08/17/2010 archive

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

34 Top Story Final.

1 Afghan president formally orders security firms to disband

by Sardar Ahmad, AFP

1 hr 8 mins ago

“Punting the Pundits” is 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.

Eugene Robinson: Jefferson Would be Ashamed of Republican Mosque Panderers

Lies, distortions, jingoism, xenophobia-another day, another campaign issue that Republicans can use to bash President Barack Obama and the Democrats. First it was illegal immigration. Now it’s the so-called “Ground Zero mosque,” which is not at all what its opponents claim.

First, it’s not at Ground Zero. The site in question is two blocks north of the former World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan; an existing mosque is just a few hundred feet more distant from the site of the collapsed towers. Second, while the planned building will indeed house a place of worship, it is designed to be more of a community center along the lines of a YMCA. Plans include a fitness center, swimming pool, basketball court, bookstore, performing arts center and food court. Kebabs do not threaten our way of life.

Most important, organizers have made clear that the whole point of the project is to provide a high-profile platform for mainstream, moderate Islam-and to stridently reject the warped, radical, jihadist worldview that produced the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001.

William Saletan: Islam Is Ground Zero

Why we should build the proposed Islamic center in Lower Manhattan.

Are we at war with Islam?

That’s the central question now in the debate over the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero. On Friday, President Obama entered the debate, defending the right of Muslim-Americans to worship where they choose. He was then chastised by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and other Republican leaders. Yes, they conceded, the project’s sponsors can legally build it at the planned site, two blocks from Ground Zero. But that isn’t the issue. The issue, they argue, is propriety. As Palin puts it: “We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they?”

Confronted by that question on Saturday, Obama ducked it. “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there,” he said. “I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have.”

Former Presidential Senior Advisor turned Fox News Political Analyst Karl Rove interviews former President George W. Bush six months from today at his Crawford Texas ranch, and finds a broken, pathetic ex-president who’s reverted to his former days of booze and cocaine since leaving the brightly lit world stage he inhabited for eight years.

Rove finds the venerable ex-president who sacrificed so much and made it his life’s mission to protect America from the hordes of evil terrorists world wide swimming across the oceans with knives in their teeth to kill American babies in their beds has sunk into a paranoid hallucinatory state in which he’s broken all the mirrors in his house out of fear that they are “looking at me” every time he passes one, and who lives in the sad, pathetic delusion that President Obama and the Democrats fully intend to have him arrested, charged, and finally held accountable for what he terms “all my sins” – his war crimes.

It’s sad. He’s a very very sick man, obviously. In this delusional state I doubt very much it’ll be possible for him to understand that Obama and the Democrats are on his side and will always protect him.

Perhaps if we give him more time….

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

August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 136 days remaining until the end of the year.

The Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Uprising, Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow’s War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux or Dakota which began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.

Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that the government give the annuity payments directly to them (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders to the exclusion of the Dakota). In mid-1862 the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit under those conditions, and negotiations reached an impasse.

On August 17, 1862, four Dakota killed five American settlers while on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley to try to drive whites out of the area. There has never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, but estimates range from 400 to 800. It is said that until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the civilian wartime toll from the Dakota conflict was the highest in U.S. history (excluding those of the Civil War).

Over the next several months, continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota bands. By late December 1862, soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota, who were interned in jails in Minnesota. After trials and sentencing, 38 Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. In April 1863 the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota. The United States Congress abolished their reservations.

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



August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 136 days remaining until the end of the year.

The Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Uprising, Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow’s War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux or Dakota which began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.

Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that the government give the annuity payments directly to them (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders to the exclusion of the Dakota). In mid-1862 the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit under those conditions, and negotiations reached an impasse.

On August 17, 1862, four Dakota killed five American settlers while on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley to try to drive whites out of the area. There has never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, but estimates range from 400 to 800. It is said that until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the civilian wartime toll from the Dakota conflict was the highest in U.S. history (excluding those of the Civil War).

Over the next several months, continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota bands. By late December 1862, soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota, who were interned in jails in Minnesota. After trials and sentencing, 38 Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. In April 1863 the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota. The United States Congress abolished their reservations.

The parallels between Mormonism and Islam

I’m going to start by defining my own religious prejudices to which you’ll no doubt add as we continue this discussion and the ones that are not obvious to me become more apparent to you.  I was raised a Methodist of the evangelical/social justice kind rather than the fundamentalist.  Yes, the same church as George W. Bush (we’ll get to his History Major).

What’s the distinction?

The ‘Method’ in ‘Methodism’ is a fundamentalist Protestantism that led to a schism with the Church of England.  About the same time many English colonies in America practiced African Slavery.  These poor heathens weren’t even Christians and needed to be evangelized and taught about Jesus and the word of God.

As a result of the effort by the founding fathers of Methodism, many of them became members of the Church which has contributed to it’s ‘liberal’ positions.  The particular Church where I went to Sunday School and was in the Children’s Choir until the age of 14 is now overwhelmingly Black and Latino in participation.

That’s not why I became an atheist.  My disagreement with Christianity is about free will and supernaturalism.

As weak as they are I believe what my lying eyes tell me.  I believe in the scientific method.  If it’s not duplicatable and predictive it doesn’t exist.

Nor do I believe that humans are born in original sin, that some Platonic Ideal of a chair reflected as a wall shadow diminishes our worth and we have to be redeemed by a supernatural force greater than us so we look more like a chair.

A chair is anything you can sit on.  There is no Platonic Ideal.  There is no God and no ‘after life’.

This is the one chance you get, best to make the most of it.

Next- About Mormonism

Monday Night Throwball?!!  WTF!?  At least these are 2 teams that are a passing distraction to me (Jets/Giants).  I’d liveblog them all, but looking at the schedule there are only 6 games I have even a minor interest in-

And by minor, I mean Jets/Patriots is hardly going to keep me up any longer than my Mom, Emily, who although a huge Patriots fan goes to bed at 9 pm.

Seriously.

The door is open for anyone who wants to step up.

• AMC– Nanny McPhee, last night’s Rubicon
• ABC Family– Secret Life of the American Teenager (premier, for Caribou Barbie)
• FX– The Devil Wears Prada (so does the Pope)
• History– Pawn Stars, American Pickers (Season Premier)
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– The Mortal Storm, The Tarnished Angels
• Discovery– Ultimate Car Build-Off (Spy Cars, premier)
• TNT– The Closer (last week and premier)
• Toon– Adventure Time With Finn & Jake, Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Total Drama World Tour, Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated (mostly premiers)
• Spike– Blade: Trinity
• Travel– Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (premier)
• TLC– Cake Boss

Later-

• AMC– Last night’s Mad Men, Nanny McPhee again
• FX– The Girl Next Door
• Turner Classics– Airplane! (why I was thinking about The Spinning News)

Dave is still in repeats.  Jon has Emma Thompson, Stephen Richard Clarke and John Fetterman.  Alton does Trout.  What Goes Down Must Come Up.

I think you’re the greatest, but my dad says you don’t work hard enough on defense. And he says that lots of times, you don’t even run down court. And that you don’t really try… except during the playoffs.

The hell I don’t. LISTEN KID. I’ve been hearing that crap ever since I was at UCLA. I’m out there busting my buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Technical twists delay timing of BP final well kill

By Kristen Hays and Anna Driver, Reuters

27 mins ago