Tag: Open Thread

Sep 25 2015

The Breakfast Club (Those Were The Days)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Nine black students escorted into Little Rock’s Central High School; President Woodrow Wilson collapses; Author William Faulkner born; TV’s Barbara Walters and movie actor-producer Michael Douglas born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Benjamin Franklin

Sep 25 2015

On This Day In History September 25

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 25 is the 268th day of the year (269th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 97 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1789, the Bill of Rights passes Congress.

The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.

The Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known. They were introduced by James Madison to the First United States Congress in 1789 as a series of articles, and came into effect on December 15, 1791, when they had been ratified by three-fourths of the States. An agreement to create the Bill of Rights helped to secure ratification of the Constitution itself. Thomas Jefferson was a supporter of the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights prohibits Congress from making any law respecting any establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, guarantees free speech, free press, free assembly and association and the right to petition government for redress, forbids infringement of “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms…”, and prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. In federal criminal cases, it requires indictment by a grand jury for any capital or “infamous crime”, guarantees a speedy, public trial with an impartial jury composed of members of the state or judicial district in which the crime occurred, and prohibits double jeopardy. In addition, the Bill of Rights states that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” and reserves all powers not specifically granted to the federal government to the people or the States. Most of these restrictions were later applied to the states by a series of decisions applying the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, after the American Civil War.

The question of including a Bill of Rights in the body of the Constitution was discussed at the Philadelphia Convention on September 12, 1787. George Mason “wished the plan [the Constitution] had been prefaced with a Bill of Rights.” Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts “concurred in the idea & moved for a Committee to prepare a Bill of Rights.” Mr Sherman argued against a Bill of Rights stating that the “State Declarations of Rights are not repealed by this Constitution.” Mason then stated “The Laws of the U. S. are to be paramount to State Bills of Rights.” The motion was defeated with 10-Nays, 1-Absent, and No-Yeas.

Madison proposed the Bill of Rights while ideological conflict between Federalists and anti-Federalists, dating from the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, threatened the final ratification of the new national Constitution. It largely responded to the Constitution’s influential opponents, including prominent Founding Fathers, who argued that the Constitution should not be ratified because it failed to protect the fundamental principles of human liberty. The Bill was influenced by George Mason’s 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, the 1689 English Bill of Rights, works of the Age of Enlightenment pertaining to natural rights, and earlier English political documents such as Magna Carta (1215).

Two other articles were proposed to the States; only the last ten articles were ratified contemporaneously. They correspond to the First through Tenth Amendments to the Constitution. The proposed first Article, dealing with the number and apportionment of U.S. Representatives, never became part of the Constitution. The second Article, limiting the power of Congress to increase the salaries of its members, was ratified two centuries later as the 27th Amendment. Though they are incorporated into Madison’s document known as the “Bill of Rights”, neither article established protection of a right. For that reason, and also because the term had been applied to the first ten amendments long before the 27th Amendment was ratified, the term “Bill of Rights” in modern U.S. usage means only the ten amendments ratified in 1791.

The Bill of Rights plays a key role in American law and government, and remains a vital symbol of the freedoms and culture of the nation. One of the first fourteen copies of the Bill of Rights is on public display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

Sep 24 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The G.O.P.’s Obsession With Planned Parenthood

Congressional Republicans are again playing brinkmanship with the budget – some are even threatening to shut down the government – in order to score ideological and political points. On Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, introduced a bill to keep the government running for a few months past the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30 – as long as Democrats agree to cut off money for Planned Parenthood. [..]

Abortions are a small part of Planned Parenthood’s services and tissue donation a very small part. No federal money is spent on abortions at Planned Parenthood; most of its services are for contraception, health screenings, pregnancy tests and prenatal care for low-income women.

The Republican obsession with the group seems to come to this: denying women, especially poor women, the health care they need; pandering for primary votes among Tea Party regulars; and obstructing the budget process and the smooth functioning of government. Quite a record.

Trevor Timm: We need to find a way to help Syria that isn’t ‘add more military’

As the refugee crisis across Europe continues and Syrian civil war drags on, it seems the only “solution” western politicians can muster for the conflict is to send more weapons for various fighters, drop more bombs from the sky and argue for a more entrenched war – actions that will all but guarantee to further descend the region into chaos. [..]

Sadly, the calls for a US military escalation will only get louder, as various Republican war mongers hog the stage during the high-profile Republican campaign. And the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, is as hawkish, or more so, than Republicans. Gen. John Allen, the man in charge of the still-undeclared Isis war, supposedly someone who would “push back” against the more uber-militaristic elements in the Obama administration is stepping aside. Who his replacement will be is not known, but you can guess the drumbeat for someone who is even more “aggressive” will get louder by the day.

What is happening in Syria is an absolute tragedy, and one can only hope that the western powers will welcome refugees with open arms, and that a potential negotiated settlement is still somehow possible to at least stop the carnage on one side of the war. But while there are proposals everywhere for more war, no one has explained how adding more military destruction to the equation would actually help.

David Cay Johnston: GM settlement shows Justice isn’t serious about justice

The Obama administration prosecutes fraud by peanut CEO, but not by car or finance executives

Barely a week after the Justice Department announced it would pursue individual wrongdoers in corporate crimes, a policy mocked as just reheated cabbage in the headline of my last column, Justice served up some reheated cabbage.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates declared that the policy was real reform: “We mean it when we say, ‘You have got to cough up the individuals.’ ”

The next week Justice settled with General Motors over faulty ignition switches that killed more than 120 people who lost control of their vehicles, the airbags failing to deploy. GM will pay $900 million, recall 2.6 million cars and offer some money to survivors and families of the dead, most of which were unable to collect damages because of GM’s 2009 bankruptcy.

Before the first car with a faulty ignition switch was sold more than decade ago, GM knew that the ignition switches were prone to fail, court papers show.

Yet despite knowing there would be deadly consequences, GM neither changed the design nor warned motorists, a callous disregard for the lives not just of customers but also of everyone else on the road.

Were there individuals named in the GM settlement with Justice? No. Were criminal charges filed for this deadly and long-running conspiracy? No.

Steven W. Thrasher: Disaster capitalism is a permanent state of life for too many Americans

In the United States, disaster has become our most common mode of life. Proof that our daily existence was something other than a simmering, smoldering disaster has been historically held somewhat at bay by the myth that hard work equals some kind of subsistence living. For the more deluded amongst us, this ‘American dream’ even got us to believe we could be something called ‘middle class’. We were deceived.

For those not yet woke, I don’t see how y’all can stay asleep when story after story proves how screwed we are.

The New York Post, no bastion of bleeding heart liberalism, reported on Monday that “Hundreds of full-time city workers are homeless”. These are people who clean our trash and make our city, the heart of American capitalism, safe and livable, including for those who plunder the globe from Wall Street. These are men and women, living in shelters and out of their cars, who have government jobs – the kind of workers conservatives love to paint as greedy, gluttonous pigs.

Sen Bernie Sanders: We Must End For-Profit Prisons

The United States is experiencing a major human tragedy. We have more people in jail than any other country on earth, including Communist China, an authoritarian country four times our size.  The U.S. has less than five percent of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate about a quarter of its prisoners — some 2.2 million people.

There are many ways that we must go forward to address this tragedy.  One of them is to end the existence of the private for-profit prison industry which now makes millions from the incarceration of Americans.  These private prisons interfere with the administration of justice. And they’re driving inmate populations skyward by corrupting the political process.

No one, in my view, should be allowed to profit from putting more people behind bars — whether they’re inmates in jail or immigrants held in detention centers. In fact, I believe that private prisons shouldn’t be allowed to exist at all, which is why I’ve introduced legislation to eliminate them.

Jeffrey Sachs: Rational Drug Pricing

Drug pricing has taken center stage in U.S. politics, and it’s high time that it should. The soaring prices for drugs like Sovaldi ($1,000 a pill) and the recent hike of Deraprim from $13.50 to $750 a pill after the supplier was bought by a shady hedge-fund manager, have caused white-hot fury in the public. Corporate lobbyists and their friends in the media spout free-market platitudes about why the sky-high prices are necessary to promote innovation. It’s time for a serious understanding of the policy issues.

Drug pricing is not like the pricing of apples and oranges, clothing, or furniture that well and good should be left to the marketplace. There are two major reasons. First, the main cost of drug production is not the cost of manufacturing the tablet but the cost of producing the knowledge embedded in the tablet. Second, there is often a life-and-death stake in access to the drug, so society should take steps to ensure that the drug is affordable and accessible. [..]

Second, the government grants patent rights for drug discovery. A patent gives a 20-year exclusive right to make, use, or sell an invention, effectively a 20-year monopoly. This allows companies to boost their prices, earn monopoly profits, and thereby recoup the costs of the R&D that went into the drug discovery.

Sep 24 2015

On This Day In History September 24

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 98 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day on 1789, The Judiciary Act of 1789 is passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. That day, President Washington nominated John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices. On September 26, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

The U.S. Supreme Court was established by Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution granted the Supreme Court ultimate jurisdiction over all laws, especially those in which their constitutionality was at issue. The high court was also designated to oversee cases concerning treaties of the United States, foreign diplomats, admiralty practice, and maritime jurisdiction. On February 1, 1790, the first session of the U.S. Supreme Court was held in New York City’s Royal Exchange Building.

Sep 23 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Wednesday is Ladies’ day

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: As the 2016 Campaigns Heat Up, the Moment Still Belongs to the People

Maybe the wave of vertigo washed over me the evening one of the cable channels ran the caption, “Awaiting Donald Trump’s National Security Address on the USS Iowa.” Or, perhaps my bout with vertigo this season has simply been caused by all the events I try to make sense of in my job as the Nation’s editor. Just think about what we are witnessing in these vertiginous days: [..]

After all, around the world, there is an uprising against austerity and status-quo politics, and it is having a powerful impact in the United States as the 2016 election campaigns heat up. What seemed impossible – the development of new political movements in Greece and Spain, the selection of Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party in Britain, the growing political potency of the New Democrats in Canada, the radical politics of South America, the rise of new radical movements in South Africa and many other examples – is playing out in real time. The rules are not merely being rewritten elsewhere; they are being rewritten in the United States. What we know for certain is that this is a moment of political upheaval. A movement moment. Yet, where this moment takes the United States is still an open question, especially in the midst of a campaign that has given us both the unexpectedly strong candidacy of Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination and the unsettlingly strong candidacy of Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.

What I hope, and increasingly believe, is that this is a vertiginous moment of political possibility and change for the United States.

Amanda Marcottr: How Ted Cruz Gave Away The GOP’s Muslim Strategy

This week has epitomized the bizarro world American politics has become. It’s a week during which the media and politicians have been enraptured by a debate over whether or not a Muslim could become president. [..]

Nope, our entire national press has to be riveted to a hypothetical question for which there is already an answer.

Why? Well, Ted Cruz’s answer to a question about this new controversy hinted at what is really going on here. After affirming that he can read by noting that the constitution requires no religious test for office, Cruz said, “The broader question, and what I think Ben was trying to get at, is what are the consequences been in the last six and a half years of the Obama presidency?”

Say what? Carson said he didn’t think Muslims should be allowed into the office and then he backtracked saying that he just meant that members of that mythical cabal of sharia-law-in-America politicians should be barred. Obama is neither a Muslim nor part of a larger conspiracy to impose sharia law on the United States. So how, exactly, was Carson talking about him?

Obviously the answer is that both Carson and now Cruz are referencing the widespread belief amongst conservatives that Obama is secretly a Muslim but is concealing his true beliefs for nefarious reasons, possibly to impose sharia law on the nation. (Any day now.) The last public poll on this belief showed that 86 percent of Republicans are warm to it, with 54 percent believing that Obama is a Muslim and 32 percent saying they are unsure. Only 14 percent of Republicans correctly describe Obama’s religion as Christian.

In other words, the belief that Obama is a Muslim is an entrenched “fact” on the right, much like the belief that global warming is a hoax or Planned Parenthood is a for-profit company that makes its money selling fetal parts. Carson and Cruz aren’t really talking about a hypothetical Muslim president in some future world. This is all a coded way to talk about Obama.

Ellen Brown: Time for the Nuclear Option: Raining Money on Main Street

Predictions are that we will soon be seeing the “nuclear option” – central bank-created money injected directly into the real economy. All other options having failed, governments will be reduced to issuing money outright to cover budget deficits. So warns a September 18 article on ZeroHedge titled “It Begins: Australia’s Largest Investment Bank Just Said ‘Helicopter Money’ Is 12-18 Months Away.”

Money reformers will say it’s about time. Virtually all money today is created as bank debt, but people can no longer take on more debt. The money supply has shrunk along with people’s ability to borrow new money into existence. Quantitative easing (QE) attempts to re-inflate the money supply by giving money to banks to create more debt, but that policy has failed. It’s time to try dropping some debt-free money on Main Street.

Heather Digby Parton: Ted Cruz’s diabolical shutdown strategy: Why the GOP senator wants to watch the world burn

The government is hurtling towards yet another shutdown this fall. The man with the most to gain: Ted Cruz

The conventional wisdom says that these GOP shutdowns in off-years work a lot better than they would in a presidential year due to the Republican turn out advantage in mid-terms. And it’s fairly certain that the disastrous Obamacare website rollout stepped on the story of Republican overreach in 2013. Nonetheless the right wing is convinced that this is a big winner for them – and frankly, even if it isn’t, they don’t care. To people who believe in the marrow of their bones that government is a bad actor designed to make their lives miserable, shutting it down, even temporarily, is a good thing in and of itself. And who knows? It might just make the other side break one of these days.

So, here we are in the fall, once again, facing a government shutdown. The committees have not done their jobs, there is no budget, and the expiration of the current budget appropriations is almost upon us. In normal times the congress would simply pass a continuing resolution and get back to work to run the government. Instead, we are facing another “showdown”.

Jess Zimmmerman: Apple, your anti-choice tendencies are showing in your app store

Lady Parts Justice, a self-described “cabal” of pro-choice comedians, released a satirical app called “Hinder” that lets you left-swipe through a whole three-ring circus of conservative politicians bent on curtailing reproductive freedom. Each pol’s profile has more information on his (or her, but probably his) bad opinions on abortion, sex education and women in general. You can play with it on the Lady Parts Justice site, if you want to (or not! They support your choice). But you can’t find it on Apple’s App Store. Apple rejected Hinder this month, even though its guidelines explicitly allow political satire. [..]

But being merely an all right app is not what kept Hinder out of the App Store. (If that were the standard of inclusion, there would be way fewer apps overall.) Rather, it’s been barred under Apple’s rule against anything “defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harm’s way.” Let me repeat: an app that accurately states politicians’ publicly held positions on reproductive rights and sex education is considered “mean-spirited” and “defamatory”.

Nobody who followed the “Siri, find me an abortion” story thinks this is about “defamatory” content. (If you missed it: Apple’s virtual personal assistant refused to find abortion clinics and occasionally directed people to “crisis pregnancy centers”, which push an anti-choice agenda in the guise of safeguarding women’s health.) And it’s definitely not about a little salty language. This is a symptom of Apple’s ongoing hostility towards reproductive rights.

Victoria Bassetti: Beware the Billionaire Gunslinger

With his blowsy hair, pinstripe suits, and brash New York attitude, Donald Trump resembles nothing so much as a gunslinging cowboy. Rick Perry may have presented himself as the real Westerner in the Republican presidential primary, but it’s the Donald’s campaign mythos that most closely resembles a classic Western.

He is the bronco-buster striding into town, looking for justice, willing to stand up to the corrupt sheriff and the local railroad bossman.

The Donald has freely accused his opponents of being part of the corrupt town gang he’s here to stare down.

Hilary, Jeb and Scott and Marco: “It’s like puppets…bing, bing,” Trump says. “They’re totally controlled, totally controlled by special interests, lobbyist, and donors. They’re totally.”

But not the Donald. He wears a white ten-gallon hat.

Sep 23 2015

The Breakfast Club (Autumn Begins)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Richard Nixon gives his ‘Checkers’ speech; Rome’s Augustus Caesar born; Lewis and Clark finish trek to America’s West; Psychologist Sigmund Freud dies; Musicians Ray Charles and Bruce Springsteen born.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

The autumn wind is a pirate. Blustering in from sea with a rollicking song he sweeps along swaggering boisterously. His face is weather beaten, he wears a hooded sash with a silver hat about his head… The autumn wind is a Raider, pillaging just for fun.

Steve Sabol

Sep 23 2015

On This Day In History September 23

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

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 23 is the 266th day of the year (267th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 99 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1964, the Paris Opera, Palais Garnier, unveils a stunning new ceiling painted as a gift by Belorussian-born artist Marc Chagall, who spent much of his life in France. The ceiling was typical of Chagall’s masterpieces–childlike in its apparent simplicity yet luminous with color and evocative of the world of dreams and the subconscious. . . .

. . . . Andre Malraux, the French minister of culture, commissioned him to design a new ceiling for the Paris Opera after seeing Chagall’s work in Daphnis et Chloe. Working with a surface of 560 square meters, Chagall divided the ceiling into color zones that he filled with landscapes and figures representing the luminaries of opera and ballet. The ceiling was unveiled on September 23, 1964, during a performance of the same Daphnis et Chloe. As usual, a few detractors condemned Chagall’s work as overly primitive, but this criticism was drowned out in the general acclaim for the work. In 1966, as a gift to the city that had sheltered him during World War II, he painted two vast murals for New York’s Metropolitan Opera House (1966).

In 1977, France honored Chagall with a retrospective exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. He continued to work vigorously until his death in 1985 at the age of 97.

The unveiling of the ceiling coincided with the publication of “The Phantom of the Opera“ (“Le Fantôme de l’Opéra”) by Gaston Leroux.

It was first published as a serialization in “Le Gaulois” from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910. Initially, the story sold very poorly upon publication in book form and was even out of print several times during the twentieth century, despite the success of its various film and stage adaptations. The most notable of these were the 1925 film depiction and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1986 musical. The Phantom of the Opera musical is now the longest running Broadway show in history, and one of the most lucrative entertainment enterprises of all time.

Sep 22 2015

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dean Baker: Will President Obama Stand up to the Drug Thugs?

It takes a lot of courage to defy the folks who make tens of billions a year selling drugs. We will find out soon whether President Obama has the backbone to stand up to Merck, Pfizer, and the other major drug companies in order to protect the health and lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the world’s poorest countries.

The immediate issue is an extension of the period until the poorest countries must adopt U.S.-type patent protections for drugs under the World Trade Organizations (WTO) rules. In 1994, the Clinton administration inserted the trade-related trade aspects of intellectual property rights, or TRIPS, provisions into the agreement that established the WTO. The TRIPS provisions effectively required all WTO members to adopt U.S.-type patent and copyright laws. [..]

The reality is that patent monopolies are a relic of the feudal guild system. They are poorly suited as a mechanism to finance research in a 21st-century economy. If it were not for the enormous political power of the drug industry we would be looking at developing modern alternatives.

It may be too much to expect President Obama to actually talk about reforming our mechanisms for subsidizing research, but it shouldn’t be too much to ask him to join the EU in supporting the indefinite extension for developing countries. It may not be as much fun as flying around the world with billionaires for charity, but it will do much more to help poor people.

Richard Eskow: “Sowers of Change”: The Pope Arrives At a Critical Moment

Pope Francis’ first visit to the United States begins with his arrival in Washington D.C. on Tuesday afternoon. From the nation’s capital he goes to its economic capital, New York City, before concluding his trip with a visit to the nation’s birthplace in Philadelphia.

That itinerary seems to suit the Pope’s message: that political institutions must respond to the needs of the people, that the economy is a tool for human betterment rather than an end in itself, and that it is just as possible to remake society today as it was when this country was founded.

You don’t have to agree with all of the Catholic Church’s doctrines to recognize that the Pope’s message has a timeliness and urgency. New data underscores his call to reduce economic inequality. The ongoing deaths of African Americans in police confrontations highlight his message of social justice. And the planet itself is in peril.

Mark Weibrot: Election offers no solution to Greece’s economic problems

European authorities have chosen to prolong Greek depression

What are we to make of Syriza’s victory in the Greek elections on Sunday? As in January, Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras will be able to form a parliamentary majority in coalition with the right-wing populist Independent Greeks party. On the other hand, they are now committed to implementing a harsh, deeply unpopular austerity program that even its advocates among the European authorities acknowledge will keep the Greek economy in depression through the end of this year and next.

Does this mean that the battle for Greece’s future is over, and that those who claimed that there was no alternative to prolonged depression, mass unemployment and a more unequal and frankly, uglier society have won?

There is no question that the European authorities – the European Central Bank, the European Commission and eurogroup of finance ministers (led by Germany) – and the International Monetary Fund have for now succeeded in imposing their will on Greece. On July 5, the vast majority of Greeks voted to reject their economic plan, including further austerity. But the ECB did something that perhaps no central bank had ever done: It forced a shutdown of the Greek banking system. This caused economic havoc that pushed the economy back into recession, and threated to prolong and deepen the depression that Greeks had already suffered for six years. This act of financial terrorism worked: Syriza made a U-turn following the referendum, accepting the European officials’ plan, and told the Greek people that there was no choice.

Eugene Robinson: Trump, Carson, Rand Paul and Other GOP Candidates Defy the Constitution with Anti-Muslim Bigotry

The founders of this nation recognized Islam as one of the world’s great faiths. Incredibly and disgracefully, much of today’s Republican Party disagrees.

Thomas Jefferson, whose well-worn copy of the Quran is in the Library of Congress, fought to ensure that the American concept of religious freedom encompassed Islam. John Adams wrote that Muhammad was a “sober inquirer after truth.” Benjamin Franklin asserted that even a Muslim missionary sent by “the Mufti of Constantinople” would find there was “a pulpit at his service” in this country.

Indeed, the Constitution states that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Some of the GOP candidates for president, however, simply do not care. [..]

On the campaign trail, GOP candidates are touting their own Christian faith in what can only be described as a literal attempt to be holier than thou. They should reread the Constitution, which says “no religious test”-not “only the religious test that I can pass.”

Jeb Lund: The Trump juggernaut took out Scott Walker. But he may live to run again

The experiment in seeing if Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker could be elected president, which began with energetic music and a decorated hall packed with supporters waving signs is over after only about 70 days. Walker held its eulogy in the sort of dismal hotel meeting room you see at conventions for dental certification in a new kind of gum gauze. [..]

But that final moment, in which he could have said anything he wanted, was as bereft of ideas as the campaign necessitating it. Walker began by citing Ronald Reagan’s optimism, ignoring that Reagan campaigned on optimism after the deserved negativity of the nation after Nixon’s resignation and the Church Committee. (Ignore, too, that Reagan campaigned on a rejection of Jimmy Carter’s call for the embrace of the values of work, anti-materialism and sacrifice, offering Americans instead a buy-now/pay-never consumptive celebration that a generation of Boomers embraced the moment they had to pay the bills for a safety net their parents built and for which everyone else has been paying for 35 years and counting. That’s Scott Walker’s lodestar.)

Sep 22 2015

The Breakfast Club (The Last Day of Summer)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

photo 807561379_e6771a7c8e_zps7668d00e.jpg

This Day in History

Nathan Hale hanged in the American Revolution; Iraq invades Iran; President Gerald Ford faces a second assassination attempt in weeks; ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ hits Broadway; Songwriter Irving Berlin dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

Dr. Seuss

Sep 22 2015

The Breakfast Club (Summer’s End)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

photo 807561379_e6771a7c8e_zps7668d00e.jpg

This Day in History

Nathan Hale hanged in the American Revolution; Iraq invades Iran; President Gerald Ford faces a second assassination attempt in weeks; ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ hits Broadway; Songwriter Irving Berlin dies.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

Dr. Seuss

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