Tag: Open Thread

“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 this Sunday’s “This Week” are: White House press secretary Jay Carney; and House Counterterrorism and Intelligence Sub-Committee Chair Rep. Peter King (R-NY).

The roundtable guests are ABC News’ Cokie Roberts; Yahoo News national political columnist Matt Bai; CNN “Crossfire” co-host Van Jones; Patriot Voices chair and former Sen. Rick Santorum; and Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX); Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); members of the U.S. Olympic delegation, Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano.

Joining him for a panel discussion on the upcoming State of the Union address are Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal; Bob Woodward of the Washington Post; Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard; and President Obama’s former Chief of Staff and CBS News Contributor Bill Daley.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: The guests on MTP are: Sen. Rand Paul (K-KY); former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Jesselyn Radack, one of Snowden’s legal advisors and also National Security and Human Rights Director of the Government Accountability Project; tennis legend Billie Jean King; and Assistant Majority Leader Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Guests st the roundtable are Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez (D-CA); former FCC Chairman, now President and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, Michael Powell; Republican Strategist Mike Murphy; New York Times Washington Bureau Chief Carolyn Ryan; and NBC’s Chuck Todd.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms Crowley has an exclusive interview with Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, Russia’s Ambassador to the US to discuss the Sochi Olympics. Her other guests are White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer; Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY); House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Deputy Majority Whip Tom Cole (R-OK).

Host of MSNBC’s “Up.” Steve Kornacki discusses what we have learned this week with his guest.

Tell us what you have learned this week.

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

A vegetable gratin is a casserole that is baked in the oven in a heavy baking dish until the top and sides are browned, or gratinéed. Roasting vegetables for a gratin adds another level of caramelized flavor to the dish. Roasted winter squash is particularly sweet. Roasting cauliflower coaxes flavor out of this somewhat bland vegetable: the small flowers brown and crisp, and I was hard pressed to save enough for my gratin, so tempting a snack were they. I begin just about any eggplant dish I make by roasting the eggplant, as this method of cooking requires much less oil than frying.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

“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

New York Times Editorial: A Hidden Threat in the Farm Bill

The mammoth farm bill is reportedly near a conference compromise in Congress, bristling with more tragic cuts in the food stamp program for the needy and a revision of lucrative commodity subsidies for mostly big farmers. Running below the radar is a dangerous, broadly written amendment that would threaten states’ current powers to enact their own agricultural standards – standards that can extend far beyond farmyards to consumer, worker and environmental safety. [..]

The National Conference of State Legislatures has properly urged rejection of the amendment because it would pre-empt assorted local agricultural policies vital in protecting “our farmland, waterways, forests and most importantly, the health and welfare of our constituents.” The group warned that existing laws on invasive pests and livestock disease and standards of seed and food protection would be open to challenge, abrogating states’ rights guaranteed under the Constitution. States vary, with some requiring the labeling of farm-raised fish, the banning of specific pesticides, and cross-border protections against Dutch elm disease and other threats.

John Nichols: Who Backs the TPP and a ‘NAFTA on Steroids’? Nobody Even Slightly Progressive

If President Obama uses his State of the Union address to launch a major push for “fast-track” authority to bypass congressional input and oversight on a sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, he will need new allies to generate support around the country. [..]

In fact, if Obama decides to ramp up his advocacy for a free-trade strategy that progressive Americans tend to see as a threat to workers, farmers, the environment, human rights and democracy, he won’t be able to count on many traditional allies to stir up grassroots support in the states. That’s one of the reasons there remains considerable uncertainty about whether the president really will-in a speech that is expected to focus on income equality-spend substantial time talking up a trade agenda that has drawn broad opposition from House and Senate Democrats and so much of his base.

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.

January 25 is the 25th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 340 days remaining until the end of the year (341 in leap years).

On this day in 1905, the world’s largest diamond is found. At the Premier Mine in Pretoria, South Africa, a 3,106-carat diamond is discovered during a routine inspection by the mine’s superintendent. Weighing 1.33 pounds, and christened the “Cullinan,” it was [the largest diamond ever found.

The Cullinan diamond is the largest rough gem-quality diamond ever found, at 3,106.75 carats (621.35 g).

The largest polished gem from the stone is named Cullinan I or the Great Star of Africa, and at 530.4 carats (106.1 g) was the largest polished diamond in the world until the 1985 discovery of the Golden Jubilee Diamond, 545.67 carats (109.13 g), also from the Premier Mine. Cullinan I is now mounted in the head of the Sceptre with the Cross. The second largest gem from the Cullinan stone, Cullinan II or the Lesser Star of Africa, at 317.4 carats (63.5 g), is the fourth largest polished diamond in the world. Both gems are in the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom.

History

The Cullinan diamond was found by Frederick Wells, surface manager of the Premier Diamond Mining Company in Cullinan, on January 26, 1905. The stone was named after Sir Thomas Cullinan, the owner of the diamond mine.

Sir William Crookes performed an analysis of the Cullinan diamond before it was cut and mentioned its remarkable clarity, but also a black spot in the middle. The colours around the black spot were very vivid and changed as the analyzer was turned. According to Crookes, this pointed to internal strain. Such strain is not uncommon in diamonds.

The stone was bought by the Transvaal government and presented to King Edward VII on his birthday. It was cut into three large parts by Asscher Brothers of Amsterdam, and eventually into 9 large gem-quality stones and a number of smaller fragments. At the time, technology had not yet evolved to guarantee quality of the modern standard, and cutting the diamond was considered difficult and risky. In order to enable Asscher to cut the diamond in one blow, an incision was made, half an inch deep. Then, a specifically designed knife was placed in the incision and the diamond was split in one heavy blow. The diamond split through a defective spot, which was shared in both halves of the diamond.

“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

New York Times Editorial: End the Phone Data Sweeps

Once again, a thorough and independent analysis of the government’s dragnet surveillance of Americans’ phone records has found the bulk data collection to be illegal and probably unconstitutional. Just as troubling, the program was found to be virtually useless at stopping terrorism, raising the obvious question: Why does President Obama insist on continuing a costly, legally dubious program when his own appointees repeatedly find that it doesn’t work? [..]

The growing agreement among those who have studied the program closely makes it imperative that the administration, along with the program’s defenders in Congress, explain why such intrusive mass surveillance is necessary at all. If Mr. Obama knows something that contradicts what he has now been told by two panels, a federal judge and multiple members of Congress, he should tell the American people now. Otherwise, he is in essence asking for their blind faith, which is precisely what he warned against during his speech last week on the future of government surveillance.

Paul Krugman: The Populist Imperative

“The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.”

John Maynard Keynes wrote that in 1936, but it applies to our own time, too. And, in a better world, our leaders would be doing all they could to address both faults.

Unfortunately, the world we actually live in falls far short of that ideal. In fact, we should count ourselves lucky when leaders confront even one of our two great economic failures. If, as has been widely reported, President Obama devotes much of his State of the Union address to inequality, everyone should be cheering him on.

They won’t, of course. Instead, he will face two kinds of sniping. The usual suspects on the right will, as always when questions of income distribution comes up, shriek “Class warfare!” But there will also be seemingly more sober voices arguing that he has picked the wrong target, that jobs, not inequality, should be at the top of his agenda.

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.

January 24 is the 24th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 341 days remaining until the end of the year (342 in leap years).

On this day in 1848, A millwright named James Marshall discovers gold along the banks of Sutter’s Creek in California, forever changing the course of history in the American West.

The California Gold Rush began at Sutter’s Mill, near Coloma. On January 24, 1848 James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River. Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold. However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies, Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” With the news of gold, local residents in California were among the first to head for the goldfields.

At the time gold was discovered, California was part of the Mexican territory of Alta California, which was ceded to the U.S. after the end of the Mexican-American War with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.

On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report the discovery of gold. On December 5, 1848, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress. Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the “forty-niners”, invaded the Gold Country of California or “Mother Lode”. As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters took over his land and stole his crops and cattle.

San Francisco had been a tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned about the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses whose owners joined the Gold Rush, but then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of San Francisco exploded from perhaps 1,00 in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850. The sudden massive influx into a remote area overwhelmed the infrastructure. Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships.[13] Wherever gold was discovered, hundreds of miners would collaborate to put up a camp and stake their claims. With names like Rough and Ready and Hangtown, each camp often had its own saloon and gambling house.

“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: The Damage From the Housing Bubble: How Much Did the Greenspan-Rubin Gang Cost Us?

Eduardo Porter asks how much the housing bubble and its collapse cost us in his column today. (He actually asks about the financial crisis, but this was secondary. The damage was caused by the loss of demand driven by bubble wealth in a context where we had nothing to replace it.) Porter throws out some estimates from different sources, but there are some fairly straightforward ways to get some numbers from authoritative sources. [..]

If we really want to have fun, we can sum the shortfall over the infinite horizon, an accounting technique that is gaining popularity among those advocating cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The loss over the infinite horizon due to the Greenspan-Rubin bubble would be over $140 trillion, or more than $400,000 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Obviously these numbers are very speculative but the basic story is very simple. If you want to have a big political battle in Washington, start yelling about people freeloading on food stamps, but if you actually care about where the real money is, look at the massive wreckage being done by the Wall Street boys and incompetent policy makers in Washington.

Juan Cole: Bill Gates Worries Pakistan Violence Blocks Polio Eradication, but Is CIA Partly to Blame?

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done an amazing job in targeting diseases for eradication, and the world is very close to getting rid of polio altogether, in part because the Gateses in recent years have given their support to the effort, which began in 1988. Cases have fallen 99% since then.

Bill Gates worried yesterday in an interview with AFP, however, that violence in Pakistan and Nigeria would interfere with the goal of wiping the disease out by 2018. [..]

Unfortunately, as the Scientific American explains, the problem of Taliban violence against vaccination workers in Pakistan was exacerbated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, which in its search for Usama Bin Laden in the northern Pakistani city of Abbotabad used agents falsely pretending to be vaccinating against Hepatitis B. The ploy failed, but news of it reached the Taliban. [..]

At a time when the US is grappling with all the dirty tricks played by the National Security Agency with regard to electronic surveillance, it is important to remember that unethical operatives have sometimes acted in rash and foolhardy ways that have produced more harm than good.

Bill Gates is perfectly correct that Taliban violence in Pakistan, which often targets non-combatants, is evil. But the evil has been compounded by unwise false flag tradecraft on the part of out of control operatives who were working for the executive branch of the US government.

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.

January 23 is the 23rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 342 days remaining until the end of the year (343 in leap years).

On this day in 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell is granted a medical degree from Geneva College in New York, becoming the first female to be officially recognized as a physician in U.S. history.

Blackwell, born in Bristol, England, came to the United States in her youth and attended the medical faculty of Geneva College, now known as Hobart College. In 1849, she graduated with the highest grades in her class and was granted an M.D.

Banned from practice in most hospitals, she was advised to go to Paris, France and train at La Maternite, but had to continue her training as a student midwife, not a physician. While she was there, her training was cut short when in November, 1849 she caught a serious right eye infection, purulent ophthalmia, from a baby she was treating. She had to have her right eye removed and replaced with a glass eye. This loss brought to an end her hopes to become a surgeon.

In 1853 Blackwell along with her sister Emily and Dr. Marie Zakrzewska, founded their own infirmary, the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children, in a single room dispensary near Tompkins Square in Manhattan. During the American Civil War, Blackwell trained many women to be nurses and sent them to the Union Army. Many women were interested and received training at this time. After the war, Blackwell had time, in 1868, to establish a Women’s Medical College at the Infirmary to train women, physicians, and doctors.

In 1857, Blackwell returned to England where she attended Bedford College for Women for one year. In 1858, under a clause in the 1858 Medical Act that recognized doctors with foreign degrees practising in Britain before 1858, she was able to become the first woman to have her name entered on the General Medical Council’s medical register (1 January 1859).

In 1869, she left her sister Emily in charge of the college and returned to England. There, with Florence Nightingale, she opened the Women’s Medical College. Blackwell taught at London School of Medicine for Women, which she had co-founded, and accepted a chair in gynecology. She retired a year later.

During her retirement, Blackwell still maintained her interest in the women’s rights movement by writing lectures on the importance of education. Blackwell is credited with opening the first training school for nurses in the United States in 1873. She also published books about diseases and proper hygiene.

She was an early outspoken opponent of circumcision and in 1894 said that “Parents, should be warned that this ugly mutilation of their children involves serious danger, both to their physical and moral health.” She was a proponent of women’s rights and pro-life.

“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

Rachel Maddow: Democracy needs dogged local journalism

If you type “Shawn Boburg” into your Web browser address bar, a strange thing happens. Boburg is a reporter for The Record newspaper, in Bergen County, N.J. But ShawnBoburg.com sends visitors to The Record’s rival, Newark’s Star-Ledger.

The man who bought the rights to Boburg’s online name – and who presumably engineered the nasty little redirect – is David Wildstein, who last week became the country’s most high-profile political appointee. After his high school classmate Chris Christie was elected governor of New Jersey in 2009, Wildstein was appointed to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for a highly paid position that, conveniently, had no job description. [..]

Most of the time, national news happens out loud: at news conferences, on the floor of Congress, in splashy indictments or court rulings. But sometimes, the most important news starts somewhere more interesting, and it has to be dug up. Our democracy depends on local journalism, whether it’s a beat reporter slogging through yet another underattended local commission meeting, or a state political reporter with enough of an ear to the ground to know where the governor might be when he isn’t where he says he is, or a traffic columnist who’s nobody’s fool.

Media Benjamin: Should Syria’s Future Be Decided by Men With Guns?

Just days before the Syria peace talks known as Geneva II are scheduled to begin on January 22, 2014, in Montreux, Switzerland, Syria’s main political opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), has agreed to attend. They will be joined by various officials of the Syrian government, UN officials and representatives from 35 countries. Swiss President Didier Burkhalter will deliver the opening remarks, followed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Then, Russian Foreign Ministry Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry will address the assembly on behalf of the forum’s initiators. But one voice will be notably underrepresented-that of Syrian women, especially the non-violent, pro-democracy activists who represent civil society. “When we talk about women at the table, the men see them as the tablecloth,” said Hibaaq Osman, an NGO leader who has been working with Syrian women and pushing for their inclusion. “The future of Syria should not exclusively be decided by those who carry guns. [..]

The Syrian women and their global allies understand that the Syria crisis is so deep and complex that it will take a long time to end the fighting and even longer to rebuild, but they see no other option. “We are lawyers, engineers and professors; we are housewives, nurses and other medical professionals; we are 50 percent of society and we are determined to stop the war,” said Rafif Jouejati, director of FREE-Syria (the Foundation to Restore Equality and Education in Syria). “If Geneva II fails, then we will keep going to make Geneva III, IV or V work. We will keep pushing the men who are making war until they make peace.”