Brief programming note: Because of Rosh Hashanah, I am joining the great Exodus to the New Jersey suburbs for the holiday. (If you’re wondering about my surname, and people do, my dad was a Polish Catholic and my mom’s a Sephardic Jew from Morocco.) I’m going to go dip some things in honey—like maybe my [...]

In the postmortems of the failure yesterday of the Congressional bill to right the credit markets, I’m noticing a repeated refrain: representatives voted against it because their constituents hated it, and their constituents hated it because they didn’t understand the consequences. But if that’s true, isn’t there someone at fault besides voters and their elected [...]

1. Let’s be fair: John McCain and Sarah Palin weren’t claiming that a question from a voter was “gotcha journalism.” They were claiming that for Katie Couric to have the temerity to take Palin’s answer to a voter seriously was “gotcha journalism.” That, of course, makes all the difference. 2. Should the McCain-Palin camp—given the [...]

I don’t have time to gin up separate full-fledged posts on How I Met Your Mother or Heroes from last night, so while there’s nothing really spoilery in the following post, avert your eyes if you’re nervous about that sort of thing.

A quick note that the better-than-ever Chuck and the pretty-much-same-as-always Life both return to NBC tonight (if you haven’t already seen them online). See my take on their return engagements here.

This is not The Curious Capitalist, but the Congressional bailout bill has failed and the Dow is fluctuating between 500 and 600 points down. (As I noted in my Tina Fey post below: Sarah Palin, time to suspend your campaign!) My only insight: the most frightening thing about CNBC’s coverage is that Jim Cramer is [...]

I stuck with straight-ahead news-channel carriage of the debates for my liveblog Friday night, so I didn’t have a chance to check out the broadcast on Al Gore’s Current TV, which included “tweets” from Twitter by Current viewers. But Current PR was helpful enough to send some along: *McCain was afraid to make eye contact [...]

A scad of new and returning programming last night. Were you digging Dexter? Amazed by Race? Bowled over by Britain? Taken by Tim? Supercaliflabbergasted by Californication?

Let’s hope Sarah Palin was watching this one with the sound off too. Tina Fey, playing Palin, and Amy Poehler, playing Katie Couric’s eyelashes, reprised SNL’s satire of the Vice presidential candidate Saturday night, capping off a week of bad media for the nominee. It wasn’t the show-stopper that Fey’s first Palin skit was, but [...]

AMC SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, put on “Candle in the Wind’ and watch last night’s Mad Men.

Debate, schmebate! In really important news, NBC Universal won a preliminary injunction against the Weinstein Company’s moving Project Runway to Lifetime in January. NBC Universal’s statement: NBC Universal is pleased that the court granted our motion for a preliminary injunction against The Weinstein Company. The overwhelming evidence demonstrated that The Weinstein Company violated NBC Universal’s [...]

My liveblog (with Swampland’s Karen Tumulty) is not here at Tuned In; it’s at this super-special debate-liveblog page. Debate starts at 9 p.m. E.T.; see you there.

Peter Iovino/Showtime Lots of TV going down Sunday—more than I can reasonably review here, more than you will probably watch. The rundown: * Dexter returns to Showtime. I’ve only watched one of several episodes the network sent out, but it fairly quickly involves Dexter—riding high from his escape from being caught for the harbor bodies [...]

NBC Photo: Chris Hasto SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, mix some lemon juice and cayenne, swallow a tapeworm and watch last night’s The Office.

And thus so is your drink. MSNBC, CNN and Fox News reports that McCain will go to Mississippi.

Upon Yogi’s suggestion in the comments earlier, I hereby solicit your rules. Yogi kicks it off with: Drink every time someone says, “Ahmadinejad.” If there is no debate, you may drink anyway.