Tag: Open Thread

Sep 15 2015

On This Day In History September 14

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 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.

Sep 14 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

Paul Krugman: Labour’s Dead Center

Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time leftist dissident, has won a stunning victory in the contest for leadership of Britain’s Labour Party. Political pundits say that this means doom for Labour’s electoral prospects; they could be right, although I’m not the only person wondering why commentators who completely failed to predict the Corbyn phenomenon have so much confidence in their analyses of what it means.

But I won’t try to get into that game. What I want to do instead is talk about one crucial piece of background to the Corbyn surge – the implosion of Labour’s moderates. On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest was that every candidate other than Mr. Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative government’s austerity policies.

Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit. If you want a U.S. analogy, it’s as if all the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2004 had gone around declaring, “We were weak on national security, and 9/11 was our fault.” Would we have been surprised if Democratic primary voters had turned to a candidate who rejected that canard, whatever other views he or she held?

Dean Baker: To fix the debt, stop Fed rate hikes

Deficit hawks should join the fight against interest rate hikes

The drumbeat for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve Board seems to be unstoppable. When the data seem to undermine one argument for a hike, the rate hike advocates simply change course.

The original rationale for higher interest rates was the need to stop inflation. We have had people harping on the risk of hyper-inflation since 2009. Inflation has remained stubbornly low these last six years, consistently remaining under the Fed’s 2.0 percent target. If anything, the recent trend has been downward as a result of the collapse of the price of oil and other commodities.

If the threat of inflation isn’t adequate for selling an interest-rate hike, the next move was the need to have higher rates to attack bubbles. The big problem with this story is that it is not clear that we have any bubbles, nor is it obvious that hiking interest rates is the best way to address them if we did.

Charles M. Blow: Bernie Sanders and the Black Vote

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders spoke Saturday to a half-empty gymnasium at Benedict College in South Carolina. The school is historically black, but the crowd appeared to be largely white.

This underscores the severe challenge facing the Sanders campaign: African-American voters have yet to fully connect to the man and the message. [..]

South Carolina will be the first test. According to The New York Times, 55 percent of South Carolina Democratic primary voters were black in 2008. Yet current polls show Clinton with a massive lead over Sanders in the state. And those polls show Vice President Joe Biden leading Sanders, even though Biden has yet to announce whether he’ll run. That’s why it’s important not only for Sanders to spend more time in the state, but also to pick a venue like Benedict College.

Robert Kuttner: The Larger Meaning of Jeremy Corbyn

The victory of Jeremy Corbyn, an old-style unreconstructed lefty, to lead the supposedly modernized British Labour Party, is emblematic of trends afflicting all of Europe. Corbyn represents the same upsurge among the young and the dispossessed as Bernie Sanders does in the United States — a feeling] that the more progressive of the two major parties is just not delivering, and a demand for new leadership that rejects failed centrism.

Unfortunately for the Brits, Sanders is rather more presentable in his views than Corbyn. In the mainstream press, Corbyn has been ridiculed for saying admiring things about Hugo Chavez, wanting to pull Britain out of NATO, calling for broad scale nationalizations of industry and expressing pro-Palestinian views that, at times, seem to border on anti-Semitism. More on these questions in a moment.

But the election of Corbyn — love him or hate him — reflects something profound that is occurring all across Europe.

Scott Lemieux: Partisanship isn’t the enemy of reform – it’s a necessary condition of it

Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig has raised a million dollars and declared that he’s running for the Democratic nomination for president – and he claims to have invented a new strategy that would compel Congress to pass his agenda.

Lessig’s campaign is based on a simple promise – that his entire goal as president would be passing the “Citizens Equality Act,” a series of (attractive) electoral and campaign finance reforms. He has vowed to do nothing but focus on the act and then resign once it’s passed. Even if North Korean troops attempt to march into Seoul, a hurricane hits Miami and a US Supreme Court vacancy emerges, Lessig will retain a laser focus on his pet procedural reforms. By declaring the election a “referendum,” he asserts, even the Republicans who will almost certainly control the House of Representatives in 2016 will have no choice but to pass his proposed legislation.

He’s wrong. Both strategically and substantively, Lessig’s run reflects a lot of the common fallacies of people who think they’re too smart for politics.

Robert Reich: Ranking Colleges

After heavy lobbying from some of the nation’s most elite institutions of higher education, the President has just abandoned his effort to rank the nation’s 7,000 colleges and universities.

So, with college application season almost upon us, where should aspiring college students and their parents look for advice?

In my view, not U.S. News and World Report‘s annual college guide (out last week).

It’s analogous to a restaurant guide that gives top ratings to the most expensive establishments that are backed and frequented by the wealthiest gourmands — and much lower rankings to restaurants with the best food at lower prices that attract the widest range of diners. [..]

In an era when income and wealth are more concentrated at the top than in living memory — much of it in the hands of Wall Street bankers, corporate executives, and their retainers — U.S. News has become a major enabler of American inequality.

We need another guide for ranking colleges — one that doesn’t look at the fatness of alumni wallets or the amount spent on each student, but does take account of economic diversity and dedication to public service.

Fortunately, there is one. It’s a relatively new one, provided by the Washington Monthly.

My advice: Use it.

Sep 14 2015

On This Day In History September 14

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 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.

Sep 13 2015

On This Day In History September 13

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 13 is the 256th day of the year (257th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 109 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1814, Francis Scot Key pens Star-Spangled Banner

“The Star-Spangled Banner“ is the national anthem of the United States of America. The lyrics come from “Defence of Fort McHenry”, a poem written in 1814 by the 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, Francis Scott Key, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

The poem was set to the tune of a popular British drinking song, written by John Stafford Smith for the Anacreontic Society, a men’s social club in London. “The Anacreontic Song” (or “To Anacreon in Heaven”), with various lyrics, was already popular in the United States. Set to Key’s poem and renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner“, it would soon become a well-known American patriotic song. With a range of one and a half octaves, it is known for being difficult to sing. Although the song has four stanzas, only the first is commonly sung today, with the fourth (“O thus be it ever when free men shall stand…”) added on more formal occasions. In the fourth stanza, Key urged the adoption of “In God is our Trust” as the national motto (“And this be our motto: In God is our Trust”). The United States adopted the motto “In God We Trust” by law in 1956.

“The Star-Spangled Banner” was recognized for official use by the Navy in 1889 and the President in 1916, and was made the national anthem by a congressional resolution on March 3, 1931 (46 Stat. 1508, codified at 36 U.S.C. § 301), which was signed by President Herbert Hoover.

Before 1931, other songs served as the hymns of American officialdom. “Hail, Columbia” served this purpose at official functions for most of the 19th century. “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee“, whose melody was derived from the British national anthem, also served as a de facto anthem before the adoption of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Following the War of 1812 and subsequent American wars, other songs would emerge to compete for popularity at public events, among them “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Sep 13 2015

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“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 Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with George Stephanopolis: The guests on Sunday’s “This Week” are: Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson; Gen. John Allen, Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS; and Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX).

The roundtable guests are: NPR’s Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep; Washington Post national political reporter Robert Costa; Republican strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson; and Democratic strategist Maria Cardona.

Face the Nation: Host John Dickerson’s guests are: Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

His panel guests are: Democratic strategist David Axelrod; Peter Baker, The New York Times; Wall Street Journal contributor, Peggy Noonan; John Heilemann, Bloomberg Politics; and Gwen Ifill, PBS Newshour and Washington Week.

Meet the Press with Chuck Todd: The guests on this Sunday’s “MTP” are: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I_VT); Republican presidential candidate Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ); Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK); former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC); and former ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.

The roundtable gusts are: David Brooks; Maria Hinljosa; Ron Fournier; and Sarah Fagen.

State of the Union with Jake Tapper: Mr. Tappers guests are: GOP presidential candidate Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI); and RNC Chair Reince Priebus.

Sep 12 2015

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Tomatoes à la Provence

Photobucket

This is the first summer in a long time that I haven’t had a tomato garden. My garden needed a rest, and my plan was to work on my annual tomato piece for Recipes for Health during the two weeks I spent in Provence, where my love affair with Mediterranean cuisine began. It was an easy assignment. Summer cooking here revolves around tomatoes, squash and eggplant, and these ingredients pretty much dominated my market baskets.

When I started going to Provence more than 30 years ago, the tomatoes were superior to anything I could find in the States. Now that’s not the case, thanks to our wonderful farmers’ markets, which offer a wider variety of these nutrient-dense vegetables than any French market I visited this summer. An added benefit is that in American markets you are much more likely

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Pain Catalan With Extra Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

This dish is inspired by the Catalan signature dish, but mustard takes the place of the traditional raw garlic.

Provençal Tomato and Squash Gratin

Tomatoes do double duty here, forming a sauce and decorating the top of the dish.

Rainbow Trout Baked in Foil With Tomatoes, Garlic and Thyme

Cooked in packets, this savory fish dish can be assembled well ahead of time and baked at the last minute.

Tomato, Squash and Eggplant Tian

A tian takes a little time to assemble, but you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful presentation of summer’s bounty.

Tomato and Goat Cheese Tart

Dijon mustard spread on the pastry dough before baking adds even more French flavor to this dish.

Sep 12 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

Trevor Timm: One good thing about Donald Trump’s campaign: it’s ruining Jeb Bush’s

There are many, many reasons to abhor Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, but there’s at least one reason to appreciate it, for now: his constant and merciless trolling of Jeb Bush that is currently tanking Bush’s shot at the presidency. In some sense, Trump is doing democracy a service by helping ensure we will not have to suffer the embarrassment of having a third Bush family member as president within two decades. [..]

Thankfully, Trump has exposed Bush, not only on substance but as someone who is just not a good politician. Jeb’s campaign knows it. His donors know it. And the voters certainly have been paying attention: Bush’s poll numbers have dropped so low, it’s hard to believe even the most conventional wisdom-spewing political pundits can still call him the “front runner” with a straight face. He’s dropped to fifth or sixth and to single digits in almost all the recent polls in the early primary states. He seems flustered on the trail, and no one can point to a path by which he recovers from this, despite remaining the DC elite’s odds-on favorite.

As embarrassing and terrifying as a Trump presidency would be, the virtual anointing of a Bush family monarchy could be far worse, and so at least for now, I hope Trump keeps swinging away.

Ali Gharib: Further sabotage of the Iran deal won’t bring success – only embarrassment

Over the past two months, since the Iran nuclear deal was inked by the US and world powers, opponents of the accord have delivered fiery speeches predicting dire consequences (another Holocaust, nuclear war), poured millions of dollars into fiery television advertisements (does your dog have a fallout shelter?) and vowed to stop at nothing to take the deal down. On Thursday, however, the deal overcame its most harrowing obstacle – Congress – and the opponents went down with a whimper, not a bang. [..]

Opponents of the deal want to say the Democrats played politics instead of evaluating the deal honestly. That charge is ironic, to say the least, since most experts agree the nuclear deal is sound and the best agreement diplomacy could achieve. But there were politics at play: rather than siding with Obama, Congressional Democrats lined up against the Republican/Netanyahu alliance. The adamance of Aipac ended up working against its stated interests.

Groups like Aipac will go on touting their bipartisan bona fides without considering that their adoption of Netanyahu’s own partisanship doomed them to a partisan result. Meanwhile, the ensuing fight, which will no doubt bring more of the legislative chaos we saw this week, won’t be a cakewalk, so to speak, but will put the lie to Aipac’s claims it has a bipartisan consensus behind it. Despite their best efforts, Obama won’t be the one embarrassed by the scrambling on the horizon.

David Sirota: Prosecution of White-Collar Crime Hits 20-Year Low

Just a few years after the financial crisis, a new report tells an important story: Federal prosecution of white-collar crime has hit a 20-year low.

The analysis by Syracuse University shows a more than 36 percent decline in such prosecutions since the middle of the Clinton administration, when the decline began. Landing amid calls from Democratic presidential candidates for more Wall Street prosecutions, the report notes that the projected number of prosecutions this year is 12 percent less than last year and 29 percent less than five years ago. [..]

Underscoring that assertion is a recent study by researchers at George Mason University tracking the increased use of special Justice Department agreements that allow corporations-and often their executives-to avoid being prosecuted. Before 2003, researchers found, the Justice Department offered almost no such deals. The researchers report that from 2007 to 2011, 44 percent of cases were resolved through the deals-known as deferred prosecution agreements and non-prosecution agreements.

In 2012, President Obama pledged to “hold Wall Street accountable” for financial misdeeds related to the financial crisis. But as financial industry donations flooded into Obama’s re-election campaign, his Justice Department officials promoted policies that critics say embodied a “too big to jail” doctrine for financial crime.

Thor Benson: Can Apple, Google and Facebook Save Us From Big Brother?

Apple has been battling the Department of Justice and the intelligence community for years now, as was amply illustrated recently. The DOJ obtained a court order to force the company to provide it with the texts of two criminal suspects, but Apple responded by saying the messages are automatically encrypted and it cannot access them.

The DOJ is not happy about this. FBI Director James Comey has often stated that message encryption helps terrorists and kidnappers stay undetected, despite the fact that no evidence of this has been provided.

Ryan Calo, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law, published a piece on Fusion on Monday that explains part of his longer thesis on surveillance. He believes tech companies are playing-and could continue to play-a major role in ensuring the privacy of Americans and protecting them from unnecessary surveillance efforts. “Keep on top of Apple, Google, Microsoft. Follow what they do and don’t let them let up,” he writes. “They may be our best chance out of this surveillance mess.”

Ari Berman: Restoring the Voting Rights Act Now Has Bipartisan Support

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska becomes the first Republican to support ambitious legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act.

 On June 2015-the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision gutting the Voting Rights Act (VRA)-congressional Democrats introduced ambitious new legislation to restore the VRA. Last night, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska became the first Republican to cosponsor the bill, known as the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015. The bill compels states with a well-documented history of recent voting discrimination to clear future voting changes with the federal government, requires federal approval for voter ID laws, and outlaws new efforts to suppress the growing minority vote. [..]

Murkowski’s decision to support restoring the VRA stands in stark contrast to the hateful and inflammatory rhetoric espoused by Republican presidential candidates such as Donald Trump and reactionary efforts by the likes of Kim Davis to limit civil rights.

Her cosponsorship of the bill was influenced by her home state of Alaska, which since 1965 had to approve its voting changes with the federal government because of discrimination against Alaska Natives. Said Murkowski: “The question of whether Alaska Natives have fair access to the voting booth has been litigated multiple times over the past several years. Impediments to voting in many of our rural communities because of distance and language need to be addressed, and my hope is that this legislation will resolve these issues. Every Alaskan deserves a meaningful chance to vote.”

Zoë Carpenter: Republicans Hold a Planned Parenthood ‘Show Trial’ Based on Videos They Haven’t Seen

“Joseph McCarthy would be proud of this committee today,” said one Democrat.

 On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held the first of several congressional hearings sparked by undercover videos purporting to show that Planned Parenthood profits from illegal sales of fetal tissue. Less than 40 minutes had elapsed by the time someone quoted Adolf Hitler. The hysteria lasted for nearly four hours, marked by claims that abortion providers start their day with a “shopping list” of body parts to procure, about a fetus’s face being cut open with scissors, about fetuses who “cried and screamed as they died” but weren’t heard “because it was amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air.”

The hearing was engineered to repulse and horrify; it was not designed to reveal any credible information about Planned Parenthood or the Center for Medical Progress, the antiabortion group that made and edited the undercover videos. Neither Planned Parenthood nor CMP were asked to make representatives available to testify. Instead, Republicans called on two “abortion survivors” who lived after their mothers attempted to terminate their pregnancies, and issued emotional appeals against abortion, broadly. They also invited James Bopp, the Indiana lawyer who argued on behalf of the nonprofit Citizens United in the Supreme Court case that extended 1st Amendment rights to corporations. Among other things, Bopp argued in his testimony that fetal tissue donation encourages women “to choose abortions as an acceptable form of birth control.” Priscilla Smith, who directs the Program for the Study of Reproductive Justice at Yale Law School, was the only witness who supported abortion rights.

Sep 12 2015

On This Day In History September 12

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.

October 12 is the 285th day of the year (286th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 80 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1810, Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen.

The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. These famous public fields were named Theresienwiese-“Therese’s fields”-in honor of the crown princess; although locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the “Wies’n.” Horse races in the presence of the royal family concluded the popular event, celebrated in varying forms all across Bavaria.

Oktoberfest is a 16-18 day festival held each year in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, running from late September to the first weekend in October. It is one of the most famous events in Germany and the world’s largest fair, with more than 5 million people attending every year. The Oktoberfest is an important part of Bavarian culture. Other cities across the world also hold Oktoberfest celebrations, modelled after the Munich event.

The Munich Oktoberfest, traditionally, takes place during the sixteen days up to and including the first Sunday in October. In 1994, the schedule was modified in response to German reunification so that if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or 2nd, then the festival will go on until October 3 (German Unity Day). Thus, the festival is now 17 days when the first Sunday is October 2 and 18 days when it is October 1. In 2010, the festival lasts until the first Monday in October, to mark the 200-year anniversary of the event. The festival is held in an area named the Theresienwiese (field, or meadow, of Therese), often called Wiesn for short, located near Munich’s centre.

Visitors eat huge amounts of traditional hearty fare such as Hendl (chicken), Schweinsbraten (roast pork), Schweinshaxe (ham hock), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), Würstl (sausages) along with Brezn (Pretzel), Knödel (potato or bread dumplings), Kasspatzn (cheese noodles), Reiberdatschi (potato pancakes), Sauerkraut or Blaukraut (red cabbage) along with such Bavarian delicacies as Obatzda (a spiced cheese-butter spread) and Weisswurst (a white sausage).

First hundred years

In the year 1811, an agricultural show was added to boost Bavarian agriculture. The horse race persisted until 1960, the agricultural show still exists and it is held every four years on the southern part of the festival grounds. In 1816, carnival booths appeared; the main prizes were silver, porcelain, and jewelry. The founding citizens of Munich assumed responsibility for festival management in 1819, and it was agreed that the Oktoberfest would become an annual event. Later, it was lengthened and the date pushed forward, the reason being that days are longer and warmer at the end of September.

To honour the marriage of King Ludwig I and Therese of Bavaria, a parade took place for the first time in 1835. Since 1850, this has become a yearly event and an important component of the Oktoberfest. 8,000 people-mostly from Bavaria-in traditional costumes walk from Maximilian Street, through the centre of Munich, to the Oktoberfest. The march is led by the Münchner Kindl.

Since 1850, the statue of Bavaria has watched the Oktoberfest. This worldly Bavarian patron was first sketched by Leo von Klenze in a classic style and Ludwig Michael Schwanthaler romanticised and “Germanised” the draft; it was constructed by Johann Baptist Stiglmaier and Ferdinand von Miller.

In 1853, the Bavarian Ruhmeshalle was finished. In 1854, 3,000 residents of Munich succumbed to an epidemic of cholera, so the festival was cancelled. Also, in the year 1866, there was no Oktoberfest as Bavaria fought in the Austro-Prussian War. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian war was the reason for cancellation of the festival. In 1873, the festival was once more cancelled due to a cholera epidemic. In 1880, the electric light illuminated over 400 booths and tents (Albert Einstein helped install light bulbs in the Schottenhamel tent as an apprentice in his uncle’s electricity business in 1896). In 1881, booths selling bratwursts opened. Beer was first served in glass mugs in 1892.

At the end of the 19th century, a re-organization took place. Until then, there were games of skittles, large dance floors, and trees for climbing in the beer booths. They wanted more room for guests and musicians. The booths became beer halls.

In 1887, the Entry of the Oktoberfest Staff and Breweries took place for the first time. This event showcases the splendidly decorated horse teams of the breweries and the bands that play in the festival tents. This event always takes place on the first Saturday of the Oktoberfest and symbolises the official prelude to the Oktoberfest celebration

In the year 1910, Oktoberfest celebrated its 100th birthday. 120,000 litres of beer were poured. In 1913, the Braurosl was founded, which was the largest Oktoberfest beer tent of all time, with room for about 12,000 guests.

I have very fond memories of Oktoberfest. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Europe, do it in late September because this is a must see and experience.

Sep 11 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

Bill de Blasio: It’s Time to Close the Carried Interest Loophole

The rampant inequality that we face in America is no accident. It is the result of a system that, for too long, has rewarded existing wealth over work.

There is no more striking example of this phenomenon than the disparity between the earnings — and the tax rates — of kindergarten teachers and hedge fund managers.

In 2014, the top 25 hedge fund mangers made more money than every single kindergarten teacher in America — over 150,000 of them — combined. That’s right: 25 individuals — not even enough to fill the seating space on a single New York City subway car — made more than everyone who teaches our youngest learners put together.

What’s more, because of something called carried interest — a tax loophole that exists only to boost the earnings of hedge fund managers — those 25 people paid a lower tax rate than the average kindergarten teacher.

If we’re to truly tackle the crisis of income inequality, changing that rule — and investing that money in growing our middle class — is where we must start.

Norman Solomon: America’s post-9/11 Cassandras are still ignored

As the US war machine grinds on, mainstream media outlets bury prescient warnings

Fourteen years later, the horrors of 9/11 continue with deadly ripple effects. American militarism has become the dominant position of U.S. foreign policy, while other options remain banished to the sidelines. Yet from the outset of the “war on terrorism,” some Americans spoke out against a militarized response to the terrible events on Sept. 11, 2001. [..]

Even the most prominent warnings against such an approach were marginalized and vilified in the wake of Sept. 11. And those warnings have been buried by the U.S. media as though they never occurred, even though their concerns have proved prescient. The U.S. has spent trillions of dollars on military interventions across the Middle East, and yet the region is more violent and turbulent than ever.

This media amnesia helps keep the U.S. war train on track. The importance of the erasure is embodied in an observation by George Orwell, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” The widespread pretense that there was no credible critique of going to war 14 years ago reinforces the assumption that there is no credible alternative to militarized responses today.

Paul Krugman: Japan’s Economy, Crippled by Caution

Visitors to Japan are often surprised by how prosperous it seems. It doesn’t look like a deeply depressed economy. And that’s because it isn’t.

Unemployment is low; overall economic growth has been slow for decades, but that’s largely because it’s an aging country with ever fewer people in their prime working years. Measured relative to the number of working-age adults, Japanese growth over the past quarter century has been almost as fast as America’s, and better than Western Europe’s.

Yet Japan is still caught in an economic trap. Persistent deflation has created a society in which people hoard cash, making it hard for policy to respond when bad things happen, which is why the businesspeople I’ve been talking to here are terrified about the possible spillover from China’s troubles.

Greg Grandin: The TPP Will Finish What Chile’s Dictatorship Started

Salvador Allende warned against neoliberalism’s disastrous effects just before he was overthrown. He was right to be worried.

This September 11th will be the forty-second anniversary of the US-backed coup against the democratically-elected Chilean government, led by the Socialist Salvador Allende, kicking off a battle that is still being fought: in Chile, protests led by students, indigenous peoples, and workers to rollback the “neoliberalization,” or Pinochetization, of society, are a continuing part of everyday life.

Neoliberalism is hard to define. It could refer to intensified resource extraction, financialization, austerity, or something more ephemeral, a way of life, in which collective ideals of citizenship give out to marketized individualism and consumerism. [..]

In the 1970s, socialism was, for many, on the horizon of the possible, with the principle of “excess profit” seen as a way for exploited countries to, in Allende’s words, “correct historic wrongs.” Today, forget nationalization, much less socialism. If the TPP is ratified and ISDS put into effect, countries won’t be able to limit mining to protect their water supply or even enforce anti-tobacco regulation.

This September 11th, as the Obama administration makes its final push for the TPP, it’s worth taking a moment to realize why all those people in Chile-and in Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, and throughout Latin America-died and were tortured: to protect the “future profits” of multinational corporations.

Glenn Greenwald: Hillary Clinton Goes to Militaristic, Hawkish Think Tank, Gives Militaristic, Hawkish Speech

Leading Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday delivered a foreign policy speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington. By itself, the choice of the venue was revealing.

Brookings served as Ground Zero for centrist think tank advocacy of the Iraq War, which Clinton (along with potential rival Joe Biden) notoriously and vehemently advocated. Brookings’ two leading “scholar”-stars – Kenneth Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon – spent all of 2002 and 2003 insisting that invading Iraq was wise and just, and spent the years after that assuring Americans that the “victorious” war and subsequent occupation were going really well (in April 2003, O’Hanlon debated with himself over whether the strategy that led to the “victory” in his beloved war should be deemed “brilliant” or just extremely “clever,” while in June 2003, Pollack assured New York Times readers that Saddam’s WMD would be found). [..]

So the hawkish Brookings is the prism through which Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy worldview can be best understood. The think tank is filled with former advisers to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, and would certainly provide numerous top-level foreign policy officials in any Hillary Clinton administration. As she put it today at the start: “There are a lot of long-time friends and colleagues who perch here at Brookings.” And she proceeded to deliver exactly the speech one would expect, reminding everyone of just how militaristic and hawkish she is.

Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff: The US is not fit to host the Olympics

Sorry, Los Angeles, but Washington’s appalling human rights record contravenes the principles of the Olympic movement

On Sept. 1, the Los Angeles City Council voted to authorize the U.S. Olympic Committee’s (USOC) bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The committee dropped Boston in July amid tenacious activism, wavering politicians and paltry polling numbers.

Los Angelenos should emulate Bostonians to make sure that their political leaders say no. The Olympic games tend to militarize the host city and go over budget, saddling taxpayers with lopsided fiscal risk while private groups pile up profits. What’s more, the United States’ appalling human rights record should rule the country out as a host. [..]

But the USOC should be spurned. The United States’ horrific human rights record breaches the Olympic Charter’s fundamental principles of Olympism (PDF), which calls for leading by example, social responsibility and respect for universal ethics. The objections over the awarding of Olympic Games to other human rights violators such as China and Russia should also apply to the United States. In fact, the U.S. is a ghastly maverick in many respects. Look no further than the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba, where more than 100 detainees – most of them without a single charge – continue to languish.

Sep 11 2015

The Breakfast Club (Keep It Simple)

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

American Revolution: Gen George Washington defeated at the Battle of Brandywine; FDR dedicated the Hoover Dam; The Beatles recorded their first singles.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius

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