“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.

Eugene Robinson: Even Beck can’t mar King’s legacy

The majestic grounds of the Lincoln Memorial belong to all Americans — even to egomaniacal talk-show hosts who profit handsomely from stoking fear, resentment and anger. So let me state clearly that Glenn Beck has every right to hold his absurdly titled “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday.

But the rest of us have every right to call the event what it is: an exercise in self-aggrandizement on a Napoleonic scale. I half-expect Beck to appear before the crowd in a bicorn hat, with one hand tucked into the front of his jacket.

That Beck is staging his all-about-me event at the very spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his immortal “I Have a Dream” speech — and on the 47th anniversary of that historic address — is obviously intended to be a provocation. There’s no need to feel provoked, however; the appropriate response is to ignore him. No puffed-up blabbermouth could ever diminish the importance of the 1963 March on Washington or the impact of King’s unforgettable words.

Lincoln and King will always have their places in American history. Beck’s 15 minutes of fame and influence are ticking by.

Joan Walsh Beck has a scheme

Promote Palin at an event he says isn’t political, on a day he says he didn’t know was the MLK speech anniversary

(But) my friend Melissa Harris-Lacewell cautioned me and Chris Matthews against giving Beck and Palin too much credit for winning people over to their crazy racial views. She’s right: It’s increasingly clear that the Tea Parties and Palin power are just more exciting names for an old political phenomenon: the aging, white, anti-government Republican base. They have more acolytes than I wish they did but fewer than they’ll need to transform the country, especially if Democrats remember what they’re fighting for in November. Harris-Lacewell also compared King’s incomparable words to the word salad normally tossed by Palin, and that made me laugh. Put the “I Have a Dream” speech side by side with whatever Palin says Saturday, and you’ll create instant civil rights believers among whoever reads through both.

Peter Daou: The “nutcase defense” – The DNC creates the RNC’s November ad campaign

Progressive activists have been raising the red flag for almost two years. The message to Democrats has been simple: if you don’t present a grand unified vision of what Democrats stand for, the rightwing noise machine will step into the vacuum and frame everything you do as part of a liberal conspiracy to destroy America.

The progressive message has not gotten through. The result is now a wave election, with Democrats scrambling to avoid a total wipeout. In this state of chaos and confusion, Democrats are now resorting to the “nutcase defense” – trying to tell voters that they are ‘crazy to vote for crazy people.’ But this is a gross misreading of the rise of the Tea Party, the age of Palinmania and America’s sudden rightward shift.

Greg Sargent: Will Glenn Beck rally help Dems tar GOP as extreme?

It isn’t every day that Democrats go out of their way to hype Glenn Beck’s activities, but Dems think the Beck rally scheduled for this Saturday — on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech — gives them an opportunity to push the line that the GOP is hostage to intolerants and extremists.

Dems are gleefully noting to reporters that Beck intends to rally the faithful from the Lincoln Memorial — the very spot where King gave his speech 47 years ago. And with turnout estimates running as high as 300,000, Dems say they hope they can wrest some political advantage from what they hope will amount to a massive show of Tea Party force that’s rife with ugly Obama-bashing.

Ellen Goodman: The Equal Rites Awards-Again

And so we rise to celebrate Aug. 26, the 90th anniversary of the day American women finally won the right to vote. It took nine decades to get a third woman on the Supreme Court. But in politics, alas, we have gone from radical women chaining themselves to the White House fence to conservative women serving tea. Or at least the tea party.

   What would Susan B. Anthony make of Sarah Palin as arguably the most (in)famous female politician in the land with her menagerie of groupies? The former leader of “pit bulls with lipstick” is now a “Mama Grizzly” intent on escorting a “stampede of pink elephants”-aka ultraconservative female Republicans-to Washington.

   The Year of the Pink Elephant Women was enough to force our one-woman jury back to its annual task. Once more we celebrate suffrage by giving out the much-prized Equal Rites Awards to those who did their best over the past 12 months to set back the cause of women.

   Before we get trampled, the envelopes please.

Joe Conason: Harbingers of violence in anti-mosque movement

The top organizer of the Sept. 11 rally against the “ground zero mosque” praises racist thugs in England

Pamela Geller furiously rejects any responsibility for the threatening, racially charged tenor of yesterday’s incident. But should anti-Muslim protesters here emulate her thuggish allies in the United Kingdom, nobody should be surprised when disorder and even bloodshed follow.

Geller has declared herself a proud supporter of the English Defence League, a far-right street movement that sprang up in the United Kingdom earlier this year to protest planned construction of mosques and to stoke fear of Islam more broadly. She isn’t troubled by the EDL’s shadowy leadership, nor by its connections with English fascist organizations and propensity for violence against bystanders, counter-protesters and the police.

Timothy Egan: Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?

David Sarota: Lessons from a Low-Impact Week

“Will you join me in lowering our impact?”

That was the subject line on a recent e-mail I sent out to family, friends, column readers and radio listeners asking them to join me for a week in trying to reduce our individual environmental footprint. Inspired by Colin Beaven’s prophetic book “No Impact Man,” I proposed four pollution- and waste-reducing steps many people could try for a few days: Stop consuming meat, devote one meal a day to eating only locally grown products, avoid producing non-recyclable garbage and refrain from riding in a fossil-fuel burning vehicle with fewer than three people.

Having now completed this Low-Impact Week, I can report that it was not easy and that I did not achieve perfection-not even close. However, I can also say I learned a few things beyond how to manage bicycle-seat discomfort.

For one, I discovered that you can find affordable food that isn’t flown in at great energy expense-but it takes initiative. You have to check food labels at the grocery or hunt down a farmers market.

I was also reminded that we waste an obscene amount of paper and plastic. Coffee cups, disposable utensils, food wrappers-this offal is everywhere and most of it is used for less than 15 minutes and then discarded. Avoiding this trash for a week makes you think about the monstrous amount of energy used in producing, distributing and tossing it.

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

August 27 is the 239th day of the year (240th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 126 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1883, The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau (also called Krakatoa), a small, uninhabited volcanic island located west of Sumatra in Indonesia, on this day in 1883. Heard 3,000 miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people.

Krakatau exhibited its first stirrings in more than 200 years on May 20, 1883. A German warship passing by reported a seven-mile high cloud of ash and dust over Krakatau. For the next two months, similar explosions would be witnessed by commercial liners and natives on nearby Java and Sumatra. With little to no idea of the impending catastrophe, the local inhabitants greeted the volcanic activity with festive excitement.

On 27 August four enormous explosions took place at 05:30, 06:44, 10:02, and 10:41 local time. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,500 km (2,200 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia and the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away, where they were thought to be cannonfire from a nearby ship. Each was accompanied by very large tsunamis, which are believed to have been over 30 meters (100 ft) high in places. A large area of the Sunda Strait and a number of places on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano.

The pressure wave generated by the colossal final explosion radiated from Krakatoa at 1,086 km/h (675 mph). It was so powerful that it shattered the eardrums of sailors on ships in the Sunda Strait and caused a spike of more than two and half inches of mercury in pressure gauges attached to gasometers in the Jakarta gasworks, sending them off the scale. The pressure wave radiated across the globe and was recorded on barographs all over the world, which continued to register it up to 5 days after the explosion. Barograph recordings show that the shockwave from the final explosion reverberated around the globe 7 times in total. Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (50 mi).

The eruptions diminished rapidly after that point, and by the morning of August 28 Krakatoa was silent. Small eruptions, mostly of mud, continued through October, though further reports continued through February 1884. These reports were discounted by (Rogier) Verbeek.

The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region. There were no survivors from 3,000 people located at the island of Sebesi, about 13 km (8.1 mi) from Krakatoa. Pyroclastic flows killed around 1,000 people at Ketimbang on the coast of Sumatra some 40 km (25 mi) north from Krakatoa. The official death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at 120,000 or more.

Ships as far away as South Africa  rocked as tsunamis hit them, and the bodies of victims were found floating in the ocean for weeks after the event. The tsunamis which accompanied the eruption are believed to have been caused by gigantic pyroclastic flows  entering the sea; each of the four great explosions was accompanied by a massive pyroclastic flow resulting from the gravitational collapse of the eruption column.

In the aftermath of the eruption, it was found that the island of Krakatoa had almost entirely disappeared, except for the southern half of Rakata cone cut off along a vertical cliff, leaving behind a 250-metre (820 ft) deep caldera.

In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 C (2.2 F). Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.

The eruption darkened the sky worldwide for years afterwards, and produced spectacular sunsets throughout the world for many months. British artist William Ashcroft made thousands of colour sketches of the red sunsets half-way around the world from Krakatoa in the years after the eruption.

479 BC – Greco-Persian Wars: Persian forces led by Mardonius are routed by Pausanias, the Spartan commander of the Greek army in the Battle of Plataea.

410 – The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ends after three days.

663 – Battle of Baekgang: Remnants of the Korean Baekje Kingdom and their Yamato Japanese allies engage the combined naval forces of the Tang Chinese and Silla Koreans on the Geum River in Korea.

1172 – Henry the Young King and Margaret of France are crowned as junior king and queen of England.

1232 – The Formulary of Adjudications is promulgated by Regent Hojo Yasutoki. (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 1232)

1776 – The Battle of Long Island: in what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington.

1789 – The French National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming that “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”.

1793 – French counter-revolution: the port of Toulon revolts and admits the British fleet, which lands troops and seizes the port leading to Siege of Toulon.

1798 – Wolfe Tone’s United Irish and French forces clash with the British Army in the Battle of Castlebar, part of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, resulting in the creation of the French puppet Republic of Connaught.

1810 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Navy defeats the British Royal Navy, preventing them from taking the harbour of Grand Port on Ile de France.

1813 – French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte defeats a larger force of Austrians, Russians, and Prussians at the Battle of Dresden.

1828 – Uruguay is formally proclaimed independent at preliminary peace talks brokered by Great Britain between Brazil and Argentina during the Argentina-Brazil War.

1859 – Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world’s first commercially successful oil well.

1861 – Union forces attack Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1883 – Krakatoa, an Indonesian volcano, enters the final stage of its eruption.

1896 – Anglo-Zanzibar War: the shortest war in world history (09:00 to 09:45) between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.

1916 – Romania declares war against Austria-Hungary, entering World War I as one of the Allied nations.

1921 – The British install the son of Sharif Hussein bin Ali (leader of the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Ottoman Empire) as King Faisal I of Iraq.

1928 – The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlawing war is signed by the first fifteen nations to do so. Ultimately sixty-one nations will sign it.

1939 – First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world’s first jet aircraft.

1943 – Japanese forces evacuate New Georgia Island in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II.

1957 – The Constitution of Malaysia comes into force.

1962 – The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA.

1969 – Israeli commando force penetrates deep into Egyptian territory to stage a mortar attack on regional Egyptian Army headquarters in the Nile Valley of Upper Egypt.

1971 An attempted coup fails in the African nation of Chad. The Government of Chad accuses Egypt of playing a role in the attempt and breaks off diplomatic relations.

1979 – An IRA bomb kills British World War II admiral Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma and 3 others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Another bomb near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland kills 18 British soldiers.

1993 – The Rainbow Bridge, connecting Tokyo’s Shibaura and the island of Odaiba, is completed.

2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.

2007 – Bluegrass Army Depot Sarin(GB) leak in Lexington, Kentucky. Officials reported the Sarin levels 85 times above the safe limit.

Carter gains release of U.S. activist imprisoned by North Korea



By Chico Harlan

Washington Post Foreign Service

Friday, August 27, 2010; 2:46 AM

TOKYO — An American activist imprisoned since January in North Korea was released early Friday and permitted to return to the United States, following a rescue mission by former president Jimmy Carter.

Aijalon Mahli Gomes departed Pyongyang with Carter; they are expected to land in Boston on Friday afternoon.

North Korea’s state-run news agency described the pardon as “a manifestation of [North Korea’s] humanitarianism and peace-loving policy.”

Parade of Super Cars Inspires Mixed Feelings

LONDON JOURNAL

By JOHN F. BURNS

Published: August 26, 201  

LONDON – With his canary yellow Ferrari at rest in the forecourt of one of the most expensive hotels in London’s upscale West End, its eight-cylinder, race-bred engine burbling, a young Arab man who gave his name as Khalefa spoke with whimsical regret about the array of even faster, more expensive super cars parked nearby that belonged to other young men like himself from the Persian Gulf oil states.

“Me, I only have the Ferrari,” he said. “I am a poor man.”

With Britain still struggling to climb out of recession, and the new governing coalition embarked on a historic campaign of budget austerity, wealthy young men like Khalefa – who declined to give his full name, or his nationality – encounter a conflicted reception when they flee the conservative social mores and the 130-degree heat of the Middle East in high summer to enjoy the cool breezes of millionaires’ row districts of London like Belgravia, Mayfair and Knightsbridge.

USA

Behind Scenes of Gulf Oil Spill, Acrimony and Stress



By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, HENRY FOUNTAIN and JOHN M. BRODER

HOUSTON – Richard Lynch was walking down the hall in BP’s crisis command center in early May when some engineers rushed up, bearing bad news.

“We’ve lost the cofferdam,” they said.

In fact the cofferdam, a 100-ton, four-story-high steel dome that the company had lowered to try to contain the flow of oil from its out-of-control well, had become clogged with icelike crystals and was rising in the water, full of flammable gas and oil.

Uneven Katrina recovery efforts often offered the most help to the most affluent



By Michael A. Fletcher

Friday, August 27, 2010; 12:12 AM

IN NEW ORLEANS The massive government effort to repair the damage from Hurricane Katrina is fostering a stark divide as the state governments in Louisiana and Mississippi structured the rebuilding programs in ways that often offered the most help to the most affluent residents.

The result, advocates say, has been an uneven recovery, with whites and middle-class people more likely than blacks and low-income people to have rebuilt their lives in the five years since the horrific storm.

Europe

U2 deliver subtle dig to Medvedev in Moscow



By Shaun Walker in Moscow Friday, 27 August 2010

When a huge rock band with strong political interests played in Russia for the first time, the results were never likely to be sedate.

But as it turned out, the most dramatic moments at U2’s debut show in Moscow were not on stage but off it. Although Bono, who has also visited President Dmitry Medvedev this week, did invite a prominent Kremlin critic onstage, the results were strictly musical, with no mention of Russian human rights abuses. Meanwhile, activists complained of police harassment outside the stadium, and five volunteers from Amnesty International were arrested for distributing leaflets.

France deports more Roma in defiance of international criticism

France deported hundreds more Roma on Thursday in defiance of growing international unease about its crackdown on traveling minorities. Amnesty International said it was alarmed about the stigmatization of the Roma.  

IMMIGRATION | 27.08.2010

Around 300 Roma departed from airports in Paris and Lyon on Thursday in the latest wave of what the French government calls a voluntary repatriation scheme. The flights bring the total number of Roma expelled from France this year to more than 8,000.

French police also dismantled a campsite in Lille as part of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s major crackdown on crime that began earlier this month. Police have targeted the Roma community, along with other itinerant groups.

Middle East

Chilcot inquiry accused of fixating on west and ignoring real victims

Iraq Body Count group claims attention paid to Iraqi casualties has been derisory

Jonathan Steele

The Guardian, Friday 27 August 2010

The Chilcot inquiry has “fixated” on decision-making in Whitehall and Washington, obsessed over the ”war at home” and given “derisory” attention to the plight of the main victims, the Iraq Body Count (IBC) claims today.

Releasing correspondence with Sir John Chilcot, the IBC, which is widely considered as the most reliable database of Iraqi civilian deaths, says a proper “Iraq War Inquest” may be the only way to fill the gap his inquiry has left.

The inquiry closed its public hearings last month after seeing 140 witnesses but none dealt specifically with civilian casualties, which the IBC calculates as between 97,000 and 106,000.

Iraq combat phase ends, but U.S. might stay past 2011



By Warren P. Strobel and Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers  

WASHINGTON – The U.S. combat mission in Iraq officially comes to an end Tuesday, 2,722 days after American-led troops stormed across the border from Kuwait. The remaining 49,000 U.S. troops are supposed to depart by the end of next year.

The American mission is far from over, however, and it may have to be extended, according to former senior U.S. officials, foreign diplomats and private analysts.

Asia

Pakistan floods prompt mass evacuations in south

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis have been ordered to evacuate their homes as flood waters threaten several cities in the south of the country.

The BBC  27 August 2010

The flood surge, after weeks of monsoon rains, has breached embankments on the Indus River, inundating villages and swamping vast areas of farmland.

Continue reading the main story

Pakistan’s Monsoon Floods

Floods ‘consuming’ southern villages

Damage and challenges

Army boosted by aid effort

Your pictures: Shangla

Parts of Pakistan have been described as resembling an inland sea.

After threats from Pakistan’s Taliban, the UN is reviewing security for its aid workers helping flood victims.

A US official said militants planned to attack foreigners delivering aid to the millions of people affected by the devastating floods.

Afghan leader criticises US pullout



FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010  

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has strongly criticised the US planned troop pullout starting next July, saying the announcement has given “the enemy a morale boost”.

Karzai said the war on terror cannot be won as long as insurgents’ sanctuaries exist, citing the situation in neighbouring Pakistan.

He also criticised the death of civilians during military operations, saying the US announcement of a drawdown date has given courage to his country’s enemies, referring to the Taliban and its allies.

Africa

How did rebels rape 200 women just miles from UN base in Congo?

Agency condemns attack but struggles to justify costly mission in North Kivu that was powerless to stop wave of sexual violence

By David Usborne in New York Friday, 27 August 2010

The UN Security Council yesterday condemned the mass rape of almost 200 women by rebels in eastern Congo as the organisation’s top officials struggled to account for the failure of peacekeepers to prevent the attacks.

The UN has a large and costly peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which appeared powerless to prevent the rebel rampage through a string of rural villages.

UN officials in Congo said they only learned of the rape from an international medical charity 10 days after they occurred.

Kenya to adopt new constitution

Kenya is set to adopt a new constitution on Friday, more than three weeks after it was overwhelmingly approved in a national referendum.

The BBC  27 August 2010

President Mwai Kibaki will sign the document into law at a large ceremony in the capital, Nairobi.

The constitution is expected to bring significant changes, with political supporters hailing it as the birth of the second republic.

Continue reading the main story

Related stories

Kenya’s new constitution sparks hopes of rebirth

Key reforms put to vote in Kenya

In pictures: Kenyan views on constitution referendum

The debate over a new constitution has lasted 20 years.

The new constitution will bring a more decentralised political system which will limit the president’s powers and replace corrupt provincial governments with local counties.

Latin America

Brazil government gives go-ahead for huge Amazon dam

Brazil’s government has given the formal go-ahead for the building on a tributary of the Amazon of the world’s third biggest hydroelectric dam.

The BBC  26 August 2010

After several failed legal challenges, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed the contract for the Belo Monte dam with the Norte Energia consortium.

Critics say the project will damage the local ecosystem and make homeless 50,000 mainly indigenous people.

But the government says it is crucial for development and will create jobs.

Bidding for the project had to be halted three times before a final court appeal by the government allowed Norte Energia, led by the state-owned Companhia Hidro Eletrica do Sao Francisco, to be awarded the contract.

Ignoring Asia A Blog

Thursday Night Throwball, the Indianapolis Traitors @ Packers (you know who to root for even if you don’t like cheese, cheese heads, or community ownership).

Last chance for the Boys and all night Keith and Rachel this week.

• FX– Double Jeopardy, Double Jeopardy (have I mentioned that TV programmers are lazy assed sons of bitches?)
• Lifetime– Project Runway (premier)
• SciFi– Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
• TBS– Fool’s Gold (I’m tired of posting this, it’s going in my never watch or promote category)
• Turner Classic– A Face in the Crowd (hmm…)
• Discovery– Cereal: Beyond the Bowl (I’m mentioning this because I’m interested in ‘its influence on modern banking’).  Also Pitchmen (premier) and Mythbusters (repeat).
• TLC– Sr. v. Jr. (premier), BBQ Pitmasters (also)
• Toon– Repeat of Monday’s premiers.
• USA– Burn Notice (last week’s and premier), Royal Pains (premier)
• Disney– Phineas and Ferb
• Comedy– Futurama (premier)
• TNT– Sleepy Hollow

Later-

• AMC– Mad Men, Analyze This
• Turner Classic– Anatomy of a Murder

Dave hosts Anne Heche, Ken Burns, and The Specials.  Jon has Michael Bloomberg (ugh), Stephen Richard Engel.  Alton does Sausage (much better eats than the DC kind).

Handsome Ransom– Captain Sunshine!

Well, then, I confess, it is my intention to commandeer one of these ships, pick up a crew in Tortuga, raid, pillage, plunder and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out.

I said no lies.

I think he’s telling the truth.

If he were telling the truth, he wouldn’t have told us.

Unless, of course, he knew you wouldn’t believe the truth even if he told it to you.

…

Me? I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly…

Stupid.

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Jane Hamsher and the FDLakers are calling on President Obama to Can the Cat Food Commission. She very clearly presents the case

The Catfood commission is not legitimate. It was stacked with people who knew their job was to fulfill Pete Peterson’s dream  of rolling back the New Deal and waging war on the social safety net. It is a committee of oligarchs designed to circumvent electoral repercussions for those who oppose the will of the vast majority of the American people, both Republicans and Democrats, who don’t want to see the federal budget balanced on the backs of the nation’s senior citizens.

President Obama, it is not just Alan Simpson who needs to go. It’s time to shut down the entire commission.

She invites everyone

Sign the petition: Tell President Obama to Can the Catfood Commission

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Pakistan orders nearly half a million to evacuate

by Emmanuel Duparcq and Hasan Mansoor, AFP

1 hr 55 mins ago

2 ‘Problems’ among trapped Chile miners: report

by Moises Avila Roldan, AFP

2 hrs 1 min ago

3 Doubts over bid to protect New Orleans from more Katrinas

by David Parker, AFP

2 hrs 16 mins ago

4 Mother Teresa remembered, 100 years on from birth

by Sailendra Sil, AFP

Thu Aug 26, 8:22 am ET

5 No Elin, no problem as leader Tiger enjoys season best

AFP

1 hr 1 min ago

6 Jazz breathes life back into New Orleans after Katrina

by Erica Berenstein, AFP

Thu Aug 26, 11:53 am ET

7 Japan set to draft fresh economic stimulus

by Kyoko Hasegawa, AFP

Thu Aug 26, 7:23 am ET

8 South African workers hold mass protests

by Fanuel Jongwe, AFP

Thu Aug 26, 6:30 am ET

9 Pakistan seeks to salvage economy as more flee floods

By Robert Birsel and Lesley Wroughton, Reuters

13 mins ago

10 U.S. banks lobby Fed on debit card fee limits

By Dave Clarke, Reuters

Thu Aug 26, 7:11 am ET

11 Iraqis who fought view U.S. exit with mixed feelings

By Waleed Ibrahim and Fadhel al-Badrani, Reuters

8 mins ago

12 Scarcity of jobs puts more at risk of foreclosure

By ALAN ZIBEL and CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER, AP Business Writers

2 hrs 52 mins ago

13 Fears Taliban expanding in Afghan north, west

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 12:50 pm ET

14 Pakistani Taliban hint at attacks on aid workers

By RASOOL DAWAR, Associated Press Writer

2 hrs 7 mins ago

15 Salmonella find links 2 Iowa egg farms to recall

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Writer

13 mins ago

16 Restaurants scramble after massive egg recall

By ASHLEY M. HEHER, AP Retail Writer

Thu Aug 26, 12:33 pm ET

17 Woods shoots 65 for his best round of the year

By DOUG FERGUSON, AP Golf Writer

1 hr 14 mins ago

18 Chile faces unique challenge in maintaining miners

By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 9:22 am ET

19 FACT CHECK: Stimulus assessments overly optimistic

By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 9:59 am ET

20 Ground zero’s boundaries evolve in mosque debate

By AMY WESTFELDT, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 6:39 am ET

21 From King to Beck: Big rally at Lincoln Memorial

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 25 mins ago

22 Palin a central figure in tight Alaska Senate race

By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 6:39 am ET

23 State obscures elite Texas Rangers’ border work

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 3:24 am ET

24 NFL moving forward with 18-game season

By PAUL NEWBERRY, AP Sports Writer

Thu Aug 26, 3:40 am ET

25 Police: 6 Sunni fighters killed in ambush in Iraq

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 6:31 am ET

26 NY official: Stabbing suspect had war journals

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

1 hr 26 mins ago

27 As GOP civil war rages, Democrats look to benefit

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer

Wed Aug 25, 10:23 pm ET

28 More than 3M seniors may have to switch drug plans

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer

Wed Aug 25, 5:20 pm ET

29 Rod Blagojevich headed for retrial in early 2011

By MICHAEL TARM and DON BABWIN, Associated Press Writers

7 mins ago

30 Pop isn’t dead: Icy treats become sweet trend http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201…

By DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Writer

26 mins ago

31 Michigan tea partiers launch surprise push

By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer

2 hrs 31 mins ago

32 Life since Katrina: 3 stories of survival

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA, SHARON COHEN and ALLEN G. BREED, AP National Writers

Thu Aug 26, 1:48 pm ET

33 Colleges see prospective donors among new students

By ALAN SCHER ZAGIER, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 5:17 am ET

34 Army ending its GED program for aspiring soldiers

By SUSANNE M. SCHAFER, Associated Press Writer

Thu Aug 26, 4:18 am ET

35 Judge won’t move DeLay trial from liberal Austin

By KELLEY SHANNON, Associated Press Writer

Wed Aug 25, 8:15 pm ET

36 UN says Congo rapes not mentioned to patrols

By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer

Wed Aug 25, 7:34 pm ET

37 Army: Soldiers plotted to kill Afghan civilians

Associated Press

Wed Aug 25, 6:31 pm ET

38 Calif. library gives Nazi papers to Nat’l Archives

By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer

Wed Aug 25, 5:36 pm ET

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

They Go or Obama Goes

Robert Scheer,

Truthdig, August 25, 2010

Barack Obama and the Democrats he led to a stunning victory two years ago are going down hard in the face of an economic crisis that he did nothing to create but which he has failed to solve. That is somewhat unfair because the basic blame belongs to his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who let the bulls of Wall Street run wild in the streets where ordinary folks lived. And there was universal Republican support in Congress for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that produced this debacle.

The core issue for the economy is the continued cost of a housing bubble made possible only after what Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers back then trumpeted as necessary “legal certainty” was provided to derivative packages made up of suspect Alt-A and subprime mortgages. It was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Senate Republican Phil Gramm drafted and which Clinton signed into law, that made legal the trafficking in packages of dubious home mortgages. In any decent society the creation of such untenable mortgages and the securitization of risk irrationally associated with it would have been judged a criminal scam. But no such judgment was possible because thanks to Wall Street’s sway under Clinton and Bush the bankers got to rewrite the laws to sanction their treachery.

It is Obama’s continued deference to the sensibilities of the financiers and his relative indifference to the suffering of ordinary people that threaten his legacy, not to mention the nation’s economic well-being. There have been more than 300,000 foreclosure filings every single month that Obama has been president, and as The New York Times editorialized, “Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Obama administration’s efforts to address the foreclosure problem will make an appreciable dent.”

[snip]

The ugly reality that only 398,198 mortgages have been modified to make the payments more reasonable can be traced to the program being based on the hope that the banks would do the right thing. While Obama continued the Bush practice of showering the banks with bailout money, he did not demand a moratorium on foreclosures or call for increasing the power of bankruptcy courts to force the banks, which created the problem, to now help distressed homeowners.

[snip]

…foreclosures are behind Tuesday’s news that U.S. home sales reached their lowest point in 15 years and that there is unlikely to be an economic recovery without a dramatic turnabout in the housing market. The stock market tanked Tuesday on reports that U.S. home sales had dropped 25.5 percent below the year-ago level.

[snip]

There is no way that Obama can begin to seriously reverse this course without shedding the economic team led by the Clinton-era “experts” like Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who got us into this mess in the first place. They are spooked by one overwhelmingly crippling idea-don’t rattle the financial titans whom we must rely on for investment. But when it comes to keeping people in their homes, it is precisely the big banks that must be rattled into doing the right thing.

Obama gained credibility through sacking Gen. Stanley McChrystal for making untoward remarks. Why not sack Summers and Geithner for untoward policies that have inflicted such misery on the general public?

Read it all at Truthdig…

Also see:

The State of the Government’s Loan Modification Program, at ProPublica

I had a great chuckle at this from Jon Walker at FDL

In These Sorry Times, Boehner Owes Geithner and Summers a Big Apology

Trying to get the two individuals whose actions played a major role in assuring that Boehner will be promoted (to the position of Speaker of the House after Republicans win big this November) fired is just bad manners in my book. If it weren’t for Summers’ terrible economic projections and horrible advice, combined with Geithner’s equally bad counsel, consistently putting the prosperity of Wall Street over main street while horribly mismanaging the HAMP program, Boehner would not be close to measuring the drapes for the Speaker’s office..

And Paul Krugman was 100% correct in calling for Simpson firing, especially this

   

At this point, though, Obama is on the spot: he has to fire Simpson, or turn the whole thing into a combination of farce and tragedy – the farce being the nature of the co-chair, the tragedy being that Democrats are so afraid of Republicans that nothing, absolutely nothing, will get them sanctioned.

One of the best is from Dean Baker, also a recipient of Simpson’s derisive e-mails, who calls Simpson not just offensive but ignorant

   

Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of President Obama’s deficit commission, has sparked calls for his resignation after sending an offensive and sexist note to Ashley Carson, the executive director of the Older Women’s League. While such calls are reasonable — Simpson’s comments were certainly more offensive than remarks that led to the resignation of other people from the Obama administration — the Senator’s determined ignorance about the basic facts on Social Security is an even more important reason for him to leave his position.

   snip

   The key facts on Social Security are not hard to understand. The shortfall is relatively minor and distant. Most retirees have little income other than their Social Security, and most workers would find it quite difficult to stay at their jobs in their late 60s or even 70. We might have hoped that Senator Simpson understood these facts at the time when he was appointed to the commission, but we should at least expect that he would learn them on the job.

   His determined ignorance in the face of the facts is the most important reason why he is not qualified to serve on President Obama’s commission. Someone who is co-chairman of such an important group should be able to critically evaluate information, not just insult and demean his critics.

It looks like the President has opted for farce and tragedy with the acceptance of Mr. Simpson’s non-apology and refusal to fire him.

“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.

Elizabeth Galewski Women – Still a Menace?

“DANGER! Woman’s Suffrage Would Double the Irresponsible Vote. It is a MENACE to the Home, Men’s Employment and to All Business.”

I stumbled upon a poster with these headlines while doing research for the 90th anniversary of women’s right to vote, which is on Aug. 26. The rest of the poster shows a sample ballot and explains that the (responsible male) voter should “Be sure and put your cross (x) in the square after the word ‘no’ as shown here.” A drawing of a hand points a finger at the sample ballot’s “no” box, which is checked.

Presumably, the Responsible Vote had required this kind of careful guidance. At least, the “Progress Publishing Co.,” which printed it, thought so.

Uncovering this gem of a poster resulted in a moment of high hilarity for me at the Wisconsin Historical Society. I could not resist pulling a librarian over and showing it to him. “I must, I simply must,” I told him, “get this as an electronic file.”

Today, it almost seems hard to believe that only 90 years ago, women did not have the right to vote. How could withholding this basic right from half of the population possibly have been justified?

Dahlia Lithwick: In Ken We Trust

Why do Ken Cuccinelli’s legal opinions always match his personal ambitions?

It must be Wednesday, because Virginia’s hyperactive Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, is back in the news. Of course, he was also in the news on Tuesday, on Monday, and last Friday. Religious displays on public land, abortion, immigration, climate change. Is there a single issue from the culture wars over which Cuccinelli hasn’t picked a fight? But that’s one of the perils of treating one’s elected office like a Fox News show: If Cuccinelli isn’t launching five national ideological battles per week, his ratings might slip. And so ever onward he trudges, devoting his every working day to treating the Commonwealth like it’s the Lord’s Disneyland.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Tuesday’s tutorial: a GOP too far right

Republicans are in the midst of an insurrection. Democrats are not. This vast gulf between the situations of the two parties — not some grand revolt against “the establishment” or “incumbents” — explains the year’s primary results, including Tuesday’s jarring outcomes in Florida and Alaska.

The agitation among Republicans is not surprising, given the trauma of the final years of George W. Bush’s presidency. After heavy losses in 2006 and 2008, it was natural that GOP loyalists would seek a new direction.

Liberals who saw Bush’s presidency as a failed right-wing experiment thought Republicans would search for more moderate ground, much as Britain’s Tories turned to the soothing leadership of David Cameron to organize their comeback. But this expectation overlooked the exodus of moderates over the past decade, which has shifted the balance of power in Republican primaries far to the right.

Dean Baker: Senator Simpson: He’s Not Just Offensive, He’s Ignorant

Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of President Obama’s deficit commission, has sparked calls for his resignation after sending an offensive and sexist note to Ashley Carson, the executive director of the Older Women’s League. While such calls are reasonable — Simpson’s comments were certainly more offensive than remarks that led to the resignation of other people from the Obama administration — the Senator’s determined ignorance about the basic facts on Social Security is an even more important reason for him to leave his position.

snip

he key facts on Social Security are not hard to understand. The shortfall is relatively minor and distant. Most retirees have little income other than their Social Security, and most workers would find it quite difficult to stay at their jobs in their late 60s or even 70. We might have hoped that Senator Simpson understood these facts at the time when he was appointed to the commission, but we should at least expect that he would learn them on the job.

His determined ignorance in the face of the facts is the most important reason why he is not qualified to serve on President Obama’s commission. Someone who is co-chairman of such an important group should be able to critically evaluate information, not just insult and demean his critics.

Bob Cesca: The Summer of Republican Race-Baiting

Earlier this year, Republican Party chairman Michael Steele admitted that the GOP has engaged in Southern Strategy politics: employing racial, anti-minority code language and fear-mongering as a means of energizing the party’s white Christian base.

This is a fact. The Southern Strategy is real, though it’s no longer exclusively “southern.”

There’s no disputing its widespread use. Come to think of it, for Steele to “confess” to the the GOP’s use of the Strategy makes it seems as though it was previously a secret. It wasn’t. Fact: the Republican Party routinely tweaks white fear, paranoia, prejudice and resentment in order to win votes and score political points at the expense of demonized minority groups. They engage in stereotyping and misinformation and they rarely, if ever, use the “n-word” these days, though they might as well. After all, as the Strategy goes, blacks and minorities aren’t voting Republican anyway, so… let fly.

Robert Scheer They Go or Obama Goes

Barack Obama and the Democrats he led to a stunning victory two years ago are going down hard in the face of an economic crisis that he did nothing to create but which he has failed to solve. That is somewhat unfair because the basic blame belongs to his predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who let the bulls of Wall Street run wild in the streets where ordinary folks lived. And there was universal Republican support in Congress for the radical deregulation of the financial industry that produced this debacle.

The core issue for the economy is the continued cost of a housing bubble made possible only after what Clinton Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers back then trumpeted as necessary “legal certainty” was provided to derivative packages made up of suspect Alt-A and subprime mortgages. It was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Senate Republican Phil Gramm drafted and which Clinton signed into law, that made legal the trafficking in packages of dubious home mortgages. In any decent society the creation of such untenable mortgages and the securitization of risk irrationally associated with it would have been judged a criminal scam. But no such judgment was possible because thanks to Wall Street’s sway under Clinton and Bush the bankers got to rewrite the laws to sanction their treachery.

Jim Hightower Wall Street’s Connected Lobbyists

Congress finally passed a moderate reform package to tighten regulations on the banksters of Wall Street. Of course, the banksters howled, protesting even the meekest of reforms – but the package is now the law, so that’s that.

Right? Uh … no.

What Congress passed is a 2,300-page compendium of concepts, leaving the real decision-making about the details of financial regulation in the hands of the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and other regulatory agencies.

In other words, the game is still on for Wall Street lobbyists! So they’re presently mounting a furious blitz on the rule-writing regulators, still trying to weaken or even kill many of the reform ideas passed by Congress.

To weasel their way inside, the financial giants have reached into the agencies themselves to hire away nearly 150 regulators, luring them with fat salaries to switch sides and become industry lobbyists.

For the banking powers, these insiders-turned-outsiders are well worth the big bucks, for former regulators have long, personal relationships with those in the agencies who’re filling in the blanks left by Congress. If nothing else, these newly minted lobbyists are much more likely to get their phone calls returned by their former colleagues than a stranger would.

Robert Weissman and Tyson Slocum Here’s What’s Wrong With BP’s Trust Fund

President Barack Obama’s forceful demand that BP accept liability for the damage it caused in the Gulf was a highlight of the administration’s handling of the BP disaster.

Yet, like virtually everything else connected with the BP catastrophe, it looks like the initial positive reports obscured troubling realities.

Yes, BP is creating a $20 billion trust fund. But with the trust fund terms now public, it is evident that there are serious problems that the administration must demand be fixed.

BP’s scheme enlists the government as a virtual partner in its Gulf oil and gas production, and the company uses that partnership to shield itself from punishment. It is likely to give the government a financial incentive to become an even bigger booster of offshore oil drilling in the Gulf – the Minerals Management Service’s fatal flaw at the time of the BP disaster. BP seems to have structured the fund largely to limit its liability in civil cases and escape accountability.

First, the trust fund appears to be capped at $20 billion – contrary to what fund administrator Ken Feinberg has said was his understanding of BP’s plans.

Even worse, the $20 billion is to be drawn down not just by Feinberg-ordered payments to those suffering economic harm from the oil gusher, but by reimbursements for state and local response, natural resource harms and payments pursuant to class action and other civil action awards.

This arrangement leaves substantially less than $20 billion to compensate individuals and businesses for their economic losses – most likely leaving them shortchanged.

Gail Colllins: The Trends of August

Since this is possibly the most depressing August in the history of summer, I feel compelled to point out a brighter side of the news.

The big trend among Republicans is voting out the incumbent, even if said incumbent is a Republican. In their primaries, the Democrats tend to go for the status quo. This makes sense, since the Republicans are looking for a way to show they’re angry, angry, angry while the Democrats are too terrified of the Republicans to do anything but hunker down.

In response, the Republican establishment is in identity denial. John Boehner is vowing that if his party wins a majority in the House, he will run things differently than either Nancy Pelosi or her Republican predecessor, the evil dictator John Boehner. And of course, Senator John McCain just notched up a triumph in Arizona, running against Senator John McCain.

The Democrats aren’t much better – unless you think it’s a good plan for Robin Carnahan, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Missouri, to be calling her opponent “the very worst of Washington” for supporting the same financial services bailout that President Obama and most of the Democrats in Congress backed. Really, the way these people are fleeing their parties, you’d almost think neither side has any clue of what to do to resuscitate the economy.

Instead of running as part of a group with a shared ideology and agenda, candidates run biography ads that stress their sterling character. A deprived childhood is always good. Kendrick Meek, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida, ran as the son of a struggling single mother even though his particular single mother was also the local congresswoman. And did you know John Boehner used to mop the floor of his dad’s bar when he was 11?

Timothy Egan: Building a Nation of Know-Nothings

It would be nice to dismiss the stupid things that Americans believe as harmless, the price of having such a large, messy democracy. Plenty of hate-filled partisans swore that Abraham Lincoln was a Catholic and Franklin Roosevelt was a Jew. So what if one-in-five believe the sun revolves around the earth, or aren’t sure from which country the United States gained its independence?

But false belief in weapons of mass-destruction led the United States to a trillion-dollar war. And trust in rising home value as a truism as reliable as a sunrise was a major contributor to the catastrophic collapse of the economy. At its worst extreme, a culture of misinformation can produce something like Iran, which is run by a Holocaust denier.

It’s one thing to forget the past, with predictable consequences, as the favorite aphorism goes. But what about those who refuse to comprehend the present?