June 2011 archive

Those of you who read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a redneck sort of place, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

I rarely write about living people except with their express permission, but may make an exception or two here because it might be important to talk about some of her decedents who still breathe.  None of those references will be derogatory.

I actually know less about Granddad than I do about Ma, because he died in 1969 at the age of 91.  I was only 12 years old then.  Ma lived until she saw me as an adult and married and their mother having her great, great grandchildren.  Here is what I know about his history.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Around the Globe, US Military Bases Generate Resentment, Not Security

As we debate an exit from Afghanistan, it’s critical that we focus not only on the costs of deploying the current force of more than 100,000 troops, but also on the costs of maintaining permanent bases long after those troops leave.  

This is an issue that demands a hard look not only in Afghanistan and Iraq, but around the globe-where the US has a veritable empire of bases.

According to the Pentagon, there are approximately 865 US military bases abroad-over 1,000 if new bases in Iraq and Afghanistan are included.  The cost?  $102 billion annually-and that doesn’t include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan bases.

In a must-read article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences, anthropologist Hugh Gusterson points out that these bases “constitute 95 percent of all the military bases any country in the world maintains on any other country’s territory.”  He notes a “bloated and anachronistic” Cold War-tilt toward Europe, including 227 bases in Germany.

Amy Goodman: War on Drugs: Fast, Furious and Fueled by the U.S.

The violent deaths of Brian Terry and Juan Francisco Sicilia, separated by the span of just a few months and by the increasingly bloody U.S.-Mexico border, have sparked separate but overdue examinations of the so-called War on Drugs, and how the U.S. government is ultimately exacerbating the problem.

On the night of Dec. 14, 2010, Agent Brian Terry was in the Arizona desert as part of the highly trained and specially armed BORTAC unit, described as the elite paramilitary force within the U.S. Border Patrol. The group engaged in a firefight, and Terry was killed. While this death might have become just another violent act associated with drug trafficking along the border, one detail has propelled it into a high-stakes confrontation between the Obama administration and the U.S. Congress: Weapons found at the scene, AK-47s, were sold into likely Mexican criminal hands under the auspices of a covert operation of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

June 15 is the 166th day of the year (167th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 199 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day 1215, Magna Carta sealed.

Following a revolt by the English nobility against his rule, King John puts his royal seal on the Magna Carta, or “Great Charter.” The document, essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteed that the king would respect feudal rights and privileges, uphold the freedom of the church, and maintain the nation’s laws. Although more a reactionary than a progressive document in its day, the Magna Carta was seen as a cornerstone in the development of democratic England by later generations.

John was enthroned as king of England following the death of his brother, King Richard the Lion-Hearted, in 1199. King John’s reign was characterized by failure. He lost the duchy of Normandy to the French king and taxed the English nobility heavily to pay for his foreign misadventures. He quarreled with Pope Innocent III and sold church offices to build up the depleted royal coffers. Following the defeat of a campaign to regain Normandy in 1214, Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury, called on the disgruntled barons to demand a charter of liberties from the king.

Magna Carta is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215 and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions, which included the most direct challenges to the monarch’s authority to date. The charter first passed into law in 1225. The 1297 version, with the long title (originally in Latin) The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest, still remains on the statute books of England and Wales.

The 1215 Charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no “freeman” (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today.

Magna Carta was the first document forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects, the feudal barons, in an attempt to limit his powers by law and protect their privileges. It was preceded and directly influenced by the Charter of Liberties in 1100, in which King Henry I had specified particular areas wherein his powers would be limited.

Despite its recognised importance, by the second half of the 19th century nearly all of its clauses had been repealed in their original form. Three clauses remain part of the law of England and Wales, however, and it is generally considered part of the uncodified constitution. Lord Denning described it as “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despo In a 2005 speech, Lord Woolf described it as “first of a series of instruments that now are recognised as having a special constitutional status”, the others being the Habeas Corpus Act, the Petition of Right, the Bill of Rights, and the Act of Settlement.

The charter was an important part of the extensive historical process that led to the rule of constitutional law in the English speaking world, although it was “far from unique, either in content or form”. In practice, Magna Carta in the medieval period did not in general limit the power of kings, but by the time of the English Civil War it had become an important symbol for those who wished to show that the King was bound by the law. It influenced the early settlers in New England and inspired later constitutional documents, including the United States Constitution.

Due to traveling (NN11) and playing in the mud (don’t ask, trust me it’s messy), the Evening Edition, Punting the Pundits and promotions will be sporadic for the next 2 weeks at both Docudharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette, especially tomorrow.

Bernanke warns of crisis if debt limit not raised

By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa – 1 hr 11 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned on Tuesday that a failure to lift the government’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling risks a potentially disastrous loss of confidence in America’s creditworthiness.

In comments that could give fresh impetus to talks on raising the legal limit on the nation’s debt, Bernanke said the United States could lose its prized AAA credit rating and the U.S. dollar’s special status as a reserve currency might be damaged if Congress fails to act soon.

This nuisance law passed by the right wing, ultra-ignorant of the US Constitution, Tennessee legislature is most assuredly unconstitutional and unenforceable even if it were. Can you just picture the mile high stack of law suits filed in Tennessee courts? Can you imagine the cost to the state? Smaller government? LMAO

Rachel Maddow reports on a new Tennessee law that bans the transmission or display of an image on-line that can frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress to someone who sees it.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

New York Times Editorial: Nearly a Year After Dodd-Frank

Without strong leaders at the top of the nation’s financial regulatory agencies, the Dodd-Frank financial reform doesn’t have a chance. Whether it is protecting consumers against abusive lending, reforming the mortgage market or reining in too-big-to-fail banks, all require tough and experienced regulators.

Too many of these jobs are vacant, or soon will be, or are filled by caretakers. So it was a relief last week when President Obama said he had decided on a well-qualified nominee to be the new chairman for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and would make other nominations soon. The White House needs to move quickly and be prepared to fight.

Daniel Ellsberg: Why the Pentagon Papers Matter Now

While we go on waging unwinnable wars on false premises, the Pentagon papers tell us we must not wait 40 years for the truth

The declassification and online release Monday of the full original version of the Pentagon Papers – the 7,000-page top secret Pentagon study of US decision-making in Vietnam 1945-67 – comes 40 years after I gave it to 19 newspapers and to Senator Mike Gravel (minus volumes on negotiations, which I had given only to the Senate foreign relations committee). Gravel entered what I had given him in the congressional record and later published nearly all of it with Beacon Press. Together with the newspaper coverage and a government printing office (GPO) edition that was heavily redacted but overlapped the Senator Gravel edition, most of the material has been available to the public and scholars since 1971. (The negotiation volumes were declassified some years ago; the Senate, if not the Pentagon, should have released them no later than the end of the war in 1975.)

In other words, today’s declassification of the whole study comes 36 to 40 years overdue. Yet, unfortunately, it happens to be peculiarly timely that this study gets attention and goes online just now. That’s because we’re mired again in wars – especially in Afghanistan – remarkably similar to the 30-year conflict in Vietnam, and we don’t have comparable documentation and insider analysis to enlighten us on how we got here and where it’s likely to go.

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

June 14 is the 165th day of the year (166th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 200 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1777, during the American Revolution, the Continental Congress adopts a resolution stating that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate stripes red and white” and that “the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”

The Flag Resolution of 1777

On June 14, 1777, the Marine Committee of the Second Continental Congress passed the Flag Resolution which stated: “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.” Flag Day is now observed on June 14 of each year. A false tradition holds that the new flag was first hoisted in June 1777 by the Continental Army at the Middlebrook encampment.

The 1777 resolution was most probably meant to define a naval ensign, rather than a national flag. It appears between other resolutions from the Marine Committee. On May 10, 1779, Secretary of the Board of War Richard Peters expressed concern “it is not yet settled what is the Standard of the United States.”

The Flag Resolution did not specify any particular arrangement, number of points, nor orientation for the stars. The pictured flag shows 13 outwardly-oriented five-pointed stars arranged in a circle, the so-called Betsy Ross flag. Although the Betsy Ross legend is controversial, the design is among the oldest of any U.S. flags. Popular designs at the time were varied and most were individually crafted rather than mass-produced. Other examples of 13-star arrangements can be found on the Francis Hopkinson flag, the Cowpens flag, and the Brandywine flag. Given the scant archaeological and written evidence, it is unknown which design was the most popular at that time.

Despite the 1777 resolution, a number of flags only loosely based on the prescribed design were used in the early years of American independence. One example may have been the Guilford Court House Flag, traditionally believed to have been carried by the American troops at the Battle of Guilford Court House in 1781.

The origin of the stars and stripes design is inadequately documented. The apocryphal story credits Betsy Ross for sewing the first flag from a pencil sketch handed to her by George Washington. No evidence for this exists; indeed, nearly a century had passed before Ross’ grandson, William Canby, first publicly suggested it. Another woman, Rebecca Young, has also been credited as having made the first flag by later generations of her family. Rebecca Young’s daughter was Mary Pickersgill, who made the Star Spangled Banner Flag.

It is likely that Francis Hopkinson of New Jersey, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, designed the 1777 flag while he was the Chairman of the Continental Navy Board’s Middle Department, sometime between his appointment to that position in November 1776 and the time that the flag resolution was adopted in June 1777. This contradicts the Betsy Ross legend, which suggests that she sewed the first Stars and Stripes flag by request of the government in the Spring of 1776. Hopkinson was the only person to have made such a claim during his own lifetime, when he sent a bill to Congress for his work. He asked for a “Quarter Cask of the Public Wine” as payment initially. The payment was not made, however, because it was determined he had already received a salary as a member of Congress, and he was not the only person to have contributed to the design. No one else contested his claim at the time.

Wisconsin voters are suffering from “buyers remorse” and are now using the democratic process to remedy some of the bad choices they made last November by recalling six Republicans state senators. The petitions to re-call Gov. Scott Walker are already being prepared with more legislators being targeted. At a rally in Madison this past weekend, one of those November losers, former Sen. Russ Feingold gave arousing speech rallying support for the up coming re-call vote.

Why are we in a place called Walkerville today? I will tell you why we’re here. We are here because we will not stop until we win, until this is over. We are here because the big corporate interests in this country decided, about 20 years ago, ‘I think the first thing we’ll do is pass a bunch of trade agreements and ship overseas all the jobs of the people in the private sector’, that’s the first thing they decided to do. They got the job done on that, ruthlessly, tricking both parties into it, and then they said ‘Okay, now we go after the public employees. Let’s go after, those, let’s start saying that teachers aren’t the people they are, let’s start demonizing public employees, and maybe we can get the people who lost their jobs on the private side to turn on the people on the public side!’. It’s divide and conquer by the big money interests in this country, that’s always been their strategy. Frankly, I don’t think all of us saw it coming. I certainly didn’t see the ruthlessness and how far they would go with this. . . .

We only need 17 of em. So that we are able to keep Walker stopped. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything more. That’s not enough. Then we gotta take back the state assembly in the 2012 elections. And then we all agree, we want the trifecta, and that we have to defeat Scott Walker and get a new Governor. And then we need a repeal passed by the Democratic state senate, passed by the Democratic state assembly and then signed by the new Democratic governor, that is what we need.

I am here to stand with you to continue that fight. If it takes a year, great, if it takes five years, it’s worth it. This is not a short term deal. I used to say when I maybe occasionally played a little to aggressively with my sister, ‘The game is not over until I win!’, well, this game is not over until WE WIN!

Get this man back into public office, either the Senate or the Wisconsin State house as governor, better yet as President of the United States.

h/T Crooks & Liars and Ministry of Truth