Worried?  You should be.

digby–

I don’t have a clue how to stop this train. Having the zombie eyed granny starver on the ticket hasn’t changed their view that the Grand Bargain to slash 4 trillion in government programs in the middle of an epic slump is still great policy and even better politics.

But don’t worry. They’ll ask millionaires to “pay a little more” so it’s all good. I’m feeling more “confident” already.

Basically we have a choice between the Republican dystopian hellscape or the Democrats’ long slow jobless recovery with even more insecurity for the poor and middle class.

Balanced?  How many billionaires can you fit on the backs of the workers?

dday (note: he used to write with digby)-

The best expression of the austerity that has been implemented at the federal level for the last two years can be found in this chart from Goldman Sachs. It shows pretty clearly that fiscal policy at the federal level turned negative in mid-2010. This doesn’t just mean that fiscal policy, after the stimulus began to run out, was relatively speaking less powerful. It means that federal fiscal policy, not combined with state and local but just confined to the federal level, dragged on growth starting in mid-2010, before the 2010 midterm elections. It really never recovered, save for a couple quarters of near-zero growth from fiscal policy in the middle of 2011.

And there are policies that correspond to this. The White House froze federal employee pay; it was one of the first items touted from their budget in 2010. They cut food stamps twice to pay for other priorities. They cut unemployment benefits in the most recent extension, so that the 99-week benefit has been reduced to 73. They cut $39 billion from the 2012 budget and imposed a spending cap for the next ten years. The Administration will tell you proudly that they have inaugurated the lowest rate of discretionary spending (.pdf) since the Eisenhower era.

Obama Reiterates Desire for Grand Bargain on Taxes and Spending

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Monday August 20, 2012 2:23 pm

(T)he pro-austerity rhetoric emanating from the Obama Administration has been corrosive. And despite signs that, after the unpopular debt limit deal, the President put such rhetoric in his hip pocket, sadly that’s not at all true. Witness him today in his impromptu press conference.

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Welcome back, confidence fairy!

“The $1 trillion in spending cuts we’ve already made,” also typically ignored by those who want to say that Obama out-foxed Boehner in the debt limit deal, refers to the spending cap, which will starve federal investment for the next ten years. But the clear point made here is that $1 trillion is not enough for this President. He still seeks that grand bargain where token revenue increases are exchanged for “tough spending cuts.” This is still part of the agenda even in an election year.

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(O)ftentimes, budget cuts and grand bargains like this don’t happen because a very vocal minority makes it toxic for them to happen. Then they get told “see, there was never anything to worry about, you didn’t have to shout,” when the shouting helped stop the plan from taking effect. It’s a thankless job, alas, but someone has to do it.

“She was an acrobat’s daughter.”  Originally posted here April 28, 2011.

Today they’re taking the oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy out for a little sail and turn around.

Navy’s oldest commissioned warship to sail again

By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press

Fri, Aug 17, 2012

The USS Constitution, which was first launched in 1797, will be tugged from its berth in Boston Harbor on Sunday to the main deepwater pathway into the harbor. It will then set out to open seas for a 10-minute cruise.

The short trip marks the day two centuries ago when the Constitution bested the British frigate HMS Guerriere in a fierce battle during the War of 1812. It follows a three-year restoration project and is the first time the Constitution has been to sea on its own since its 200th birthday in 1997.

Now the truth is they turn it around every few years anyway for preservation and maintenance, but it’s usually shoved along by tugs.  This is a big deal for the Sailors who get to participate either as workers (who’ve been preparing for a couple of years with the rigging which is not trivial even for 4 sails) and the ‘honorary’ crew who are mostly senior enlisted personnel (NCOs).

Not to disparage the Constitution‘s victory, but as with most such it was hardly a fair fight.

The English had been fighting continuously at sea against one nation or another (Netherlands, Spain, France) for over 2 hundred years using refinements of the same technology and tactics and got quite highly organized about it.  They divided ships into various types based on firepower mostly.  Fifth raters were never used in a battle line, but instead in patrols and as messengers.  In colonial waters they’d often pursue pirates or act as commerce raiders (there’s a HUGE difference).  The captured French frigate, Guerriere was armed to suit the English practice of running right alongside close up and blasting your hull with heavy carronades (30 x 18pdr guns, 16 x 32pdr carronades, 2 x 12pdr guns, 1 x 18pdr carronade).

The United States Navy was nothing like that.

What we called a frigate was actually a Fourth Rate Ship of the Line.  The Constitution never sailed with less than 50 guns (thirty 24-pounders on the main deck, twenty-four 32-pounders and two bored out 18-pounders on the upper deck on this occasion).  It also had the advantage of a 2 x 6″ bias ply hull over a diagonally stiffened frame that improved the sailing performance.

The Battle against the Guerriere is actually kind of instructive of why you just couldn’t expect a Fifth Rate to stand up actually.

Because of it’s heavier build the English long range guns had limited effect (thus Old Ironsides) while Hull put on more sail (unknown why Dacres did not respond) and soon got in range.  They exchanged fire for about 15 minutes with the Guerriere sustaining tremendous damage, including losing the Mizzen Mast.  Dacres had been maneuvering for a clear shot and tangled with the Constitution’s rigging.  Both Captains sent boarding parties forward to the contact point but were unable to board.

During this time the ships basically continued blowing each other apart until the Guerriere’s Fore Mast fell too and the Constitution disengaged and made ready for another pass.  During this time Hull dispatched a boat to ask if Dacres wanted to strike his colors.

Well, Sir, I don’t know. Our mizzen mast is gone, our fore and main masts are gone – I think on the whole you might say we have struck our flag.

That and the Battle of New Orleans are the notable victories and we forget about Detroit and the Burning of Washington.

(T)he greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made.

Orson Welles

Buster Keaton– The General (1926) (1:44)

Buster Keaton– Sherlock Jr., 1924 (44:01)

One of AFI’s 100 Funniest.

I can’t believe it’s only another week to this farce.

The past is never forgotten; it’s never even past

This originally appeared here April 27, 2011.

So, like where’s my flying car dude?  Originally posted here on April 26, 2011.

Call me Ishmael.  Long before the movie there was a book and since paperback pop trash sci-fi was only a hobby I can say that Jaws was worth the $.75 I paid for it and the 2 hours it took to consume not unpleasant if not particularly memorable.  I have no idea why people think Spielberg is a genius either.

Nor are sharks a particular terror of mine, the reason I don’t swim in dark water is my acrophobia and the sensation of falling, not because I’m afraid of getting eaten by a big fish.

Still there is no denying the mass fascination.

About 24 years go the programmers at Discovery were wondering how they could fill the hot dead humid air of August when they came up with an idea.

The Evolution of Shark Week, Pop-Culture Leviathan

By Ashley Fetters, The Atlantic

Aug 13 2012, 1:02 PM ET

Now the longest-running cable TV programming event in history, Shark Week has cemented itself as a fixture in the pop-culture lexicon, both seriously and meme-tastically. Stephen Colbert and Tracy Morgan (the voices of their generation, of course) have both publicly professed the sanctity of Shark Week in recent years: In 2006, Morgan’s character on 30 Rock sagely advised a colleague to “Live every week like it’s Shark Week“, and Colbert proclaimed it the second holiest annual holiday next to the week after Christmas in 2010.

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By 1994, Shark Week had lured Jaws author Peter Benchley on board as the show’s first-ever host. For its 15th anniversary in 1997, the sharks had costars-Celebrity Shark Week, it was dubbed, with appearances by Julie Bowen, Mark McGrath, and Brian McKnight, among others. Volleyball player Gabrielle Reece jumped into shark-infested waters without ever really informing the producers that she was more than a little new to scuba-diving: “I thought if I told [Discovery],” she said, “they wouldn’t let me come.”

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To this day, Runnette says, the team continues to develop its programming simply by asking themselves the question that spawned the first Shark Week: “What would be the most fun?” (“Chum underpants” and “the meat suit” are just two unforgettable responses that Runnette mentions, laughing at the memory-but clarifies that neither one has ever been or will ever be actually implemented.)

Shark Week, though, Runnette says, has never been at a loss for fun. “It’s taught us that it wants to be almost like a holiday-which it is for a lot of people,” Runnette says. “They want to wave little flags that say ‘Happy Shark Week.’ I always see pictures of all these cupcakes and these party decorations that they have to celebrate Shark Week.”

A beginner’s guide to Shark Week – a bloody American tradition

Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian

Friday 10 August 2012 12.28 EDT

Thrashing limbs, bloodied ocean and the shell-crushing teeth of the most-feared creature in the sea: this my friends, is Shark Week.

Broadcast annually for a quarter-century, the shockingly educational and often voyeuristic week of shark-oriented programming has dominated American airwaves each summer, courtesy of the Discovery Channel.

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The combination of courageous camerawork, melodramatic music and terrifying facts – a shark can smell a single drop of blood in an Olympics-sized pool! – has been a ratings boon for Discovery since its inception.

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For the past 24 summers, the network has hosted shows including: Teeth of Death, In Search of the Golden Hammerhead, The Man Who Loves Sharks, Shark Shooters, Blood in the Water and Jaws Comes Home.

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And though people are more likely to die from digging a hole in the sand than from a shark attack, the programming’s focus on these aquatic onslaughts plays up to the fears most famously induced by Jaws (whose author happened to host the first Shark Week) and helps get great ratings along the way.

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“People are quite obviously a greater danger to sharks than the other way around, so I talk to them about how we can show that or how we can talk about that,” Runnette said.

Happy Shark Week.  Tomorrow, Little League Baseball.