June 2014 archive

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

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.

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

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on SundY’S “This Week” are: Pres. Barack Obama; Rep. Peter King (R-NY); and  documentary filmmaker Stanley Nelson.

At the roundtable are: Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol; editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel; ABC News’ Terry Moran; Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick; and the Judicial Crisis Network’s Carrie Severino.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV); Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY); former US ambassador to Iraq, James Jeffrey; CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan and TIME Magazine‘s Michael Crowley.

His panel guests are Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal; Michael Gerson of The Washington Post; former Clinton White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers; and Todd Purdum of Politico.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: The guests on MTP are: Former President Bill Clinton; and Reince Priebus, Chair, Republican National Committee.

The roundtable guests are: Kathy Ruemmler, former White House Counsel; Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI); Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent; and Nia-Malika Henderson, National Political Reporter, The Washington Post.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darell Issa (R-CA); Lois Lerner’s attorney William Taylor; and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI).

Her panel guests are attorney Stephanie Cutter, Neera Tanden, Liz Mair, and Mattie Duppler.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Iraq receives Russian fighter jets to fight rebels

 29 June 2014 Last updated at 07:13

 BBC

Iraq says it has received the first batch of fighter jets it ordered from Russia to help it as it fights an offensive by Sunni rebels.

The defence ministry said five Sukhoi Su-25 attack aircraft would enter service in “three to four days”.

The insurgents control large swathes of the north and west after a string of attacks over the past three weeks.

On Saturday, the government said it had retaken the northern city of Tikrit, but rebels dispute this.




Sunday’s Headlines:

Syria charity blames red tape for closure of Aleppo hospital

If King Canute had a roads policy… North Carolina’s Highway 12 is at the centre of a ferocious and politically charged dispute

India’s uranium mines expose villages to radiation

‘She had too much ABCD’: the tale of one divorced Nigerian girl

History divides Bosnia once again, this time over World War I centenary

Random Japan

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Japanese Twitter users square off in Adios Guy Photoshop Championship

   Master Blaster

With the Japanese national team’s hopes of winning the World Cup championship dashed far too early this year. Japan’s soccer fans were left with mere scraps of enjoyment they once had in the tournament. Luckily though, every World Cup has its ancillary breakout star.

Last time, we saw the mystical talents of Paul the Octopus, and now the world finds itself staring in wonder at the phenomenon Japan has dubbed Adios Ojisan (Adios Guy). For those not familiar, Adios Ojisan was a guy in the audience of the Chile/Spain match (among others) holding up an iPad which read “Adios Spana.”

And so, with Team Japan out of the running, let us enjoy some highlights from the Adios Spana Photoshop Championship currently being held on Twitter!

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness NewsWelcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

50 Ways to Love Your Quinoa

50 Ways to Love Your Quinoa photo 24recipehealth-tmagArticle_zps9778e734.jpg

You’d think I would eventually run out of ideas for quinoa. I’ve posted over 50 recipes on this page over the years. But ideas keep coming and I keep loving this grain (O.K., Paleos, I know, it’s a seed, not a grain. But we use it on the plate like a grain, so that’s what I’ll continue to call it.) [..]

Quinoa keeps well in the refrigerator, so cook some up and make these salads through the week. They make great lunches or light suppers.

Red Quinoa Salad With Walnuts, Asparagus and Dukkah

This salad is garnished with steamed asparagus and the Middle Eastern nut and spice mix called dukkah.

Spicy Quinoa Salad With Broccoli, Cilantro and Lime

The grassy flavor of quinoa works well with cilantro in this main-dish salad.

Chickpea, Quinoa and Celery Salad With Middle Eastern Flavors

Chickpeas make this salad a substantial and comforting dish for a light supper.

Green Bean Salad With Lime Vinaigrette and Red Quinoa

Red quinoa is a colorful contrast to the green beans in a salad that is full of texture.

Mediterranean Cucumber and Yogurt Salad With Red or Black Quinoa

Red quinoa adds color and substance to a typically Mediterranean mix of yogurt and finely diced cucumber.

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: What We Can Learn From Lawrence of Arabia

As fears grow of a widening war across the Middle East, fed by reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) envisions a region-wide, all controlling theocracy, we found ourselves talking about another war. The Great War – or World War I, as it would come to be called – was triggered one hundred years ago this month when an assassin shot and killed Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Through a series of tangled alliances and a cascade of misunderstandings and blunders, that single act of violence brought on a bloody catastrophe. More than 37 million people were killed or wounded. [..]

In America, if we reflect on the First World War at all, we think mostly about the battlefields and trenches of Europe and tend to forget another front in that war – against the Ottoman Empire of the Turks that dominated the Middle East. A British Army officer named T.E. Lawrence became a hero in the Arab world when he led nomadic Bedouin tribes in battle against Turkish rule. Peter O’Toole immortalized him in the epic movie, “Lawrence of Arabia.” [..]

But then and now, Lawrence’s understanding of the ancient and potent jealousies of the people among whom he had lived and fought generally was ignored. In 1920, he wrote for the Times of London an unsettling and prophetic article about Iraq – then under the thumb of the British. He decried the money spent, the number of troops and loss of life, and warned that his countrymen had been led “into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information…. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It… may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far from a disaster.”

Not for the last time in the Middle East would disaster come from the blundering ignorance and blinding arrogance of foreign intruders convinced by magical thinking of their own omnipotence and righteousness. How soon we forget. How often we repeat.

Joshua Holland: The First Iraq War Was Also Sold to the Public Based on a Pack of Lies

Polls suggest that Americans tend to differentiate between our “good war” in Iraq – “Operation Desert Storm,” launched by George HW Bush in 1990 – and the “mistake” his son made in 2003.

Across the ideological spectrum, there’s broad agreement that the first Gulf War was “worth fighting.” The opposite is true of the 2003 invasion, and a big reason for those divergent views was captured in a 2013 CNN poll that found that “a majority of Americans (54%) say that prior to the start of the war the administration of George W. Bush deliberately misled the U.S. public about whether Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction.”

But as the usual suspects come out of the woodwork to urge the US to once again commit troops to Iraq, it’s important to recall that the first Gulf War was sold to the public on a pack of lies that were just as egregious as those told by the second Bush administration 12 years later.

Zoë Carpenter: Will the Government Finally Regulate the Most Predatory Industry in America?

When Dana Jones first heard about payday loans, she was struggling to pay for prescriptions for her mother, who had been struck suddenly with mental illness. She borrowed a small amount that first time-just $50, she remembers-and paid it back when she got her next paycheck. It seemed simple enough, so she began drawing regularly on short-term credit. “I really thought it was a loan that worked like any other loan I had gotten from finance companies,” said Jones, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “I just didn’t know.” [..]

Some 200,000 households in Louisiana borrow from short-term lenders every year, as do roughly 12 million people in the United States. There are about as many payday loan stores in the United States as there are McDonald’s and Starbucks. Typically under $500, the loans are intended to provide small amounts of cash to tide borrowers over until their next paycheck. With interest rates as high as 700 percent, many borrowers end up under a mountain of unpayable debt instead. In Baton Rouge, 20 percent of bankruptcy cases involve payday loans.

Dave Zirin: Luis Suárez May Bite, but FIFA Sucks Blood

This is not a pro-Luis Suárez column. This is not an article in defense of his taking a chomp out of Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini during Uruguay’s 1-0 World Cup victory. This is not a piece that will make apologies for Mr. Suárez, who has some longstanding issues when it comes to getting peckish with opponents, so much so, it was reported that 167 people won a “prop bet” that he would bite someone during the World Cup.

Suárez should be suspended because what he did should not be a part of the sport and is, frankly, kind of gross. But for the sports media to climb their branded pulpits and say that Suárez demands suspension precisely because young, impressionable, wide-eyed youngsters the world over would emulate him and start adopting a particular kind of paleo diet on the pitch, is absurd.

Eugene Robinson: The Drone Dilemma

In our growing reliance on armed drones as instruments of war, how slippery is the slope we’re sliding on? Imagine that Vladimir Putin began using drones to kill Ukrainians who opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea. If Putin claimed the targets were “members of anti-Russian terrorist groups,” what credibility would the United States have to condemn such strikes?

This scenario is outlined in a chilling new report released Thursday by a bipartisan panel of military experts. The use of drones against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, begun by the George W. Bush administration and greatly expanded by President Obama, risks becoming “a long-term killing program based on secret rationales,” the report warns.

In the hypothetical Ukraine example, the world would demand proof that the individuals killed were indeed terrorists. The report notes that “Russia could simply repeat the words used by U.S. officials defending U.S. targeted killings, asserting that it could not provide any evidence without disclosing sources and methods.”

David Sirota: How Corruption Shapes State Policy

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Tennessee-a state that has been called the most corrupt in the country. That’s right, according to a 2010 Daily Beast analysis compiling data about convictions on charges of public corruption, racketeering, extortion, forgery, counterfeiting, fraud and embezzlement, the Volunteer State is America’s single most corrupt. Similarly, a 2012 Harvard study lists Nashville as one of the nation’s most corrupt capitals.

Since I was traveling to the state for a conference about technology and innovation, I had a simple question on my mind: How does such rampant corruption shape state policy? [..]

Any state with that potential in its midst can have a bright economic future, and the encouraging news is that Tennessee’s dirty politics didn’t stop Chattanooga’s efforts. But an exception to a rule is not a rule unto itself. In general, corruption’s deleterious effect on public policy is a serious problem-and not just a purely political problem either. It is a destructive force that can make or : [break an entire local economy.

On This Day In History June 28

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 images to enlarge.

June 28 is the 179th day of the year (180th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 186 days remaining until the end of the year.

In common years it is always in ISO week 26.

This date is the only date each year where both the month and day are different perfect numbers, June 6 being the only date where the month and day are the same perfect number.

On this day in 1919, Keynes predicts economic chaos

At the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, Germany signs the Treaty of Versailles with the Allies, officially ending World War I. The English economist John Maynard Keynes, who had attended the peace conference but then left in protest of the treaty, was one of the most outspoken critics of the punitive agreement. In his The Economic Consequences of the Peace, published in December 1919, Keynes predicted that the stiff war reparations and other harsh terms imposed on Germany by the treaty would lead to the financial collapse of the country, which in turn would have serious economic and political repercussions on Europe and the world.

snip

A decade later, Hitler would exploit this continuing bitterness among Germans to seize control of the German state. In the 1930s, the Treaty of Versailles was significantly revised and altered in Germany’s favor, but this belated amendment could not stop the rise of German militarism and the subsequent outbreak of World War II.

In the late 1930s, John Maynard Keynes gained a reputation as the world’s foremost economist by advocating large-scale government economic planning to keep unemployment low and markets healthy. Today, all major capitalist nations adhere to the key principles of Keynesian economics. He died in 1946.

Governments ignore Keynes at their own peril.

The Breakfast Club (Goodbye To All That)

Quick, what do these things have in common besides being music related?

Karl Michael Ziehrer – Das dumme Herz

Sergei Prokofiev – Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major

Richard Strauss – Alpine Symphony

Maurice Ravel – Piano Trio in A Minor

Edward Elgar – Sospiri

Tanbûrî Cemil Bey – Nihâvend Şarkı

(Well, maybe.  Best I could do.)

Ottorino Respighi – Sinfonia Drammatica

Charles Ives – Violin Sonata No. 3

Maybe this will give you a hint-

More, including the answer and obligatories. below the fold.

The Breakfast Club (Goodbye To All That)

Quick, what do these things have in common besides being music related?

Karl Michael Ziehrer – Das dumme Herz

Sergei Prokofiev – Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major

Richard Strauss – Alpine Symphony

Maurice Ravel – Piano Trio in A Minor

Edward Elgar – Sospiri

Tanbûrî Cemil Bey – Nihâvend Şarkı

(Well, maybe.  Best I could do.)

Ottorino Respighi – Sinfonia Drammatica

Charles Ives – Violin Sonata No. 3

Maybe this will give you a hint-

More, including the answer and obligatories. below the fold.

Party at SHG- Hot Summer Nights

Hello Party People, and welcome to Party at SHG! To kick off this series we’re going with summer time tunes.

Bad Case Of Loving You

 

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Jessica Valenti: The US supreme court’s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror

Abortion clinics are not safe places – anti-choicers have ensured that – and if women are going to be free from harassment, the fight must go on

Imagine trying to walk into a building, trying to get a medical treatment – and someone screams at you. Someone is two inches from your face – two feet from the front door – and that someone is videotaping you, calling you a whore. There’s ketchup poured in the snowbanks around you, made to look like spurted blood. You try to take a step forward, but people block your way, yelling that you’re going to be “mother to a dead baby”. They hold signs in your faces, whisper “murderer” in your ear as you pass. Maybe they shove you.

Don’t believe portrayals to the contrary – from anti-choice activists and the news media – that these kinds of protestors outside abortion clinics are not grandmas praying, or kindly “counselors” who just want to talk reasonably to women. These people wait outside clinics to shame and to harass; they are there to scare.

Despite the horrifying experiences of women across the country trying to obtain abortions, the US supreme court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a Massachusetts law providing a 35-foot buffer zone outside of clinics is unconstitutional, and violates protesters’ first amendment right to engage in “personal, caring, consensual conversations” with women seeking abortions.

Personal, caring and consensual?

Peter van Buren: Shredding the Fourth Amendment in Post-Constitutional America

Four ways It no longer applies

Here’s a bit of history from another America: the Bill of Rights was designed to protect the people from their government. If the First Amendment’s right to speak out publicly was the people’s wall of security, then the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy was its buttress. It was once thought that the government should neither be able to stop citizens from speaking nor peer into their lives. Think of that as the essence of the Constitutional era that ended when those towers came down on September 11, 2001. Consider how privacy worked before 9/11 and how it works now in Post-Constitutional America. [..]

In Post-Constitutional America, the old words that once defined our democracy are twisted in new ways, not discarded. Previously unreasonable searches become reasonable ones under new government interpretations of the Fourth Amendment. Traditional tools of law, like subpoenas and warrants, continue to exist even as they morph into monstrous new forms.

Americans are told (and often believe) that they retain rights they no longer have. Wait for the rhetoric that goes with the celebrations of our freedoms this July 4th. You won’t hear a lot about the NSA then, but you should. In pre-constitutional America the colonists knew that they were under the king’s thumb. In totalitarian states of the last century like the Soviet Union, people dealt with their lack of rights and privacy with grim humor and subtle protest. However, in America, ever exceptional, citizens passively watch their rights disappear in the service of dark ends, largely without protest and often while still celebrating a land that no longer exists.

Scott Lemieux: Justice Scalia’s ahistorical legal view informs his recess appointment opinion

Scalia wants to make 18th century practices work in our government. But that’s disastrous in the 21st century

It doesn’t matter which theory of executive power that the conservative political views of Antonin Scalia require him to advance at any given time. His way of advancing them remains consistent: the US supreme court justice makes highly tendentious historical arguments in a tone suggesting that only a fool could disagree with him.

Scalia’s concurrent opinion issued as part of Thursday’s court ruling on the constitutionality of presidential recess appointments is no different.

The case, NRLB v Canning, brought to the high court one question: whether a three-day recess of the US Senate was long enough to justify President Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. While the constitution normally requires Senate approval of executive branch appointments, there is one exception: Article II empowers the president to fill up “all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate” without its approval, though such appointments expire at the end of the Senate’s term.

Dean Baker: Bankers Could Go To Jail

Morning Edition had a strange piece discussing how regulators can punish banks for breaking the law. The piece focused on the various fines and regulatory measures that can be imposed as penalties when banks are found to have broken the law. Remarkably it never considered the underlying logic of the punishment and the likely deterrent effect on criminal activity.

While banks are legal institutions, ultimately it is individuals that break the law. The question that any regulator should be asking is the extent to which the penalties being imposed will discourage future law breaking. As a practical matter, the immediate victims of the measures mentioned in the piece are banks’ current shareholders. Since there is often a substantial period of time between when a crime is committed and when regulators discover it and succeed in imposing a penalty, the shareholders facing the sanction will be a different group from the shareholders who benefited from the original crime. This makes little sense either from the standpoint of justice or from the standpoint of deterring criminal activity by bankers.

Amy Goodman: [The Egyptian Counterrevolution Will Not Be Televised The Egyptian Counterrevolution Will Not Be TelevisedThe Egyptian Counterrevolution Will Not Be Televised]

Egypt sentenced three Al-Jazeera journalists this week to severe prison terms, in court proceedings that observers described as “farcical.” Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed were charged with fabricating news footage, and thus supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which was ousted from power in a military coup a year ago and labeled a terrorist organization. Along with the three jailed journalists, three other foreign journalists were tried and convicted in absentia. Greste, who is Australian, and Fahmy, who is Canadian-Egyptian, received seven-year prison sentences. Baher Mohamed, who is Egyptian, was dealt a 10-year sentence, ostensibly because he had an empty shell casing in his possession, which is an item that many journalists covering conflicts pick up off the street as evidence. The prosecutors called that possession of ammunition. The harsh, six-month pretrial imprisonment, the absurd trial itself and now these sentences have generated global outrage. A movement is growing to demand clemency or release for these three journalists. But while the words of the Obama administration support their freedom, the U.S. government’s actions, primarily in pledging to resume military aid to Egypt, send the opposite message.

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