“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”.

Robert Reich: Why This is Exactly the Time to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure

Seems like only yesterday conservative nabobs of negativity predicted America’s ballooning budget deficit would generate soaring inflation and crippling costs of additional federal borrowing.

Remember Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States? Recall the intense worry about investors’ confidence in government bonds – America’s IOUs?

Hmmm.

Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Treasuries closed at 1.83 percent.

In other words, they were wrong.

In fact, it’s cheaper than ever for the United States to borrow. That’s because global investors desperately want the safety of dollars. Almost everywhere else on the globe is riskier. Europe is in a debt crisis, many developing nations are gripped by fears the contagion will spread to them, Japan remains in critical condition, China’s growth is slowing.

David Sirota: Why white liberals are (really) ditching Obama

Racism isn’t responsible for the president’s drop in popularity. His right-wing policies are

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay that got me a much larger truckload of hate mail than usual. The piece concerned the persistent problem of denialism in parts of White America when it comes to race. I lamented how, despite media and political insinuations that whites have become an oppressed group, it is people of color — and in particular, African-Americans — who remain the real casualties of discrimination:

   You can see [this racism] in black unemployment rates, which are twice as high as white unemployment rates — a disparity that persists even when controlling for education levels. You can see it in a 2004 MIT study showing that job-seekers with “white names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews” than job seekers with comparable resumes and “African-American-sounding names.” And you can see it in a news media that looks like an all-white country club and a U.S. Senate that includes no black legislators.

I stand by my argument. It is a fact that the most problematic and widespread application of this denialism takes the form represented by white conservatives who angrily insist that racism against minorities is not only dead, but that African-Americans enjoy undue favoritism.

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 27 is the 270th day of the year (271st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 95 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1922, Jean-François Champollion deciphered the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone with the help of groundwork laid by his predecessors: Athanasius Kircher, Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Akerblad, Thomas Young, and William John Bankes. Champollion translated parts of the Rosetta Stone, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs.

Thomas Young was one of the first to attempt decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, basing his own work on the investigations of Swedish diplomat Akerblad, who built up a demotic  alphabet of 29 letters (15 turned out to be correct) and translated all personal names and other words in the Demotic part of the Rosetta Stone  in 1802. Akerblad however, wrongly believed that demotic was entirely phonetic or alphabetic. Young thought the same, and by 1814 he had completely translated the enchorial (which Champollion labeled Demotic as it is called today) text of the Rosetta Stone (he had a list with 86 demotic words). Young then studied the hieroglyphic alphabet and made some progress but failed to recognise that demotic and hieroglyphic texts were paraphrases and not simple translations. In 1823 he published an Account of the Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphic Literature and Egyptian Antiquities. Some of Young’s conclusions appeared in the famous article Egypt he wrote for the 1818 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

When Champollion, in 1822, published his translation of the hieroglyphs and the key to the grammatical system, Young and all others praised this work. Young had indicated in a letter to Gurney that he wished to see Champollion acknowledge that he had made use of Young’s earlier work in assisting his eventual deciphering of hieroglyphics. Champollion was unwilling to share the credit even though initially he had not recognized that hieroglyphics were phonetic. Young corrected him on this, and Champollion attempted to have an early article withdrawn once he realized his mistake. Strongly motivated by the political tensions of that time, the British supported Young and the French Champollion. Champollion completely translated the hieroglyphic grammar based in part upon the earlier work of others including Young. However, Champollion maintained that he alone had deciphered the hieroglyphs. After 1826, he did offer Young access to demotic manuscripts in the Louvre, when he was a curator. Baron Georges Cuvier (1825) credited Champollion’s work as an important aid in dating the Dendera Zodiac.

I didn’t think digging holes and mobilizing communities to protect or restore the trees, forests, watersheds, soil, or habitats for wildlife that surrounded them was spiritual work.

During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me whether spirituality, different religious traditions, and the Bible in particular had inspired me, and influenced my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation? Were there spiritual lessons to be learned and applied to their own environmental efforts, or in their lives as a whole?

When I began this work in 1977, I wasn’t motivated by my faith or by religion in general. Instead, I was thinking literally and practically about solving problems on the ground. I wanted to help rural populations, especially women, with the basic needs they described to me during seminars and workshops. They said that they needed clean drinking water, adequate and nutritious food, income, and energy for cooking and heating. So, when I was asked these questions during the early days, I’d answer that I didn’t think digging holes and mobilizing communities to protect or restore the trees, forests, watersheds, soil, or habitats for wildlife that surrounded them was spiritual work.

Keith Olbermann reports on Occupy Wall St. and the “clear case of police brutality”. Going into its eleventh day, the protest has finally started to get attention from the media, sadly, not because of the mission of the protest to bring attention on the abuses of Wall St and the banks but because of the over-reacton of the NYC Police Department to an essentially peaceful demonstration and obvious police brutality.

The movement has received attention in the world press such as the Guardian UK and Al Jazeera. Also filmmaker and activist Michael Moore has taken up the cause, visiting the site and Noam Chomsky announced his solidarity adding to the encouragement of the protesters to continue bring their message about corporate greed and social inequality. It was also revealed that the white shirted police officer who maliciously maced the young women on Saturday has been accused of civil rights violations at the time of the 2004 Republican national convention protests.

In case anyone has missed the reason of Occupy Wall St. here it is:

Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.

The occupation will continue and if you can’t be there, please, donate.

Never mind dreaming of Jeannie, trader Alessio Rastani tells the BBC host that he goes to bed dreaming of the next recession and doesn’t care what happens to the economy because people like him will make a fortune from the crash. He almost makes an ambulance chasing lawyer sound like a humanitarian but he’s not wrong just painfully realistic.

“This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out,” Rastani told the BBC. “The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world.”

In a candid interview about the Eurozone rescue plan, Rastani said the market is ruled by fear and cannot be saved by the rescue plan.

“They know the stock market is toast,” he said. “They know the stock market is finished.”

Rastani said most investors are moving their money to places it would be more safe, like U.S. treasuries and the dollar, as they simply do not care about the state of the economy but rather about their own pockets.

“Personally it doesn’t matter,” he said. “See I’m a trader. I don’t really care about that kind of stuff. If I see an opportunity to make money, I go with that.”

snip

“For most traders…we don’t really care that much about how they’re going to fix the economy, how they’re going to fix the whole situation,” Rastani said. “Our job is to make money from it.”

h/t Yves Smith @ naked capitalism

“Find out why a “peck” of Republicans comprised of Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan and conservative columnist John Feehery is WORSE; FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly is WORSER; and Pam Olsen, Rick Perry’s new Florida campaign co-chair, is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for September 23, 2011.

“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”.

Dean Baker: Why Don’t the Deficit Hawks Want to Tax Wall Street?

The intensity with which the country’s leading deficit hawks continue to ignore financial speculation taxes (FST) is getting ever more entertaining. While deficit hawks like Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson, Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles and The Washington Post never tire of preaching the virtues of shared sacrifice, somehow sacrifice for Wall Street never features as a part of this story.

The refusal of this group to consider FST is becoming more striking because most of the world appears to be moving in this direction. Last spring, the European Parliament voted by an almost four to one margin in support of FST. The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU), is now making plans to implement a modest tax beginning in 2014.

New York Times Editorial: An Indefensible Punishment

When the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty 35 years ago, it did so provisionally. Since then, it has sought to articulate legal standards for states to follow that would ensure the fair administration of capital punishment and avoid the arbitrariness and discrimination that had led it to strike down all state death penalty statutes in 1972.

As the unconscionable execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last week underscores, the court has failed because it is impossible to succeed at this task. The death penalty is grotesque and immoral and should be repealed.

Over the weekend President Obama was out on the campaign trail giving rousing speeches to “energize his base”. Kicking off on Satuday night, he spoke before the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus, urging them to:

“stop complaining” and fight for jobs and opportunity. “Shake it off,” Obama said. “Stop grumbling. Stop crying. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”

Mighty words but are they good enough to shake off the apathy of the voters who contributed time and money to get him elected. While Obama’s poll number have fallen dramatically among white voters and independents, his numbers are now slipping among Black and minority voters:

A Washington Post-ABC poll published last week showed that while African Americans continue to view the president favorably in overwhelming numbers, the proportion of blacks expressing strongly positive views of Obama has dropped 25 points since mid-April – from 83 percent to 58 percent. His “favorable” rating has slipped below 50 percent among those age 18 to 29. And among all liberal Democrats, that number has dropped from 69 percent in April to 52 percent.

And his continues “bashing” of the left at a fund raiser in San Jose, California where he said this:

Mr. Obama said it’s not enough for the supporters in the audience to support him. He said if their friends and neighbors are reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page or watching Fox News the donors at this event need to talk to “push back” on their “inadequate information.”

“And in some cases I may need you to have some arguments with our progressive friends,” Mr. Obama said.

He said over the last 2.5 years even though he’s gotten a lot done a lot of Democrats “get dispirited.” He brought up the complaint about health care reform without a public option – “c’mon!” he said. He said he hasn’t got everything done on the environmental front because of the economy.

“We’re going to have a stark choice in this election. But I have to make sure that our side is as passionate and as motivated and is working just as hard as the folks on the other side because this is a contest of value. This is a choice about who we are and what we stand for and whoever wins this next election is going to set the template for this country for a long time to come.”

He told the donors if they believe in a “fact-based” America, they need to work hard for him.

POTUS also quoted “my friend Joe Biden,” who likes to say, “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.”

Oh, yea, that’ll work to overcome this problem:

Through June 30, the close of the most recent campaign reporting period, more than 552,000 people had contributed to Mr. Obama’s re-election effort, according to campaign officials. Half of them were new donors, and nearly all of them gave contributions of less than $250.

But those figures obscured another statistic: a vast majority of Mr. Obama’s past donors, who number close to four million, have not yet given him any money at all.

He doesn’t get it:.

As many of us warned, Obama’s pivot to deficit reduction proved to be devastating.  Not only did it completely undermine any ability to argue persuasively for more supportive federal spending; it poured the foundation for the right wing’s radical anti-government attacks on funding all of the beneficial public programs enacted since the New Deal.

Instead of mounting a vigorous defense of these programs and government’s role in protecting the public interest, the President’s budget rhetoric repeatedly undermined them.  In statement after statement, Obama falsely equated a household budget and the supposed need to tighten family belts with the federal budget and the need for government to cut back on spending.

Obama’s austerity message was dead wrong; every responsible economist knew that massive deficit spending was the one thing keeping the economy afloat while the private sector reduced its debts, and such deficits might be needed for years.

Obama is the one who needs to change, drastically and now.

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 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 96 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day on 1957, West Side Story premieres on Broadway. East Side Story was the original title of the Shakespeare-inspired musical conceived by choreographer Jerome Robbins, written by playwright Arthur Laurents and scored by composer and lyricist Leonard Bernstein in 1949. A tale of star-crossed lovers-one Jewish, the other Catholic-on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, the show in its original form never went into production, and the idea was set aside for the next six years. It was more than just a change of setting, however, that helped the re-titled show get off the ground in the mid-1950s. It was also the addition of a young, relatively unknown lyricist named Stephen Sondheim. The book by Arthur Laurents and the incredible choreography by Jerome Robbins helped make West Side Story a work of lasting genius, but it was the strength of the songs by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein that allowed it to make its Broadway debut on this day in 1957.

There are no videos of the original Broadway production which starred Larry Kert as Tony, Carol Lawrence as Maria, Ken Le Roy as Bernardo and Chita Rivera as Anita (Ms. Rivera reprized her role in the movie), so here is the Prologue from the Academy Award winning movie. The area that the movie was filmed no longer exists. The 17 blocks between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, from West 60th to West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he filming took place were demolished to build Lincoln Center for the Preforming Arts.