Sunday and Thursday are currently the best TV nights of the week. Tonight, Food Network's "The Great Food Truck Race" is in Denver.

There's also a new episode of Big Brother and Breaking Bad. And the MTV Music Video Awards are tonight. MTV sent a private jet yesterday to collect Snooki and the Jersey Shore gang from the East Coast so they wouldn't miss it.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

It's a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall. Goodnight Irene.

This is an open thread, all topics -- and music suggestions -- welcome. Stay safe everyone.

I found the impotence "defense" of President Obama strange before, it seems incomprehensible to me now that we need to make an argument for why he should be reelected. I'm not going to rehash my arguments on the subject. Suffice it to say that in his discussion with Scott LeMieux, I think Glenn Greenwald has the better of the argument.

Speaking for me only.

Big Tent Democrat and David Waldman debut Daily Kos Radio this morning on Sirius Left Channel 127 from 10 am ET to 1pm ET. Give a listen.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Via Atrios, this story about how cable is losing customers contains this "gem" of a comment from DISH CEO Joseph Clayton:

Dish Chief Executive Officer Joseph Clayton said yesterday that one of his goals is to reposition the company away from marketing to lower-income customers. Instead, he wants Dish to rely on its technology and promotions to persuade customers to buy more expensive offerings and increase average revenue per user.Clayton rejected the idea of relaxing credit standards to appeal to lower-income people, saying he’s “looking for a better class of customer.”

I look forward to the day DISH files for bankruptcy. What an a**hole.

Speaking for me only

Congratulations to Armando, aka Big Tent Democrat, who will be the co-host of Daily Kos Radio on Sirius beginning this Saturday. What a great choice.

NEW YORK, NY– August 8, 2011 - Sirius XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) today announced that it will launch a live, interactive four-week radio series with Daily Kos, the influential online progressive political community, news organization and activist hub.

Daily Kos Radio will launch on August 13 at 10:00 am ET, and air Saturdays through September 3 live from 10:00 am – 1:00 pm ET on liberal/progressive talk channel SiriusXM Left, ch. 127. Daily Kos contributing editors David Waldman and Armando Llorens will co-host the show from SiriusXM’s Washington, D.C. headquarters, breaking down headlines and issues with other members of the Daily Kos community to bring the interactive experience of the blogosphere to SiriusXM listeners coast to coast.

Don't forget to tune in. And not to worry, BTD will be continuing to blog here at TalkLeft.

Both Ezra Klein and Felix Salmon defend S&P from criticisms. Salmon's defense is very telling:

S&P is not judging the quality of Treasury bonds as an investment.

Say what? Then in what way is S&P issuing a credit rating? If S&P acknowledged they were writing a political Op-Ed, that would be one thing. But in fact, S&P is purporting to do precisely what Salmon says it is not doing - judging the creditworthiness of US government obligations. Salmon's argument makes no sense. More . . .

Marking my territory - I came up with the Madman Theory of Political Bargaining, not Kurt Anderson.

Also, too, I coined 11 Dimensional Chess.

Just sayin'.

Open Thread.

Sorry to beat a dead horse, but this from Kevin Drum annoyed me:

If Obama had negotiated with nerves of steel, would he have gotten better deals throughout his presidency? I don't think so. Unlike labor bosses and Soviet bosses, who could be pressured because there were things they wanted that a president could provide, Republicans — and especially tea party Republicans — can't be. If Obama had been tough as nails, they would followed a path of total obstruction and nihilism anyway. Maybe some details here and there would have changed, but on the whole it just wouldn't have made any difference.

(Emphasis supplied.) In December, the President had his biggest bargaining chip - the Bush tax cuts. To pretend he did not is either wilful blindness or ignorance. Now you can argue for The Deal the President made, but don't pretend it was not a moment of maximum bargaining leverage. The debt ceiling increase is a moment of maximum bargaining leverage for Republicans. They are wringing out as much as they can from it (that the Tea Party is genuinely insane does not change that fact.) See my posts The Debt Ceiling Battle Was Lost Last December and Seeking Maximum Leverage In Political Bargaining. See also the Madman Theory of Political Bargaining.

Speaking for me only

Ta-Nehisi Coates:

Obama has been much praised for the magnanimity he shows his opposition. But such empathy, unburdened by actual expectations, comes easy. More challenging is the work of coping with those who have the disagreeable habit of taking the president, and his talk of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” seriously. In that business, Obama would do well to understand that while democracy depends on intelligent compromise, it also depends on the ill-tempered gripers and groaners out in the street.

Coates references Eric Foner's great book The Fiery Trial, which I wrote about here:

What a depressing day of news, between the budget cuts, Norway and the deplorable media interviews by the accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

Time for something else: Breaking Bad, Big Brother and the Next Food Network Star. See you all tomorrow.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Even if you never watched Seasons 1-3, don't miss tonight's premiere of AMC's Breaking Bad, Season 4. (8 PM, Denver Time) It's the best show on television. Here's a review (no spoilers) of tonight's episode, The Box Cutter. The author says: "Every note of these opening episodes is pitch perfect, building a slow crescendo of what looks to be an impressively strong season."

While you're waiting, check out Nerve.com's clip of the best lines of "Better Call Saul", the show's sleazy defense lawyer.