08/29/2010 archive

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

46 Story Final.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Pakistan on ‘war footing’ to save city

by Hasan Mansoor and Emmanuel Duparcq, AFP

Sun Aug 29, 1:16 pm ET

THATTA, Pakistan (AFP) – Pakistani troops and workers were on a “war footing” Sunday as they battled to save the southern city of Thatta after most of the population of 300,000 fled advancing flood waters.

Torrential monsoon rains have triggered massive floods that have moved steadily from north to south over the past month, engulfing a fifth of the volatile country and affecting 17 million of its 167 million people.

Southern Sindh is the worst-affected province, with 19 of its 23 districts ravaged as flood waters swell the raging Indus river to 40 times its usual volume.

Rant of the Week: Jon Stewart on Glen Beck’s ‘I Have A Scheme’

Still Missing New Orleans

I posted the following on September 4, 2005 at The Dream Antilles and I cross-posted it in various places.  Five years later, there’s really very little I can add to this, so I am re-posting it:

The Week In Review 8/22 – 28

261 Stories served.  37 per day.

This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time.  It should be a Sunday morning feature.

Punting the Pundits

Punting the Punditsis an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Bob Herbert: America Is Better Than This

America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants – Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?

Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.

Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”

Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”

Washington was on edge on the morning of Aug. 28, 1963. The day was sunny and very warm and Negroes, as we were called in those days, were coming into town by the tens of thousands. The sale of liquor was banned. Troops stood by to restore order if matters got out of control. President John F. Kennedy waited anxiously in the White House to see how the day would unfold.

It unfolded splendidly. The crowd for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” grew to some 250,000. Nearly a quarter of the marchers were white. They gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they were enthralled by the singing of Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez. The march was all about inclusion and the day seemed to swell with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie and good feeling.

Frank Rich: The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier.

Vive la révolution!

There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising: the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it, and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer. Three heavy hitters rule. You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch. The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans. But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.

Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News. The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.

On This Day in History: August 29

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

August 29 is the 241st day of the year (242nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 124 days remaining until the end of the year.

We are all aware that on this day, 5 years ago, a category 4 hurricane named Katrina slammed into the Gulf coast. Much of the news this past week and today has been, and will be, devoted to that catastrophe and its aftermath which is as much of a disaster as was the original event.

But other important things happened on this day as well.

On this day in 1533, the 300 year old Inca civilization ended when Francisco Pizarro’s conquistadors strangled the last Inca Emperor, Atahuallpa.

High in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the Inca built a dazzling empire that governed a population of 12 million people. Although they had no writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a brilliant agricultural system. In the five years before the Spanish arrival, a devastating war of succession gripped the empire. In 1532, Atahuallpa’s army defeated the forces of his half-brother HuÁscar in a battle near Cuzco. Atahuallpa was consolidating his rule when Pizarro and his 180 soldiers appeared.

In 1531, Pizarro sailed down to Peru, landing at Tumbes. He led his army up the Andes Mountains and on November 15, 1532, reached the Inca town of Cajamarca, where Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in preparation for his march on Cuzco, the capital of his brother’s kingdom. Pizarro invited Atahuallpa to attend a feast in his honor, and the emperor accepted. Having just won one of the largest battles in Inca history, and with an army of 30,000 men at his disposal, Atahuallpa thought he had nothing to fear from the bearded white stranger and his 180 men. Pizarro, however, planned an ambush, setting up his artillery at the square of Cajamarca.

On November 16, Atahuallpa arrived at the meeting place with an escort of several thousand men, all apparently unarmed. Pizarro sent out a priest to exhort the emperor to accept the sovereignty of Christianity and Emperor Charles V., and Atahuallpa refused, flinging a Bible handed to him to the ground in disgust. Pizarro immediately ordered an attack. Buckling under an assault by the terrifying Spanish artillery, guns, and cavalry (all of which were alien to the Incas), thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the emperor was captured.

Atahuallpa offered to fill a room with treasure as ransom for his release, and Pizarro accepted. Eventually, some 24 tons of gold and silver were brought to the Spanish from throughout the Inca empire. Although Atahuallpa had provided the richest ransom in the history of the world, Pizarro treacherously put him on trial for plotting to overthrow the Spanish, for having his half-brother HuÁscar murdered, and for several other lesser charges. A Spanish tribunal convicted Atahuallpa and sentenced him to die. On August 29, 1533, the emperor was tied to a stake and offered the choice of being burned alive or strangled by garrote if he converted to Christianity. In the hope of preserving his body for mummification, Atahuallpa chose the latter, and an iron collar was tightened around his neck until he died.

F1: Spa

Spa is race 12 of 18 and the next to last one in Europe this year.  As I mentioned yesterday it’s been kind of hard to tell if teams have made any improvements during the 3 week summer break because of the weather which is again forecast for showers though it is clear and dry as I write.

If it rains it’s going to put some pressure on the teams, most of whom have used 2 of their 4 sets of Intermediate rain tires.  Many teams are also experiencing engine shortages.  You’re only allowed 8 for the entire season and Ferrari powerplants have proven less than reliable.  Some teams are on their 7th while the Renault factory team is only on its 5th.

The penalty for going over the limit is you lose starting grid position and there were a number of changes to that in this race from the Qualifying finish for racing infractions at the last race in Hungary that I hope are included in the table below.  I used the latest and greatest info from Speed.

I’ve also included tables for Team and Drivers standings.  You can follow Speed’s Commentary here.

Morning Shinbun Sunday August 29




Sunday’s Headlines:

US right claims spirit of Martin Luther King at Lincoln Memorial rally

Deepwater Horizon fears resurface as rigs probe for oil under Arctic ice

USA

Five years later, large New Orleans family ‘still walking through Katrina’

For Obama, Steep Learning Curve as Chief in Time of War

Europe

Sublime to the ridiculous: new cases in the extradition courts

Central bank exec triggers fresh storm with views on the “Jewish gene”

Middle East

A U.S. ‘legacy of waste’ in Iraq

Asia

Thousands flee Indonesia volcano on Sumatra

New Dissent in Japan Is Loudly Anti-Foreign

Africa

South Africa’s unions turn on Jacob Zuma and the ANC

Latin America

Chile mine rescuers work on ‘Plan B’

Prime Time

Well, there is Throwball, Boys @ Texans, root for the Texans.  Giants @ Ravens, Go Blue.  I suggest High School Throwball if you must, Madison v. Steele.

Turner Classic has Lawrence of Arabia.  TheMomCat keeps telling me that if you want to understand Arabia you need to read The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Later-

SNL is repeating Taylor Swift.  Adult Swim has the normal Boondocks repeats, The S Word and It’s a Black President, Huey Freeman.  Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood City of Heresy, InuYasha Series Premier, GitS:SAC Meme and Idolater.

I’ve refrained from pimping Yahoo TV Listings the last couple of days deliberately because they’re showing a lot of blank spaces.  I think the page is broken as they’re also shuffling the channel order.

Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Biff Tannen Museum! Dedicated to Hill Valley’s #1 Citizen. And America’s greatest living folk hero. The one and only Biff Tannen. Of course we’ve all heard the legend, but who is the man? Inside you will learn how Biff Tannen became one of the richest and most powerful men in America. Learn the amazing history of the Tannen family, starting with his great-grandfather, Buford ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen, fastest gun in the West. See Biff’s humble beginnings and how a trip to the race track on his 21st Birthday made him a millionaire overnight. Share in the excitement of a fabulous winning streak that earned him the nickname “The Luckiest Man on Earth.” Learn how Biff parlayed that lucky winning streak into the vast empire called Biffco. Discover how, in 1979, Biff successfully lobbied to legalize gambling and turned Hill Valley’s dilapidated courthouse into a beautiful casino-hotel!

I just wanna say one thing! God Bless America.

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Exodus as floods threaten more Pakistan towns

by Hasan Mansoor and Emmanuel Duparcq, AFP

2 hrs 48 mins ago

THATTA, Pakistan (AFP) – Hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing areas of southern Pakistan on Saturday as rising floodwaters breached more defences and inundated towns.

For nearly a month torrential monsoon rains have triggered massive floods, moving steadily from north to south in Pakistan, affecting a fifth of the volatile country and 17 million of its 167 million people.

Southern Sindh is the worst-affected province. Out of its 23 districts, 19 have so far been ravaged by floods, a statement by the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday.