In case your New Years is heading in a mellow direction, or if you're waking up/coming to and can't handle anything louder than a whisper, here is Bobby "Route 66" Troup with his trio featuring then-up-and-comer Julie London on vocals. All from the celebrated Cameo Room on New York's Eastside.

Recorded for NBC Radio in 1956, the set features Troup's immortal Route 66 and London's famous "Cry Me A River". A pretty good show and a nice sendoff to the new year.

Get comfortable.

On Morning Joe Thursday morning, NBC anchor Brian Williams stopped by to discuss the different stories that the media covered during 2010 and he had the temerity to blame the media’s lack of coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster once the gusher was capped in the Gulf on the public losing interest in the topic.

WILLIAMS: And in between for those of us that have a love affair the state of Louisiana, with the southern portion of the coastline in the United States, the one story I think that’s been forgotten, because it’s cognitive dissonance looking at that live camera, of that spewing oil. We as Americans certainly like to pick ourselves up and recover and move on. And you can go down there to Venice Louisiana and not see too much in the way of pick up and clean up crews.

I’m happy to read that the Chevy Volt is being made of 100,000 pounds of plastic body parts that are a product of 100 miles of oil soaked boom. That’s what happened to all that stuff. They transported it and they’re churning it up and melting it down and making plastic body parts for the Chevy Volt. […]

So something good came out of this awful year. But I don’t think, I think we’ve all moved on and forgot what it was like to wake up on this broadcast and others every morning… let’s go to the live picture and just the helplessness that we watched.

So that’s what I’m going to remember this year for because that area already meant so much to me and I might add a person here at this table, the only one who represented it in Congress.

Yeah, it’s a good thing all that oil just magically disappeared now that there’s no more ambulance for the media to chase in the form of that gusher of oil. Good grief. Somehow I doubt anyone who’s still living with the oil on their shores and the dispersants or anyone that wonders if seafood from the Gulf will ever be safe to eat again feels the same way. Hey Brian, there’s still a story to cover if you and your cohorts would get off your butts and go down there and do some follow up. The public didn’t lose interest in the story. The media just refuses to cover it now that it will actually take some investigative journalism to do so and bucking the establishment they love to suck up to.

h/t to Fran for bringing this up in their podcast this week. I'd almost forgotten I sent the tip on this to the team via email until she and Driftie brought it up there.

Happy New Year to everyone from all of us at Crooks and Liars! It's an open thread AND a New Year's Eve party.

What are you doing tonight, hoping for this year, resolving for the next few? Welcome and a toast to our readers and commenters! Cheers!

Happy New Year from The Music Club! This song's videos, both the Rube Goldberg and Marching Band variations, far outshadow the song itself.

But if you listen to the words as shown in this fanvid, it's the perfect New Year's Eve number for a difficult year.

Our sister site Newstalgia has for its New Year's Eve concert, Aretha Franklin, Live in Stockholm, 1968.

What are you listening to this New Year's Eve?

A little something from us at Newstalgia to take you into the New Year. It's the legendary Aretha Franklin, kicking off her 1968 European Tour in Stockholm Sweden. The sound is a little dicey the first minute or so (it IS a 1968 tape after all) but it settles in and it's a great concert with Aretha in top form. Here's a list of what she does and who's in the band:

Aretha Franklin - Konserthuset, Stockholm, Sweden, May 2nd 1968, FM.

1st show on '68 Europe Tour
1. Don't Let Me Lose This Dream >
2. Soul Serenade
3. Night Life >
4. Baby, I Love You >
5. Groovin'
6. (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
7. Come Back Baby
8. Dr. Feelgood (Love Is A Serious Business)
9. Since You've Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby)
10. I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)
11. Chain Of Fools >
12. Respect

Performers:
Russell Conway: Trumpet
George Davidson: Drums
Aretha Franklin: Piano, Vocals
Carolyn Franklin: Vocals, Vocals (Background)
Gary Illingworth: Piano

I don't have to tell you not only what a legend she is, but how much all of our prayers are with her for a speedy recovery. And just a reminder of why she will forever be known as The Queen Of Soul.

Happy New Year from the gang at Newstalgia.

Since we're coming to the end of a year and the end of a decade, I thought taking a look at the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and the turbulent times surrounding it might be a good idea.

Here is a look back at the Johnson years, as presented by NBC Radio and their Second Sunday series, broadcast on January 1969, as Richard Nixon assumed the White House.

Opinions on Johnson as President were sharply divided as much as everything else in the country at the time. In that respect, there are striking similarities between then and now with very little in the way of "middle-ground" opinions it seems.

So in case you were wondering if the country has always been divided over a leader and an administration's policies. I'm here to tell you it's always been that way.

I guess we just have to get used to it.

Happy New Year.

Time for your 2010 year end podcast from The Professional Left, our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Happy New Year everybody and enjoy the podcast.

Mentioned in the podcast

Jon Stewart article in The NY Times.

Brian Williams Claims the Media Quit Covering the BP Oil Spill Because the Public Lost Interest in the Story

Batocchio's round up of best posts of the year by the bloggers who wrote them.

You can listen to the archives at The Professional Left or make a donation there if you'd like to help keep these going. Have a great weekend everybody.

The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur filling in for Ed Schultz talked to former Labor Secretary under President Clinton Robert Reich about the recent request by U.S. companies for a tax holiday on the over $1 trillion in assets they have sitting offshore.

Dodging Repatriation Tax Lets U.S. Companies Bring Home Multinational Cash:

At the White House on Dec. 15, business executives asked President Obama for a tax holiday that would help them tap more than $1 trillion of offshore earnings, much of it sitting in island tax havens.

The money -- including hundreds of billions in profits that U.S. companies attribute to overseas subsidiaries to avoid taxes -- is supposed to be taxed at up to 35 percent when it’s brought home, or “repatriated.” Executives including John T. Chambers of Cisco Systems Inc. say a tax break would return a flood of cash and boost the economy.

What nobody’s saying publicly is that U.S. multinationals are already finding legal ways to avoid that tax. Over the years, they’ve brought cash home, tax-free, employing strategies with nicknames worthy of 1970s conspiracy thrillers -- including “the Killer B” and “the Deadly D.”

Read on...

Uygur asked Reich what solutions there are when we have one party that is a wholly owned subsidiary of big business as the Republicans are and too many Democrats willing to feed off of the same trough. Reich pointed to the obvious, which is campaign finance reform.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

Since we're coming to the end of a year and the end of a decade, I thought taking a look at the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and the turbulent times surrounding it might be a good idea.

Here is a look back at the Johnson years, as presented by NBC Radio and their Second Sunday series, broadcast on January 1969, as Richard Nixon assumed the White House.

Opinions on Johnson as President were sharply divided as much as everything else in the country at the time. In that respect, there are striking similarities between then and now with very little in the way of "middle-ground" opinions it seems.

So in case you were wondering if the country has always been divided over a leader and an administration's policies. I'm here to tell you it's always been that way.

I guess we just have to get used to it.

Happy New Year.

I'm probably not qualified to talk about the year's best movies, because -- being the father of a 9-year-old -- I made it to relatively few of them that did not feature talking animals. However, thanks to the graces of Blu-Ray, I did get my eyes popped out by Inception, one of the best movies I've seen in many moons. Now I just need to wait for the discs to come out on the other grown-up films. So, which were your favorites?

Speaking of talking animals, one of the best-looking movies I've ever seen -- both in the 3D version in the theater and the Blu-Ray at home -- was Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole. I know everyone else loved How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 (justifiably), but for sheer visuals I've never quite had my socks knocked off as I did with Ga'Hoole. It lags the other two in writing, though it's still a strong enough story -- but holy cow, this kind of animation is really stunning, and most grown-ups will never see it.

For the parents out there ... what were your favorite kids' movies?