I've started this blog as an open forum to discuss current topics in the news in a "Point - Counter Point" manner. By using this method of debate, I seek to encourage all to lend their voices and opinions by weighing in on the current days topics up for discussion. Welcome to POINT - COUNTER POINT.
The Grim Reaper will pay a most unwelcome visit to the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off in the May 13 episode. I say most unwelcome as opposed to, you know, just generally unwelcome, because the person whose alter ego is being killed off is someone I — and most of you, — have been a fan of for years.
But that’s all you’re getting out of me. Okay, that, and this list of reasons it could/couldn’t be the following.
Kate Walsh (Addison) Pro: Killing off the star of the show would certainly shake things up! Con: She’s the star of the show!
Tim Daly (Pete) Pro: His death would bring about a speedy resolution to the Sam/Addison/Pete triangle! Con: It’s Tim Daly!
Audra McDonald (Naomi) Pro: New York-based McDonald has been doing the bicoastal thing for three seasons, and all that air travel has to be taking a toll. Plus, Naomi’s death would clear the way for Addison and Sam to be together. Con: She’s Addison’s BFF and only emotional constant.
Paul Adelstein (Cooper) Pro: I honestly can’t think of one. Con: He brings a welcome dose of levity to an otherwise emotionally charged medi-soap. His light touch would be sorely missed.
KaDee Strickland (Charlotte) Pro: She has always been the outcast of the group, a point that was driven home even more painfully than usual in the wake of her estrangement from Coop. Con: Every show needs a bitch.
Chris Lowell (Dell) Pro: Lowell’s episode order was cut back this season. Has Shonda Rhimes been trying to wean us off Dell? Con: He remains one of the show’s most popular (and demo-friendly) characters. Plus, Rhimes would never make sweet Betsy an orphan.
Taye Diggs (Sam) Pro: He’s Addison’s partner-slash-crush and Naomi’s ex, so his death would have a cascading effect that would reverberate for many seasons to come. Con: Have you seen that smile? Oh, and those abs?
Amy Brenneman (Violet) Pro: Since her C-section from hell, she has proved to be emotionally unstable (not to mention the worst mom ever). Next step: suicide? Con: Fans are just now getting over Judging Amy’s cancellation!
Who do you think is getting whacked? Speculate away in the comments!
Eva Longoria Parker, Teri Hatcher, Marcia Cross, and Felicity Huffman have issued a joint statement backing Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry in the face of accusations made by former co-star Nicollette Sheridan in a lawsuit: “It would be irresponsible of us to let the public believe that being a part of this show from its inception has been anything but a blessing,” the statement reads. “We have no first-hand knowledge of what Nicollette may or may not have experienced, but we would never characterize our set as a hostile environment. It is, in fact, the opposite…The friendships and support that Marc Cherry, the cast, the crew and the producers have shared for the past six years have made this a wonderful job that we are grateful for every day.”
Hatcher also complained about being singled out in Sheridan’s lawsuit, which said that Hatcher complained about Cherry to ABC executives, only to have Cherry say, “I hope Teri Hatcher gets hit by a car and dies.” The actress, in a separate statement, said her inclusion was “unfortunate and inappropriate.” “While my adoration and respect for the classic and dynamic chemistry of the characters of Susan and Edie is indelible, I’m honored to stand with Eva, Felicity and Marcia, as a group and clarify that our set environment is nothing less than an amazingly positive experience. I have never felt discriminated against. In fact, I have felt heard and respected by Marc and other executives in regards to both my professional and personal needs.”
In her lawsuit, Sheridan claimed that Cherry hit her during an argument and subsequently let her go after she complained.
Fet up with people eating on the subways and then just discarding their garbage? Well so is a fellow blogspot blogger. Checkout his site on the link below. I know that I'll be sending him some pic's shortly!
American Idol' star Kara DioGuardi laid herself bare for the newest issue of Allure -- literally.
The judge, along with 'Grey's Anatomy' doc Jessica Capshaw, singer-songwriter Colbie Caillat and 'Entourage' hottie Emmanuelle Chriqui posed naked for the magazine.
Will the U.S. accept youth unemployment levels like Europe's? By DANIEL HENNINGER
Unemployment today doesn't look like any unemployment in the recent American experience. We have the astonishing and dispiriting new reality that the "long-term jobless"—people out of work more than six months (27 weeks)—was about 44% of all people unemployed in February. A year ago that number was 24.6%.
This is not normal joblessness. As The Wall Street Journal reported in January, even when the recovery comes, some jobs will never return.
But the aspect of this mess I find more disturbing is the numbers around what economists call "youth unemployment." The U.S. unemployment rate for workers under 25 years old is about 20%.
"Youth unemployment" isn't just a descriptor used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's virtually an entire field of study in the economics profession. That's because in Europe, "youth unemployment" has become part of the permanent landscape, something that somehow never goes away.
Is the U.S. there yet?
No public figure has ever taken more flak for a comment than former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for "old Europe." These are the Western European nations that spent the postwar period free of Soviet domination. With that freedom they designed what came to be called the "social-market economy," a kind of Utopia where a job exists to be protected and the private sector exists mainly to pay for the state's welfare plans.
Alas for Utopia it came to pass that the marginal cost of adding employees increased so much around Europe that private-sector hiring of new workers slowed and "youth unemployment" rose. And stayed.
Eight years ago, a bittersweet movie about this tragedy of fallen expectations for Europe's young, "L'Auberge Espagnole," ends with a bright young Frenchman getting a "job" at a public ministry, where on the first day his co-workers explain the path to retirement. He runs from the building.
In the final month of 2009, these were European unemployment rates for people under 25: Belgium, 22.6; Spain, 44.5; France, 25.2; Italy, 26.2; the U.K., 19; Sweden, 26.9; Finland, 23.5. Germany, at 10% uses an "apprentice" system to bring young people into the work force, though that system has come under stress for a most relevant reason: a shortage in Germany of private-sector jobs.
In the U.S., we've always assumed that we're not them, that America has this terrific, unstoppable job-creation machine. And that during a "cyclical downturn," all the U.S. Congress or the states have to do is keep unemployment benefits flowing and retraining programs running until the American jobs machine kicks in and sops up the unemployed.
But what if this time the new-jobs machine doesn't start?
In the U.S., we've thought of youth unemployment as mainly about minority status linked to poor education. Not in Europe. German TV recently broadcast a sad piece on Finland, which has the continent's most admired school system. It showed an alert, vivacious young woman—she looked like someone out of an upper-middle-class U.S. high school—roaming Helsinki's streets begging waitress jobs, without success.
It was during the Reagan presidency's years of strong new-job growth, with an expansion that lasted 92 months between 1983 and 1990, that Europeans began to envy the employment prospects for American graduates. The envy continued through the dot.com boom of the Clinton years. Some of Europe's most ambitious young workers emigrated to the U.S.
Which brings us to the current American presidency. Last March, its admirers proclaimed that the Obama budget drove "a nail in the coffin of Reaganomics." And replaced it with what?
Mr. Obama spent his first year saving the public economy (the stimulus's money mainly protected public-sector jobs) and designing a U.S. health-care system led, if not run, by the public sector. The year's most significant U.S. fiscal policies created an array of new taxes to finance the congressionally designed health system, and raised federal spending to 25% of GDP. Another broad tax increase begins Jan. 1.
The only new-jobs idea the philosopher kings around Mr. Obama have had is the "green economy." No doubt it will create some jobs. But an idea so dependent on subsidy economics is not going to deliver strong-form employment for the best, brightest or willing and able in the next American generation. The path we're on is toward a flatter, gentler U.S. economy.
This is not the way forward to the next version of an American economy that once created Microsoft, Intel, MCI, Oracle, Google or even Twitter. The United States needs tremendous economic forces to lift its huge work force. Since 1990, roughly 80 million Americans have been born. They can't all be organic farmers or write scripts for "30 Rock."
Many upscale American parents somehow think jobs like their own are part of the nation's natural order. They are not. In Europe, they have already discovered that, and many there have accepted the new small-growth, small-jobs reality. Will we?
