I wish we could recruit her without bringing over all her fans.

Interesting article about who owns the U.S. debt, consumption of imported goods, and where we buy our oil.

I've heard all of those points from other sources as well. IMO, it really doesn't matter than our oil doesn't come from the Middle East, it's a fungible good so it's more of an issue of the effect our overall consumption has on the world market.

I find the manufacturing output point the most surprising. It wasn't very long ago I came across information that set me straight on that.

I was reading other people saying there were two more two hour blocks of Downton to come. I'm not precisely paying the most attention, just cursorily watching. Somehow this season didn't grab me like the last.

All I know from Sue Perkins is her Graham Norton appearance, but she's pretty much textbook-gay-lady-trying-to-seduce-ita !. It's patently, shamelessly obvious.

I was reading other people saying there were two more two hour blocks of Downton to come.

If the S2 finale has aired, the only thing left is the 90 minute Christmas special.

(The S2 finale had me shouting at the TV. Seriously, how does Dr Clarkson still have a job? Between the "oh wait, did I say never walk again? My bad!" and his apparent total ignorance that the Spanish flu had killed 100,000 people in the UK that summer...and that maybe a wee little quarantine might be a good idea so EVERYONE DOESN'T DIE? GAH. What an idiot.)

A friend of mine went to a Downton Abby tea - not in costume, but dressed up, with a hat and pearls.

Umm, it did look rather xmasy from the preview.

Yeah, they also combined eps 7 & 8 into one 2-hour show, and the result was close to Moldavian Massacre levels of melodrama and WTF-ness. The dresses and people are still pretty.

Oh, okay, that was this week? Did I mention attention? Not paying much?

The building just rumbled in an atypical fashion. The place is made of tinkertoys, so I'm never surprised when the floor shakes daily, but this felt different, and you couldn't hear anyone stomping by concurrently.

Jessica, YES to your spoiler-fonted text. Also, I felt like I was checking off a list of melodrama tropes while watching this season. I mean, seriously: deathbed marriages, out-of-wedlock baby spurned by the upper-class family, straying patriarch, PARALYSIS, amnesia/Brat Farrar plot, multiple affairs with lower-class characters, heroic save by the servant, OMG I CAN WALK AGAIN, meddling old ladies, EEEVIL media mogul, blackmailing ex-wife, stupid public snogging/kissing overheard by the person most likely to be hurt by it, self-sacrificing death, etc etc. It's just so completely over the top, way too much going on. And the scene at Lavinia's grave, with Matthew wailing about them being cursed? I couldn't stop laughing. It's all just so ludicrous. All we need is for one of the women to be raped. That's about the only soap opera plot element I haven't seen yet. Or maybe an evil twin: we haven't had an evil twin yet.

we haven't had an evil twin yet.

We did have the dread Canadian imposter!/maimed unrecognizable heir.

ETA: You forgot: Matthew's apparent transformation into a zombie after Lavinia's death. What was up with that makeup.