09/16/2012 archive

h/t Kevin Gosztola at FDl‘s The Dissenter

On HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill takes Mitt Romney to task for his carping over the made up non-controversy that President Obama supposedly wants to take the word God off of our money. And then you had the Republicans making a big deal about whether god was removed from their platform or not at this year’s convention.

As Bill pointed out, worrying about whether the word is on our money or not is redundant, since our god is already the almighty dollar, and in Mittens’ case, probably parked over in the Cayman Islands in one of those tax shelters he loves so much.

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.

September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 106 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1932, in his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste.A leader in the Indian campaign for home rule, Gandhi worked all his life to spread his own brand of passive resistance across India and the world. By 1920, his concept of Satyagraha (or “insistence upon truth”) had made Gandhi an enormously influential figure for millions of followers. Jailed by the British government from 1922-24, he withdrew from political action for a time during the 1920s but in 1930 returned with a new civil disobedience campaign. This landed Gandhi in prison again, but only briefly, as the British made concessions to his demands and invited him to represent the Indian National Congress Party at a round-table conference in London.

In 1932, through the campaigning of the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution. In protest, Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast in September 1932. The resulting public outcry successfully forced the government to adopt a more equitable arrangement via negotiations mediated by the Dalit cricketer turned political leader Palwankar Baloo. This was the start of a new campaign by Gandhi to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he named Harijans, the children of God.

“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”.

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The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Sam Seder, host of The Majority Report, will be filling in for Chris Hayes. Joining Sam are: Tanya Wells, (@vidawells) who, along with her husband, lost her job in 2008 and has gone back to school to try to get back on her feet. Tanya’s family now survives in large part with the help of student loans, Medicaid, and food stamps; Steven Gates, program director, Youth Advocacy Programs-Illinois and resident of the Roseland area of Chicago; Melissa Boteach, director of the “Half in Ten” campaign at the Center for American Progress, a campaign to cut poverty by half in 10 years; John Reel, assistant to the director at Senior Service America, Inc.; Gary Younge, (@garyyounge) Guardian columnist & feature writer, columnist for The Nation, Chicago resident and parent who has been covering the Chicago teachers strike for the Guardian; Matt Farmer, (@mifarmer) Chicago lawyer and parent, member of his local school council at Philip Rogers Elementary School, contributor to the Huffington Post; Stephen Pimpare, (@stephenpimpare) associate professor at Columbia University School of Social Work, author of “The People’s History in America;” and Elise DeBroad, teacher at International Community High School in Bronx, NY.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Sunday on “This Week,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice speaks to ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper on the deadly attacks and anti-American protests sweeping across the Middle East; ABC News global affairs anchor Christiane Amanpour, ABC News senior foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz, and ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross.

The  roundtable debates the fallout from the Middle East violence and all the week’s politics, with ABC News’ George Will; Fox News contributor and former State Department official Liz Cheney, co-founder of Keep America Safe; Ret. General Wesley Clark, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe; PBS’ “Washington Week” moderator and managing editor Gwen Ifill; and ABC News senior political correspondent Jonathan Karl.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are  U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice; Council of Foreign Relations President Richard Haass and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, VP and Director of Brookings’ Foreign Policy Program Martin Indyk.

The panel guests are The New York Times‘ David Sanger, TIME‘s Bobby Ghosh, and CBS News’ Margaret Brennan and John Dickerson.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor; Trish Regan, Bloomberg News; Kasie Hunt, Associated Press

Political Reporter; and John Harris, Politico Editor-in-Chief.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: On MTP this Sunday is  Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Joining the roundtable discussion are Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN ); Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Rep Peter King (R-NY); author of the new book “The Price of Politics,” The Washington Post’s, Bob Woodward; the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg; and NBC’s Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Andrea Mitchell.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

U.S. Is Preparing for a Long Siege of Arab Unrest

　

By PETER BAKER and MARK LANDLER

After days of anti-American violence across the Muslim world, the White House is girding itself for an extended period of turmoil that will test the security of American diplomatic missions and President Obama’s ability to shape the forces of change in the Middle East.

Although the tumult subsided Saturday, senior administration officials said they had concluded that the sometimes violent protests in Muslim countries may presage a period of sustained instability with unpredictable diplomatic and political consequences. While pressing Arab leaders to tamp down the unrest, Mr. Obama’s advisers say they may have to consider whether to scale back diplomatic activities in the region.

The upheaval over an anti-Islam video has suddenly become Mr. Obama’s most serious foreign policy crisis of the election season, and a range of analysts say it presents questions about central tenets of his Middle East policy: Did he do enough during the Arab Spring to help the transition to democracy from autocracy? Has he drawn a hard enough line against Islamic extremists? Did his administration fail to address security concerns?

Up with Chris Hayes guest hose Sam Seder reports on the partial victory for voting rights activists in Florida who challenged the state’s efforts to purge voting rolls. The panels guests, Hooman Majd, (@hmajd) Iranian-born writer and author of the books, “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran” and “The Ayatollahs’ Democracy: An Iranian Challenge“; Reza Aslan, (@rezaaslan) Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of  “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam“; Phyllis Bennis, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, Founder of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, Co-chair of the UN-based International Coordinating Network on Palestine; and Eli Lake, (@ELILAKE) Senior National Security reporter for Newsweek and The Daily Beast discuss with what they learned this week.