Nouriel Roubini, chairman and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics and professor of economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business, appeared in a web only interview with Rachel Maddow. Roubini argues that efforts to restore the collapsing economy are too little too late and that the structure that caused the collapse has not been fixed.

‘It’s a problem when you have a society where you have more financial engineers than computer engineers.’

With the repeal of DADT, wingers really start to come out of the closet.

“We don’t get ourselves dry-cleaned. We tend to take showers. …” And “Do you think that gyms should have separate showers for gay and straight people?”

“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 Obama Wins on Foreign Policy and Gays But Loses on Economics and Taxes

Two important victories for President Obama this week — the New Start anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia to reduce weapons and restart inspections, and the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell after a 17-year ban on gays in the military.

Why have Senate Republicans been willing to break ranks on these two, while not a single Republican went along with Obama’s plan to extend the Bush tax cuts only on the first $250,000 of income?

A hint of an answer can be found in another Senate defeat for Obama over the last few weeks that got almost no attention in the media but was a big one: Republicans blocked consideration of the House-passed DISCLOSE Act, which would have required groups that spend money on outside political advertising to disclose the major sources of their funding.

The answer is this. When it comes to protecting the fortunes of America’s rich (mostly top corporate executives and Wall Street) and maintaining their stranglehold on the political process, Senate Republicans, along with some Senate Democrats, don’t budge.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Costs of War

“We are winning” in Afghanistan, says Gen. David H. Petraeus. President Obama declares that the December military review shows we are “on track.” No doubt the president and the general are right: We will keep “making progress” for as many months or years as we choose to fight what is now America’s longest war – until we finally pull out, in defeat or in political exhaustion, wondering what we have accomplished for all the blood and treasure spent.

The president’s review only confirmed what informed observers already know. U.S. troops can win nearly any firefight. But ultimately we are no more secure, and Afghanistan is no closer to becoming a stable and developing country. No matter how light or agile their “footprint,” U.S. and allied occupying forces end up generating as many enemies as they kill, not only in Afghanistan but in other Muslim lands. No matter how much help we give to the Afghan people, inevitably it is seen as being on behalf of a government that is more a kleptocracy than a democracy.

New York Times Editorial: A Matter of Life or Death

St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix announced on Tuesday that it will continue to provide life-saving abortion care to patients even though it means losing its affiliation with the local Roman Catholic Diocese.

This commendable decision by St. Joseph’s and the hospital network that oversees it, Catholic Healthcare West, upholds important legal and moral principles. It also underscores the need to ensure that religiously affiliated hospitals comply with their legal duty to provide emergency reproductive care. . . .

This is no small matter. Catholic hospitals account for about 15 percent of the nation’s hospital beds and are the only hospital facilities in many communities. Months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to investigate reported instances where religious doctrine prevailed over the need for emergency reproductive care, and to issue a formal clarification that denying such treatment violates federal law.

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.

December 23 is the 357th day of the year (358th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are eight days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1893, The opera Hansel und Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed.

The libretto was written by Adelheid Wette (Humperdinck’s sister), based on the Grimm brothers’ Hansel and Gretel. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the Abendsegen (“Evening Benediction”) from Act 2.

The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on “Hänsel und Gretel.” After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera.

Humperdinck composed Hansel and Gretel in Frankfurt am Main in 1891 and 1892. The opera was first performed in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. It has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances and today it is still most often performed at Christmas time.

Most of us remember the novel by Alexander Dumas’s, “The Count of Monte Cristo“. The novel’s hero, Edmond Dantès, is falsely accused of being a traitor, denied a trial and imprisoned at the château on the Isle d’If off the coast of France.

This same fictional scenario has been the reality for the detainees at the detention camp at the US Naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. As of November, 2010, there are 174 detainees many of whom have yet to see the evidence against them. There are 48 detainees that President Obama the Obama administrative wants to hold indefinitely and that number may increase as The White house drafts an executive order that should be ready for President Obama to sign early on January.

(The) order establishes indefinite detention as a long-term Obama administration policy and makes clear that the White House alone will manage a review process for those it chooses to hold without charge or trial.

Nearly two years after Obama’s pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo, more inmates there are formally facing the prospect of lifelong detention and fewer are facing charges than the day Obama was elected.

That is in part because Congress has made it difficult to move detainees to the United States for trial. But it also stems from the president’s embrace of indefinite detention and his assertion that the congressional authorization for military force, passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks, allows for such detention.

After taking office, the Obama administration reviewed the detainee population at Guantanamo Bay and chose 48 prisoners for indefinite detention. Officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that number will likely increase in coming months as some detainees are moved from a transfer category to a continued detention category.

As David Dayen st FDL noted

I would rather this remain as an executive order than through a statute; at least it would be easier to overturn that way. But I don’t think any future President would choose to overturn it, and a statute could come anyway in a new, more conservative Congress. This is basically indefinite detention, an unheard-of policy prior to 9-11, with a bit of a smiley face. And to those who say this is limited to the 48 detainees designated for indefinite detention right now, here’s Tom Malinowski:

Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, said such an order could provide additional safeguards for those prisoners who are already being held in as wartime detainees, but worried that it could be used to entrench the idea of detention without trial.

   “My sense and my hope is that it would be limited to the detainees whom Obama inherited from the Bush administration, rather than serving as a permanent regime for the detention of anyone the government may decide is dangerous in the future,” he said.

Consider the detention of Bradley Manning, in solitary confinement without being charged with a crime. There’s been credible speculation that Manning is being held to break him and give up some information about Julian Assange. I just think this will become more of the norm, especially with a codified indefinite detention standard.

Cenk Uygur had a live interview on Dylan Ratigan Show with Julian Assange who denied any contact with Pvt. Manning, or that he was even the source of the information.

How far down will this country go? Apparently this far

(Washington, DC) – The US Senate’s passage on December 22, 2010, of a ban on the use of government funds for the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US, even for prosecution, will severely undermine US efforts to fight terrorism, Human Rights Watch said today.

“The Senate vote banning the transfer of Guantanamo detainees is a reckless and irresponsible affront to the rule of law and efforts to protect the US from terrorism,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “By hindering the prosecution of Guantanamo detainees in federal court, Congress has denied the president the only legally sustainable and globally legitimate means to incarcerate terrorists.”

The provision in the National Defense Authorization Act changes a prior funding ban that blocked the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the US except for prosecution, thereby preserving the Obama administration’s option of trying Guantanamo detainees in US federal courts. The new provision completely strips the government of the federal court option until September 2011 or until a new authorization bill is passed, effectively blocking closure of the Guantanamo detention facilities in the near future. The House of Representatives passed a similar provision on December 17, 2010. The Senate made unrelated changes to the bill, requiring it to be sent back to the House where it is expected to be passed immediately.

I met this man two years ago at the NYS Renaissance Festival in Tuxedo. He plays on a four ton Medieval Carillon. When he preforms the bells echo throughout the valley. Awesome.

“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”.

Amy Goodman: President Obama’s Christmas Gift to AT&T (and Comcast and Verizon)

One of President Barack Obama’s signature campaign promises was to protect the freedom of the Internet. He said, in November 2007, “I will take a back seat to no one in my commitment to network neutrality, because once providers start to privilege some applications or websites over others, then the smaller voices get squeezed out and we all lose.”

Jump ahead to December 2010, where Obama is clearly in the back seat, being driven by Internet giants like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. With him is his appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, his Harvard Law School classmate and basketball pal who just pushed through a rule on network neutrality that Internet activists consider disastrous.

Robert Reich: The Year Washington Became “Business Friendly”

History will record 2010 as the year Washington became “business friendly.”

Not that it was all that unfriendly before. Some would say the bailouts of Wall Street, AIG, GM, and Chrysler were about as friendly as it can get. In addition, Washington gave windfalls to drug companies and health insurers in the new health bill, subsidies to energy companies in the stimulus package, and billions to domestic and military contractors.

But for corporate America it still wasn’t friendly enough. Before the midterm elections, Verizon CEO and Business Roundtable chair Ivan Seidenberg accused the president of creating a hostile environment for investment and job-creation. In the midterms, business leaders overwhelmingly threw their support to Republicans.

So the White House caved in on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and is telling CEOs it will be on their side from now on. As the president recently told a group of CEOs, the choice “is not between Democrats and Republicans. It’s between America and our competitors around the world. We can win the competition.”

Fred Kaplan: Political Brinksmanship

Republicans picked a silly fight over START, and they lost badly.

The Senate seems on its way to ratifying the New START on nuclear arms, an achievement that looked unlikely to say the least just a few weeks ago.

If a Republican were president, the accord would have excited no controversy and at most a handful of diehard nays. As even most of its critics conceded, the treaty’s text contains nothing objectionable in substance.

There were two kinds of opponents in this debate. The first had concerns that President Barack Obama would use the treaty as an excuse to ease up on missile defense and the programs to maintain the nuclear arsenal. In recent weeks, Obama and his team did as much to allay these concerns as any hawk could have hoped-and more than many doves preferred.

So that left the second kind of opponent: those who simply wanted to deny Obama any kind of victory. The latter motive was clearly dominant in this debate.

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.

December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are nine days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1808, Ludwig von Beethoven’s 5th Symphony makes its world premier in Vienna.

Also premiering that day at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna were Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58, and the Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68-the “Pastoral Symphony.” But it was the Fifth Symphony that, despite its shaky premiere, would eventually be recognized as Beethoven’s greatest achievement to that point in his career. Writing in 1810, the critic E.T.A. Hoffman praised Beethoven for having outstripped the great Haydn and Mozart with a piece that “opens the realm of the colossal and immeasurable to us…evokes terror, fright, horror, and pain, and awakens that endless longing that is the essence of Romanticism.”

That assessment would stand the test of time, and the Fifth Symphony would quickly become a centerpiece of the classical repertoire for orchestras around the world. But beyond its revolutionary qualities as a serious composition, the Fifth Symphony has also proven to be a work with enormous pop-cultural staying power, thanks primarily to its powerful four-note opening motif-three short Gs followed by a long E-flat. Used in World War II-era Britain to open broadcasts of the BBC because it mimicked the Morse-code “V” for “Victory,” and used in the disco-era United States by Walter Murphy as the basis for his unlikely #1 pop hit “A Fifth Of Beethoven,” the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony have become a kind of instantly recognizable musical shorthand since they were first heard by the public on this day in 1808.

“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”.

Starhawk: Out of darkness, light: Solstice and the lunar eclipse

Winter Solstice–the shortest day and longest night of the year. For Pagans, Wiccans and Goddess worshippers, this is one of our most sacred holidays. As winter closes in, the darkness grows and the light recedes. For Pagans, darkness is the necessary balance to light. We don’t conceive of the dark as evil, but as a place of potential, of gestation–the black, fertile soil where the seed puts forth roots and shoots, the dark womb where new life is nurtured. But being humans, we also have a natural affinity for the light, the time of growth and new beginnings, of warmth and color and bright new hopes. Solstice reminds us that no darkness, no loss, no grief or disappointment is final. Out of darkness, light is born. Every ending gives rise to a new beginning. Out of disappointment and despair comes new courage, new hope.

Dean Baker: Saving Social Security: Stopping Obama’s Next Bad Deal

President Obama insists that he is a really bad negotiator, therefore the deal he got on the 2-year extension of the Bush tax cuts and the 1-year extension of unemployment benefits was the best that he could do. This package also came with a 1-year cut in the Social Security tax.

This cut will seriously threaten the program’s finances if next year, the Republican Congress is no more willing to end a temporary tax cut than this year’s Democratic Congress.

The logic here is straightforward. Under the law, the Bush tax cuts were supposed to end in 2010. Tax rates returned to their pre-tax cut levels in 2011. However, the Republicans maintained a steady drumbeat about the evils of raising taxes in the middle of a downturn, even if the tax increase would just apply to the richest 2 percent of the population.

Jane Hamsher: Barack Obama and the Art of Negotiation

The President is “moving quickly” to reassure liberals that he has “not abandoned them” in the wake of the tax cut deal, according to the Washington Post.

But liberals shouldn’t be concerned that Obama has “abandoned them.”  They should be far more worried if he’s actually on their side, and simply losing one fight after another.

The White House has been working to smooth the ruffled feathers of liberals that Obama dismissed as “sanctimonious” in his spur-of-the-moment press conference two weeks ago. But having watched the event, I have to say that I was personally far less concerned about Obama’s attack on his liberal critics than I was about the signals he sent to anyone who ever negotiates against him.

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.

December 21 is the 355th day of the year (356th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 10 days remaining until the end of the year. This is a frequent day for the winter solstice to occur in the northern hemisphere and summer solstice to occur in the southern hemisphere.

On this day in 1968, Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders aboard.

Apollo 8 was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth orbit; the first to be captured by and escape from the gravitational field of another celestial body; and the first crewed voyage to return to planet Earth from another celestial body-Earth’s Moon. The three-man American crew of mission Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders became the first humans to directly see the far side of the Moon, as well as the first humans to see planet Earth from beyond low Earth orbit. The 1968 mission was accomplished with the first manned launch of a Saturn V rocket. Apollo 8 was the second manned mission of the Apollo program and the first manned launch from the John F. Kennedy Space Center.

Originally planned as a second Lunar Module/Command Module test in an elliptical medium Earth orbit in early 1969, the mission profile was changed in August 1968 to a more ambitious Command Module-only lunar orbital flight to be flown in December, because the Lunar Module was not ready to make its first flight then. This meant Borman’s crew was scheduled to fly two to three months sooner than originally planned, leaving them a shorter time for training and preparation, thus placing more demands than usual on their time and discipline.

After launching on December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 took three days to travel to the Moon. It orbited ten times over the course of 20 hours, during which the crew made a Christmas Eve television broadcast in which they read the first 10 verses from the Book of Genesis. At the time, the broadcast was the most watched TV program ever. Apollo 8’s successful mission paved the way for Apollo 11 to fulfill U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.