Gay Reichs

This segment of The Daily Show deserves an Emmy!

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A note to the media

President Obama appearing on The View today (in a show taped yesterday) is NOT the first time a sitting president has appeared on a daytime TV talk show. President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush appeared on Dr. Phil in September 2004.

Inception

Inception is one of the greatest films I have ever seen. A jar full of awesome with a fountain spewing WIN out of it. 5 totems out of 5! EVERYONE was walking out of the theater arguing about the ending.

Recapping the controversy

If only the oil spill could have been capped this quickly.

ACORN may get the last laugh

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The end of civilization

Fox News is covering how the bad world economy is eating into the run of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, and how, apparently, this is all Obama's fault.

CNN is covering an economic story with "balanced" experts -- one says everything's going to be okay, the other says we're all going to die. No facts.

And MSNBC has live coverage of Lindsay Lohan's court hearing.

No, I'm not making that up.

The heartless, the clueless, and the confused

Paul Krugman has written a very good editorial. I don't necessarily agree on every single point, but the overall message is one everyone needs to hear.

I tried to share this on Facebook, but inexplicably is refuses to allow me to link to it. So I'll post a link here with some excepts. Read the whole thing. It's good for you.

Punishing the Jobless

By PAUL KRUGMAN

There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.

But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?

The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.

By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.

By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits. A sample remark: “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn’t pay as much. We’ve put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry.”

Now, I don’t have the impression that unemployed Americans are spoiled; desperate seems more like it. One doubts, however, that any amount of evidence could change Ms. Angle’s view of the world — and there are, unfortunately, a lot of people in our political class just like her.

But there are also, one hopes, at least a few political players who are honestly misinformed about what unemployment benefits do — who believe, for example, that Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, was making sense when he declared that extending benefits would make unemployment worse, because “continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” So let’s talk about why that belief is dead wrong.

Read the rest here.

Best idea I've heard this month

If they ever get around to rebooting Star Trek: The Next Generation, as they did with the original series last year, here's a fantastic idea for who can play Counselor Deanna Troi:

Firefly/Terminator hottie Summer Glau.

Okay, this was just an excuse to post a picture of Summer Glau. Sue me.

Leno back in late night not so hot

Jay Leno returned to his late night spot, but the ratings haven’t come back.

Deadline Hollywood reports that "The Tonight Show" posted its lowest Q2 ratings during Q2 2010 — the first full quarter since Leno took the show back from Conan O'Brien — since rival David Letterman's "The Late Show" debuted on CBS in 1993.

Leno's "Tonight Show" (4.0 million total viewers, 1.1/4 A18-49) beat Letterman's "Late Show" (3.3 million total viewers, 0.9/4 A18-49), but was still down 20% in viewers and 31% in A18-49 from last year's Q2 (though those ratings were high due to Leno's farewell and Conan's debut).

June employment numbers

We're heading in the right direction, just very, very slowly. And there's still a long way to go. For June, unemployment drops to 9.5%, net job loss, but 83,000 private sector jobs added.

The United States added just 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, a dishearteningly low number that could add to the growing number of economists who warn that the economic recovery has slowed to the point that it cannot generate enough job growth.

Over all, the nation lost 125,000 jobs, according to the monthly snapshot of the job market released by the Labor Department on Friday. Most of the lost jobs came as temporary workers hired by the federal government for the 2010 Census exited their jobs. The unemployment rate, based on a different survey, declined to 9.5 percent in June from the previous 9.7 percent. This decline came only because the nation’s labor force shrank by 652,000 jobs.

Just as last month’s government job report appeared deceptively robust, swollen by 411,000 workers hired by the federal government to help with the Census, so the June report appears deceptively anemic, as the government shed many of those same temporary census workers.

And signs of strength could be spotted. Although quite weak by historic standards, the 83,000 private-sector jobs created in June more than doubled the count in May. And in the first six months of last year, the nation lost 3.7 million private-sector jobs; during the first six months of this year it gained 590,000.