September 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”.

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Trevor Timm: One good thing about Donald Trump’s campaign: it’s ruining Jeb Bush’s

There are many, many reasons to abhor Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, but there’s at least one reason to appreciate it, for now: his constant and merciless trolling of Jeb Bush that is currently tanking Bush’s shot at the presidency. In some sense, Trump is doing democracy a service by helping ensure we will not have to suffer the embarrassment of having a third Bush family member as president within two decades. [..]

Thankfully, Trump has exposed Bush, not only on substance but as someone who is just not a good politician. Jeb’s campaign knows it. His donors know it. And the voters certainly have been paying attention: Bush’s poll numbers have dropped so low, it’s hard to believe even the most conventional wisdom-spewing political pundits can still call him the “front runner” with a straight face. He’s dropped to fifth or sixth and to single digits in almost all the recent polls in the early primary states. He seems flustered on the trail, and no one can point to a path by which he recovers from this, despite remaining the DC elite’s odds-on favorite.

As embarrassing and terrifying as a Trump presidency would be, the virtual anointing of a Bush family monarchy could be far worse, and so at least for now, I hope Trump keeps swinging away.

Ali Gharib: Further sabotage of the Iran deal won’t bring success – only embarrassment

Over the past two months, since the Iran nuclear deal was inked by the US and world powers, opponents of the accord have delivered fiery speeches predicting dire consequences (another Holocaust, nuclear war), poured millions of dollars into fiery television advertisements (does your dog have a fallout shelter?) and vowed to stop at nothing to take the deal down. On Thursday, however, the deal overcame its most harrowing obstacle – Congress – and the opponents went down with a whimper, not a bang. [..]

Opponents of the deal want to say the Democrats played politics instead of evaluating the deal honestly. That charge is ironic, to say the least, since most experts agree the nuclear deal is sound and the best agreement diplomacy could achieve. But there were politics at play: rather than siding with Obama, Congressional Democrats lined up against the Republican/Netanyahu alliance. The adamance of Aipac ended up working against its stated interests.

Groups like Aipac will go on touting their bipartisan bona fides without considering that their adoption of Netanyahu’s own partisanship doomed them to a partisan result. Meanwhile, the ensuing fight, which will no doubt bring more of the legislative chaos we saw this week, won’t be a cakewalk, so to speak, but will put the lie to Aipac’s claims it has a bipartisan consensus behind it. Despite their best efforts, Obama won’t be the one embarrassed by the scrambling on the horizon.

A set of unrelated and usually short instrumental pieces, movements or sections played as a group, and usually in a specific order.

Key Igor Stravinsky work found after 100 years

by Stephen Walsh, The Guardian

Saturday 5 September 2015 19.05 EDT

Igor Stravinsky composed his Pogrebal’naya Pesnya (Funeral Song) in memory of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, shortly after Rimsky’s death in June 1908. The 12-minute work was performed only once, in a Russian symphony concert conducted by Felix Blumenfeld in the Conservatoire in January 1909, but was always thought to have been destroyed in the 1917 revolutions or the civil war that followed.

Stravinsky recalled it as one of his best early works, but could not remember the actual music.

…

Stravinsky was 26 when The Funeral Song was performed and was by no means advanced as a composer. He was completely unknown outside Russia – and barely known even there. Yet in the next four years he would compose The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, transforming himself into the most notorious modernist of them all.

…

There is a touching postscript to the story. Stravinsky was desperate to have his composition included in one or other of the memorial concerts being planned, and his surviving letters to Rimsky’s widow, to their son, Vladimir, and to the conductor Alexander Ziloti, positively cry out with the insecurity of a young composer who had never quite been accepted at the heart of musical St Petersburg and feared its judgment. They are the first hint of a split that would rapidly widen after Stravinsky’s dramatic successes in Paris. But by then of course, it hardly mattered.

The lost genius of Mozart’s sister

by Sylvia Milo, The Guardian

Tuesday 8 September 2015 09.54 EDT

“I am writing to you with an erection on my head and I am very much afraid of burning my hair”, wrote Nannerl Mozart to her brother Wolfgang Amadeus. What was being erected was a large hairdo on top of Nannerl’s head, as she prepared to pose for the Mozart family portrait.

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Maria Anna (called Marianne and nicknamed Nannerl) was – like her younger brother – a child prodigy. The children toured most of Europe (including an 18-month stay in London in 1764-5) performing together as “wunderkinder”. There are contemporaneous reviews praising Nannerl, and she was even billed first. Until she turned 18. A little girl could perform and tour, but a woman doing so risked her reputation. And so she was left behind in Salzburg, and her father only took Wolfgang on their next journeys around the courts of Europe. Nannerl never toured again.

But the woman I found did not give up. She wrote music and sent at least one composition to Wolfgang and Papa – Wolfgang praised it as “beautiful” and encouraged her to write more. Her father didn’t, as far as we know, say anything about it.

Did she stop? None of her music has survived. Perhaps she never showed it to anybody again, perhaps she destroyed it, maybe we will find it one day, maybe we already did but it’s wrongly attributed to her brother’s hand. Composing or performing music was not encouraged for women of her time. Wolfgang repeatedly wrote that nobody played his keyboard music as well as she could, and Leopold described her as “one of the most skilful players in Europe”, with “perfect insight into harmony and modulations” and that she improvises “so successfully that you would be astounded”.

Like Virginia Woolf’s imagined Shakespeare’s sister, Nannerl was not given the opportunity to thrive. And what she did create was not valued or preserved – most female composers from the past have been forgotten, their music lost or gathering dust in libraries. We will never know what could have been, and this is our loss.

Lubec, Maine

The story that goes with this picture is about Hopley Yeaton, the first officer commissioned (March 21, 1791) under the Constitution of the United States by George Washington into the Revenue Marines.  By most Coast Guarders (of whom Alex Haley is one and I am not but… New London) he is considered the first Commandant.

So in a friendly gesture the Coast Guard dug him up and planted him in New London where you can lie on his grave and think about death.

Now even though his grave was threatened by development, that of his family were not and they remain six feet (more or less, it’s pretty rocky) under the sod in North Lubec, once a bustling industrial center and now a wasteland of corrugated metal strapped around concrete slabs that machines and production lines used to be anchored on.

The libertarian impulse would be to point out the decline in commerce stems from an EPA ruling that it was no longer cool to dump buckets of blood, fish guts, and chicken beaks and feet straight into the water until the bay was red with it.

Scavanger species went into a predictable decline.  Yes, I like lobster and I know what they eat.  Do you like Pollack, Haddock, and Cod?

Seagulls I can do without even if they are agreeable to a close up.

So Lubec North, South, East, and West is available for about a dime and it is a bustling hub of International commerce.

I still don’t think grave robbing is an acceptable practice but when in Rome…  It certainly made things easier when I injured myself and had to exchange body parts after the beach amputation with shell edged tools.

What?  I had seaweed to grind my teeth on.  You guys are so effete.

Which brings us to Valhalla, New York and not by way of Wagner (Pfui!).

Family Balks at Talk by Russia to Move Rachmaninoff’s Remains

By JAMES BARRON, The New York Times

SEPT. 6, 2015

Resolutely nationalistic Russians want his body back. His great-great-granddaughter, Susan Sophia Rachmaninoff Volkonskaya Wanamaker, says “nyet.” Or she might, if she spoke Russian, but probably not. In a conversation about where his remains belong, she repeatedly used words like “dignity” and “respect.”

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The dispute over his burial place started last month, when Russia’s culture minister, Vladimir Medinsky, said that Rachmaninoff’s remains should be exhumed and sent to Russia. “The composer dreamed of being buried in Russia, that’s why returning his remains to his motherland would be a great deed,” he said, according to a report on the ministry’s website.

Ms. Wanamaker said Rachmaninoff had no such dream.

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(W)hile he died in Beverly Hills, Calif., on March 28, 1943, “the family’s roots in New York were deeper than their roots in Beverly Hills,” Ms. Wanamaker said. Rachmaninoff, who left his homeland to escape the Russian Revolution in 1917, had rented a house on Riverside Drive when he arrived in Manhattan in the 1920s. He became an American citizen eight weeks before he died.

Mr. Medinsky accused the United States of laying claim to Rachmaninoff’s legacy. “If you look at American sources, you’ll see that Sergei Rachmaninoff is a great American composer of Russian descent,” he said. “Americans are presumptuously privatizing the name of Rachmaninoff.”

That idea was echoed by Valery Poliansky, the president of the Rachmaninov Society in Moscow (the group spells his last name with a V). Mr. Poliansky told the Govorit Moskva radio station that “nobody in America needs him,” referring to Rachmaninoff, or his remains. “America doesn’t need anyone, except itself,” he said.

Ms. Wanamaker disputed that. “It’s not possible to privatize a name that’s well known,” she said, also noting that her great-great-grandfather “was always proud to be a Russian, even while he was living in exile in America.”

“There is no separating Sergei Rachmaninoff from Russia,” Ms. Wanamaker said. “His music is the embodiment of the Russian romantic spirit. It’s the embodiment of the Russian soul.”

She added, “I believe the name Rachmaninoff, because it’s recognized and respected, gives Medinsky a platform to spout his nationalism.” She suggested that Mr. Medinsky was “trying to politicize a personal choice” – Rachmaninoff’s decision to leave Russia and never return.

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Ms. Wanamaker said that Rachmaninoff, great as he was, was not the only one to think about.

“He rests next to his wife and his daughter,” she said, “and there’s no mention of moving them. So they want to separate his family, one that he fought to keep together through the Russian Revolution, through World War II? It’s simply unconscionable.”

My wishes?  I want to go like El Cid.  Shove a stick up my butt, light me on fire, and give my horse a slap on the ass.

It’s kind of unfair to the horse.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

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.

October 12 is the 285th day of the year (286th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 80 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1810, Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. These famous public fields were named Theresienwiese-“Therese’s fields”-in honor of the crown princess; although locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the “Wies’n.” Horse races in the presence of the royal family concluded the popular event, celebrated in varying forms all across Bavaria.

Oktoberfest is a 16-18 day festival held each year in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. It is one of the most famous events in Germany and the world’s largest fair, with more than 5 million people attending every year. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations, modelled after the Munich event.

The Munich Oktoberfest, traditionally, takes place during the sixteen days up to and including the first Sunday in October. In 1994, the schedule was modified in response to German reunification so that if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or 2nd, then the festival will go on until October 3 (German Unity Day). Thus, the festival is now 17 days when the first Sunday is October 2 and 18 days when it is October 1. In 2010, the festival lasts until the first Monday in October, to mark the 200-year anniversary of the event. The festival is held in an area named the Theresienwiese (field, or meadow, of Therese), often called Wiesn for short, located near Munich’s centre.

Visitors eat huge amounts of traditional hearty fare such as Hendl (chicken), Schweinsbraten (roast pork), Schweinshaxe (ham hock), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), Würstl (sausages) along with Brezn (Pretzel), Knödel (potato or bread dumplings), Kasspatzn (cheese noodles), Reiberdatschi (potato pancakes), Sauerkraut or Blaukraut (red cabbage) along with such Bavarian delicacies as Obatzda (a spiced cheese-butter spread) and Weisswurst (a white sausage).

First hundred years

In the year 1811, an agricultural show was added to boost Bavarian agriculture. The horse race persisted until 1960, the agricultural show still exists and it is held every four years on the southern part of the festival grounds. In 1816, carnival booths appeared; the main prizes were silver, porcelain, and jewelry. The founding citizens of Munich assumed responsibility for festival management in 1819, and it was agreed that the Oktoberfest would become an annual event. Later, it was lengthened and the date pushed forward, the reason being that days are longer and warmer at the end of September.

To honour the marriage of King Ludwig I and Therese of Bavaria, a parade took place for the first time in 1835. Since 1850, this has become a yearly event and an important component of the Oktoberfest. 8,000 people-mostly from Bavaria-in traditional costumes walk from Maximilian Street, through the centre of Munich, to the Oktoberfest. The march is led by the Münchner Kindl.

Since 1850, the statue of Bavaria has watched the Oktoberfest. This worldly Bavarian patron was first sketched by Leo von Klenze in a classic style and Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler romanticised and “Germanised” the draft; it was constructed by Johann Baptist Stiglmaier and Ferdinand von Miller.

In 1853, the Bavarian Ruhmeshalle was finished. In 1854, 3,000 residents of Munich succumbed to an epidemic of cholera, so the festival was cancelled. Also, in the year 1866, there was no Oktoberfest as Bavaria fought in the Austro-Prussian War. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war was the reason for cancellation of the festival. In 1873, the festival was once more cancelled due to a cholera epidemic. In 1880, the electric light illuminated over 400 booths and tents (Albert Einstein helped install light bulbs in the Schottenhamel tent as an apprentice in his uncle’s electricity business in 1896). In 1881, booths selling bratwursts opened. Beer was first served in glass mugs in 1892.

At the end of the 19th century, a re-organization took place. Until then, there were games of skittles, large dance floors, and trees for climbing in the beer booths. They wanted more room for guests and musicians. The booths became beer halls.

In 1887, the Entry of the Oktoberfest Staff and Breweries took place for the first time. This event showcases the splendidly decorated horse teams of the breweries and the bands that play in the festival tents. This event always takes place on the first Saturday of the Oktoberfest and symbolises the official prelude to the Oktoberfest celebration

In the year 1910, Oktoberfest celebrated its 100th birthday. 120,000 litres of beer were poured. In 1913, the Braurosl was founded, which was the largest Oktoberfest beer tent of all time, with room for about 12,000 guests.

I have very fond memories of Oktoberfest. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Europe, do it in late September because this is a must see and experience.

Last Day

Football Town

War Games

Cat Park

Twue Wuve

Therapy

Therapy Part 2

More Therapy

Celebrity Interview

Amy Schumer is as funny as Bill Murray, and I like Bill Murray a lot.

I hope she get the bulk of the time because I don’t much like Stephen King (it’s a jealousy thing, his style is too similar to my own).  The musical guest is Troubled Waters.

This is a minor mystery–

According to the New York Times, Troubled Waters is an unknown Paul Simon tribute band, which makes sense considering the iconic singer/songwriter’s track “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” However, the group doesn’t have any social media presence–not a Facebook, Twitter or Soundcloud–so we’re going to wager that this is some elaborate prank. Will it be Paul Simon himself? Will Colbert go the “Fallon” route and do his best Paul Simon impression? Is it some to-be-named supergroup?

Stupid implies they were motivated by noble instincts and were merely misguided, ignorant, or incompetent.

Evil says they knew exactly what they were doing.

Unless you think everyone’s an idiot except you (which I do with ample justification but is not really relevant) I think you’ve got to come out somewhere on the evil side.  Does the rot go to the top?

Have you been asleep since Lehman?

Now the DOJ Admits They Got it Wrong

by William Black, New Economic Perspectives

Posted on September 11, 2015

It is now seven years after Lehman’s senior officers’ frauds destroyed it and triggered the financial crisis. The Bush and Obama administrations have not convicted a single senior bank officer for leading the fraud epidemics that triggered the crisis. The Department’s announced restoration of the rule of law for elite white-collar criminals, even if it becomes real, will come too late to prosecute the senior bankers for leading the fraud epidemics. The Justice Department has, effectively, let the statute of limitations run and allowed the most destructive white-collar criminal bankers in history to become wealthy through fraud with absolute impunity. This will go down as the Justice Department’s greatest strategic failure against elite white-collar crime.

The Obama administration and the Department have failed to take the most basic steps essential to prosecute elite bankers. They have not restored the “criminal referral coordinators” at the banking regulatory agencies and they have virtually ignored the whistleblowers who gave them cases against the top bankers on a platinum platter. The Department has not even trained its attorneys and the FBI to understand, detect, investigate, and prosecute the “accounting control frauds” that caused the financial crisis. The restoration of the rule of law that the new policy promises will not happen in more than a token number of cases against senior bankers until these basic steps are taken.

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As a corporate executive once told a former Assistant Attorney General of ours: “[A]s long as you are only talking about money, the company can at the end of the day take care of me . . . but once you begin talking about taking away my liberty, there is nothing that the company can do for me.”(1) Executives often offer to pay higher fines to get a break on their jail time, but they never offer to spend more time in prison in order to get a discount on their fine.

We know that prison sentences are a deterrent to executives who would otherwise extend their cartel activity to the United States. In many cases, the Division has discovered cartelists who were colluding on products sold in other parts of the world and who sold product in the United States, but who did not extend their cartel activity to U.S. sales. In some of these cases, although the U.S. market was the cartelists’ largest market and potentially the most profitable, the collusion stopped at the border because of the risk of going to prison in the United States.”

As prosecutors, (real) financial regulators, and criminologists, we have known for decades that the only effective means to deter elite white-collar crimes is to imprison the elite officers that grew wealthy by leading those crimes (which include the largest “hard core cartels” in history – by three orders of magnitude). In the words of a Deutsche Bank senior officer, the bank’s participation in the Libor cartel produced a “mountain of money” for the bank (and the officers). Holder’s bank fines were useless – and the Department’s real prosecutors told him why they were useless from the beginning. No one, of course, thinks Holder went rogue in refusing to prosecute fraudulent bank officers. President Obama would have requested his resignation six years ago if he were upset at Holder’s grant of de facto immunity to our most destructive elite white-collar criminals.

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The Department’s top criminal prosecutor, Lanny Breuer, publicly stated his paramount concern about the fraud epidemics that devastated our nation – he was “losing sleep at night over worrying about what a lawsuit might result in at a large financial institution.” That’s right – he was petrified of even bringing a civil “lawsuit” – much less a criminal prosecution – against “too big to prosecute” banks and banksters. I lose sleep over what fraud epidemics the banksters will lead against our Nation. The banksters have learned to optimize “accounting control fraud” schemes and learned that they can grow immensely wealthy by leading those fraud epidemics with complete impunity. None of them has a criminal record and even those that lost their jobs are overwhelmingly back in financial leadership positions. In the aftermath of the savings and loan debacle, because of the prosecutions and criminal records of the elites that led those frauds, no senior S&L fraudster who was prosecuted was able to become a leader of the fraud epidemics that caused our most recent financial crisis.

We have known for decades that repealing the rule of law for elite white-collar criminals and relying on corporate fines always produces abject failure and massive corporate fraud. We have known for millennia that allowing elites to commit crimes with impunity leads to endemic fraud and corruption. If the Department wants to restore the rule of law I am happy to help it do so. We have known for over 30 years the steps we need to take to succeed against elite white-collar criminals through vigorous regulators and prosecutors. We must not simply prosecute the current banksters, but also prevent and limit future fraud epidemics through regulatory and supervisory changes.

The Justice Department’s New Policy Is a Brutal Admission of Eric Holder’s Failures

By David Dayen, The Fiscal Times

September 11, 2015

This week, the Justice Department felt the need to write a memo to staff instructing them to indict individuals when they commit crimes, seemingly something implied by their job titles. It doesn’t say as much about the current Justice Department regime under Loretta Lynch as it does about the former one under Eric Holder.

No major Wall Street executive went to jail for the illegal actions that precipitated the financial crisis, despite a mountain of documentary evidence of fraud. Corporations and their employees got away with what amounted to slaps on the wrist. And Holder, after presiding over this, joined the head of his Justice Department criminal division and several top deputies at Covington & Burling, a white-collar defense firm that represents most major banks.

You can draw a direct line from this failure back to the “Holder memo,” written when he served as a deputy in the Clinton Justice Department. That memo created the “collateral consequences” policy, arguing that prosecutors who seek criminal cases against large companies should take into account innocent victims who may get hurt. It laid out a host of alternative remedies, such as fines and deferred prosecution agreements.

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The Justice Department would not have attempted to make this change without full recognition of the loss of public trust its actions over the past several years have engendered. Relentless criticism of the lack of white-collar prosecutions had an impact, and those who participated in that conversation should be proud.

But at this point, guidelines won’t do the trick, only actions will – a genuine effort to make the concept of justice more than a punch line. This is the beginning of a real overhaul in mindset at the Department of Justice. Hopefully, the resources and training needed to undertake wide-ranging investigations will accompany the guidelines. Hopefully, U.S. Attorneys and FBI agents will be allowed to do their jobs. Hopefully, settlements with corporations no longer represent a dead end of accountability. Hopefully, the Justice Department will live up to its name.

The End of the Deferred Prosecution Agreement?

by David Dayen, Naked Capitalism

Posted on September 8, 2015

DPAs usually arise out of the company disclosing misconduct and convening an internal investigation with some Assistant AG, promising full cooperation. The company gets credit for remedial conduct prior to the settlement, essentially setting their own punishment. And typically, DPAs are not paired with prosecutions for individuals committing the crimes.

So let’s look at the DPA that could bring this cozy situation crashing down. DoJ headlined back in June 2014 that Fokker Services BV would forfeit $10.5 million for selling aircraft parts and services to customers in Iran, Burma and Sudan. There was a parallel civil settlement with the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to pay an additional $10.5 million. If you go down the press release, you find that Fokker received $21 million in gross revenue for these 1,153 illegal transactions, so the penalty was simply to give back what they received. Now they’re out a bunch of aircraft parts, one assumes, and I don’t really know the markup here. But that doesn’t seem too taxing.

In fact, in the DPA itself, we learn that “at least $21 million” was involved in the transactions. So it’s not possible to know what, if any, financial penalty was imposed. And FWIW, the civil penalty for the crime FSBV committed could have been as high as $51 million, per corporate law firm Akin Gump.

FSBV had to “accept responsibility” for its actions and really do little else. They agreed to cooperate with any matters relating to this investigation, making documents and individual employees available. For what purpose I have no idea, since nobody at FSBV has been indicted for this, 4 years after the company disclosed everything. FSBV must also continue to apply what it has already implemented voluntarily, namely compliance programs to prevent it from continuing to break the law. And… that’s about it. Plus, “in consideration of FSBV’s remedial actions to date,” this “punishment” all goes away within 18 months.

So I can see why Judge Richard Leon rejected this deal back in February, calling it “grossly disproportionate” and that “it would undermine the public’s confidence in the administration of justice and promote disrespect for the law… to see a defendant prosecuted so anemically for engaging in such egregious conduct.”

Just as a sidebar, I have a problem with a Dutch company being prosecuted by the United States for trading with other countries. There are a series of “trading with the enemy” type of laws that put the U.S. in the position of world trading policeman, sometimes for inscrutable reasons. But as long as that law is on the books, sentencing an offender to give back (some? all?) of their profits and promise not to do it again does seem a bit thin.

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DoJ and FSBV jointly appealed Judge Leon’s order, saying he exceeded his authority. When the law enforcement agency and the offending entity end up on the same side of a lawsuit, well, it certainly doesn’t look great.

So this week we’ll have arguments in the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (h/t Abigail Field). And I don’t really know what DoJ will have to say for themselves. These are the kind of craptastic agreements they’ve been making with corporate offenders for the entire Holder era (Holder, last seen just hanging out at his awesome new office at Covington & Burling, was AG when this DPA was made). Presumably they’ll avoid the specifics and just claim that judges can’t have the temerity to reject contractual agreements made by two sides, and how this would damage the separation of powers, prosecutorial discretion, &c.

But judges have held up DPAs in the past, though they were eventually approved. And considering that DoJ can also file a non-prosecution agreement, which don’t require court approval, there’s obviously some role for judges to play here. If you want to get judicial approval, you can’t expect that approval to come automatically. And if the goal is to extract the proper consequences out of a corporate offender, a judge resisting settlements that are overly lenient can only enhance DoJ’s efforts.

Of course, that isn’t what DoJ is after. They would rather settle these matters quietly, write a press release, and then get a judge to bless it to get buy-in from another branch of government, so if anyone questions the slap on the wrist they can say “well a judge approved it.”

Legally this is a jump ball; DoJ could easily wriggle off the hook here. But if the 1st Circuit D.C. Circuit blows up this little charade, they will have to make their terrible deals without a patina of outside approval. Or maybe, horror of horrors, they’ll have to do their job properly.

In an extended, and sometimes poignant interview with Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show,” Vice President Joe Biden discussed the loss of his son, Beau, and calls for his tossing his hat ring for president. Joe Biden is no doubt a really nice man and loving father and husband but even he expressed doubt last night that he has the heart, the soul or the energy to make that run.

“I don’t think any man or woman should run for president unless, number one, they know exactly why they would want to be president; and two, they can look at folks out there and say, ‘I promise you have my whole heart, my whole soul, my energy and my passion,'” he told comedian Stephen Colbert in an interview on CBS’ “The Late Show.”

“I’d be lying if I said that I knew I was there. I’m being completely honest,” Biden continued. “Nobody has a right in my view to seek that office unless they are willing to give it 110 percent of who they are.”

As Charles Pierce at Esquire Politics put it, “it was powerful television, but it doesn’t mean he should run for president.”

This is a guy who already had more tragedy than a merciful god would have allowed and that was before his son, Beau, died earlier this year. Of course, the man broke down. The wonder is that he ever gets out of bed in the morning. What he should do is continue as best he can to be the finest vice-president of my lifetime. What he should not do in his current state of emotional turmoil is run for president. [..]

Joe Biden shouldn’t run for president because he shouldn’t do it to himself. He has earned a unique place in the country’s heart, which is a far warmer place for him as a human being than shivering in some cornfield outside Ottumwa in the cold winter winds. A presidential campaign is a soulless mechanism designed to grind the human spirit into easily digestible nuggets. Moments of profound personal pain and loss are as unavoidable as are concussions in the NFL. It was almost unbearable to watch him speak of his son’s death even to someone as profoundly compassionate as Colbert. I would hate to see him coin that grief into political currency, or fashion it into a portion of a stump speech that would become banal the second time it was delivered. I think, at some level, he would come to hate himself for having to do that.  It’s not that I wouldn’t vote for Joe Biden, though I probably wouldn’t. It’s that I don’t want to see him hurt any more.

Like Charlie, I admire Biden as a person but he is as hawkish as Hillary and just as friendly to Wall Street and the banks as Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. His record as a senator would hurt him just as Hillary’s is hurting her, the nonsensical e-mail tempest aside. The Democratic Party needs to stop tacking right and embrace the popular policies of Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

“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 de Blasio: It’s Time to Close the Carried Interest Loophole

The rampant inequality that we face in America is no accident. It is the result of a system that, for too long, has rewarded existing wealth over work.

There is no more striking example of this phenomenon than the disparity between the earnings — and the tax rates — of kindergarten teachers and hedge fund managers.

In 2014, the top 25 hedge fund mangers made more money than every single kindergarten teacher in America — over 150,000 of them — combined. That’s right: 25 individuals — not even enough to fill the seating space on a single New York City subway car — made more than everyone who teaches our youngest learners put together.

What’s more, because of something called carried interest — a tax loophole that exists only to boost the earnings of hedge fund managers — those 25 people paid a lower tax rate than the average kindergarten teacher.

If we’re to truly tackle the crisis of income inequality, changing that rule — and investing that money in growing our middle class — is where we must start.

Norman Solomon: America’s post-9/11 Cassandras are still ignored

As the US war machine grinds on, mainstream media outlets bury prescient warnings

Fourteen years later, the horrors of 9/11 continue with deadly ripple effects. American militarism has become the dominant position of U.S. foreign policy, while other options remain banished to the sidelines. Yet from the outset of the “war on terrorism,” some Americans spoke out against a militarized response to the terrible events on Sept. 11, 2001. [..]

Even the most prominent warnings against such an approach were marginalized and vilified in the wake of Sept. 11. And those warnings have been buried by the U.S. media as though they never occurred, even though their concerns have proved prescient. The U.S. has spent trillions of dollars on military interventions across the Middle East, and yet the region is more violent and turbulent than ever.

This media amnesia helps keep the U.S. war train on track. The importance of the erasure is embodied in an observation by George Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” The widespread pretense that there was no credible critique of going to war 14 years ago reinforces the assumption that there is no credible alternative to militarized responses today.

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

American Revolution: Gen George Washington defeated at the Battle of Brandywine; FDR dedicated the Hoover Dam; The Beatles recorded their first singles.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius

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 11 is the 254th day of the year (255th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 111 days remaining until the end of the year. It is usually the first day of the Coptic calendar and Ethiopian calendar (in the period AD 1900 to AD 2099).

On this day in 1941, ground is broken for the construction of The Pentagon.

The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, “the Pentagon” is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.

Designed by the American architect George Bergstrom (1876-1955), and built by Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, general contractor John McShain, the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943, after ground was broken for construction on September 11, 1941. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motive power behind the project; Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the Army.

The Pentagon is the world’s largest office building by floor area, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (604,000 m2), of which 3,700,000 sq ft (344,000 m2) are used as offices. Approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km) of corridors. The Pentagon includes a five-acre (20,000 m2) central plaza, which is shaped like a pentagon and informally known as “ground zero”, a nickname originating during the Cold War and based on the presumption that the Soviet Union would target one or more nuclear missiles at this central location in the outbreak of a nuclear war.

On September 11, 2001, exactly 60 years after the building’s groundbreaking, hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the western side of the Pentagon, killing 189 people, including five hijackers, 59 others aboard the plane, and 125 working in the building.

So down 4.4 million for the 2nd episode and a .4 deficit in the demo (not insignificant, it’s like 30%) but ’twas ever thus destined to be.  Fallon labors under the handicap or advantage of a Thursday Night Throwball intro pairing the Patsies and the Steelers in the season opener.

Biden made ‘news?’ today in his interview with Stephen which was embargoed and then transcripts unembargoed while the tape remained embargoed.  I’m hard put to call it actual news because nothing new came out of it except his continued protestation that running for President takes your full commitment and he got all verklempt about his kid’s service in Iraq.

The reason Biden is being sucked up to by the Villagers is Good Old Senator Credit Card is their very own pod produced clone, a hollow empty husk of institutionalized graft and corruption that they hope can fool enough of the people when Hillary falls to their decades of Clinton hate.

He says himself he is no populist.  Do we really need another Democrat running to the right of Hillary?  That’s Jim Webb’s job.

I hope Stephen cleans him like a fish and drops him still flopping in a pan but I expect he’ll be much gentler than that.  His other guests are Travis Kalanick and Toby Keith.

So, do Natasha and Bruce ever get together?

The New Continuity

Welcome to Mars

Tonightly we will be talking about Tom Brady’s balls, concussions, and other things thrown with Tony Richards, Mike Yard and Rory Albanese.

Tomorrow will be all Amy Schumer all the time.