“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the t 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.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Enough with the partisan posturing

Will the 2010 election campaign provide us with a debate worthy of a great nation in trouble? The early harbingers aren’t good. The pundit herd has already declared the election over, with only the scope of the Democratic reverses yet in question. The two parties are gearing up for a fierce debate on whether to extend the Bush tax cuts to everyone including the wealthiest 2 percent or merely to everyone except the very rich.

We can’t afford this partisan posturing. Fifteen million Americans are unemployed. Poverty is up. One in four homes is under water, worth less than what is owed on it. Voters deserve a serious debate about what is to be done. And what are the choices that the two parties present?

Eugene Robinson: Christine O’Donnell’s win is the GOP’s loss

When you ride a tiger, you go wherever the tiger wants to go – even off a cliff.

The Republican Party – viewed less favorably by voters than even the Democrats, according to polls – has been planning to win in November by harnessing the energy and passion of the Tea Party movement. But tonight’s stunning result in Delaware demonstrates that the Tea Party will go wherever it chooses, heedless of Republican strategists’ grand design.

Christine O’Donnell’s victory over Rep. Mike Castle in the Senate primary is a huge political story. How huge? This one race, in one of the nation’s smallest and least populous states, comes pretty close to wiping out the possibility of the Republicans taking control of the Senate in November.

That’s because any reasonable scenario giving the GOP a Senate majority involves capturing the Senate seat that used to belong to Vice President Biden. Castle, a veteran congressman, would have been favored to win – perhaps easily – in the general election. He is Delaware’s kind of Republican: fiscally conservative but moderate on social issues. He’s pro-choice and he favors gun control, in keeping with the attitudes and values of his state.

Kathleen Reardon: Will They Pull a Brooksley Born on Elizabeth Warren?

Remember Brooksley Born, former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission? In the late 1990s, Born sensed trouble was coming to a $25-trillion derivatives market. She pushed to strictly regulate derivatives under the Clinton administration, but lost the battle because she found herself on the wrong side of then Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his deputy Lawrence Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission head Arthur Levitt.

To say Born’s warnings were ignored would be an understatement. The gurus of the U.S. economy “dark markets” went after her. . . . .

If the financial overseers do pull a “Brooksley Born” on Warren, they will be overestimating their own power and underestimating both the acumen and the power of Americans who supported President Obama in the past. They will also be turning their backs on those striving to join the middle class and those struggling to remain there.

If President Obama fails to appoint Warren — or if he appoints her and his cronies render the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau powerless, he will lose the next presidential election.

Millions of Americans, and perhaps especially American women, will not stand idly by and let the establishment savage Warren, her skill, integrity and willingness to defend those not able to so aptly defend themselves.

Robert Reich: The Republican Threat to Shut Down the Federal Government

Newt Gingrich is saying if Republicans win back control of Congress and reach a budget impasse with the president, they should shut down the government again. GOP pollster Dick Morris is echoing those sentiments, as is Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R. Ga), and Alaska GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller.

I am continuously amazed at the GOP’s ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of potential victory. It is the gift that keeps giving.

I was there November 14, 1995 when Newt Gingrich pulled the plug on the federal government the first time. It proved to be the stupidest political move in recent history. Not only did it help Bill Clinton win reelection but it was a boon to almost all other Democrats in 1996 (Gingrich’s photo was widely used in negative ads), and the move damaged Republicans for years.

Gingrich hurt his cause by complaining that Bill Clinton had put him in the back of Air Force One on a trip that occurred about the same time. Republican lore has it that it was this babyish behavior rather than the shutdown itself that caused the public to side with Clinton in the game of chicken Gingrich launched over the budget. Undoubtedly Gingrich’s whining didn’t help, but it was his cavalier attitude toward government itself that was the defining issue. Gingrich was the one who first bragged he’d shut down the government if Clinton didn’t agree to what the Republicans wanted.

Now, remarkably, Gingrich is back at it.

David Swanson: Only in America Can Blair Go Out in Public

When U.S. media pundits claim that every other nation on earth honestly believed the absurd lies George W. Bush told about Iraqi weapons and ties to terrorism, the grain of truth is that one leader of one foreign nation went along with the lies: British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush gave Blair a medal of freedom as a reward. I picture millions of Iraqi refugees without proper food or medicine in Jordan and Syria strong in spirit and grateful for their fate thanks to Blair’s assistance in freeing them from their homes.

On August 31st, President Obama spoke from the Oval Office, assuring us that the War on Iraq had been launched to disarm a nation. Disarming a nation is a criminal basis for a war, a fact that I wish would quit getting lost in the madness of what we actually debate in this country. But Obama’s claim to have opposed this war that he funded as a senator and continued as a president rests on the idea, not just that he was lucky enough not to yet be in the Senate when it started, but that he didn’t at that time yet pretend to believe the lies. Now he finds it important to put up that pretense when nobody else believes it anymore, in order to urge us to “turn the page” on the crime of the century.

Obama’s embrace of the Iraq war lies, which included the “surge” lies so valuable now in Afghanistan, coincided with Tony Blair’s book tour. When Blair was performing his poodle tricks in 2002 and 2003 he was questioned and mocked at home and in Parliament, but given endless standing ovations in Congress. Nothing has changed. In Ireland on his book tour — the current equivalent of a triumphal march after a return from foreign slaughter — Blair faced protests and an attempted citizen’s arrest. In London the planned protests were so large that Blair canceled his event, stuck his tail between his legs, and whimpered away. In Philadelphia, on the other hand, Blair has just been presented with a Liberty Medal at the Constitution Center by none other than Bill Clinton, as reward for Blair’s . . . wait for it . . . “steadfast commitment to conflict resolution.” Only in America.

If this sounds like something out of a Dumas novel, imprisoned on the word of an unknown person without charges, no legal representation or trial, held on an isolated island in a tiny cell with the only contact your jailers who are free to torture and torment you and your fellow inmates, you’d be wrong.  This is the military prison at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba where the United States has held people from all over the world who have been charged as enemy combatants since 9/11 during the never ending, nebulous “war on terror”. President Obama promised during his campaign to close it and after his inauguration, he set a deadline of one year to shut it down that has come and gone months ago.

In a Washington Post Op-Ed, Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who served as an assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, has some suggestions for the dilemma that Guantanamo poses, not all of them are legal or constitutional. There are two problems that Mr. Goldsmith attempts to address, closing Guantanamo and trials for the detainees.

Jack Goldsmith: A way past the terrorist detention gridlock

Nine years after Sept. 11 and 20 months into the Obama presidency, our nation is still flummoxed about what to do with captured terrorists. The Obama administration is stuck about where the Bush administration was, with little hope in sight for progress.

Guantanamo Bay has proved harder to close than the Obama administration anticipated. Many terrorists there are too dangerous to release and, for a variety of evidentiary reasons, cannot be brought to trial. Our allies have taken fewer detainees than we would like. These men will thus have to be held in U.S. custody. But neither Congress nor the American people is keen on transferring them to the United States…..

Difficulties with trials have left the Obama administration, like its predecessor, relying primarily on military detention without trial to hold terrorists. Courts have given their general blessing to military detention as a legitimate form of terrorist incapacitation. But military detention still raises hard legal questions, about which Congress has said practically nothing. As a result, unaccountable judges are making fateful detention decisions, demanding release of some whom the administration thinks are dangerous terrorists. President Obama pledged last May to seek congressional clarity on detention but has yet to follow through. The abundant dysfunctions in our system for incapacitating terrorists have led to increased reliance on targeted killings and outsourced renditions, neither of which is optimal from an intelligence-gathering perspective. . . .

First, give up on closing the Guantanamo Bay facility.

Second, acknowledge that military detention will remain the primary basis for holding terrorists, and strengthen the system.

Third, stop using military commissions, which are a good idea in theory but have for nine years proved unworkable in practice.

Fourth, separate the legitimacy of civilian trials from the security of such trials.

Fourth, separate the legitimacy of civilian trials from the security of such trials.

So, Mr. Goldsmith blames the courts for giving the OK to military detention, tribunals and, heh, those damned “unaccountable judges are making fateful detention decisions, demanding release of some whom the administration thinks are dangerous terrorists”. Blame Congress for not clarifying what is a blatant disregard for the Constitution and International Law by two administrations.

How is any of this Constitutional? Indefinite Detention without trial? How do you legally, constitutionally hold a person indefinitely because someone says they are too dangerous to release? The government can do this to anyone, for any reason. This was not acceptable under Bush, how is it any more acceptable under Obama?

How does the US maintain face in the International community when it decries war crimes that itself commits and lamely tries to hide?

As for for his 5 solutions, I agree with not seeking the death penalty just not for the same reason of “the hard legal and political problems in trials — including the use of classified information and coerced confessions — arise in the penalty phase, when defendants can seek and introduce any conceivably probative evidence.” Well, the 9th Circuit Court may have helped solve part of that problem for the government.

THe rest of his suggestions to keep Guantanamo open and try the detainees in civilian courts are just convoluted legally or logistically impossible.

This is just a poorly argued excuse to curry Republican favor and fuel the fear mongering that Guantanamo cannot be closed.

h/t Marcy Wheeler and Spencer Ackerman @ FDL

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

September 15 is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 107 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1963, a bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four young girls.

The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a racially motivated terrorist attack on September 15, 1963, by members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Birmingham, Alabama in the United States. The bombing of the African-American  church resulted in the deaths of four girls. Although city leaders had reached a settlement in May with demonstrators and started to integrate public places, not everyone agreed with ending segregation. Other acts of violence followed the settlement. The bombing increased support for people working for civil rights. It marked a turning point in the U.S. 1960s Civil Rights Movement and contributed to support for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The three-story Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was a rallying point for civil rights activities through the spring of 1963, and is where the students who marched out of the church to be arrested during the 1963 Birmingham campaign’s Children’s Crusade were trained. The demonstrations led to an agreement in May between the city’s African-American leaders and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to integrate public facilities in the country.

In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton, Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement.

At about 10:22 a.m., when twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room for closing prayers of a sermon entitled “The Love That Forgives,” the bomb exploded. According to an interview on NPR on September 15, 2008, Denise McNair’s father stated that the sermon never took place because of the bombing. Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (aged 14), Denise McNair (aged 11), Carole Robertson (aged 14), and Cynthia Wesley (aged 14), were killed in the attack, and 22 additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins’ younger sister, Sarah.

The explosion blew a hole in the church’s rear wall, destroyed the back steps, and left intact only the frames of all but one stained-glass window. The lone window that survived the concussion was one in which Jesus Christ was depicted knocking on a door, although Christ’s face was destroyed. In addition, five cars behind the church were damaged, two of which were destroyed, while windows in the laundromat across the street were blown out.

 668 – Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is assassinated in his bath at Syracuse, Italy.

921 – At Tetin Saint Ludmila is murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law.

994 – Major Fatimid victory over the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of the Orontes.

1556 – Departing from Vlissingen, ex-Holy Roman Emperor Charles V returns to Spain.

1616 – The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy.

1762 – Seven Years War: Battle of Signal Hill.

1776 – American Revolutionary War: British forces land at Kip’s Bay during the New York Campaign.

1789 – The United States Department of State is established (formerly known as the “Department of Foreign Affairs”).

1812 – The French army under Napoleon reaches the Kremlin in Moscow.

1812 – War of 1812: A second supply train sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows.

1820 – Constitutionalist revolution in Lisbon, Portugal.

1821 – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica jointly declare independence from Spain.

1830 – The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opens.

1831 – The locomotive John Bull operates for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad.

1835 – HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galapagos Islands.

1851 – Saint Joseph’s University is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1862 – American Civil War: Confederate forces capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

1873 – Franco-Prussian War: The last German troops leave France upon completion of payment of indemnity.

1883 – The Bombay Natural History Society is founded in Bombay (Mumbai), India.

1894 – First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeats China in the Battle of Pyongyang.

1916 – World War I: Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme.

1931 – In Scotland, the two-day Invergordon Mutiny against Royal Navy pay cuts begins.

1935 – The Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of citizenship.

1935 – Nazi Germany adopts a new national flag with the swastika.

1940 – World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Royal Air Force shoots down large numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft.

1942 – World War II: U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp is torpedoed at Guadalcanal.

1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill meet in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.

1945 – A hurricane in southern Florida and the Bahamas destroys 366 planes and 25 blimps at NAS Richmond.

1947 – RCA releases the 12AX7 vacuum tube.

1947 – Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077.

1948 – The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h).

1950 – Korean War: United States forces land at Incheon

1952 – United Nations gives Eritrea to Ethiopia.

1958 – A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 58.

1959 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.

1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour.

1962 – The Soviet ship Poltava heads toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1963 – The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Four children killed at an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama, United States

1966 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1968 – The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

1981 – The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approves Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1981 – The John Bull becomes the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operates it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.

1981 – Vanuatu becomes a member of the United Nations.

1983 – Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigns.

1987 – United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sign a treaty to establish centers to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

1990 – France announces it will send 4,000 troops to the Persian Gulf

1993 – Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II disbands Parliament

1998 – With the landmark merger of WorldCom and MCI Communications completed the day prior, the new MCI WorldCom opens its doors for business.

2000 – The 2000 Summer Olympics are opened in Sydney, Australia

2004 – National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announces lockout of the players union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office.

2008 – Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

Tonight is Game 2 of the WNBA Basketball Finals.  Bet you didn’t even know.

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South… Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow… Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave… Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind…

Can I tell you how much I hate Gone with the Wind?  As over rated and romanticized as Ayn Rand and her purile pre-pubescent fantasies of noble rape at the hand of a strong and masterful man.  Not to mention the naked racism.  As bad as anything in Birth of a Nation only with sound and in Technicolor.

Once I had hopes that we had put these shameful chapters behind us, if not in the Remorseless Revolutionary Struggle that claimed over 364 thousand (I don’t count Slavers), then certainly in the Civil Rights Movement.  But Bigots will not be thwarted.  They’ll not be satisfied until their racism is met with the applause of the approving and the shameful silence of those who should know better.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

• ABC Family– Melissa & Joey (premier), Love & Basketball
• AMC– Death Wish II x 2 (even more soul destroying than the first, I’m going to stop reporting on these)
• Bravo– Flipping Out (last week’s and new), The Rachel Zoe Project (premier)
• ESPN– World Series of Poker (2 premiers)
• ESPN2– Dream @ Storm
• Food– Chopped Champions (Round 3 of 4)
• FX– Prom Night (much worse than the 1980 original with Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen)
• Oxygen– Bad Girls Club (most recent and new), Hair Battle Spectacular (premier)
• SciFi– Warehouse 13 (last week’s and new)
• Speed– Monster Jam (with Inside Monster Jam 2!)
• Turner Classic– Gone with the Wind
• Toon– Unnatural History, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack (premiers)
• USA– Covert Affairs (2 part Season Finale)
• Vs.– Major League

Later-

• AMC– Hamburger Hill
• FX– Terriers (Series Premier repeat)
• SciFi– Haven (this week’s)
• USA– Psych (this week’s)
• VH1– Roxanne (not Steve Martin’s best, that would be The Jerk, but watchable)

Jon has Tony Blair, Stephen Sean Wilentz.  Alton does Broccoli.  Boondocks, A Date With the Booty Warrior.

Tony Blair-

• Liar
• Murderer
• War Criminal

Unable to show his face in any civilized country.

May he end his long, long life of suffering locked in a dank cell at Spandau, despised and forgotten.

I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’ll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I’ll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There’s one thing I do know… and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we’re alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 French parliament adopts ban on full-face veil

by Frederic Dumoulin, AFP

10 mins ago

2 Huge Saudi arms deal aimed at Iran, Yemen troubles: analysts

by Paul Handley, AFP

1 hr 14 mins ago

3 Police open fire in Indian Kashmir after protest deaths

by Izhar Wani, AFP

1 hr 17 mins ago

4 EU threatens action over French Roma ‘disgrace’

by Laurent Thomet, AFP

Tue Sep 14, 9:22 am ET

5 Australian lender terminates $12.4 bln AXA bid

AFP

Tue Sep 14, 7:42 am ET

6 German investor confidence sinks in September

by William Ickes, AFP

Tue Sep 14, 7:41 am ET

7 Japan PM survives leadership challenge

by Miwa Suzuki, AFP

Tue Sep 14, 6:49 am ET

8 BP and partners say most victims not yet entitled to sue

By Tom Hals, Reuters

Tue Sep 14, 9:33 am ET

9 Obama edges toward decision on Warren as regulator

By Caren Bohan and Kim Dixon, Reuters

57 mins ago

10 Nevada eyes big political gamble

By Peter Henderson, Reuters

7 mins ago

11 North Korea "succession" meeting could start soon

By Yoko Kubota and Jeremy Laurence, Reuters

Tue Sep 14, 7:41 am ET

12 Japan PM wins party vote but faces more challenges

By Linda Sieg and Chisa Fujioka, Reuters

Tue Sep 14, 6:38 am ET

13 Pentagon cost-cutting drive faces uphill battle

By Andrea Shalal-Esa, Reuters

Tue Sep 14, 1:09 am ET

14 GOP establishment vs tea party in primary showdown

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

29 mins ago

15 French Senate passes ban on full Muslim veils

By ELAINE GANLEY, Associated Press Writer

16 mins ago

16 Corn syrup producers want sweeter name: corn sugar

By EMILY FREDRIX, AP Marketing Writer

50 mins ago

17 Aging gas pipes at risk of explosion nationwide

By GARANCE BURKE and JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writers

Tue Sep 14, 6:46 am ET

18 Forces told to shoot anyone defying Kashmir curfew

By AIJAZ HUSSAIN, Associated Press Writer

Tue Sep 14, 10:11 am ET

19 US considers terror charges for cleric al-Awlaki

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

Tue Sep 14, 10:28 am ET

20 Stocks edge lower, breaking 4-day winning streak

By STEPHEN BERNARD, AP Business Writer

13 mins ago

21 Japan PM wins party vote; bigger challenge to come

By ERIC TALMADGE, Associated Press Writer

Tue Sep 14, 8:31 am ET

22 AP-CNBC Poll: Investors wary of stock trading

By ALAN ZIBEL, AP Business Writer

Tue Sep 14, 12:27 pm ET

23 US man’s healing prompts Newman’s beatification

By JAY LINDSAY, Associated Press Writer

Tue Sep 14, 2:33 am ET

24 Senate Republicans say they’ll block tax increase

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

Mon Sep 13, 9:27 pm ET

25 Obama children’s book `Of Thee I Sing’ out Nov. 16

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

Mon Sep 13, 11:29 pm ET

26 Imam says NYC mosque site is not ‘hallowed ground’

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press Writer

Mon Sep 13, 9:27 pm ET

27 New Medicare chief speaks out against rationing

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer

Mon Sep 13, 9:28 pm ET

28 Dead Sea Scrolls debate spurs NY criminal trial

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 2 mins ago

29 Years after floods, homeowners still wait for FEMA

By KEN KUSMER, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 24 mins ago

30 Former British PM Tony Blair gets Liberty Medal

By KATHY MATHESON, Associated Press Writer

Mon Sep 13, 10:01 pm ET

31 Former colleagues testify for lesbian flight nurse

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer

Mon Sep 13, 8:25 pm ET

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the t 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.

Dean Baker: The Soft Bigotry of Incredibly Low Expectations: The Case of Economists

In a country with almost 15 million people out of work, it is amazing that any economists still have jobs. This one is their fault first and foremost. Economists are supposed to know about the economy and provide advice on how to avoid disasters before they happen and help us recover from the bad things happen in spite of good advice.

The economics profession has not done well on this simple scorecard. Remarkably, rather than improve their game, economists are now busy dampening down expectations so that the public will not hold them responsible for the state of the economy.

Towards this end, a group of Fed economists recently put out a new studyclaiming that it was impossible for economists to recognize the $8 trillion housing bubble before it wrecked the economy. In effect, they argued that economists should not be blamed for this failure because:

“The state-of-the-art tools of economic science were not capable of predicting with any degree of certainty the collapse of U.S. house prices that started in 2006.”

This raises the obvious question: if economists can’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble, what can they see? This is bit like the firehouse where everyone sits around calmly sipping their coffee as the school across the street burns down. Completely missing the largest financial bubble in the history of the world is pretty inexcusable, even if economists continue to make excuses.

Bob Herbert: A Recovery’s Long Odds

We can keep wishing and hoping for a powerful economic recovery to pull the U.S. out of its doldrums, but I wouldn’t count on it. Ordinary American families no longer have the purchasing power to build a strong recovery and keep it going.

Americans are not being honest with themselves about the structural changes in the economy that have bestowed fabulous wealth on a tiny sliver at the top, while undermining the living standards of the middle class and absolutely crushing the poor. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have a viable strategy for reversing this dreadful state of affairs. (There is no evidence the G.O.P. even wants to.)

Robert Reich, in his new book, “Aftershock,” gives us one of the clearest explanations to date of what has happened – how the United States went from what he calls “the Great Prosperity” of 1947 to 1975 to the Great Recession that has hobbled the U.S. economy and darkened the future of younger Americans.

David Weigel: Newt Is Nuts!

Why is Gingrich pushing Dinesh D’Souza’s crazy theory about Obama’s “Kenyan anti-colonialism”?

The release of a new book by Dinesh D’Souza prompts a perennial question: Why do people keep publishing books by Dinesh D’Souza?

There’s a simple answer. Newt Gingrich provided it to me and National Review’s Robert Costa on Saturday night. After the premiere of his documentary America at Risk, Gingrich mused about the brilliance of D’Souza’s Forbes magazine cover story about the “roots of Obama’s rage,” based on his upcoming book with that title. The roots, according to D’Souza, were in mid-1960s, Marxist-inspired, Kenyan anti-colonialism. Gingrich repeated those words-“Kenyan, anti-colonial”-and called the article “brilliant.”

Eugene Robinson: Gingrich, unhinged on Obama

Is Newt Gingrich just pretending to have lost his mind, or has he actually gone around the bend?

His lunacy certainly seems genuine enough. It’s one thing to be a rhetorical bomb-thrower, as Gingrich has long fancied himself, and another to lob damp squibs of pure nonsense into the fray. The man’s contributions to the public discourse have become increasingly unhinged.

The latest example comes in an interview with the conservative Web site National Review Online. Unsurprisingly, he was criticizing President Obama. Bizarrely, according to the Web site, he said the following: “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” According to Newt, this is “the most accurate, predictive model” for the president’s actions, or policies or something.

What in the world is “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior” supposed to mean? That Obama is waging a secret campaign to free us from the yoke of British oppression?

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

September 14 is the 257th day of the year (258th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 108 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this Day in 1901, U.S. President William McKinley dies after being shot by a deranged anarchist during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

President and Mrs. McKinley attended the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. He delivered a speech about his positions on tariffs and foreign trade on September 5, 1901. The following morning, McKinley visited Niagara Falls before returning to the Exposition. That afternoon McKinley had an engagement to greet the public at the Temple of Music. Standing in line, Leon Frank Czolgosz waited with a pistol in his right hand concealed by a handkerchief. At 4:07 p.m. Czolgosz fired twice at the president. The first bullet grazed the president’s shoulder. The second, however, went through McKinley’s stomach, pancreas, and kidney, and finally lodged in the muscles of his back. The president whispered to his secretary, George Cortelyou  “My wife, Cortelyou, be careful how you tell her, oh be careful.” Czolgosz would have fired again, but he was struck by a bystander and then subdued by an enraged crowd. The wounded McKinley even called out “Boys! Don’t let them hurt him!” because the angry crowd beat Czolgosz so severely it looked as if they might kill him on the spot.

One bullet was easily found and extracted, but doctors were unable to locate the second bullet. It was feared that the search for the bullet might cause more harm than good. In addition, McKinley appeared to be recovering, so doctors decided to leave the bullet where it was.

The newly developed x-ray machine was displayed at the fair, but doctors were reluctant to use it on McKinley to search for the bullet because they did not know what side effects it might have on him. The operating room at the exposition’s emergency hospital did not have any electric lighting, even though the exteriors of many of the buildings at the extravagant exposition were covered with thousands of light bulbs. The surgeons were unable to operate by candlelight because of the danger created by the flammable ether used to keep the president unconscious, so doctors were forced to use pans instead to reflect sunlight onto the operating table while they treated McKinley’s wounds.

McKinley’s doctors believed he would recover, and the President convalesced for more than a week in Buffalo at the home of the exposition’s director. On the morning of September 12, he felt strong enough to receive his first food orally since the shooting-toast and a small cup of coffee. However, by afternoon he began to experience discomfort and his condition rapidly worsened. McKinley began to go into shock. At 2:15 a.m. on September 14, 1901, eight days after he was shot, he died from gangrene surrounding his wounds. He was 58. His last words were “It is God’s way; His will be done, not ours.” He was originally buried in West Lawn Cemetery in Canton, Ohio, in the receiving vault. His remains were later reinterred in the McKinley Memorial, also in Canton.

Czolgosz was tried and found guilty of murder, and was executed by electric chair at Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901.

 81 – Domitian becomes Emperor of the Roman Empire upon the death of his brother Titus.

786 – Harun al-Rashid becomes the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother al-Hadi.

1180 – Battle of Ishibashiyama in Japan.

   * 1607 – Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland.

1682 – Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest schools in Wales, is founded.

1752 – The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).

1812 – Napoleonic Wars: French grenadiers enter Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city.

1814 – The poem Defence of Fort McHenry is written by Francis Scott Key. The poem is later used as the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner.

1829 – The Ottoman Empire signs the Treaty of Adrianople with Russia, thus ending the Russo-Turkish War.

1847 – Mexican-American War: Winfield Scott captures Mexico City.

1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of South Mountain, part of the Maryland Campaign, is fought.

1901 – President of the United States William McKinley dies after an assassination attempt on September 6, and is succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt.

1917 – Russia is officially proclaimed a republic.

1923 – Miguel Primo de Rivera becomes dictator of Spain.

1944 – World War II: Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.

1948 – Groundbreaking for the United Nations headquarters in New York City.

1958 – The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere.

1959 – The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.

1960 – The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.

1975 – The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is canonized by Pope Paul VI.

1982 – President-elect of Lebanon, Bachir Gemayel, is assassinated.

1984 – Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a hot air balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

1987 – The Toronto Blue Jays set a record for the most home runs in a single game, belting 10 of them.

1994 – The Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.

1995 – Body Worlds opens in Tokyo, Japan

1998 – Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom complete their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom.

1999 – Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations.

2001 – Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation’s capital.

2003 – In a referendum, Estonia approves joining the European Union.

U.S. pledges millions to end child labor in cocoa harvests



By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers  

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government and the chocolate industry pledged $17 million on Monday to help end child labor – some of it forced and dangerous – in two African countries where much of the world’s cocoa is grown.

“If there’s one thing people around the world share in common it’s our love of chocolate. But it is a bitter reality that the main ingredient in chocolate, cocoa, is produced largely by child labor,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, at a signing ceremony for a new agreement between industry, the Department of Labor, the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

Shark survivors team up to save species

Some lost limbs, but they now lobby U.N. for protections

By JOHN HEILPRIN

UNITED NATIONS – They have the scars and missing limbs that make it hard to forgive, but these victims are tougher than most. And now they want to save their attackers.

They are shark attack survivors, a band of nine thrown together in an unlikely and ironic mission to conserve the very creatures that ripped their flesh, tore off their limbs and nearly took their lives.

They want nations to adopt a resolution that would require them to greatly improve how fish are managed, including shark species of which nearly a third are threatened with extinction or on the verge of being threatened.

USA

After Volatile Primary Season, G.O.P. Faces New Test

POLITICAL MEMO

By JEFF ZELENY

Published: September 13, 2010  

As the long and turbulent primary season of the midterm election campaign drew to a close on Monday, the Republican establishment was placing its confidence on hold and bracing for the prospect that voters in yet another state would send a message of defiance to party leaders in Washington.

The Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday was prompting anxiety among party officials, who feared that a victory by Christine O’Donnell, a candidate backed by the Tea Party, could complicate Republican efforts to win control of the Senate. Republican leaders rushed to the aid of Representative Michael N. Castle, a moderate lawmaker and former governor, as internal party warfare – including accusations of a death threat – intensified on the eve of the primary.

Jobless are straining Social Security’s disability benefits program

 

By Michael A. Fletcher Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, September 14, 2010; 3:24 AM

The number of former workers seeking Social Security disability benefits has spiked with the nation’s economic problems, heightening concern that the jobless are expanding the program beyond its intended purpose of aiding the disabled.

Applications to the program soared by 21 percent, to 2.8 million, from 2008 to 2009, as the economy was seriously faltering.

Europe

Traditionalists outraged at Versailles’ modern makeover



By Nicola Hebden in Paris Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Outraged traditionalists are due to demonstrate outside the Palace of Versailles tonight against an invasion of the gilded former home of French royalty by a radical contemporary art exhibition.

For the second time in two years, the management of the palace has caused uproar by displaying garish modern art – this time by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami – in the ornate halls and gardens of the palace.A petition appealing to Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the director of the palace, and France’s minister of culture Frédéric Mitterrand not to “shatter the harmony” of Versailles, has almost 5,000 signatures.

EU agency demands more coherent asylum procedures

Asylum seekers are getting unfair and inconsistent treatment across the EU, says a new report by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. Language bariers mean asylum applicants often don’t understand what’s going on.  

HUMAN RIGHTS | 13.09.2010  

Asylum seekers across Europe are on an uneven playing field, according to the EU Fundamental Rights Agency. On Monday, the FRA released two reports looking at the access asylum seekers have to legal remedies and how well informed they are about their rights and the asylum process.

“A fair asylum procedure is one where applicants know their rights and their duties. As our research has shown, this is often not the case in the EU,” Morten Kjaerum, the director of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency, told a press conference on Monday.

Middle East

New building permits cast shadow over Middle East peace talks



By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem  Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Jewish settlers have permits to start building thousands of new homes within hours of the end of a 10-month construction freeze in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli watchdog revealed.

The Peace Now organisation said in a report that settlers have the necessary approvals for some 13,000 new homes, and could theoretically start building many of these as soon as the freeze ends in the last week of September.

The disclosure comes as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, prepare to resume US-mediated peace talks in Egypt today.

The two leaders meet in an atmosphere of mutual distrust, not least over settlements, which are illegal under international law and are built on the territory that the Palestinians want as the basis for their future state.

Briton ‘among thousands held without trial in Iraq’



A British man is among tens of thousands of people imprisoned without charge in Iraq, according to an Amnesty International report.

Asia

Indian children still underweight – after 20 years of interventions

Inefficiency, the global financial meltdown and rising food prices have conspired to reverse progress made on poverty and hunger  

Jason Burke

guardian.co.uk,     Tuesday 14 September 2010 07.50 BST  

Head out of Delhi, across the fetid Yamuna river, with the tourist sites behind you and the northern Indian plains in front of you. Go past the new, luxury flats built for the Commonwealth Games, turn right and follow the lines of the new metro and then plunge left, avoiding the chaotic traffic and the occasional bullock cart and into the seething slums.In a small, two-roomed flat off one of the packed streets of Kalyan Puri, one of the biggest slum neighbourhoods, you will find Anju Rao, a 50-year-old grandmother who spends her days looking after her two small grandchildren.

Japan PM Naoto Kan survives leadership challenge  

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has survived a party leadership challenge from veteran lawmaker Ichiro Ozawa.

The BBC  14 September 2010

Lawmakers and members of the governing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) elected to retain Mr Kan by a margin of 721 points to 491.

His victory means that Japan will be spared a sixth leadership change in four years.

Mr Kan, who took office in June, has said he wants to rein in spending and curb Japan’s massive public debt.

As his victory was confirmed, the yen hit a new 15-year high against the dollar.

Party unity

Analysts had expected a tight contest, with Ichiro Ozawa backed by a large DPJ faction.

Africa

A suburban idyll fades away in Johannesburg

Dog walkers, joggers and homeless people share a deteriorating park in South Africa, sometimes violently.  

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa – Each morning, an old Toyota arrives at the park, its engine protesting but its light blue paint work spotless. A sprightly woman with neatly coiffed snow-white hair alights. She and her arthritic dog, part border collie, part mutt, walk once around the park. Passing, she nods and smiles.

A man, wearing only his briefs, sits in the sun on a rock in the middle of the park’s river, his clothes laid out to dry. On the riverbank, faded yellow signs with skulls and crossbones warn against drinking, swimming or washing there.

Latin America

Cuba to cut more than 1m state jobs

Move part of economic reforms to kickstart private sector and follows Castro’s comment that the Cuban model no longer works

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent

guardian.co.uk,     Tuesday 14 September 2010 08.44 BST  

Cuba has announced it will lay off more than a million state employees in a sweeping privatisation drive which will transform the island’s socialist economy.

Authorities said layoffs would begin immediately amid loosened controls on private enterprise which, it is hoped, will kickstart the private sector and create new jobs for former public workers.

The official Cuban labour federation, which made the announcement on Monday, said 500,000 jobs would go by March and eventually 1m would be cut in the biggest economic shakeup since the 1960s.

Ignoring Asia A Blog

Oh, and about your phoney baloney jobs assholes-

Democratic Job Prospects Dim on K Street

By Anna Palmer, Roll Call Staff

Sept. 14, 2010, 12 a.m.

Help wanted on K Street. (Democrats need not apply.)

That’s the not-so-subtle message many Democratic Hill staffers say they are getting about their employment prospects this fall.

…

Limited job prospects have left some Democratic staffers, particularly those working for vulnerable Members, doing everything they can to be ready to start their job search on Nov. 3. In addition to readying their résumés for potential lobbying gigs, staffers are meeting with former colleagues who have already made the jump downtown.

…

Democratic aides may take a cue from their Republican counterparts. It wasn’t that long ago that Republicans found themselves in a similar position. After Democrats won the House in 2006, the job market significantly tightened, and many former GOP staffers left the Beltway completely.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Fear Factor

Be afraid.  Be very, very afraid.

A line of argument we’re mostly used to hearing from Thugs, but being pushed hard by the Institutional "Fuck You Retards" Democrats in the run up to this election.  Even my activist brother somewhat bought the latest variation- that re-districting might be effected by the results in November.

Not so much it seems.

Debunking the Redistricting Myth

by Dylan Loewe- Speechwriter, Author of Permanently Blue

Via Huffington Post, Posted: September 13, 2010 08:00 AM

Many have suggested that if Republicans are able to retake the majority in Congress this fall, they’ll be able to maintain that majority over the long-term, largely as a result of a subsequent redistricting process they expect to control. Some have even argued that Republicans could gain the power to draw as many as 25 congressional districts in their favor.

…

(Only) 23 states … will be at the center of the redistricting battle.

…

Democrats will be in a better position during this redistricting in at least 8 states, and, depending on the outcome in November, could very well be in better shape in as many as 11 states. Republicans, on the other hand, will find themselves in an improved partisan environment in just 6 states.

…

The states where Republicans are expected to be better positioned (Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Tennessee, and South Carolina) are midsized states, with an average of only about 8 congressional districts each.

The states where Democrats are expected to improve, on the other hand, (Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Virginia, and Michigan) include a significant number of very large states, with an average of about 17 congressional districts.

…

Over the last ten years, 80 percent of the population growth in this country has come from minorities, overwhelmingly in metropolitan areas. When states like Texas are awarded new congressional districts (they are expected to get four this cycle), those districts will have to be drawn in the same metropolitan areas where such high minority population growth is occurring. Barack Obama won 80 percent of the minority vote. He won every major city in Texas except Fort Worth. This means that these new districts are going to be drawn in areas that are going to be highly populated with Democrats, ones that are almost certainly going to send Democrats to Congress. This, of course, will play out beyond Texas. In fact, of the 10 new districts expected to be allocated, there is reason to believe that at least 8 of them will end up in Democratic hands.

I don’t mean to understate the power of gerrymandering. But even gerrymandering can’t solve this problem for the Republican Party. In the middle of last decade, when Tom Delay and state Republican leaders redrew the Texas state map in a way that removed half a dozen Democratic seats, they didn’t touch the minority districts already in place. Why? Because they were concerned that doing so would invoke the Voting Rights Act and send the newly drawn map to the courts, where it would likely be redrawn by judges. (If that happened in 2011, Democrats could gain as many as 10 seats in Texas.) During the 2011 redistricting, it won’t just be the already existing minority districts that Republicans will have to avoid. It will be the new ones too. With the vast majority of the population growth coming from minorities, the vast majority of the new districts are likely to require minority representation. And for the first time since the Voting Rights Act was passed, the Attorney General in charge of overseeing the process will have been appointed by a Democratic president.

…

(E)ven if taken to the extreme–even if Republicans are able to ensure, in each case, that a Democratic seat gets erased, that still won’t do as much for the Republican Party as they think. Such a district is likely to be erased in predominantly white, rural areas, where population has declined over the last decade. That means that the Democratic districts that will be erased are more likely to be moderate ones, the kinds that Blue Dogs represent.

…

By the time redistricting is over, not only will Democrats have secured for themselves a far more favorable map, they will have also gone through a process that will unify their caucus, increasing the number of seats where progressives can win, in exchange for decreasing the number of seats where Blue Dogs can win.

Folks, the only thing they’re really afraid of is losing their phoney baloney jobs and getting second pick at the choice offices and parking spots on Capitol Hill.