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Aug 17 2011
On This Day In History August 17
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.
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
August 17 is the 229th day of the year (230th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 136 days remaining until the end of the year.
The Dakota War of 1862 (also known as the Sioux Uprising, Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow’s War) was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of the eastern Sioux or Dakota which began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota. It ended with a mass execution of 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota.
Throughout the late 1850s, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. Traders with the Dakota previously had demanded that the government give the annuity payments directly to them (introducing the possibility of unfair dealing between the agents and the traders to the exclusion of the Dakota). In mid-1862 the Dakota demanded the annuities directly from their agent, Thomas J. Galbraith. The traders refused to provide any more supplies on credit under those conditions, and negotiations reached an impasse.
On August 17, 1862, four Dakota killed five American settlers while on a hunting expedition. That night a council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley to try to drive whites out of the area. There has never been an official report on the number of settlers killed, but estimates range from 400 to 800. It is said that until the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the civilian wartime toll from the Dakota conflict was the highest in U.S. history (excluding those of the Civil War).
Over the next several months, continued battles between the Dakota against settlers and later, the United States Army, ended with the surrender of most of the Dakota bands. By late December 1862, soldiers had taken captive more than a thousand Dakota, who were interned in jails in Minnesota. After trials and sentencing, 38 Dakota were hanged on December 26, 1862, in the largest one-day execution in American history. In April 1863 the rest of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota to Nebraska and South Dakota. The United States Congress abolished their reservations.
Aug 16 2011
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”.
Paul Krugman: Downgrade of US Credit Rating Is Baseless – and Outrageous
Standard & Poor’s has gone ahead with the threatened downgrade of the United States’ credit rating. It’s a strange situation.
On one hand, there is a case to be made that the madness of the right has made America a fundamentally unsound nation. And yes, it is the madness of the right: If not for the extremism of anti-tax Republicans, we would have no trouble reaching an agreement that would ensure long-run solvency.
On the other hand, it’s hard to think of anyone less qualified to pass judgment on America than the rating agencies.
The people who rated subprime-backed securities are now declaring that they are the judges of fiscal policy? Really?
Dean Baker: President Obama Joins the Cult of Economics Deniers
President Obama has abandoned evidence-based economics to return the US to growth in favor of the politics of deficit-cutting
A front page story in Sunday’s New York Times gave the country the bad news. President Obama is no longer paying attention to economists and economics in designing economic policy. Instead, he will do what his campaign people tell him will get him re-elected, presumably by getting lots of money from Wall Street.
The article said that President Obama intends to focus on reducing government spending and cutting programs like social security and Medicare. This is in spite of the fact that: “A wide range of economists say the administration should call for a new round of stimulus spending, as prescribed by mainstream economic theory, to create jobs and promote growth.”
In other words, President Obama intends to ignore the path for getting the economy back to full employment that most economists advocate. Instead, he is going to cut government spending – because his chief of staff and former JP Morgan vice president Bill Daley and his top campaign adviser David Plouffe both say this is a good idea.
Unless Congress extends it, the 18.4 cents-a-gallon federal gas tax will expire on Sept. 30. Allowing that to happen would be tremendously destructive. It would bankrupt the already stressed Highway Trust Fund, with devastating effects on the country’s highways, bridges, mass transit systems and the economy as a whole.
Reports suggest that some House Republicans may push to let the tax lapse or use the threat of expiration as leverage in the budget wars. This is a dangerous idea. If anything, the tax should rise to maintain a system that constantly needs upkeep – the backlog of bridges needing repair is estimated at $72 billion – creates jobs and encourages drivers to buy more fuel-efficient cars.
Steven Rattner: Republican Extremism, Bad Economics
IN the middle of all the debt default drama and stock market turbulence, the leading Republican presidential candidates have begun to fill in the shadowy outlines of their positions on major economic issues.
And what a picture it is, a philosophy oriented around shrinking the role of the federal government in every imaginable way, by slashing spending, cutting taxes and halting or rescinding regulations. Their mantra is repeal and retrenchment, devoid of new initiatives or a positive agenda.
Some of these views are to the right even of the Tea Party; they amount to the most radically conservative positions of any set of candidates at least since Barry M. Goldwater in 1964.
John Nichols: FDR Went to Wisconsin to Battle ‘Economic Royalists,’ But Obama Avoids the State and the Fight http://www.thenation.com/blog/…
President Obama is interrupting his long vacation to bus across the battleground states of the Midwest this week, on an officially “non-political” journey that his aides obviously hope will renew a connection with the people who overwhelmingly elected him president in 2008. It is an essential endeavor, as Obama’s uncertain tenure has frustrated voters who once saw him as a transformational leader but now wonder whether there is a point to his presidency.
The disconnect between Obama and his base has grown more profound this year, as he has focused on the compromises of Washington while working people in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and other states have engaged in “Which side are you on?” fights against a Republican austerity agenda that threatens the very underpinnings of civil society and democratic experiment.
Eugene Robinson: Straw Poll Winner – Obama
Ames, Iowa – Strolling through the pageant of unhealthy food and unsound ideology that is the Iowa Straw Poll, amid the good-natured Republicans who swept Michele Bachmann to an impressive victory, I couldn’t help but reflect that this quadrennial exercise is one crazy way to pick a major-party candidate for president.
You’ll note that I used the words “Michele Bachmann” and “president” in the same sentence. That someone with views as extreme as Bachmann’s could win — and that Ron Paul, who seems to inhabit his own little reality, could finish second — would seem to rob the straw poll of all but comic value, making it analogous to the opening joke a dinner speaker might tell to warm up a stone-faced audience. But the ritual is serious business, as poor Tim Pawlenty found out. Less than 24 hours after he finished a distant third in the straw poll, “former candidate” became his new honorific.
Long before the results were tallied, it seemed clear that Pawlenty was in trouble. Like the other candidates who participated Saturday, he had a big tent on the grounds of the Iowa State University coliseum where voters could enjoy free food and entertainment. People were happy to line up for the Famous Dave’s barbecue that Pawlenty was serving, but they didn’t stay long — and when they walked away, they weren’t wearing the green Pawlenty T-shirts that signaled support. By mid-afternoon, volunteers were glum.
Aug 16 2011
The Economic Bad News Just Keeps Coming
The robust economy of Germany is starting to feel the effects of the economic crisis of its partner nations in the Eurozone and is showing signs of drastic slowing
Growth in the German economy slowed sharply between April and June and was weaker at the start of the year than previously thought, figures show.
The (German) economy grew by just 0.1% in the quarter, according to figures from the national statistics office. Growth in the eurozone as a whole also slowed.
Germany had been driving the economic recovery in the eurozone.
The figures come as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy begin crunch talks.
The two leaders are discussing ways to solve the eurozone debt crisis that has threatened to engulf Italy and Spain and has sparked turmoil on global stock markets.
Figures also released on Tuesday showed that eurozone economic growth slowed to 0.2% in the second quarter, down from 0.8% in the previous three months.
The slow down has had its effect on markets in Europe and early trading in the US:
The news led European indexes lower. Germany’s DAX fell 2.6 percent, the FTSE in Britain was 1.3 percent lower, and in France the CAC 40 was down 1.9 percent.
In early trading, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 80.68 points, or 0.70 percent, at 11,402.22. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 11.02 points, or 0.91 percent, at 1,193.47, and the Nasdaq composite index was down 26.38 points, or 1.03 percent, at 2,528.82.
“German G.D.P. data is the catalyst this morning that got us off to a bad start,” said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vt.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France were to meet later Tuesday to discuss measures to contain Europe’s fiscal crisis. A joint news conference was scheduled at noon E.D.T.
Another component of the down turn is the idea of issuing bonds backed by all Eurozone nations to ease the crisis has been poo-pooed by both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicholas Sarkozy but they may have no other choice:
The euro bond concept is gaining traction among economists and other outside experts like George Soros, the billionaire investor, as a way of preventing borrowing costs for Italy and Spain from rising so much that the countries become insolvent, an event that could destroy the common currency.
Debt issued and backed by all 17 members of the euro zone, euro bond proponents say, would be regarded as ultrasafe by investors and could rival the market for United States Treasury securities. The weaker euro members would benefit from the good standing of countries like Germany or Finland and pay lower interest rates to borrow than if left to face investors on their own.
“It may well be in order to calm markets right now,” said Jakob von Weizsäcker, an economist for the German state of Thuringia who has proposed a way to structure euro bonds so that countries would be encouraged to reduce their debt.
On the “bright side”, there is Nouriel Roubini:
.Karl Marx was right that globalization, financial intermediation, and income redistribution could lead capitalism to self-destruct
Now a combination of high oil and commodity prices, turmoil in the Middle East, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, eurozone debt crises, and America’s fiscal problems (and now its rating downgrade) have led to a massive increase in risk aversion. Economically, the United States, the eurozone, the United Kingdom, and Japan are all idling. Even fast-growing emerging markets (China, emerging Asia, and Latin America), and export-oriented economies that rely on these markets (Germany and resource-rich Australia), are experiencing sharp slowdowns.
Until last year, policymakers could always produce a new rabbit from their hat to reflate asset prices and trigger economic recovery. Fiscal stimulus, near-zero interest rates, two rounds of “quantitative easing,” ring-fencing of bad debt, and trillions of dollars in bailouts and liquidity provision for banks and financial institutions-officials tried them all. Now they have run out of rabbits.
Fiscal policy currently is a drag on economic growth in both the eurozone and the United Kingdom. Even in the United States, state and local governments, and now the federal government, are cutting expenditure and reducing transfer payments. Soon enough, they will be raising taxes.
Aug 16 2011
On This Day In History August 16
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.
On this day in 1896, Gold discovered in the Yukon.
While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s Yukon Territory on this day in 1896, George Carmack reportedly spots nuggets of gold in a creek bed. His lucky discovery sparks the last great gold rush in the American West.
Hoping to cash in on reported gold strikes in Alaska, Carmack had traveled there from California in 1881. After running into a dead end, he headed north into the isolated Yukon Territory, just across the Canadian border. In 1896, another prospector, Robert Henderson, told Carmack of finding gold in a tributary of the Klondike River. Carmack headed to the region with two Native American companions, known as Skookum Jim and Tagish Charlie. On August 16, while camping near Rabbit Creek, Carmack reportedly spotted a nugget of gold jutting out from the creek bank. His two companions later agreed that Skookum Jim–Carmack’s brother-in-law–actually made the discovery.
Aug 16 2011
Countdown with Keith Olbermann
If you do not get Current TV you can watch Keith here:
Aug 15 2011
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”.
Warren Buffet: Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
New York Times Editorial: A Jobs Agenda, Anyone?
In what can only be described as a triumph of bad policy and craven politics, Congress and the Obama administration have spent the year focused on budget cuts, as the economy has faltered and unemployment has worsened. Official unemployment is 9.1 percent, but it would be 16.1 percent, or 25.1 million people, if it included those who can only find part-time jobs and those who have given up looking for work. For the past two and a half years, there have been more than four unemployed workers for every job opening, a record high, by far. In a healthy market, the ratio would be about one to one.
By a large margin, Americans have told pollsters that job creation is more important than budget cuts. Yet Republican leaders are wedded to austerity and appear to think that high unemployment will hurt President Obama politically more than it will hurt them, so they will likely resist efforts to create jobs, no matter how great the need.
As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.
Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.
So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.
Matt Miller: Why the center-left is fed up with Obama
Here’s the thing. I know Tea Party Republicans were behind the debt-ceiling standoff that wreaked needless damage on confidence in the United States. I wrote weeks ago of Standard & Poor’s outrageous nerve in threatening a downgrade when America’s ability to pay its debts can’t possibly be in doubt. In short, I know who the real villains are at this volatile moment.
So why am I so mad at Barack Obama?
I know I’m not alone. In conversations with folks across the center-left in recent days, everyone’s basically had it with the president. I’ve had policy frustrations before: Obama’s never aimed high enough on school reform and he’s failed miserably to advance a real jobs agenda, to name just two. I’ve said repeatedly that we need a third party to shake things up. But at the same time a part of me has always cut the president some slack – after all, look at the mess the man walked into! Yet somehow the debt-ceiling fiasco and the downgrade, punctuated by these horrific jobs numbers and stock market gyrations, has made something in me (and, I suspect, millions of others) snap.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Shiny Happy Corporate People
Mitt Romney got a lot of press for telling a heckler at the Iowa State Fair that “corporations are people.” He did not go on to sing that Patti Smith song, People Have the Power.
But corporate “people” certainly do. Their power was on display this week, both in Washington and among the Republicans campaigning for the nomination.
John Nichols: Bernie Sanders Talks Up Primary Challenge to Obama as ‘a Good Idea for Our Democracy and for the Democratic Party’
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues to argue that a Democratic primary challenge to President Obama would be “good for democracy and for the Democratic Party.”
Sanders will not be a candidate. The Vermont independent, who caucuses with Senate Democrats, is running for re-election in 2012.
But Sanders, who has been sharply critical of Obama’s compromises with the Republican right on economic and fiscal policy, continues to talk up the idea of a primary challenge as a vehicle to pressure the president from the left. He is not alone. Ralph Nader is actively encouraging a primary race. And one-third of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents tell pollsters that they favor a primary challenge to the president, while just 59 percent oppose such a run.
Ben Adler: A Handful of Rural Right-Wing Extremists Chase Tim Pawlenty Out of the Race
A day after Saturday’s Iowa Straw Poll results came in-Michele Bachmann edged out Ron Paul, with Tim Pawlenty a distant third, just ahead of Rick Santorum and nobody Herman Cain-Pawlenty pulled the plug on his flagging presidential campaign. What does this tell us? That our system of nominating presidential candidates is badly broken, beholden to a small number of extremist party activists in a couple of arbitrarily chosen small, rural states and an unthinking media echo chamber.
The Iowa Straw Poll is not a nominating contest. No convention delegates are assigned there. It is a fundraiser for the Iowa state Republican Party. It is presumed to be significant because, according to campaign reporters like the New York Times’s Jeff Zeleny, it is “a test of organizing strength.” And organizing strength is considered an important capability in Iowa, where the anti-democratic caucus system depresses turnout relative to a normal primary. Since only hardcore activists will participate in the caucuses and they must be cajoled to the polls, the mind-numbing process of identifying and turning out every last supporter in Ottumwa County is a crucial component of campaigns to lead the free world. What this skill has to do with, say, balancing the federal budget is unclear. The mainstream media, meanwhile, reports on this ludicrous state of affairs as if it were an objective fact rather than a product of their own unhealthy obsession with Iowa. (After all, Iowa still only assigns a small number of delegates. If the media treated it like comparably sized Mississippi, the importance of who wins there would vanish.)
Robert Reich: Why the New Healthcare Law Should Have Been Based on Medicare (And What Democrats Should Have Learned By Now)
Remember the health-care debate? Congressional Republicans refused to consider a single-payer system that would automatically pool risks. They wouldn’t even consider giving people the option of buying into it.
The President and the Democrats caved, as they have on almost everything. They came up with a compromise that kept health care in the hands of private insurance companies. The only way to spread the risk in such a system was to require everyone to buy insurance.
Which is exactly what the two appellate judges in Atlanta objected to. The Constitution, in their view, doesn’t allow the federal government to compel citizens to buy something. “Congress may regulate commercial actors,” they wrote. “But what Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die.”
Most Americans seem to agree. According to polls, 60 percent of the public opposes the individual mandate. Many on the right believe it a threat to individual liberty. Many on the left object to being required to buy something from a private company.
Aug 15 2011
On This Day In History August 15
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.
August 15 is the 227th day of the year (228th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 138 days remaining until the end of the year.
While there were many significant events that happened on August 15, the most delightful and happily remember is Woodstock. Not many of my Baby Boomer generation remember that today Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of Japan or that East Germany began the building of the Berlin Wall or that Malcolm slain Macbeth, it was peace, love and Rock N’ Roll in the mud with a lack of sanitary facilities but lots of music from some of the best at the Woodstock Festivalduring the weekend of August 15 to 18, 1969. The site was a dairy farm in West Lake, NY near the town of Bethel in Sullivan County, some 43 miles southwest from the actual town of Woodstock in Ulster County. During that rainy weekend some 500,000 concert goers became a pivotal moment in the history of Rock and Roll.
Peace, Drugs and Rock N’Roll. Rock On.
Aug 15 2011
Hedge Fund Manager: US In Need Of Massive Stimulus
Back in July, Barton Biggs, a hedge fund manager for Traxis Partners, said that the U.S. needs to invest in a massive public works program, and rich people and corp’s should pay more taxes. Perhaps President Obama, Secretary Tim Geithner and all those who think that spending and tax cuts are the right path should listen to this.
Aug 15 2011
The Proper Use of Garnishes
I am totally bored with the news today. Like Jeralyn at TalkLeft there is little being reported except about Republicans and, like her they are just not interesting to me. They’re all clowns, felons or religious zealots. Jeralyn lucked out going to her local farmers’ market, but due to the weather here I couldn’t go for a walk on the beach. I can’t even get off the street because the intersection is under about 4 feet of water, the choice is row boat or SCUBA today.. So I surfed the net this afternoon for entertainment.
When I was back in college and in between jobs, I waited tables and tended bar. Not bad money back in ’72 – ’73, it helped pay the bills. One of the things I was very attentive about were garnishes for drinks, like lemon twists, maraschino cherries (UGH!) and olives. I’m rather observant about what goes on behind the bar and rather particular about my drinks, vodka martinis being my favorite, so when Rachel Maddow did a segment on her show about drink garnishes, I chuckled. Her rant on garnishes started because of red bees in Brooklyn, NY that had been getting into the Red Dye #40 laced cherry juice at the factory where the cherries are made. Her objections extended to olives which have “conceivably been lying out festering in their own juices in a warm room all night, with fingers on them.” Well, while the alcohol kills a lot of germs, I usually peek behind the bar to see how the garnishes are kept. The better places keep them in trays over ice with little tongs or picks. Her take on lemon twists was pretty clear, it’s there to add some flavor, “It has a job to do, and that job is not to be eaten!”. The moral of her lecture was “Don’t Eat the Garnish” and hold the maraschino cherries.
Aug 14 2011
Rant of the Week: Dylan Ratigan
MSNBC talk show host Dylan Ratigan lets go with both guns blazing on US political ties to banking. The Republican strategists sticks to her talking points, totally ignoring reality.
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