it’s much darker and more texturally rich. Season 1 was cut short by the WGA strike (only 7 episodes were made). Look for Season 2 in early 2009.

Californication (Showtime) Season 2 of this bawdy romp about a blocked, angst-ridden, sex-addicted East Coast writer (David Duchovny) who has grudgingly transplanted himself to L.A. is garnering much more interest than its premiere season for reasons that I’m sure Duchovny would rather not call more attention to (the actor’s recent, highly publicized check-in to a rehab center for, erm, sex addicts). It’s lewd, crude and frequently nude, but there are some very knowing, sharply written observations about the mercurial complexity of adult relationships lurking just beyond the bedroom door. Natasha McElhone is doing some wonderful work every week as his long-suffering ex.

The Daily Show / The Colbert Report (Comedy Central) – All I can say is, thank you, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert (and your writers), for reassuring us, with your wheelbarrows full of Emmy Awards and in your goofy yet consistently brilliant satiric fashion, that my good friend Digby and all the other equally dedicated and astute political observers/media watchdogs of the progressive blogosphere can no longer be dismissed by the MSM as the journalistic equivalent of crazy people screaming at traffic. God knows, many are the times you’ve kept me from throwing myself under a bus during a particularly depressing news cycle (like the one that’s lasted for the last, oh, eight years.)

Jurassic Fight Club(The History Channel) – Maybe there’s something about the new generation of imaginative, CG-driven, Wild Kingdom-inspired dinosaur docs that just appeals to my inner 14-year old, but ever since the BBC/Discovery Channel’s innovative and entertaining Walking With… series broke the mold of the endlessly droning paleontologist standing in front of a Museum of Natural History skeleton shtick, I can’t get enough of this stuff. Jurassic Fight Club is the latest and arguably best of the genre so far. Each episode investigates a prehistoric “crime scene”, where some epic clash of the titans has ensued. The mystery unfolds through an engaging blend of deductive science and forensic pathology, culminating with a vivid recreation of how the rumble likely went down. It’s guilt-free escapist fare, because you’re learning something…um, right?

The Life and Times of Tim (HBO) HBO’s newest addition to their sacred Sunday night lineup is an animated “cringe comedy” that is sort of a cross between The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Each show is comprised of two vignettes from the life of a beleaguered, workaday New Yorker named Tim, who despite his generally good nature and sincere intentions, can’t seem to get through the day without unwittingly becoming a social pariah, or at best, somebody’s bitch. It’s very left field, and extremely funny. It’s even hard to explain why it’s so goddam funny until you’ve actually seen it, but with vignette titles like “Angry Unpaid Hooker”, “The Priest is Drunk”, and “Tim Fights an Old Man”, I think you can glean why it’s not a Saturday morning cartoon. The series is the brainchild of one Steve Dildarian, whose previous claim to fame was dreaming up Budweiser’s “Lizard” ad campaign (who knew?). Dildarian provides the voice of Tim.

Little Britain USA (HBO) Demented Brits Matt Lucas and David Walliams have adapted their BBC series for American audiences, who may or may not glom on to their very peculiar skew on the world. The duo play recurring sketch characters, some borrowed from their BBC oeuvre and some newly minted for the HBO series. They use a framing device that is suspiciously similar to the one used in the recent Showtime mini-series Tracey Ullman’s Tracy Ullman’s State of the Union. This fish out of water motif works better with some characters than others (these guys don’t really share Ullman’s gift for dialect-perfect mimicry) but when they do hit their target, it’s a gut-busting laugh riot. Like most British comedy, it’s a strange mix of lowbrow vulgarity and inspired moments of comic transcendence. My favorite recurring characters are the world’s most unhappily married middle-aged couple; the vignettes are like three-minute Harold Pinter plays, packed with bathos, pathos and a lifetime of shattered dreams and existential misery. Bloody brilliant!

Mad Men(American Movie Classics) I mentioned this show as one to keep an eye on in my piece last year, just as the first season was getting underway, and I’m happy to report that it has since made good on that promising start (including an Emmy for star Jon Hamm) Set on the cusp of the New Frontier (circa 1960) this drama centers around Don Draper, a Madison Ave “ad man” who is tops in his field, but is going through an existential crisis (“This place has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich,” he observes about the ad agency that employs him). Series creator Matthew Weiner was a writer for “The Sopranos”, and you may notice some signature themes, like family loyalty, primal doubts and territorial pissing. It’s kind of a post-modern take on The Dick Van Dyke Show, with a nod and a wink to Billy Wilder’s The Apartment.

The Sarah Silverman Program(Comedy Central) Sort of an alternate universe version of Seinfeld , this could be seen as another sitcom “about nothing”, but the beauty of it is, it really is about something. It’s about racism, homophobia, life, the universe and everything, except you are too busy laughing your ass off to really notice. I am aware that comedienne Sarah Silverman rubs a lot of people the wrong way, particularly those who do not have a highly developed sense of irony (one day, the rest of the world will put away the smelling salts and realize that she is the female counterpart to Sascha Baron Cohen). I will say that she’s pretty damn close to being the personification of my ultimate dream girl: Intelligent, beautiful, and just so adorably twisted and sick (I’m not normal).

Z Rock (Independent Film Channel) Extras meets The Monkees
in one of the freshest new comedy series around. Tagged by IFC as “a (kinda) true story”, the program is a hybrid of “mockumentary” and reality show. An aspiring hard rock power trio (comprised of real-life Brooklyn musicians Paulie Z, David Z and Joey Cassata) gigs the NYC club scene at night as “ZO2”, and plays the children’s birthday party/bar mitzvah circuit by day as their unplugged alter-egos “The Z Brothers”. As you can imagine, this Jekyll-Hyde juggling act makes for some pretty outrageous scenarios, and it is sometimes a little tough to distinguish the club crawling groupies from the hot-to-trot soccer moms. While the three band members exude an appealing, easy-going charisma just by basically “playing themselves”, the show’s secret weapons are Lynne Koplitz as their neurotic, fast talking manager Dina, and the hilarious Jay Oakerson as a mookish club manager who may or may not have a genuinely homoerotic “man-crush” on lead singer Paulie. The dialog (partially improvised) has a Kevin Smith vibe; or maybe it’s that East Coast thing?

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