March 2015 archive

Woo Hoo!  Huskies Rock!

Oh, guys.

This Afternoon’s Matchups-

“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

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Homeland Security Committee chair Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney; NASA administrator Charles Bolden; former astronaut Buzz Aldrin; and astronaut twins Mark and Scott Kelly.

The roundtable guess are: CNN political commentator Van Jones; Rep. Tom Cole, (R-OK); host of NPR’s “Morning Edition” Steve Inskeep; and ABC News’ Cokie Roberts.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA); Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN); Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI); and former NFL linebacker Chris Borland.

His panel guests are: Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, Michael Gerson, Washington Post; Michael Crowley, Politico. and CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on Sunday’s “MTP” are: Ron Dermer, Israeli Ambassador to the United State; Dr. Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations; and Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA).

The roundtable guests are: Helene Cooper, The New York Times; Jane Harman, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Rich Lowry, The National Review; and John Stanton, Buzzfeed.

State of the Union: Gloria Borgia is this week’s host. Her guests are: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ); and former congressman Barney Frank.

Pentagon investigates ‘IS online threat’ to US military

   

BBC

The US defence department says it is investigating an online threat allegedly made by Islamic State (IS) to about 100 of its military personnel.

A list of names and addresses was posted on a website linked to the group alongside a call for them to be killed.

The group said it obtained the information by hacking servers and databases but US officials said most of the data was in the public domain.

A US security source told the BBC that those on the list were being contacted.

The group, which called itself the Islamic State Hacking Division, said the personnel named had participated in US missions against IS.

Breakfast Tune: Punch Brothers cover The Cars

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Today in History

Britain enacts the Stamp Act on its American colonies; The ‘Garbage Barge’; Skater Tara Lipinski reaches the record books; The Beatles release ‘Please Please Me’; Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber born.

Breakfast News & Blogs Below

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s 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 /tag/Health%20and%20Fitness%20News here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Over the years I have given you a number of Recipes for Health devoted to smoothies – fruit smoothies with nuts and seeds; smoothies with vegetables; dairy free smoothies. I thought I had pretty much covered all the smoothie bases. Then I came across a recipe for a “Fresh Peach, Banana and Warm Millet Smoothie” in Bryant Terry’s impressive new cookbook “Afro-Vegan,” and a bell went off. Cooked millet in a smoothie? I had never seen such a thing; yet breakfast is a great meal for cooked grains, and also for smoothies. So why not? Adding cooked grains to smoothies would be a perfect way to thicken the drinks and bulk them up. It’s also a delicious way to incorporate more grains into your diet.

~ Martha Rose Shulman ~

“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

One of our favorite pundits here at TSHG, Danny Schechter passed away Thursday after a battle with pancreatic cancer. His activism and truly liberal voice for social justice will be missed. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and his friends.

Danny Schechter: Where Is the American Spring? (or Sunshine on a Cloudy Day)

March 30, 2014. Where are you, Temptations, when I need you most?

I needed that Motown spirit again to bolster me in this month of the missing American Spring of 2014. I am still barely singing along to their hit “My Girl:”

   I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day

   When it’s cold outside

   I’ve got the month of May

The month of May is here and will soon be gone, with a May winter every other day here in New York following every occasional outbreak of seasonal warmth. We know the planet is warming, but I have yet to feel it with any regularity in my neighborhood.

Worse that that, the cold outside is not just the zigzagging temperatures, but the sense that we are stuck in a political Ice Age where change of the kind that we will soon be discussing, again and again, ad finitem, at yet another Left forum is more remote than ever. While the Left talks, the Right mobilizes, certainly in Europe, save austerity-devastated Greece.

Here, the Tea Party wing nuts have all but conquered the Repugs, bolstered by new court rulings that allow their funders to buy what’s still on sale in our political oligarchy in this Republic of Fear.

Steven W. Thrasher: Republicans fight for employers’ right to make people work more for less pay

‘Right to work’ laws are no such thing – but workers deserve the right to work for a living wage

The right to work for a fair wage was considered such an important civil rights issue during the 1960s that one of the 10 demands of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a: “A national minimum wage act that will give all Americans a decent standard of living”. The amount they proposed was $2, which would be $15 in today’s money. Our federal minimum wage is currently only $7.25.

But “right-to-work” laws – that half of all states in America fall under – do diddly squat to fix a minimum wage law that provides workers with less than a living wage. The misleadingly named law has nothing to do with any increased access to employment: it really only gives people the “right” to work in increasingly non-unionized, low-wage, split-shift jobs that may require hours of uncompensated time.

Meta Note-

Well, it’s slowed down considerable.  Almost possible to watch every game if you want to.  Still goes all day and all of the night.

I think this will all fit.

Yesterday’s Results–

Despite what you hear, the round of 64 has not been good for upsets.  Only 5 of 32.

Todays’s Matchups-

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.

March 21 is the 80th day of the year (81st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 285 days remaining until the end of the year.

March 21st is the common date of the March equinox (although astronomically the equinox is more likely to fall on March 20 in all but the most easterly longitudes). In astrology, the day of the equinox is the first full day of the sign of Aries. It is also the traditional first day of the astrological year.

On this day in 1804, the Napoleonic Code approved in France.

After four years of debate and planning, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte enacts a new legal framework for France, known as the “Napoleonic Code.” The civil code gave post-revolutionary France its first coherent set of laws concerning property, colonial affairs, the family, and individual rights.

In 1800, General Napoleon Bonaparte, as the new dictator of France, began the arduous task of revising France’s outdated and muddled legal system. He established a special commission, led by J.J. Cambaceres, which met more than 80 times to discuss the revolutionary legal revisions, and Napoleon presided over nearly half of these sessions. In March 1804, the Napoleonic Code was finally approved.

The Napoleonic Code, or Code Napoléon (originally, the Code civil des Français), is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified. It was drafted rapidly by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on March 21, 1804. The Napoleonic Code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil legal system, it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1794) and the West Galician Code, (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797). It was, however, the first modern legal code to be adopted with a pan-European scope and it strongly influenced the law of many of the countries formed during and after the Napoleonic Wars. The Code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major step in replacing the previous patchwork of feudal laws. Historian Robert Holtman regards it as one of the few documents that have influenced the whole world.

Contents of the Code

The preliminary article of the Code established certain important provisions regarding the rule of law. Laws could be applied only if they had been duly promulgated, and only if they had been published officially (including provisions for publishing delays, given the means of communication available at the time); thus no secret laws were authorized. It prohibited ex post facto laws (i.e., laws that apply to events that occurred before them). The code also prohibited judges from refusing justice on grounds of insufficiency of the law-therefore encouraging them to interpret the law. On the other hand, it prohibited judges from passing general judgments of a legislative value (see above).

With regard to family, the Code established the supremacy of the husband with respect to the wife and children; this was the general legal situation in Europe at the time. It did, however, allow divorce on liberal basis compared to other European countries, including divorce by mutual consent.

Breakfast Tune: BACH ON THE BANJO! with John Bullard

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Today in History

Dr. Martlin Luther King, Jr. begins march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; Sharkville massacre in South Africa; Bach born.

Breakfast News & Blogs Below

Ok, so what you have to remember when you look at this schedule is that ESPN is is Headquartered in Bristol CONNECTICUT, just before Otis Elevator (their test facility is about the highest building in the state outside of Hartford and sticks up from the rolling bucolic hills like a gigantic middle finger) within spitting distance of Lake Compounce (the oldest kind of sort of continuously operated amusement Park in the country).

You can tell it’s ESPN because they have this forest of satellite dishes in the front yard.

Anyway, they’re HUGE Lady Husky fans so it’s no wonder they get a Prime Time slot all to themselves, even if it’s only ESPN2, the channel for people addicted to sports nobody watches.

Yesterday’s Results-

Today’s Matchups-