PAUL KRUGMAN: First, Do Less Harm (The New York Times)
Universal health care, much as we need it, won't happen until there's a change of management in the White House. In the meantime, however, Congress can take an important step toward making our health care system less wasteful, by fixing the Medicare Middleman Multiplication Act of 2003.
Jim Hightower: LEFT-WING PENGUINS AND DEVILISH TOFU (jimhightower.com)
Maybe it was the election, or maybe it's the decline of their boy George, or maybe it's the onset of a cold, dark winter - I don't know why, but the ultra-right culture warriors seem to be getting loopier than ever.
Roger Sandall (assisted by Sir Francis Galton): The herd instinct, its benefits and its costs (culturecult.com)
I once attended an event at the Sydney Opera House where some 2500 people had gathered. A Danish percussion group were performing and they wanted the crowd to participate. Their leader stood and gave orders-clap, shout, stand, pat your knees-and 2500 men and women obeyed his commands. I myself declined to take part, but the elderly woman beside me, with shining eyes, followed every movement as though she had been waiting eighty years for instructions. She would have stood on her head if they asked.
RICHARD ROEPER: In a crowded field, mere mediocrity won't snare you a GOOF award (suntimes.com)
So much can happen to a GOOF nominee in a decade. Looking back at the roster of the 1996 finalists for my annual GOOF (Greatly Overhyped and Overexposed Fool) Award, I'm struck by the balance between those who have faded from the spotlight for reasons either tragic or pathetic and those who are still out there, living out their lives in the public eye. Not all GOOFs go gently into that good night.
zEN mAN (recognizing the rise of one of the leaders of the "Looney Left Liberal Cabal" being sworn in as the first female "Speaker of the House".....Eat your goddam heart out Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh)
CBS starts the night with '60 Minutes', followed by a RERUN'Cold Case', then a FRESH'Cold Case', followed by a FRESH'Without A Trace'.
NBC opens the night with a FRESH'Deal Or No Deal', followed by the SERIES PREMIERE'Grease: You're The One That I Want', then the SEASON PREMIERE'The Apprentice'.
ABC begins the night with a FRESH'America's So-Called Funniest Home Videos', followed by a RERUN'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition', then a FRESH'Desperate Housewives', followed by a FRESH'Brothers & Sisters'.
The CW offers a RERUN'reba', followed by a FRESH'reba', then a FRESH 2-hour 'Beauty And The Geek'.
Faux has a RERUN'War At Home', followed by another RERUN'War At Home', then a FRESH'Simpsons', followed by a FRESH'American Dad', then a RERUN'Family Guy', followed by another RERUN'Family Guy'.
MY has the movie 'Go', followed by the movie 'Tigerland'.
A&E has 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', still another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', yet another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', still another 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', one more 'Dog The Bounty Hunter', and 'Intervention'.
AMC offers the movie 'Lake Placid', followed by the movie 'Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines', then the moive 'Conan The Barbarian'.
BBC -
[2:00 pm] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 1;
[3:00 pm] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 2;
[4:00 pm] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 3;
[5:00 pm] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 3;
[6:00 pm] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 5;
[7:00 pm] Cash in the Attic - Episode 3;
[8:00 pm] Cash in the Attic - Episode 4;
[9:00 pm] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 1;
[10:00 pm] Footballers Wives Overtime - Episode 11;
[10:30 pm] Footballers Wives Overtime - Episode 12;
[11:00 pm] Cash in the Attic - Episode 3;
[12:00 am] Gordon Ramsay's F Word - Episode 1;
[1:00 am] Footballers Wives Overtime - Episode 11;
[1:30 am] Footballers Wives Overtime - Episode 12;
[2:00 am] Cash in the Attic - Episode 5;
[3:00 am] Blackadder - Plan A-Captain Cook;
[3:40 am] Blackadder - Plan B-Corporal Punishment;
[4:20 am] Blackadder - Plan C-Major Star;
[5:00 am] High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman - Episode 3;
[5:30 am] High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman - Episode 4;
[6:00 am] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EST)
Bravo has all 'Law & Order: Criminal Intent' all night.
Comedy Central has the movie 'Coming To America', followed by 'Christopher Titus: Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding'.
FX has the movie 'Spider-Man2', followed by 'Dirt', then the movie 'Spider-Man 2', again.
History has 'Rome: Engineering An Empire', another 'Rome: Engineering An Empire', 'Time Machine', and 'Caligula: Reign Of Madness'.
IFC -
[06:00 AM] The Flats;
[07:50 AM] The Great Silence;
[09:40 AM] The Emperor and the Assassin;
[12:25 PM] Making of: The Queen;
[12:35 PM] The Flats;
[02:25 PM] The Great Silence;
[04:15 PM] The Emperor and the Assassin;
[07:00 PM] Nine Queens;
[09:00 PM] City of Industry;
[10:45 PM] Fulltime Killer;
[12:30 AM] Ash Wednesday;
[02:15 AM] City of Industry;
[04:00 AM] Fulltime Killer;
[05:45 AM] Ash Wednesday. (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[07:00 AM] IN SHORT: Adam Elliot;
[07:45 AM] The Andromeda Strain;
[10:00 AM] In the Edges: the Grizzly Man Session;
[11:00 AM] Iconoclasts Season 2: Episode 5: Paul Simon + Lorne Michaels;
[12:00 PM] Hail, Hail Rock 'N' Roll;
[02:00 PM] One Punk Under God: Episode 4;
[02:30 PM] Sangam;
[03:00 PM] Kath & Kim - Season 3: 99 Percent Fat Free;
[03:30 PM] Play It As It Lays;
[05:15 PM] The Umbrellas of Cherbourg;
[07:00 PM] Little ;
[09:15 PM] Dimmer Directed By: Talmage Cooley;
[09:30 PM] Kath & Kim - Season 3: 99 Percent Fat Free;
[10:00 PM] Sugar Town;
[11:35 PM] Sangam;
[12:00 AM] Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance;
[02:05 AM] Delta of Venus;
[03:45 AM] Stars by Helmut Newton;
[04:45 AM] Hail, Hail Rock 'N' Roll. (ALL TIMES EST)
A street sign shows a name change in honor of new U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) after a ceremony in the Little Italy neighborhood of her childhood hometown of Baltimore, Maryland January 5, 2007.
Photo by Jonathan Ernst
The National Society of Film Critics bucked a trend on Saturday and named the Spanish-language fantasy film "Pan's Labyrinth" the year's best picture ahead of next month's Academy Awards.
Helen Mirren in "The Queen" and Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland" took the critics' top acting honors, adding to their growing list of awards and setting them up as Oscar front-runners.
"United 93" director Paul Greengrass was named best director for the September 11-themed film about passengers who rebelled against hijackers on the jet that crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
The film critics, in their 41st annual awards, named "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary on Al Gore's educational campaign about global warming, as the year's best nonfiction film.
Director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, left, arrives with cast members from the film 'Babel,' Adriana Barraza, second from left, Rinko Kikuchi, second from right, and Brad Pitt at the 18th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2007.
Photo by Matt Sayles
Afghanistan has banned an Indian Bollywood film about journalists in the war-ravaged country because parts of it were deemed offensive to one of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, a government official said on Saturday.
"Kabul Express" charts a 48-hour journey by three journalists in post-Taliban Afghanistan. It opened to mixed reviews in India last month.
"The film has some sentences which were very offensive toward one of Afghanistan's ethnicities, namely the Hazara," said Minister of Culture adviser Najib Manalai.
Hazara people are believed to make up about 10 percent of the Afghan population. A Shi'ite Muslim minority, Hazaras are thought to be descended from remnants of Genghis Khan's invading army and have at times faced persecution.
It's a bit late for the holidays, but the state's beer sellers are now free to let Santa's Butt Winter Porter sit on their shelves.
The Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement had blocked a beer importer from selling the brew, along with two beers with labels depicting bare-breasted women. Those decisions were reversed after the state attorney general's office determined that the company probably would win the lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed on its behalf last month.
State officials had barred the English-made Santa's Butt out of concern its label might appeal to children. It depicts a rear view of a beer-drinking Santa sitting on a "butt," a large barrel brewers once used to store beer.
The other previously banned beers feature paintings of bare-breasted women on their labels. One of the paintings hangs in the Louvre - Eugene Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People" - and the other was commissioned by the importer, Belchertown, Mass.-based Shelton Brothers.
A group of people stand by Snowziilla as cars try to maneuver around the vehicles and people stopping to look at the 22-foot snowman in Anchorage, Alaska, Friday, Jan. 5, 2007. Snowzilla may be a smash hit with shutterbugs, but some neighbors of the two-story high snowman say they're fed up with the hordes of gawkers clogging up the Street.
Photo by Al Grillo
Little League Baseball will continue on ESPN under an eight-year contract extension announced Thursday.
Financial terms of the deal, which will run through 2014, weren't disclosed. ESPN and ABC have carried the Little League Championship since 1963. The new deal includes multimedia rights and 49 games in the eight divisions of Little League Baseball.
ESPN said that this year marks the first time that the networks -- including ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC -- will carry all 32 games of the Little League Baseball World Series, which will run from August 17-23 in Williamsport, Pa.
Some football fans who pay for cable television in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, will need to make special arrangements to catch Sunday's NFL playoff game between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. Ditto for devotees of "Grey's Anatomy" in St. Louis who want to catch Thursday night's hotly anticipated new episode.
The culprit? A financial stalemate between cable operator Mediacom Communications Corp. and Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the owner of the CBS affiliate in Cedar Rapids and the ABC affiliate in St. Louis.
Because Sinclair likely will not extend its retransmission consent to Mediacom past midnight Friday, Mediacom will not carry those stations and 20 others owned or programmed by Sinclair unless Sinclair agrees to binding arbitration of a dispute over how much Mediacom should pay for the right to include the stations in its cable package.
The dispute affects more than 800,000 Mediacom cable subscribers in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Misa Kuranaga and Reyneris Reyes from Boston Ballet perform the Act II pas de deux from the ballet 'Giselle' at 'Dance Across the City at the Strand' in Boston, Massachusetts January 5, 2007. The performance was held the night before 'Dance Across the City', a day of dances classes, demonstrations and performances by scores of local and national dance compaines, all free to the public.
Photo by Brian Snyder
The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival is negotiating to buy the 500-acre farm where the first five festivals were held to be the event's permanent home, the landowner has said.
Bonnaroo officials declined to comment, but farm owner Sam McAllister said the sale could be concluded next week.
The next Bonnaroo is set for June 14-17 at the Manchester farm between Chattanooga and Nashville. The festival Web site says "early bird" discounted tickets have sold out. Regular tickets will go on sale when the artist lineup is announced.
The lit Ice and snow world is seen during the opening of the Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, the capital city of China's northernmost province, Heilongjiang in China Friday night Jan. 5, 2007. The Ice and snow festival is one of the largest of its kind in the world. Braving temperatures that can reach 35 degrees Celsius below zero (-31 F) tourists flock by the thousands to enjoy the ice carvings and snow sculptures on display.
Photo by Elizabeth Dalziel
Once down to about 15, the world's only naturally migrating flock of whooping cranes has continued its comeback, now numbering a record 237 birds in wintering grounds along Texas' Gulf Coast.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tom Stehn, who tracks the flock, said 45 cranes were born last year, including a rare seven sets of twins.
He credited the increase to mild weather at their nesting grounds in Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Canada's boreal forest. There, the birds begin their 2,500-mile migration route from their summering grounds to Texas.
Wildlife officials say the whooping crane, the tallest bird in North America, illustrates how a concerted effort of legislation and public awareness can help a species rebound.
In this photo released by the Wildlife Conservation Society, American Flamingos take advantage of the unseasonably warm weather at The Bronx Zoo in New York, Friday, Jan. 5, 2007. With local temperatures in the 50's visitors got to see giraffes, zebras, lions, monkeys, baboons and African wild dogs on exhibit outdoors all week at the zoo.
Photo by Julie Larsen Maher
Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of Dec. 25-31. Day and start time (EST) are in parentheses.
1. NFL Football: N.Y. Jets vs. Miami (Monday, 8:30 p.m.), ESPN, 7.26 million homes, 11.08 million viewers.
2. College Football: Texas vs. Iowa (Saturday, 4:29 p.m.), ESPN, 5.52 million homes, 7.79 million viewers.
3. College Football: Georgia vs. Virginia Tech (Saturday, 8:06 p.m.), ESPN, 4.4 million homes, 6.47 million viewers.
4. College Football: Florida St. vs. UCLA (Wednesday, 7:54 p.m.), ESPN, 4.13 million homes, 5.59 million viewers.
5. "Sportscenter" (Saturday, 4:11 p.m.), ESPN, 4.01 million homes, 5.39 million viewers.
6. College Football: Texas A&M vs. California (Thursday, 8:07 p.m.), ESPN, 3.78 million homes, 5.04 million viewers.
7. College Football: Navy vs. Boston College (Saturday, 12:59 p.m.), ESPN, 3.56 million homes, 4.57 million viewers.
8. "The Funniest Commercials of 2006" (Wednesday, 9 p.m.), TBS, 3.28 million homes, 4.88 million viewers.
9. "Monday Night Countdown" (Monday, 8 p.m.), ESPN, 3.23 million homes, 4.93 million viewers.
10. Movie: "Pirates of the Caribbean" (Saturday, 8 p.m.), USA, 3.19 million homes, 4.64 million viewers.
11. College Football: South Carolina vs. Houston (Friday, 4:36 p.m.), ESPN, 2.99 million homes, 4.09 million viewers.
12. College Football: Purdue vs. Maryland (Friday, 8:21 p.m.), ESPN, 2.75 million homes, 3.78 million viewers.
13. Movie: "Freaky Friday" (Friday, 9 p.m.), Disney, 2.75 million homes, 3.94 million viewers.
14. College Football: Oklahoma St. vs. Alabama (Thursday, 4:24 p.m.), ESPN, 2.73 million homes, 3.55 million viewers.
15. Movie: "High School Musical" (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), Disney, 2.73 million homes, 3.85 million viewers.
Snow covers a pink flamingo lawn ornament in southeast Denver on Friday, Jan. 5, 2007, after a winter storm dumped up to eight inches of snow on storm-weary residents of the interior West. The storm was the third to sweep over the region in less than two weeks.
Photo by David Zalubowski
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