Tag: Open Thread

May 13 2014

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

Andrew Brown: The only truth about torture is in our own morally bankrupt stance

Amnesty International report highlights how torture seldom works as a way to gain information, rather it leads to twisted testimony

Amnesty International has polled the British people and discovered that nearly a third of us think torture can sometimes be justified. Across the world, the figure is generally higher – except in a couple of countries, most notably Spain and Argentina, which have within living memory passed from being military dictatorships which used torture routinely to democracies which don’t.

Yet there are also large majorities in almost all countries polled for bans on torture. It seems that it is one of those crimes which we believe should only be committed when we are certain to profit from it; that we believe works but should only be resorted to when all other means have failed. So it is worth examining why and when it works.

Torture seeks to make people do what they would rather not – we all know that, from the playground onwards. If what someone wants to do is to keep a secret, torture may make them spill it.

Robert Reich: How the Right Wing Is Killing Women

According to a report released last week in the widely-respected health research journal, The Lancet, the United States now ranks 60th out of 180 countries on maternal deaths occurring during pregnancy and childbirth.

To put it bluntly, for every 100,000 births in America last year, 18.5 women died. That’s compared to 8.2 women who died during pregnancy and birth in Canada, 6.1 in Britain, and only 2.4 in Iceland.

A woman giving birth in America is more than twice as likely to die as a woman in Saudi Arabia or China.

You might say international comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt because of difficulties of getting accurate measurements across nations. Maybe China hides the true extent of its maternal deaths. But Canada and Britain?

Wendall Potter: [Health Insurers Using Playbook Again to Protect Profits at Expense of Consumers Health Insurers Using Playbook Again to Protect Profits at Expense of Consumers]

Health care reform advocates in California, led by Consumer Watchdog, are supporting a November ballot initiative to give the state insurance department authority to reject proposed rate increases that are deemed to be excessive.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 35 states have given their insurance departments the legal power of prior approval — or disapproval — of proposed health insurance rate changes.

California is not among them, and advocates believe the state’s residents are paying more for their health insurance coverage than necessary. While the Golden State did establish a rate review process in 2011 requiring public disclosure of proposed rate hikes — which the California Public Interest Research Group says has saved residents almost $350 million — lawmakers would not go further and grant the insurance commissioner authority to say “no” to rate hikes. As a result, says CalPIRG, about a million Californians paid higher premiums due to rate hikes state state officials deemed “unreasonable” but couldn’t do anything about.

Dan Gillmor: In the future, the robots may control you, and Silicon Valley will control them

Welcome to the horror show that is the ‘internet of things’ – hyper-intelligent software, vulnerable hardware … and a whole new level of privacy invasion

The “internet of things” is turning into Silicon Valley’s latest mania. At first glance, it is a trend with great appeal, enough to become something more than a trend and a true revolution: a world in which everything we touch and use has an embedded intelligence and memory of its own, and all of it is connected by way of digital networks.

What’s missing from this rosy scenario? Plenty – because security and privacy seem to be mostly an afterthought as we embed and use technology in our physical devices. Which means the internet of things could easily turn into a horror show.

Philip Pilkington: How rising asset prices increase inequality

The release of French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-seller “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” has posed once more the question of what causes inequality. One key culprit from Piketty’s findings is the changing valuation of financial assets.

Imagine that you hold a financial asset, a company share worth $1,000. And suppose I believe the market is going to rise and I offer you $2,000 for that share. The market price for this share will now have increased from $1,000 to $2,000. This transaction will also increase the net worth of those who hold these shares by the amount that the share has increased in value – in our example, $1,000 – multiplied by the number of these shares in existence.

If we imagine that there are 5,000 of these shares in existence, this will increase the net worth of the holders of these shares by $5 million. Since rich people hold a disproportionate number of shares, my bid will have increased inequality in the economy because the net worth of the rich will rise in relation to the net worth of the poor.

Tom Engelhardt: The Year of Edward Snowden

Make no mistake: it’s been the year of Edward Snowden.  Not since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War has a trove of documents revealing the inner workings and thinking of the U.S. government so changed the conversation.  In Ellsberg’s case, that conversation was transformed only in the United States.  Snowden has changed it worldwide.  From six-year-olds to Angela Merkel, who hasn’t been thinking about the staggering ambitions of the National Security Agency, about its urge to create the first global security state in history and so step beyond even the most fervid dreams of the totalitarian regimes of the last century?  And who hasn’t been struck by how close the agency has actually come to sweeping up the communications of the whole planet?  Technologically speaking, what Snowden revealed to the world — thanks to journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras — was a remarkable accomplishment, as well as a nightmare directly out of some dystopian novel. [..]

And of course, there was also a determined journalist, who proved capable of keeping his focus on what mattered while under fierce attack, who never took his eyes off the prize.  I’m talking, of course, about Glenn Greenwald.  Without him (and the Guardian, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post), “they” would be observing us, 24/7, but we would not be observing them.  This small group has shaken the world.

May 13 2014

On This Day In History May 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.

Click on images to enlarge

May 13 is the 133rd day of the year (134th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 232 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1846, the United States declared war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas. The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly votes in favor of President James K. Polk‘s request.

The Mexican-American War (or Mexican War) was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848 in the wake of the 1845 U.S. annexation of Texas, which Mexico considered part of its territory despite the 1836 Texas Revolution.

Origins of the war

The Mexican government had long warned the United States that annexation would mean war. Because the Mexican congress had refused to recognize Texan independence, Mexico saw Texas as a rebellious territory that would be retaken. Britain and France, which recognized the independence of Texas, repeatedly tried to dissuade Mexico from declaring war. When Texas joined the U.S. as a state in 1845, the Mexican government broke diplomatic relations with the U.S.

The Texan claim to the Rio Grande boundary had been omitted from the annexation resolution to help secure passage after the annexation treaty failed in the Senate. President Polk claimed the Rio Grande boundary, and this provoked a dispute with Mexico. In June 1845, Polk sent General Zachary Taylor to Texas, and by October 3,500 Americans were on the Nueces River, prepared to defend Texas from a Mexican invasion. Polk wanted to protect the border and also coveted the continent clear to the Pacific Ocean. Polk had instructed the Pacific naval squadron to seize the California ports if Mexico declared war while staying on good terms with the inhabitants. At the same time he wrote to Thomas Larkin, the American consul in Monterey, disclaiming American ambitions but offering to support independence from Mexico or voluntary accession to the U.S., and warning that a British or French takeover would be opposed.

To end another war-scare (Fifty-Four Forty or Fight) with Britain over Oregon Country, Polk signed the Oregon Treaty dividing the territory, angering northern Democrats who felt he was prioritizing Southern expansion over Northern expansion.

In the winter of 1845-46, the federally commissioned explorer John C. Fremont and a group of armed men appeared in California. After telling the Mexican governor and Larkin he was merely buying supplies on the way to Oregon, he instead entered the populated area of California and visited Santa Cruz and the Salinas Valley, explaining he had been looking for a seaside home for his mother. The Mexican authorities became alarmed and ordered him to leave. Fremont responded by building a fort on Gavilan Peak and raising the American flag. Larkin sent word that his actions were counterproductive. Fremont left California in March but returned to California and assisted the Bear Flag Revolt in Sonoma, where many American immigrants stated that they were playing “the Texas game” and declared California’s independence from Mexico.

On November 10, 1845, Polk sent John Slidell, a secret representative, to Mexico City with an offer of $25 million ($632,500,000 today) for the Rio Grande border in Texas and Mexico’s provinces of Alta California and Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico. U.S. expansionists wanted California to thwart British ambitions in the area and to gain a port on the Pacific Ocean. Polk authorized Slidell to forgive the $3 million ($76 million today) owed to U.S. citizens for damages caused by the Mexican War of Independence and pay another $25 to $30 million ($633 million to $759 million today) in exchange for the two territories.

Mexico was not inclined nor able to negotiate. In 1846 alone, the presidency changed hands four times, the war ministry six times, and the finance ministry sixteen times. However, Mexican public opinion and all political factions agreed that selling the territories to the United States would tarnish the national honor. Mexicans who opposed direct conflict with the United States, including President José Joaquin de Herrera, were viewed as traitors. Military opponents of de Herrera, supported by populist newspapers, considered Slidell’s presence in Mexico City an insult. When de Herrera considered receiving Slidell to settle the problem of Texas annexation peacefully, he was accused of treason and deposed. After a more nationalistic government under General Mariano Paredes y Arrillaga came to power, it publicly reaffirmed Mexico’s claim to Texas; Slidell, convinced that Mexico should be “chastised”, returned to the U.S.

May 12 2014

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

Sen. Rand Paul: Show Us the Drone Memos

I BELIEVE that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate. I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. [..]

I believe that all senators should have access to all of these opinions. Furthermore, the American people deserve to see redacted versions of these memos so that they can understand the Obama administration’s legal justification for this extraordinary exercise of executive power. The White House may invoke national security against disclosure, but legal arguments that affect the rights of every American should not have the privilege of secrecy.

I agree with the A.C.L.U. that “no senator can meaningfully carry out his or her constitutional obligation to provide ‘advice and consent’ on this nomination to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge without being able to read Mr. Barron’s most important and consequential legal writing.” The A.C.L.U. cites the fact that in modern history, a presidential order to kill an American citizen away from a battlefield is unprecedented.

Paul Krugman: Crazy Climate Economics

Everywhere you look these days, you see Marxism on the rise. Well, O.K., maybe you don’t – but conservatives do. If you so much as mention income inequality, you’ll be denounced as the second coming of Joseph Stalin; Rick Santorum has declared that any use of the word “class” is “Marxism talk.” In the right’s eyes, sinister motives lurk everywhere – for example, George Will says the only reason progressives favor trains is their goal of “diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.”

So it goes without saying that Obamacare, based on ideas originally developed at the Heritage Foundation, is a Marxist scheme – why, requiring that people purchase insurance is practically the same as sending them to gulags.

And just wait until the Environmental Protection Agency announces rules intended to slow the pace of climate change.

Trevor Timm: The battle to retake our privacy can be won – really!

A close look at the new NSA reform bill – and court cases that may be just as important – reveals that, one year after Snowden’s breakthrough, we’re finally getting somewhere

After months of inaction – and worries that real change at the National Security Agency was indefinitely stalled – there was a flurry of action in Congress this week on the most promising NSA reform bill, as the USA Freedom Act unanimously passed out of the House Judiciary Committee and then, surprisingly, out of the Intelligence Committee, too. Only its movement came at a price: the bill is now much weaker than it was before.

What would the legislation actually do? Well, for one, it would take the giant phone records database out of the NSA’s hands and put it into those of the telecom companies, and force judicial review. Importantly, it doesn’t categorically make anything worse – like the House Intel bill pushed by Rep Mike Rogers would have – and it would at least end the phone records program as it exists today, while making things a little bit better for transparency.

Simon Jenkins: Ukraine should be left to forge its own course

A key principle of liberal politics is self-determination. Step forward the people of Ukraine – not Washington or London

Last night’s Ukraine referendum yields not one crisis but two. The first is separatist pressure of the sort that has long plagued the politics of Europe. A poorly drawn border, an ethnic or linguistic minority, an inept central government – all lead to revolt. Resolution lies either in devolution and confederation or in partition and independence. Witness Ireland, Kosovo, Slovakia and Macedonia, and perhaps the Basques, the Catalans and the Scots.

The second crisis is more dangerous. It is when such local conflicts acquire outside sponsors; when they translate into the big power politics. They become test-your-weight machines for heads of state. Intervention is what “real men” do; something “must be done”. That is now happening in Ukraine.

Chase Madar: This American life (without parole)

There’s a whiff of clemency in the springtime air: New federal commutation guidelines announced two weeks ago may provide an exit for hundreds, maybe thousands of federal prisoners in for nonviolent “low level” offenses if they’ve already served 10 years with “good conduct.” If you’re wondering who these rules will affect, and why they’re so necessary, consider these three Americans currently set to rot away in prison for nonviolent crimes committed years ago. [..]

We’re likely to see some pushback against even the mild step of mercy commutations. After all, “the law is the law,” as we freedom-loving Americans somehow love to sternly say. But the funny thing is, the law is not the law, at least much of the time. The law sure wasn’t the law for Goldman Sachs or any of the other financiers who tanked our economy, and not for CIA torturers either. The law is the law, but only for some. [..]

But if you’re a poor nonviolent offender without connections, like Euka Wadlington or Larry Duke or Alice Marie Johnson, the law is the law for as long as you draw breath.  

If Eric Holder came up with a legal rationale for pardoning Marc Rich, he can certainly see the logic in delivering clemency to Euka, Larry, Alice Marie and the thousands of others like them. The question is whether Holder and the president have the will and the spine.

May 12 2014

On This Day In History May 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.

Click on images to enlarge

May 12 is the 132nd day of the year (133rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 233 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1937, George Denis Patrick Carlin was born in the Bronx. He was raised by his mother in Morningside Heights which he and his friends called “White Harlem” because it sounded tougher. He was raised Irish Catholic and educated in Catholic schools. He often ran away from home. After joining the Air Force while stationed in Louisiana, Carlin became a DJ in Shreveport starting on his long career in entertainment. Carlin rose to fame during the 60’s and 70’s, generating the most controversy with his famous “Seven Dirty Words”:

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that’ll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.

His arrest and the subsequent FCC rulings ended up in the Supreme Court which upheld the right of the FCC to regulate the public airways. In the ruling it called the routine “indecent but not obscene”.

In 1961, Carlin was also present in the audience the night that Lenny Bruce was arrested in San Fransisco for obscenity. He was arrested, as well, after the police, who were questioning the audience, asked Carlin for ID. He said he didn’t have any because he didn’t believe in government-issued ID’s.

We all know the rest. His popularity as a comic and “commentarian” on politics, religion and social issues made him a popular guest on late night talk shows. His death in  June 22, 2008 saddened many. He left behind his second wife, Sally Wade, whom he married after his first wife Brenda died of liver cancer in 1997. He left a daughter by his first marriage, Kelly.

Happy Birthday, George, you are missed.

May 11 2014

Rant of the Week: Jon Stewart: Bullets Points Over Benghazi

Bullets Points Over Benghazi

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May 11 2014

On This Day In History May 11

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.

Click on images to enlarge

May 11 is the 131st day of the year (132nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 234 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1934, a massive storm sends millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States as far east as New York, Boston and Atlanta.

At the time the Great Plains were settled in the mid-1800s, the land was covered by prairie grass, which held moisture in the earth and kept most of the soil from blowing away even during dry spells. By the early 20th century, however, farmers had plowed under much of the grass to create fields. The U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 caused a great need for wheat, and farms began to push their fields to the limit, plowing under more and more grassland with the newly invented tractor. The plowing continued after the war, when the introduction of even more powerful gasoline tractors sped up the process. During the 1920s, wheat production increased by 300 percent, causing a glut in the market by 1931.

The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion. Deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had displaced the natural deep-rooted grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.

During the drought of the 1930s, without natural anchors to keep the soil in place, it dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastward and southward in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C. Much of the soil ended up deposited in the Atlantic Ocean, carried by prevailing winds, which were in part created by the dry and bare soil conditions. These immense dust storms-given names such as “Black Blizzards” and “Black Rollers”-often reduced visibility to a few feet (around a meter). The Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2), centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas.

Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as “Okies”, since so many came from Oklahoma) migrated to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better during the Great Depression than those they had left. Owning no land, many became migrant workers who traveled from farm to farm to pick fruit and other crops at starvation wages. Author John Steinbeck [ later wrote The Grapes of Wrath, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Of Mice and Men, about such people.

May 11 2014

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: Sunday’s guests on “This Week” are: Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel; and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

The roundtable pundits are emocratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile; Weekly Standard editor and ABC News contributor Bill Kristol; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL); and radio host Michael Smerconish.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are: chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (R-MI);  former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

Joining him on his political panel are: David Ignatius of The Washington Post; Michael Crowley of Time; and CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Would you believe MTP is preempted for Barclays Premier League Soccer: Manchester City vs. West Ham.

I knew David Gregory’s rating were taking but soccer???!!

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL); Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MI); and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA).

She will host two panels this Sunday. The first will discuss Monica Lewinsky with Hilary Rosen, Susan Page, and Ramesh Ponnuru; and the second on the role of women around the world on this Mother’s Day with authors and moms Claire Shipman, Iris Krasnow, and Jennifer Senior.

May 11 2014

The Breakfast Club 5/11/2014 (Mothers’ Day)

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.

The Breakfast Club Logo photo BeerBreakfast_web_zps5485351c.png

This Day in History

Pentagon Papers Charges Are Dismissed; Judge Byrne Frees Ellsberg and Russo, Assails ‘Improper Government Conduct’

By Martin Arnold, The New York Times, 5/11/1973

New Trial Barred But Decision Does Not Solve Constitutional Issues in Case

Los Angeles, May 11 — Citing what he called “improper Government conduct shielded so long from public view,” the judge in the Pentagon papers trial dismissed today all charges against Dr. Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony J. Russo Jr.

And he made it clear in his ruling that the two men would not be tried again on charges of stealing and copying the Pentagon papers.

“The conduct of the Government has placed the case in such a posture that it precludes the fair, dispassionate resolution of these issues by a jury,” he said.

David R. Nissen, the chief prosecutor, said, “It appears that the posture is such that no appeal will be possible.”

Mother’s Day Turns 100: Its Surprisingly Dark History

By Brian Handwerk, National Geographic

As Mother’s Day turns 100 this year, it’s known mostly as a time for brunches, gifts, cards, and general outpourings of love and appreciation.

But the holiday has more somber roots: It was founded for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace. And when the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion, Anna Jarvis, gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium.

It all started in the 1850s, when West Virginia women’s organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis-Anna’s mother-held Mother’s Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College. The groups also tended wounded soldiers from both sides during the U.S. Civil War from 1861 to 1865.

In the postwar years Jarvis and other women organized Mother’s Friendship Day picnics and other events as pacifist strategies to unite former foes. Julia Ward Howe, for one-best known as the composer of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”-issued a widely read “Mother’s Day Proclamation” in 1870, calling for women to take an active political role in promoting peace.

Around the same time, Jarvis had initiated a Mother’s Friendship Day for Union and Confederate loyalists across her state. But it was her daughter Anna who was most responsible for what we call Mother’s Day-and who would spend most of her later life fighting what it had become.

Breakfast Tunes

May 10 2014

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness NewsWelcome to the Stars Hollow 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

Dishes for Digestive Health

photo recipehealthpromo-tmagArticle_zps02830fc2.jpg

I’ve long been aware of the term “probiotics” (is there anybody who watches television who hasn’t seen Jamie Lee Curtis touting them in those old ads for Activia yogurt?), the beneficial microbes in our guts, and also in fermented foods like miso and kimchi, that some experts believe play a significant role in gut health and in keeping our immune system robust. But I’d never heard the word “prebiotics” until I attended a talk by the Stanford nutritionist Jo Ann Hattner, who has written (with Susan Anderes) an interesting guide called “Gut Insight: Probiotics and Prebiotics for Digestive Health and Well-Being.”

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Chard Stalk, Chickpea, Tahini and Yogurt Dip

An economical dip that is a cross between hummus and the classic Middle Eastern dip called silq bil tahina

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Spring Vegetable Stew With Artichokes and Fennel

The inspiration for this dish is a Sicilian stew called fritteda that can be served with pasta or other grains as a main course.

Baked Frittata With Yogurt, Chard and Green Garlic

A spin on the Provençal chard omelet called truccha, good to eat hot, warm or cold.

Quinoa Bowl With Roasted Artichokes, Spring Onions, Peas and Garlic Yogurt This dish in a bowl mixes sweet and bitter edges.

This dish in a bowl mixes sweet and bitter edges.

Stir-Fried Baby Turnips With Spring Onions, Green Garlic and Tofu

Juicy springtime ginger, onions and green garlic elevate this stir-fry featuring baby turnips and their bitter greens.

May 10 2014

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

Jane White: The Best Mother’s Day Gift We Can Give: A More Secure Social Security

Women are twice as likely as men to retire into poverty because of gender inequality in pay and retirement plan coverage. On average, women earn 77 cents to every dollar men earn and for women of color it’s even worse. African American women earn 62 cents and Hispanic women earn 54 cents to every dollar earned by their male counterparts. [..]

However, Social Security’s benefits are extremely modest: on average, women receive only about $13,100 per year. Given this puniness, it’s preposterous that some on Capitol Hill would make benefits even worse. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has called for a 16.5 percent across-the-board cut. [..]

Bottom line: If the men in Congress love their mothers, then strengthening Social Security should be high on their to-do list, especially this time of year.

Glen Ford: Jail the Bankers? Obama Has Been Their Staunchest Defender

The Obama administration is in a makeover frenzy, cosmetically cleaning up its corporatist act for the sake of the lame duck president’s legacy and endangered Democrats in Congress. Evils must be reapportioned in the public mind, so that the balance between lesser and greater abominations is perceived to tilt in the Democrats’ favor – a tough trick, given the beating the party’s base constituencies have taken since 2008 at the hands of the duopoly Dem-Rep tag-team. Historical revisionism is, thus, the order of the day

Eric Holder, the U.S. Attorney General who successfully intervened in federal court to prevent the retroactive release of thousands of mostly Black prisoners convicted under the old 100-to-1 crack cocaine laws, now acts as point man for his boss’s program of charitable sentencing commutations. Obama’s compassionate mood-swing occurred at whiplash speed; in his first six years in office, he had granted fewer clemencies than any president since Dwight Eisenhower. Obama’s brazenly hypocritical and slap-dash new program “will not represent any significant or permanent change to the nation’s universal policy of mass incarceration, mainly of poor black and brown youth,” as Bruce Dixon has written, but is designed purely to rehabilitate the president’s image among Black voters. With one empty gesture, the president’s record on criminal justice is revised.

Amy B. Dean: The drive to ban mandated paid sick days

On March 20, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio signed a bill expanding the city’s paid-sick-day law, giving an additional 500,000 workers the right to take up to five sick days in a year to care for themselves or sick family members without losing pay. Other cities – including Seattle; Washington; Portland, Oregon; Jersey City and Newark, New Jersey; and San Francisco – have passed similar mandates (as has the state of Connecticut), creating a benefit that voters support and employees need and that many employers say is economically sustainable. In places without such laws, an estimated 40 percent of the workforce has no paid sick days, meaning that restaurant servers and retail employees often have little economic choice but to work sick, even if that means risking infecting customers and co-workers.

Despite the clear public benefit of paid sick days, a new, troubling backlash is occurring at the state level, urged on by lobbying groups such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which promotes conservative legislation at the state level, and the National Restaurant Association. These organizations are pushing legislatures and governors to enact pre-emption (or kill-shot) laws to bar cities and counties from passing paid sick day mandates. With this model, state lawmakers can put an end to mandatory paid sick days, minimum wage increases and other pro-worker policies that voters and city governments have passed or are considering. It is a way of attacking a current wave of grass-roots organizing – organizing that has been gaining momentum, with recent big victories in cities such as Seattle, which just passed a minimum wage increase to $15 per hour.

Paul Rogers:

Sixty years ago smallpox was endemic across much of the world, killing two million people each year. In 1959 an international programme to eliminate the virus was started, not least because it was a disease amenable to large-scale vaccination. In 1977, the last case was diagnosed and recorded. It had taken just eighteen years to achieve the elimination of the entire disease in the wild.

This was the first-ever case of a major disease organism being destroyed in the wild, and there has only been one other – far less well-known, but in its own way quite significant. This is rinderpest, a dangerous viral infection most common in cattle but infecting some other species of livestock.  It took several decades to exterminate, but success finally came in 2001.

A third disease has been the target of atempts at total elimination. This is poliomyelitis, which in the 1980s still infected hundreds of thousands of people. Polio, if not a killer on the same scale as smallpox, is particularly prone to attack children and can leave them with severe impairments that can last a lifetime.

Mark Weisbrot: With friends like the IMF and EU, Ukraine doesn’t need enemies

Euromaidan protesters took to Kyiv’s streets last year in the hopes of Ukraine’s becoming part of the European Union. The Europe they admired was one of material comforts and living standards far beyond the reach of most Ukrainians, whose average income is about the level of El Salvadorans’. The demonstrators wanted for themselves something approaching Europe’s prosperity – a market economy, advanced technology, quality public transportation, universal health care, adequate pensions and paid vacations that average five weeks.f they are fortunate enough to avoid war, Ukrainians may be in for an unpleasant surprise as their current and even soon-to-be-elected leaders negotiate their economic future with their new, unelected European deciders. The Europe of their near and intermediate future may be more like Greece’s or Spain’s – but with less than a third of their per capita income and with a small fraction of those countries’ now shrunken social safety nets.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has announced that one of the conditions of its lending to Kyiv (along with that of the EU and U.S.) will be fiscal austerity for the next two and a half years. Ukraine’s economy is already in recession, with the IMF projecting a steep 5 percent decline in GDP for 2014. The danger is that this fiscal tightening could become a moving target as the economy and therefore tax revenues shrink further and the government has to cut even more spending to meet the IMF’s deficit goals.

Ralph Nader: Let’s Call Out Institutional Insanities

What are the signs that an institution is clinically insane? For over thirty-five years I have been trying to persuade psychological and psychiatric specialists and their professional associations to take up this serious subject for study and corrective suggestions. Alas, to no avail. They are totally occupied with the mental health of individuals.

One symptom of institutional insanity is when the mass media repeatedly goes wild covering offensive words, while ignoring systemic offensive deeds that reflect those words. In 2009, Donald Sterling, owner of the NBA Los Angeles Clippers, settled for $2.725 million with the Department of Justice for unlawfully excluding prospective African-American and Hispanic tenants from his apartment buildings. In comparison to the coverage of his racist words, this injustice received little news coverage.

This past week, all you heard was the endless replay of his private bigotry with whom many believe to be his girlfriend and all the condemnations by wealthy active and retired ball players and coaches. Where was their outrage in 2009? What about the tens of thousands of serf-laborers in Southeast Asia who slave away manufacturing Michael Jordan’s and LeBron James’ shoes?

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