Punting the Pundits: Morning Edition

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Happy Birthday, Ringo.

Ringo Starr, at Age 70. The Beatles, Ageless.


Photobucket

Ringo Starr is turning 70 on Wednesday. It feels as though youth itself is now 70 years old.

I wasn’t yet 6 when the Beatles played their last live performance atop the Apple Corps building on Savile Row in London, January 1969. They split four years before I got my first Beatles album. Still, I can keep track of my teenage years by Beatles songs I happened to be enthralled with at the time. Forty years after they broke up, my 6-year-old son is learning to play “Eleanor Rigby” on the piano.

Ringo at 70: ‘I’m Not Hiding From It, You Know’

Ever since Ringo Starr  vowed, on a well-known cover of Buck Owens’s hit “Act Naturally,” that he’d become “the biggest fool to ever hit the big time,” the renowned rock ‘n’ roll drummer has done all right for himself. As a member of the Beatles and as a solo artist, Mr. Starr has sold more than a few records, won some Grammy Awards and even had a minor planet named for him. But on Wednesday Mr. Starr will reach a very special milestone: he turns 70 years old.

As you’d expect, he plans to mark the occasion with a little help from his friends, and anyone else he can round up. Finding himself in New York on the big day, he is celebrating with a private event in the morning at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square; Hard Rock International is honoring the day at locations around the world. (Details are at ringostarr.com.)

In the evening he will perform a concert at Radio City Music Hall with his All Starr Band, which includes Edgar Winter, Gary Wright and Rick Derringer.

Some advice for Goldman Sachs from William D. Cohan

Let Goldman Be Goldman

Poised as we are for the most comprehensive financial reform in this country since the Great Depression, it is time to fess up to the fact that it likely would not have occurred without a concerted effort by the Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress to demonize Goldman Sachs.

There are good reasons, of course, why politicians have seized on Goldman for easy political gain. Among them are: the perceptions that Goldman figured out a way to benefit from the misery of others; that while many Americans were hurting from a recession partly of Goldman’s making, the firm continued to rake in billions in profits and pay out billions more in bonuses; that Goldman seems unable to recognize that but for an 11th-hour rescue by the American taxpayers, in September 2008, it would have gone the way of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch; and that Goldman has proved repeatedly that it prefers putting its own interests ahead of those of its prized clients and the rest of us. Another likely reason is that the politicians simply looked at the recent public polling data, which put Goldman’s reputation below that of BP and Toyota, and realized that nothing spells political gold these days quite like bashing Goldman Sachs.

With all the important issues in the news that could be addressed in an op-ed, Maureen Dowd chooses to Kicking the Hornet’s Nest to recap Andrew Young’s book about John Edwards’ sordid indiscretion and Young’s roll in the deception. Gawd! I really feel bad for Elizabeth.

Young’s book is an amazingly sordid yarn about a fawning aide and the feckless pol he serves beyond all reason. The unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible, as Oscar Wilde called foxhunting.

We learn that in this era of immersion coverage, we can still end up with a shallow view of our candidates and their real – or Rielle – lives.

A man like Edwards can be extremely close to ascending to the White House and still be camouflaging his true nature. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, if character were elastic, John Edwards wouldn’t have enough to make suspenders for a parakeet.

In the Washington Post, Sen. John Kerry rebuts Gov. Mitt Romney’s op-ed that opposed ratification of Pres. Obama’s Nuclear Arms Treaty with Russia

Even in these polarized times, anyone seeking the presidency should know that the security of the United States is too important to be treated as fodder for political posturing. Sadly, former governor Mitt Romney failed that test in arguing that ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia would be a mistake [op-ed, July 6]. He disregarded the views of the best foreign policy thinkers of the past half-century, but more important, he ignored the facts.

No threat to our national security is greater than the danger from nuclear weapons. Responsible political figures across the spectrum need to support every step possible to control the spread of nuclear weapons. New START is one of those steps. This view is shared by most who have taken the time to understand the treaty and the international context in which it was negotiated. Rather than pander to politics, we need to ratify this agreement quickly. Every day without its verification regime is a day without a clear view of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

Someone to clue Ruth Marcus in that the rich are NOT over taxed

Rich Trumka — the AFL-CIO president intercepts any attempted honorific with an easy, “Call me Rich” — comes armed with charts. His first one is, literally, in shades of gray. Its message is anything but.

Once, its bar graphs report, the middle class and the wealthy prospered in tandem. Between 1947 and 1973, the rich got richer, but the not-so-rich actually prospered more. The household income of the middle 20 percent of Americans nearly doubled, while the income of the top 20 percent of Americans rose the least of any group, 85 percent.

After 1973, the story changes dramatically. Income for the middle group inched up, rising 24 percent through 2006. But the top 20 percent grew at nearly three times that rate.

This graphic depiction of income inequality is, understandably enough, at the center of Trumka’s worldview, a perspective that became clear when he came to lunch last week at The Post. Growing income inequality is troubling. It would be troubling in the absence of a budget crisis. But that does not mean, as Trumka would have it, that the solution to the nation’s fiscal woes is always, or only, reducing income inequality.

In short, soaking the rich gets you only so far.

“Soaking the rich”? Really, Ruth, how elitist.

3 comments

    • on 07/07/2010 at 07:44
      Author

    • on 07/07/2010 at 23:28
      Author

    If there were a prize for “The Worst Editorial Ever” this one by Terry Savage of the Chicago Sun Times would take grand Prize. It is from July 5th and there are no words to adequately describe how ignorant the the author is about what is really hurting the American economy

    There is no ‘free’ lemonade:In giving drink away, girls ignore rules of economics — and sum up what’s wrong with U.S.

    • on 07/07/2010 at 23:39
      Author

    but it goes to the double standard of MSNBC and its least watched talk show host. Greg Sargent weighs in on Markos Moulitsas’ banning as a guest from any MSNBC talk show.

    MSNBC’s excuse for banning Markos doesn’t hold water

    By now you may have heard that Markos Moulitsas, the founder of Daily Kos, has charged that he’s been blackballed from appearing on MSNBC because he got into a Twitterwar with Joe Scarborough.

    I guess if your a right wing Republican that has to resign from the House because of a dead body in your office, have the lowest rated talk show on cable and thin skin, you have power.

    Good going MSNBC  

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