June 2015 archive

“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: GOP presidential candidate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; and  retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

The roundtable guests are: Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; and former Clinton Labor secretary Robert Reich.

Face the Nation with John Dickerson: John Dickerson takes over as host. His guests are: potential GOP presidential candidate NJ Gov. Chris Christie; GOP presidential candidate former TX Gov. Rick Perry; Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) and  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

His panel guests are Susan Page, USA Today Jamelle Bouie, Slate; Ron Fournier, National Journal and CBS News Congressional Correspondent Nancy Cordes.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd This Sunday’s guests are never eas to find and I’m too busy to look. Watch at your own risk.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: CNN is another site that keeps you in the dark about who the guests are. Good Luck.

I’m still traveling and on a bit of a deadline. Enjoy your Sunday

 Fifa corruption: Documents show details of Jack Warner ‘bribes’

   

 By Ed Thomas BBC News, Trinidad

A BBC investigation has seen evidence that details what happened to the $10m sent from Fifa to accounts controlled by former vice-president Jack Warner.

The money, sent on behalf of South Africa, was meant to be used for its Caribbean diaspora legacy programme.

But documents suggest Mr Warner used the payment for cash withdrawals, personal loans and to launder money.

The 72-year-old, who has been indicted by the FBI for corruption, denies all claims of wrongdoing.

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.

Breakfast Tune: Tuba Skinny, New Orleans, Mardi Gras 2012

Today in History

James Byrd, Jr. dragged to death in Texas; Communists complete takeover of Czechoslovakia; Israel destroys an Iraqi nuclear power plant; ‘Grease’ opens on Broadway; Singer-songwriter Prince born. (June 7)

Breakfast News & Blogs Below

“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

Paul Kruman: Lone Star Stumble

Remember the Texas economic miracle? In 2012, it was one of the three main arguments from then-Gov. Rick Perry about why he should be president, along with his strong support from the religious right and something else I can’t remember (sorry, couldn’t help myself). More broadly, conservatives have long held Texas up as a supposed demonstration that low taxes on the rich and harsh treatment of the poor are the keys to prosperity.

So it’s interesting to note that Texas is looking a lot less miraculous lately than it used to. To be fair, we’re talking about a modest stumble (pdf), not a collapse. Still, events in Texas and other states – notably Kansas and California – are providing yet another object demonstration that the tax-cut obsession that dominates the modern Republican Party is all wrong.

The facts: For many years, economic growth in Texas has consistently outpaced growth in the rest of America. But that long run ended in 2015, with employment growth in Texas dropping well below the national average and a fall in leading indicators (pdf) pointing to a further slowdown ahead. In most states, this slowdown would be no big deal; occasional underperformance is just a fact of life. But everything is bigger in Texas, including inflated expectations, so the slowdown has come as something of a shock.

New York Tiimes Editorial Board: Hillary Clinton, Voting Rights and the 2016 Election

A basic fact often gets lost in the propaganda that swirls around voting laws in this country: between one-quarter and one-third of all eligible voters – more than 50 million Americans – are not registered.

That alarming statistic is the backdrop to efforts by Republicans in recent years to pass state laws that restrict ballot access, a recent Democratic campaign to push back against those laws, and a bold set of proposals that Hillary Rodham Clinton laid out Thursday afternoon in a speech at Texas Southern University, a historically black college in Houston. [..]

Making voting easier for all eligible voters should be the epitome of a nonpartisan issue. Unfortunately, stopping people from voting has become a key part of the modern Republican playbook.

The 2016 election will be about many important issues, from income inequality to immigration to health care to education, but at its core it will be a test of two ideas of what it means to be a democracy. One is currently embodied by what Mrs. Clinton called “a sweeping effort to disempower and disenfranchise people of color, poor people and young people from one end of our country to the other.”

The other, as Mrs. Clinton put it, is that, “We should do everything we can to make it easier for every citizen to vote.”

Norman Solomon: The USA Freedom Act Is a Virtual Scam

Some foes of mass surveillance have been celebrating the final passage of the USA Freedom Act, but Thomas Drake sounds decidedly glum. The new law, he tells me, is “a new spy program.” It restarts some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act and further codifies systematic violations of Fourth Amendment rights.

In Oslo as part of a “Stand Up For Truth” tour, Drake warned at a public forum on Wednesday that “national security” has become “the new state religion.” Meanwhile, his Twitter messages were calling the USA Freedom Act an “itty-bitty step” — and a “stop/restart kabuki shell game” that “starts with restarting bulk collection of phone records.”

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 6 is the 157th day of the year (158th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 208 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1933, eager motorists park their automobiles on the grounds of Park-In Theaters, the first-ever drive-in movie theater, located on Crescent Boulevard in Camden, New Jersey.

History

The drive-in theater was the creation of Camden, New Jersey, chemical company magnate Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr., whose family owned and operated the R.M. Hollingshead Corporation chemical plant in Camden. In 1932, Hollingshead conducted outdoor theater tests in his driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue in Riverton. After nailing a screen to trees in his backyard, he set a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car and put a radio behind the screen, testing different sound levels with his car windows down and up. Blocks under vehicles in the driveway enabled him to determine the size and spacing of ramps so all automobiles could have a clear view of the screen. Following these experiments, he applied August 6, 1932, for a patent of his invention, and he was given U.S. Patent 1,909,537 on May 16, 1933. That patent was declared invalid 17 years later by the Delaware District Court.

Hollingshead’s drive-in opened in New Jersey June 6, 1933, on Admiral Wilson Boulevard at the Airport Circle in Pennsauken, a short distance from Cooper River Park. It offered 500 slots and a 40 by 50 ft (12 by 15 m) screen. He advertised his drive-in theater with the slogan, “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” (The first film shown was the Adolphe Menjou film Wife Beware.) The facility only operated three years, but during that time the concept caught on in other states. The April 15, 1934, opening of Shankweiler’s Auto Park in Orefield, Pennsylvania, was followed by Galveston’s Drive-In Short Reel Theater (July 5, 1934), the Pico in Los Angeles (September 9, 1934) and the Weymouth Drive-In Theatre in Weymouth, Massachusetts (May 6, 1936). In 1937, three more opened in Ohio, Massachusetts and Rhode Island, with another 12 during 1938 and 1939 in California, Florida, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Texas and Virginia. Michigan’s first drive-in was the Eastside, which opened May 26, 1938, in Harper Woods near Detroit.

Early drive-in theaters had to deal with noise pollution issues. The original Hollingshead drive-in had speakers installed on the tower itself which caused a sound delay affecting patrons at the rear of the drive-in’s field. Attempts at outdoor speakers next to the vehicle did not produce satisfactory results. In 1941, RCA introduced in-car speakers with individual volume controls which solved the noise pollution issue and provided satisfactory sound to drive-in patrons.

Twenty six screaming 7 and 9 year olds.  Twenty eight “adult” chaperones.

Nothing will get done.  What fun.

I will be wearing very old clothes that I will burn immediately following a very long shower after dealing with many sticky interventions, some of them with children.

How bad can it be?  Last year my relative wanted to do toilet paper bowling (you know, toilet paper for the pins).  It’s cheap, it’s soft, you need it anyway.  What could possibly go wrong?

Toilet paper Dodgeball.

Did I mention the fun?

So forget music.  You get music next week.  This week you get schadenfreude.

Obligatories, News, and Blogs below.

The Belmont Stakes are perhaps the most democratic of the Triple Crown Races even though it is held Elmont right next to Queens.  Indications of that are they can’t settle on a song or a drink.  The song has ranged from Sidewalks of New York, a charming Tin Pan Alley tune better known as East Side, West Side, to the Theme from New York, New York (as performed by Frank Sinatra and appropriated as the Yankees anthem and not the original Liza Minelli rendition), to 2010’s Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z.

This year they are back to New York, New York because Sidewalks of New York didn’t produce a Triple Crown winner.

Likewise the drink has changed from the absolutely un-potable White Carnation to the refined trashcan punch that is the Belmont Breeze.

I suggest instead the classic Cosmopolitan.

This year is the 147th running and again we have the possibility of a Triple Crown.  While the past 36 years are littered with failure I’d argue that at least as many hopes have been dashed at Pimlico as at Belmont.

There are many problems a potential Triple Crown Winner faces at Belmont.  First of all the distance.  At 1 1/2 miles the Belmont is the longest of the Triple Crown races and comes hard on the heels of the sprint at Pimlico.  It is still a subject of much controversy whether the schedule should be changed, especially since it’s a common tactic for many strong contenders (but losers) at the Kentucky Derby to skip the Preakness and other horses who are also strong but without the stamina to race all three Triple Crown events to skip both in order to rest and train.

This year from 7 contenders there are 3 who fit that profile- Madefromlucky, Frosted, and Materiality.

That said, the smallness of the field and lack of serious contenders other than those three give American Pharoh an excellent chance.

But the Belmont track surface is looser, sandier, and harder to run on than most tracks in the country.  Also the NYRA is much stricter about “performance enhancement” than most racing associations.

So you want to know who will win?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Here is the line from The New York Times.

The Field

Unfortunately, Triple Crown or not, I won’t be around to watch.  If you want to take a crack at live blogging it yourself all you have to do is post “They’re off” around when the horses break from the gate and then the results when it’s over.

Good Luck!

Post time is 6:50 pm ET on NBC.  Hype starts around 4:30.

(I might update this with my collected NYT links later, but it’s too much work for right now- ek)

I’m traveling for the next few Days. The week’s Health & Fitness is very abbreviated.

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness 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.

   Italians have a way with this vegetable, both the pencil-thin stalks that grow wild in the countryside and the thicker cultivated varieties.

   Simply steamed or boiled, asparagus can be served with a range of condiments and sauces, from Parmesan and butter to anchovies and capers to gremolata – a mixture of finely chopped parsley, garlic and lemon zest. Italian cooks also use asparagus in risottos and toss it with pastas; they scramble the thin variety with eggs and use it to fill frittatas.

Asparagus is an excellent, low-calorie source of vitamin K, folate, vitamin C, vitamin A and nutrients like tryptophan, manganese and fiber.

“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

Edward Snowden: The World Says No to Surveillance

TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.

Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised by lawyers that they risked arrest or subpoena if they returned to the United States. Politicians raced to condemn our efforts as un-American, even treasonous.

Privately, there were moments when I worried that we might have put our privileged lives at risk for nothing – that the public would react with indifference, or practiced cynicism, to the revelations.

Never have I been so grateful to have been so wrong.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship: Turn Left on Main Street

Congressman John K. Delaney, what the hell are you talking about?

In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, headlined, “The last thing America needs? A left-wing version of the Tea Party,” the Democratic congressman from Maryland scolds progressives and expresses his worry “about where some of the loudest voices in the room could take the Democratic Party.”

He writes, “Rejecting a trade agreement with Asia, expanding entitlement programs that crowd out other priorities and a desire to relitigate the financial crisis are becoming dominant positions among Democrats. Although these subjects may make for good partisan talking points, they do not provide the building blocks for a positive and bold agenda to create jobs and improve the lives of Americans.”

Rep. Delaney even implies that a freewheeling, open discussion of “these subjects” could lead to the election of a Republican president.

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.

This Day in History

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy assassinated in Los Angeles; The Six-Day War erupts in the Mideast; Birth of the Marshall Plan; First reported AIDS cases in the U.S.; Former President Ronald Reagan dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Wherever you go, go with all your heart.

Confucius