Baron Dave Romm
Campaign 2010
By Baron Dave Romm
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Grading On A Curve
Personally, I give Obama and the Democrats about a C. Obama loses an entire letter grade for continuing and sometimes expanding the Bush/Rumsfeld use of torture and failed anti-terrorist activities. Still, his accomplishments were solid and they were cruising at a B- for the first year. Passing Health Care Reform, even the watered-down version, raised Obama to a B. Then he lost another letter grade by not passing climate change legislation. Dissing those to the left of his centrist views is pretty dumb, but actions speak louder than words and he's certainly inched the political debate leftward to the middle.
A gentlemanly C is not much of a recommendation... until you look at the alternative. As a teacher, I don't grade on a curve. As a political observer, I must put outcomes in context. We, as Americans, are part of something larger than ourselves. Government is a process.
On a curve, Obama and the Democrats get an A. The Tea Party Republicans fail.
As I talked about last week in Campaign 2010: Why You Should Vote Democratic , there are plenty of reasons to vote for the Democrats this election cycle. The conservative news media's corporate-driven narrative is that of an "enthusiasm gap". This was overhyped to begin with, and not particularly predictive: Among people who say they "definitely" are going to vote in the Congressional elections in November, Democrats lead 50% to 42%. Most people are still mad at Republicans for messing up the country during the Bush/Cheney years. Heck, even Republicans are mad at Republicans, driving the teabaggers off the deep end.
The woad-painted berserker Celtic warrior may be more myth than reality but the lesson remains: Religious fanaticism and ultra-nationalism are no match for a civilization with well-trained soldiers who know how to build roads and aqueducts.
Let me briefly reiterate some of the stark economic differences between the Bush-era Republican agenda and the Obama Administration's successes.
TARP vs. Stimulus
The Troubled Asset Relief Program, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by Pres. Bush, basically worked. The Democrats did their job, but Bush did a lousy job implementing it. For example: the SEC announced allegations of TARP fraud and securities fraud of more than $1.5 billion other violations against Lee B. Farkas, through his company Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. Bush's rush to give money to companies "too big to fail" was poorly handled and billions went to places unknown.
And even the successful parts of TARP are subject to Tea Party Republican "politics as usual". Despised or not, bailout did the job Miami Herald 10/3/10:
Originally envisioned as a blank check for the government to spend as much as $700 billion to rescue the financial system, the actual cost to taxpayers is estimated now to be only a seventh of that amount. The government has earned almost $13 billion in dividends from the bank stock it received in exchange for the taxpayers' investment, and earned another $8.2 billion from the sale of preferred stock.
The Treasury Department estimates that taxpayers are still on the hook for about $100 billion at this point -- a number expected to shrink with continued repayments and asset sales. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office recently put the estimated total TARP cost at around $66 billion.
Still, TARP became politically poisonous. People considered it free money for Wall Street executives whose recklessness dragged the world into the Great Recession. Now those executives are wallowing in bonuses again while taxpayers remain plagued by 9.6 percent unemployment. ``Objectively, TARP has been an economic success. Politically, it's been a miserable failure,'' said Darrell West, director of governance studies at Washington's Brookings Institution, a center-left policy research center.
Even though TARP was a Bush administration initiative and got strong congressional support from Republicans in 2008, today's GOP has painted TARP alternately as a Wall Street bailout or a cash kitty to fund Democrats' wish list.
``TARP turned out to be a slush fund,'' said Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb. ``I would come to the office in the morning and see the latest thing the president has spent money for out of the TARP fund. It just turns my hair gray.''
Upshot: Republicans flip-flopped on their support for TARP. Now that their cronies have been bailed out by the taxpayers, they feigning outrage to score political points. Instead of tightening controls and going after fraud, they're simply trying to score political points.
Meanwhile, the Stimulus worked pretty well. As mentioned last week, Obama and the Democrats "created 3.5 million jobs and kept unemployment about 1 to 2 percent lower than it otherwise would have been" but get political heat anyway: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Obama was too optimistic about job creation, but his American Recovery and Investment Act was the right thing to do at the right time. Paul Krugman's argument is that the Stimulus was too small. I'll believe Krugman over the horrendously-bad-at-math Republicans.
Let me repeat a chart from last week: A
Welcome Step In The Right Direction; a
dramatic chart showing how the arc of job losses
under Bush and the rise of job creation under
Obama.
The Pledge: Another Contract On America
The 1994 Contract With America was a mixed bag, politically and practically. Most people hadn't heard of it by the time of the election, and Republicans only promised to bring bills to the floor, not to pass them. For the most part, they didn't pass. And when they did pass, they cost money. On My Mind: GOP Pussycats Forbes, 11/13/00:
Consider: Over the past three years the Republican-controlled Congress has approved discretionary spending that exceeded Bill Clinton's requests by more than $30 billion. The party that in 1994 would abolish the Department of Education now brags in response to Clinton's 2000 State of the Union Address that it is outspending the White House when it comes to education. My colleagues Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski found that the combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate have increased by 13%. Republican congressional candidates are frightened to be associated with George W. Bush's sensible proposal to allow Americans to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in real assets.
And yet, some Republicans are still talking about Privatization. Further, of the several goppies who helped draft the Contract, which included a demand for term limits, three resigned in scandal and a fourth is still in office. Once again the whiners have a double standard.
Okay, flash forward to 2010. The Pledge To America.
We know we can't trust Tea Party Republicans. Among other disgraces, GOP 'Pledge To America' Director Lobbied For AIG, Exxon, Pfizer, Chamber. Even goppies are unsure. Conservatives split on GOP's new 'Pledge To America,' unveiled by House Republicans.
Naturally, the GOP broke their "pledge" within
a few hours of announcing it:
That
was fast.
A longer dissection of the Pledge: Perhaps the Most Ridiculous Thing to Come Out of Washington Since George McClellan
The Teabaggers keep forgetting: It's not just that most Democratic programs are popular, it's that most Republican plans are staggeringly unpopular.
A reminder: Obama was and is clearly the better president than McCain would have been
You're glad to have Obama as President instead of McCain. Really glad. Just one example:
Weekly Address: Solar Power & a Clean Energy Economy
McCain drinks the Kool-Aid [iced tea?] and becomes a climate conspiracy theorist
You can often tell what Republicans are trying to cover up by what they accuse Democrats of doing. Obama was born in the US... but McCain wasn't. The "birther" morons just don't live in the real world. They believe lies and they don't believe the truth.
All the current Tea Party Republican front runners lack even McCain's experience or intelligence, which is dismaying. Many of the more popular Republicans are nuts; they're popular with a small segment of nutjobs because they're nuts.
Compare and contrast: wimpy vs. insane
The corporate media-driven narrative is that Democrats don't stand up to fired up Republicans. While it's true some Democrats have rolled over on some issues, much work has been done when the cameras are off.
The fact remains that the Democrats have quietly reversed a lot of Bush-era madness and accomplished a great deal. Meanwhile, Tea Party Republicans have threatened, denied and gone so far off the deep end that they're not part of America anymore.
What you will get from a goppie congress: Remember Whitewater? Didn't think so. We know what Republicans will do: They will lie. And they'll use their offices not to help Americans, but to investigate Americans. GOP plans wave of White House probes Politico 8/27/10. From the McCarthy Era on, conservatives have been more about pointing fingers then getting things done. Often, to cover up their own crimes. Indeed, one of the ways you can tell what crimes a right-winger has committed is by what they accuse others of. Whether it's sexual harassment, squealing about gays or failing to tell the difference between an American and a Kenyan, Tea Bagger Republicans feel themselves to be above the law and you beneath it.
Obama is the centrist post-partisan he promised to be and hasn't been the liberal standard-bearer he was elected to be. I understand the frustration from the left. But at least he and the Democratic party are sane and headed in the right direction. The Tea Party Republicans are nuts.
The Tea Party Republicans are nuts
Year of the Nutjob The New Republic 9/14/10:
How does the class of 2010 stack up against its lunatic predecessor, of 1994? There are the well-known data points'ÄīRand Paul's alleged kidnapping of a college classmate; Sharron Angle's assertion that there are "domestic enemies" in Congress'Äīthat suggest we've reached a new zenith of crazy, making Newt Gingrich's bunch look like sensible establishmentarians by comparison. But Paul and Angle only begin to capture the strangeness of candidates out there who may soon be occupying your Capitol and governor's mansion. Herewith, a guide to the truly special specimens.And that's just nine. The article didn't get into the pernicious evil of The Texas School Board or the candidates who are every bit as bad as these but the writer ran out of virtual ink.
[just a list; the article goes into details]
TENTHER MADNESS: Tom Emmer, Gubernatorial Candidate, Minnesota
THE SCHWINN CONSPIRACY: Dan Maes, Gubernatorial Candidate, Colorado
THE WINKING EXTREMIST: Ken Buck, Senate Candidate, Colorado
THE BP TRUTHER: Bill Randall, House Candidate, North Carolina
D-TEA PARTY: Tim Crawford, House Candidate, Indiana (yes, a nutjob Democrat; still a few around who haven't slunk to the GOP)
ENHANCED INTERROGATOR: Allen West, House Candidate, Florida
BORDER BOMBER: Tom Mullins, House Candidate, New Mexico
THE ROCKY SAGA: Andrew Raczkowski, House Candidate, Michigan
GOD'S OPERATIVE: Ed Martin, House Candidate, Missouri
A suggestion: All the Republican Tea Party secessionists should move to Quebec and help them secede from Canada. That way, they can be traitors to two countries.
Maher To O'Reilly: GOP Now "Religious Lunatics, Flat-Earthers And Civil War Reenactors"
Tea Party Republicans threaten violence. Pictures in Stop calling them "Tea Party Candidates". They're REPUBLICANS! Eclectablog Daily Kos Diary 9/15/10.
Busted! Mark Belling says Sen. Russ Feingold faked his TV ad He made these accusations wholly without evidence, and was forced to recant only when called on it. We need a liberal press.
Top Ten Signs From the Gateway Arch September Tea Party Rally Daily RFT 9/14/10
Moral relativism from the right is nothing new. From 1996: George Carlin: Conservative Hypocrisy on Abortion. NOT safe for work.
GOP Conspiracy Theories are a joke, but now the punch lines want to control your life. Some right wingers are complaining about the waste of time, but too many Tea Bag Republicans live in a schizophrenic world of conspiracy and paranoia.
Bachmann, Issa Promise GOP Will Criminalize Politics
Alan
Grayson ad:
And Taliban
Dan's cynical response doesn't deal with the
charges; he can only whine.
Conservatives are not just stupid, they're proud of being stupid. They use the term elite as if it were a bad thing. Indeed, the radical right insults successful people for being successful. When Sarah Palin talks of the elites, it's like Karl Marx talking about the bourgeoisie. They consider themselves "values voters" but don't understand what values are: On Basic Religion Test, Many Doth Not Pass NYTimes 9/28/10 "Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons."
Republicans for Rape "[T]he list of thirty legislators who were brave enough to stand up in defense of rape and vote against Senator Al Franken's anti-rape amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill."
Republicans hate gays and hate our troops: Republicans Block Defense Funding Bill to Sabotage "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Repeal. Obama and co. have been dragging their feet on this issue, but they have tried and Republicans keep getting in the way.
Is this what you want? If so, don't vote. If you want sane people running the government, you will vote for any Democrats in your area to prevent the nutjobs from taking over.
The conservative news media is trying to get you to stay home
Fox News' Owner Murdoch Donates Another $1 Million to GOP Group. That's another million. And this from a guy who admits his organization supports terror (in so many hypocritical words): They attack the Park51Muslim financier... who turns out to be the second largest shareholder in Fox: Alleged "Ground Zero Mosque" financier is Fox News co-owner. Cartoon. Fox really hates our troops.
Is this what you want? If so, don't vote. All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.
Rock
the Vote Polling Data Reveals Young Voters Remain
Engaged, While Battling Feelings of
Cynicism:
The latest (9/30) pollster.com Congressional ballot has the generic party identification numbers very close, and trending towards the Democrats in a major way. chart (w/"classic" non-flash chart)
Meanwhile, the empty barrel makes the most noise. Sure, the teabaggers are loud and obnoxious and make the news, but even real Republicans are turned off. Facing a cash crunch, RNC dials back on get-out-the-vote efforts. Selfish Billionaires bankroll the extremists. No grassroots here.
The "enthusiasm gap" was largely an invention by horserace watchers. Don't be manipulated.
The Midterm Grade
To repeat:
Graded on a curve, Obama and the Democrats get a solid A. The Tea Party Republicans fail. You've got to support the people who are sane. Failing to vote (or voting third party) only helps the nutjobs take over. It's that simple.
I don't like grading on a curve, but elections have consequences. This is an important election. Time for you to get fired up.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog maintains a Facebook Page, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts of Shockwave Radio Theater. Permanent archive. A nascent collection of videos are on Baron Dave's YouTube channel. More radio programs, interviews and science fiction humor plays can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Roger Ebert: Review of "WAITING FOR SUPERMAN" (PG; 3 ½ stars)
Our nation is willing to spent trillions on war and billions to support the world's largest prison population rate. Here is my modest proposal: Spend less money on prisons and more money on education. Reduce our military burden and put that money into education. In 20 years, you would have more useful citizens, less crime and no less national security. It's so simple.
Dana Stevens: Waiting for "Superman" (slate.com)
This school reform documentary is urgent, heartbreaking, and incomplete.
Sandy Banks: Tragic, teachable moment (latimes.com)
Maybe it seems pointless to say now what a dedicated teacher Rigoberto Ruelas was.
Sanford Pinsker: "The Slow Death of Tenure" (irascibleprofessor.com)
According to the 'Chronicle of Higher Education' (July 4, 2010), the U.S. Department of Education will soon publish a report documenting the steep decline among college professors with tenure or with tenure-line appointments. In l975, 57% of all college teachers fell into these categories; as of 2007, the number was 31%. The news is depressing but not particularly surprising because the assault against tenure has been going on for some time.
Jim Hightower: HOW GOOFY CAN THE GOP GET?
What a wonderfully wacky campaign season we're having - and we haven't even gotten to the final couple of weeks, when the goofy and kooky really rise to the surface.
Mark Shields: A Joyless Capital
President John F. Kennedy in 1963 gave his White House special assistant and close personal friend, Dave Powers, a silver beer mug for his birthday, on which was inscribed: "There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter." The first two are beyond our comprehension. So we must do what we can with the third."
"Jane Addams: Spirit in Action" By LOUISE W. KNIGHT: Reviewed by Meredith Hindley
"The most beloved and reviled woman in American history.
William Germano: What are books good for? (chronicle.com)
So what are books good for? My best answer is that books produce knowledge by encasing it. Books take ideas and set them down, transforming them through the limitations of space into thinking usable by others.
Roger Ebert: "In memory: Arthur Penn, master director"
Arthur Penn, whose "Bonnie and Clyde" was a watershed in American film, died Tuesday night at 88. Gentle, much loved and widely gifted, he began life in poverty and turned World War Two acting experience in the Army into a career that led to directing in the earliest days of television and included much work on Broadway.
roger ebert's journal: Start at the top and work your way down
Introduction to The Great Movies III: You'd surprised how many people have told me they're working their way through my books of Great Movies one film at a time. That's not to say the books are definitive; I loathe "best of" lists, which are not the best of anything except what someone came up with that day. I look at a list of the "100 greatest horror films," or musicals, or whatever, and I want to ask the maker, "but how do you know?" There are great films in my books, and films that are not so great, but there's no film here I didn't respond strongly to. That's the reassurance I can offer.
Hubert's Poetry Corner
"End of a Red Dirt Road"
The Weekly Poll
Current Question
The 'Send in the Clowns... Don't bother, they're here' Edition...
The House's No. 2 Democratic leader said today that comedian Stephen Colbert's testimony last week on immigration was "inappropriate" and "an embarrassment." Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California invited Colbert to appear before the House Judiciary Committee. But other Democrats weren't happy about her decision... House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told "Faux News Sunday" he thought the episode was more of an embarrassment to Colbert than to the House. But, he added, "I think it was inappropriate" that he testified...
House leader: Colbert was an 'embarrassment' - Politics - msnbc.com
Do you agree with Majority Leader Hoyer's assessment of Colbert's appearance?
1.) Yes... He made a mockery of the legislative process. What was Rep. Lofgren thinking?
2.) No... Congress, themselves, make a mockery of the legislative process, dagnabbit!
3.) More! More! Bring on Jon Stewart!
Send your response to
wrote:
wrote:
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Links from RJ
Three-Fer!
Hi there
Three Possibilities today.... hope you enjoy. Thanks for taking a look
as ever....
BadtotheboneBob
Stem Cell Research
U-M: Researchers start embryonic stem cell line
University of Michigan researchers have created their first human embryonic stem cell line and one of only a handful in the nation made without potential contamination from other animal material, the lead scientist said today. The work was made possible by a 2008 Michigan constitutional amendment that lets scientists create embryonic stem cell lines using surplus embryos slated for disposal by fertility clinics, the university said...
U-M: Researchers start embryonic stem cell line | freep.com | Detroit Free Press
BadtotheboneBob
Thanks, B2tbBob!
Reader Suggestions
Michelle in AZ
Reader Suggestion
MAM
This is a re-imagined Donald Duck cartoon remix constructed using dozens of classic Walt Disney cartoons from the 1930s to 1960s. Donald's life is turned upside-down by the current economic crisis and he finds himself unemployed and falling behind on his house payments. As his frustration turns into despair Donald discovers a seemingly sympathetic voice coming from his radio named Glenn Beck.
Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck
MAM
Thanks, Marianne!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Looks like Coastal Eddy has returned. :)
Comic Strips Turn
Pink
The Sunday funnies will be in shades of pink ink on Oct. 10 in support of breast cancer awareness month.
King Features Syndicate Inc. said Sunday that more than 50 cartoonists will participate. Each comic strip will also feature a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness with the tag line, "Cartoonists Care." The pink strips will run in newspapers nationwide and online.
Participating strips include Blondie, Zits, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, Hagar the Horrible, Mother Goose & Grimm, Mallard Fillmore, Beetle Bailey, Dustin and The Pajama Diaries.
A gallery of the pink strips will be displayed on a ComicsGoPink website, where donations to seven breast cancer organizations will be accepted.
Pink
Enters British Pop Charts
Winston Churchill
Wartime leader Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister ever to enter the pop charts when an album featuring some of his most famous speeches set to music debuted in fourth place on Sunday.
The album "Reach for the Skies" was recorded by the Central Band of the Royal Air Force (RAF) to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, a crucial air campaign fought between British and German forces in 1940.
"It is great that to a long list of Official Chart stars including Elvis, Madonna, Cliff (Richard) and The Beatles, we can now add Winston Churchill," said Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company.
"It is also a tribute to the amazing sacrifices of our Servicemen that the British public have bought this RAF album in such large numbers."
Winston Churchill
Opera Houses With Edgier Fare
New York
New York opera companies are rolling out more high-tech shows, broadening their repertoire and raising their star quotient this season to help break the genre's image as a stodgy art form and lure new younger fans.
The Metropolitan Opera is using cables to hoist singers in the air, employing moving scenery and intricate projections, while the New York City Opera has unveiled a concert series featuring Broadway's Kristin Chenoweth and rocker Lou Reed.
The Metropolitan Opera will stage seven new productions this year -- double the number of new shows seen just a few years ago -- as it seeks to phase out long-running traditional performances staged to please conservative audience members.
These new, more adventurous productions, along with celebrity-filled red carpet premieres, are at the center of a strategy for New York opera companies to survive as a modern art form in the face of what remains an older audience.
New York
Firefighters Get Oxygen Masks For Pets
Boston
The Boston Fire Department on Wednesday received a donation of small oxygen masks designed for pets, which will become standard equipment on every fire truck in the city, officials said.
The 60 masks to fit small snouts were a gift from the WellPet pet food company and the Massachusetts Veterinary Medical Association.
Like oxygen masks for people, the masks are intended to help lungs recover from inhaled smoke.
"Smoke doesn't discriminate," said Fire Department spokesman Steve MacDonald.
Boston
Finding History
War Wrecks
Justin Taylan boots up his laptop computer in the climate-controlled comfort of a cafe and clicks on photographs of a World War II airplane lying in pieces amid a steamy jungle on the other side of the world.
He browses through a series of digital images of the vine-entangled wreckage of the American C-47B Dakota, which slammed into a mountain in Malaysia during a supply mission in November 1945. The cockpit, believed to still contain the remains of the three-member crew, lies embedded in the mountainside.
Taylan's computer file with the C-47 photographs, e-mailed to him last fall, is just one of thousands he has compiled for his website, the key component of his effort to document World War II airplane crash sites in the Pacific.
His Pacific Wrecks project has a dual mission: locate undiscovered U.S. airplane wreckage and determine the fates of the thousands of American airmen still listed as missing in the Second World War's Pacific Theater.
Pat Scannon, founder of the BentProp Project, a California-based group that hunts for wartime wrecks in Palau in the western Pacific, said Taylan deserves praise for his dedication and thoroughness.
War Wrecks
Western Lawmakers Turn Sights On
Endangered Wolves
Two decades after the federal government spent a half-million dollars to study the reintroduction of gray wolves to the Northern Rockies, lawmakers say it's time for Congress to step in again - this time to clamp down on the endangered animals.
To do so they are proposing to bypass the Endangered Species Act and lift protections, first enacted in 1974, for today's booming wolf population.
Critics say the move would undercut one of the nation's premiere environmental laws and allow for the unchecked killing of wolves across the West.
But bitterness against the iconic predator is flaring as livestock killings increase and some big game herds dwindle.
And with state efforts to knock back the predators' expansion stalled in court, senators from Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah want to strip wolves of their endangered status by force.
Endangered Wolves
Cocaine Charge
Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars, singer of the hit R&B song "Just the Way You Are," faces a felony cocaine charge stemming from his arrest after a performance at a Las Vegas nightclub last month.
The Clark County district attorney's office filed a criminal complaint Friday alleging the rising singer-songwriter had 2.6 grams of cocaine when he was arrested Sept. 19 after being detained by a hotel security guard.
Mars, whose real name is Peter Hernandez, is due in court Nov. 18 on the possession of a controlled substance charge. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
Hernandez, 24, was in Las Vegas for a performance at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino's Wasted Space nightclub.
Bruno Mars
Countries Reach Tentative Pact
Anti-Counterfeiting
Nearly 40 nations reached agreement in principle on Saturday on an international trade pact aimed at reducing copyright and trademark theft that causes losses of billions of dollars annually.
"Participants in the negotiations constructively resolved nearly all substantive issues ... (and) agreed to work expeditiously to resolve the small number of outstanding issues," the United States, Japan, the European Union and other participating countries said in a joint statement.
A key feature of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will mandate that customs officials have authority to seize counterfeit goods without a request from the rights holders or a court order, according to statements from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
The talks involved the United States, the European Union and its 27 member states, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland, and two developing countries -- Morocco and Mexico.
Anti-Counterfeiting
New US Partner?
BBC
Two U.S. media companies are vying to become BBC Worldwide's new partner in UKTV, the broadcaster behind digital channels Dave, Watch and Gold, according to the Sunday Times newspaper.
Discovery Communications and Scripps Networks are trying to team up with BBC Worldwide, which owns 50 percent of UKTV, to buy the remaining stake from cable group Virgin Media, the paper said, without citing sources.
Sources familiar with the situation told Reuters in August that Virgin Media had appointed banks UBS and Goldman Sachs to help sell its stake in UKTV and that the holding had been valued at about 350 million pounds ($554 million).
The Sunday Times said BBC Worldwide did not have enough borrowing headroom to buy out Virgin Media on its own.
BBC
Old Journals
Ship's Doctors
In the days when Britannia ruled the waves, Royal Navy doctors revived drowning men with tobacco smoke, treated scorpion stings with rum and advised sailors to gargle with sulphuric acid to combat scurvy.
The often eccentric medical methods used at sea in the 18th and 19th centuries are exposed in hundreds of naval surgeons' notebooks released by Britain's National Archives on Thursday.
They paint a gruesome picture of life on board overcrowded ships, with sailors bitten by sharks and spiders, struck by lightning and laid low by venereal disease.
One surgeon noted that "drunkenness nowadays in the navy kills more men than the sword" and that with most problems "you may trace grog as the principal cause."
Ship's Doctors
Go Online
Italian Masterpieces
Imagine being so close to Botticelli's Venus that you can see the strands of her blond hair, the shades of pink in her cheeks, the cracks in the centuries-old paint.
This week, an Italian company put online high-resolution images of "The Birth of Venus" and five other masterpieces from the Uffizi gallery in Florence, including works by Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci.
By zooming in with the click of a mouse, the smallest details can appear - even ones that aren't typically visible when viewing artworks at the distances required by museums for security.
In Caravaggio's "Bacchus," for example, the trace of a tiny self-portrait that the artist painted in the wine jug becomes detectable, as do the wine bubbles on the rim of the jug. In Leonardo's "Annunciation" computer users can see the brush strokes in the maritime background and the delicate patterns of the cloth underneath the Bible.
Italian Masterpieces
Weekend Box Office
'Social Network'
"The Social Network," director David Fincher's drama about the quarrelsome creation of the online juggernaut, debuted as the No. 1 weekend film with $23 million.
The weekend's other new wide releases had weak starts. Paramount's horror flick "Case 39," starring Renee Zellweger, opened at No. 7 with $5.35 million, while Overture Film's vampire tale "Let Me In," based on the novel "Let the Right One In," debuted at No. 8 with $5.3 million.
The Warner Bros. animated adventure "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole," held up well, retaining the No. 2 spot in its second weekend with $10.9 million and raising its total to $30 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. "The Social Network," $23 million.
2. "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole," $10.9 million.
3. "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," $10.1 million.
4. "The Town," $10 million.
5. "Easy A," $7 million.
6. "You Again," $5.6 million.
7. "Case 39," $5.35 million.
8. "Let Me In," $5.3 million.
9. "Devil," $3.7 million.
10. "Alpha and Omega," $3 million.
'Social Network'
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