Tag: Open Thread

On This Day In History November 25

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

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

November 25 is the 329th day of the year (330th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 36 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1999, The United Nations General Assembly passes a resolution designating November 25 the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The resolution, which was introduced by the Dominican Republic, marked the anniversary of the death of three sisters, Maria, Teresa, and Minerva Mirabel, who were brutally murdered there in 1960. While women in Latin America and the Caribbean had honored the day since 1981, all UN countries did not formally recognize it until 1999.

Many organizations, including the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), had been pushing for international recognition of the date for some time.

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women

The Mirabal sisters were four Dominican political dissidents who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Three of the sisters were assassinated by persons unknown.

Patria Mercedes Mirabal (February 27, 1924 – November 25, 1960), Belgica Adela “Dede” Mirabal-Reyes (March 1, 1925 – present), Maria Argentina Minerva Mirabal (March 12, 1926 – November 25, 1960) and Antonia Maria Teresa Mirabal (October 15, 1935 – November 25, 1960) were citizens of the Dominican Republic who fervently opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Dede Mirabal was not assassinated and has lived to tell the stories of the death of her sisters. Presently, she lives in Salcedo, Dominican Republic in the house where the sisters were born. She works to preserve her sisters’ memory through the Museo Hermanas Mirabal which is also located in Salcedo and was home to the women for the final ten months of their lives. She published a book Vivas en El Jardin, released on August 25, 2009.

The Mirabal women grew up in an upper class, well-cultured environment. Their father was a successful businessman. All became married family women. When Trujillo came to power, their family lost almost all its fortune. They believed that Trujillo would send their country into economic chaos. Minerva became particularly passionate about ending the dictatorship of Trujillo after talking extensively with an uncle of hers. Influenced by her uncle, Minerva became more involved in the anti-Trujillo movement. She studied law and became a lawyer, but because she declined Trujillo’s romantic advances, he ordered that while she would be issued a degree she was not to receive her practitioner’s license. Her sisters followed suit, and they eventually formed a group of opponents to the Trujillo regime, known as the Movement of the Fourteenth of June. Within that group, they were known as “The Butterflies” (Las Mariposas in Spanish) because that was the underground name that Minerva was given. Two of the sisters, Maria Argentina Minerva Mirabal and Antonia Maria Teresa Mirabal, were incarcerated and tortured on several occasions. While in prison they were repeatedly raped. Three of the sisters’ husbands were incarcerated at La Victoria Penitentiary in Santo Domingo.

Despite these setbacks, they persisted in fighting to end Trujillo’s leadership. After the sisters’ numerous imprisonments, Trujillo was blamed for their murders, but this is now being questioned. During an interview after Trujillo’s assasination, General Pupo Roman claimed to have personal knowledge that they were killed by Luis Amiama Tio, perhaps to create a rise in anti-Trujillo sentiment. On November 25, 1960, he sent men to intercept the three women after they visited their husbands in prison. The unarmed sisters were led into a sugar cane field and executed, they didn’t even have the luxury of being shot, instead they were beaten to death, along with their driver, Rufino de la Cruz. Their car was later thrown off of a mountain known as La Cumbre, between the cities of Santiago and Puerto Plata, in order to make their deaths look like an accident.

This day also marks the beginning of the 16 days of Activism against Gender Violence. The end of the 16 Days is December 10, International Human Rights Day.

Rant of the Week: Jon Stewart: Dem Nukem

Dem Nukem

Harry Reid bypasses the Senate’s filibustering Republican minority by launching the “nuclear option.”

   Stewart: Actually, Sen. McConnell, he did try to make a more substantive case against this filibuster amending.

   McConnell: I realize this sort of wishful thinking might appeal to the uninitiated newcomers in the Democratic conference who’ve served exactly zero days in the minority, but the rest of you guys in the conference should know better.

   Those of you who’ve been in the minority before should know better.

   Stewart: Mark my words! One day you Democrats will want to be obstructionist assholes making a mockery of our system of government. And who’ll be laughing then? Turtle Man.

On This Day In History November 24

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

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

November 24 is the 328th day of the year (329th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 37 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin’s theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called “natural selection.” In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species.

Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. For the sixth edition of 1872, the short title was changed to The Origin of Species. Darwin’s book introduced the scientific theory that populations evolve over the course of generations through a process of natural selection. It presented a body of evidence that the diversity of life arose by common descent through a branching pattern of evolution. Darwin included evidence that he had gathered on the Beagle expedition in the 1830s and his subsequent findings from research, correspondence, and experimentation.

Various evolutionary ideas had already been proposed to explain new findings in biology. There was growing support for such ideas among dissident anatomists and the general public, but during the first half of the 19th century the English scientific establishment was closely tied to the Church of England, while science was part of natural theology. Ideas about the transmutation of species were controversial as they conflicted with the beliefs that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and that humans were unique, unrelated to animals. The political and theological implications were intensely debated, but transmutation was not accepted by the scientific mainstream.

The book was written for non-specialist readers and attracted widespread interest upon its publication. As Darwin was an eminent scientist, his findings were taken seriously and the evidence he presented generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. The debate over the book contributed to the campaign by T.H. Huxley and his fellow members of the X Club to secularise science by promoting scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution, with a branching pattern of common descent, had occurred, but scientists were slow to give natural selection the significance that Darwin thought appropriate. During the “eclipse of Darwinism” from the 1880s to the 1930s, various other mechanisms of evolution were given more credit. With the development of the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s, Darwin’s concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection became central to  modern evolutionary theory, now the unifying concept of the life sciences.

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

Punting the Punditsis 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 Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA); Foreign Relations Committee member Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA); Facebook CEO and FWD.us founder Mark Zuckerberg; and author and poet Dr. Maya Angelou.

The roundtable guests are ABC News’ Cokie Roberts; Democratic strategist and ABC News contributor Donna Brazile; ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd; and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent assigned to Jacqueline Kennedy; House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD); and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

Joining him for a panel discussion are the New York TimesDavid Sanger; Reuters Columnist David Rohde; Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel; and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: MTP will not air this Sunday due to coverage of Brazil’s Formula 1 Race.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA); Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY); Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI).

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

Soup to Start

Soup to Start photo recipehealthpromo-tmagArticle_zps6b622929.jpg

I love the idea of soup as part of the Thanksgiving meal. There are so many fall vegetables that make delicious, light purées, and that you might want to include in your Thanksgiving menu. But the prospect of a first course with the additional bowls and soup spoons to place and clear, when the main course and trimmings and dessert are the real focus of this meal, gives me pause.

But this year I found a solution, and it solves not just the soup conundrum but also the problem of what to serve before the meal, when guests and family are trickling in, maybe some people are watching football, and you need and want to serve something good without filling people up too much. I will be serving soup shots in demitasse espresso cups. They won’t require spoons, as four of the choices are purées and one is a consommé.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Parsnip and Carrot Soup With Tarragon

A fragrant soup that lets the flavor of the vegetables shine through.

Dried Porcini Consommé

A refreshing and light soup that can be an appetizer or full first course.

Puréed Mushroom Soup

This soup is made without cream, but still tastes very rich.

Celeriac, Potato, Leek and Apple Soup

A sweet and savory mixture that works well as a soup.

Turnip, Leek and Potato Soup

A simple French soup that works well regardless of which vegetable gets the emphasis.

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

Zoë Carpenter: Inequality Is (Literally) Killing America

Only a few miles separate the Baltimore neighborhoods of Roland Park and Upton Druid Heights. But residents of the two areas can measure the distance between them in years-twenty years, to be exact. That’s the difference in life expectancy between Roland Park, where people live to be 83 on average, and Upton Druid Heights, where they can expect to die at 63.

Underlying these gaps in life expectancy are vast economic disparities. Roland Park is an affluent neighborhood with an unemployment rate of 3.4 percent, and a median household income above $90,000. More than 17 percent of people in Upton Druid Heights are unemployed, and the median household income is just $13,388.

It’s no secret that this sort of economic inequality is increasing nationwide; the disparity between America’s richest and poorest is the widest it’s been since the Roaring Twenties. Less discussed are the gaps in life expectancy that have widened over the past twenty-five years between America’s counties, cities and neighborhoods. While the country as a whole has gotten richer and healthier, the poor have gotten poorer, the middle class has shrunk and Americans without high school diplomas have seen their life expectancy slide back to what it was in the 1950s. Economic inequalities manifest not in numbers, but in sick and dying bodies

Eugene Robinson: Enough of GOP Obstruction

Way to nuke ’em, Harry.

It was time-actually, long past time-for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to invoke the “nuclear option” and ask his colleagues to change the Senate’s rules. This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about making what has been called “the world’s greatest deliberative body” function the way the Framers of the Constitution intended. [..]

The Senate was designed by the Founders to move slowly but not to be paralyzed. Republican obstruction of presidential appointments makes the government less able to do the people’s work-and less reflective of the people’s will. Elections are supposed to have consequences.

It was time to push the button.

Juan Cole: Another Reason to Divest: Global Outrage at Dirty Coal Threatens Investors’ Profits

The divestment movement on US college campuses against Big Carbon (coal, oil and gas) signals more than just the arrival of a new, determined and idealistic generation of students. It is a harbinger of danger for investors.

In addition to the keen competition thermal coal is facing as a source for electricity generation from fracked natural gas and from wind turbines, coal in particular faces a major public relations problem. It is the dirtiest way of producing electricity, causing lung problems and probably contributing to autism via mercury emissions, and it is the major cause of global warming.

The value of coal stocks is to outward seeming backed by trillions of dollars in coal reserves, but what if that substance is actually worthless? Coal is already being shorted by a major brokerage, which points out that even heavily coal-dependent China plans to move away from the fuel because of pollution concerns (like that coal plants are making the air thick as pea soup and giving small children lung cancer).

Robert Parry: Who Controls US Foreign Policy?

The new Saudi-Israeli alliance wants to drag the U.S. government – and military – into the region’s Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict by sabotaging negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and the Syrian civil war

In the case of Syria, the U.S. government has been under pressure from Israel and Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest Sunni Arab country, to enter the conflict on the side of the Syrian Sunni rebels and thus to strike a blow at Shiite-ruled Iran, which is backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. To push this goal of U.S. intervention, the Israelis and the Saudis have established what amounts to an anti-Shiite alliance based on their mutual hatred of Iran. [..]

But this joint Saudi-Israeli assault on what’s known as “the Shiite crescent” – an arc from Iran through Iraq and Syria to the Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon – is being fought on a variety of fronts, including on Capitol Hill and in the U.S. news media where American neoconservatives are working to deepen U.S. military involvement in Syria and to shoot down an interim agreement that would constrain but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.

David Sirota: Ending the Fire Zone Subsidy

In the American West, “zoning” is often viewed as a taboo term. Indeed, despite a population boom and the rise of major cities in the region, this area is still seen as the wide-open frontier. The libertarian zeal that comes with that frontier spirit naturally leads many to believe they should be able to build whatever they want wherever they want.

One obvious problem with that attitude, though, is how the inevitable costs associated with willfully irresponsible development decisions are borne not just by the individual property owner, but by all taxpayers. Such is the case with firefighting. Over the last decade, as so much suburban sprawl has reached into known wildfire zones, governments are still on the financial hook for protecting homes from blazes. That’s not frontier freedom. That’s forcing taxpayers who make responsible residential decisions to subsidize-and thus encourage-irresponsible development decisions.

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On This Day In History November 23

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

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

November 23 is the 327th day of the year (328th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 38 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1936, the first issue of the pictorial magazine Life is published.

Life actually had its start earlier in the 20th century as a different kind of magazine: a weekly humor publication, not unlike today’s The New Yorker in its use of tart cartoons, humorous pieces and cultural reporting. When the original Life folded during the Great Depression, the influential American publisher Henry Luce bought the name and re-launched the magazine as a picture-based periodical on this day in 1936. By this time, Luce had already enjoyed great success as the publisher of Time, a weekly news magazine.

In 1936 publisher Henry Luceaid $92,000 to the owners of Life magazine because he sought the name for Time Inc. Wanting only the old Life’s name in the sale, Time Inc. sold Life’s subscription list, features, and goodwill to Judge. Convinced that pictures could tell a story instead of just illustrating text, Luce launched Life on November 23, 1936. The third magazine published by Luce, after Time in 1923 and Fortune in 1930, Life gave birth to the photo magazine in the U.S., giving as much space and importance to pictures as to words. The first issue of Life, which sold for ten cents (approximately USD $1.48 in 2007, see Cost of Living Calculator) featured five pages of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s pictures.

When the first issue of Life magazine appeared on the newsstands, the U.S. was in the midst of the Great Depression and the world was headed toward war. Adolf Hitler was firmly in power in Germany. In Spain, General Francisco Franco’s rebel army was at the gates of Madrid; German Luftwaffe pilots and bomber crews, calling themselves the Condor Legion, were honing their skills as Franco’s air arm. Italy under Benito Mussolini annexed Ethiopia. Luce ignored tense world affairs when the new Life was unveiled: the first issue depicted the Fort Peck Dam in Montana photographed by Margaret Bourke-White.

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: Expanding Social Security

For many years there has been one overwhelming rule for people who wanted to be considered serious inside the Beltway. It was this: You must declare your willingness to cut Social Security in the name of “entitlement reform.” It wasn’t really about the numbers, which never supported the notion that Social Security faced an acute crisis. It was instead a sort of declaration of identity, a way to show that you were an establishment guy, willing to impose pain (on other people, as usual) in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But a funny thing has happened in the past year or so. Suddenly, we’re hearing open discussion of the idea that Social Security should be expanded, not cut. Talk of Social Security expansion has even reached the Senate, with Tom Harkin introducing legislation that would increase benefits. A few days ago Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a stirring floor speech making the case for expanded benefits.

Where is this coming from? One answer is that the fiscal scolds driving the cut-Social-Security orthodoxy have, deservedly, lost a lot of credibility over the past few years. (Giving the ludicrous Paul Ryan an award for fiscal responsibility? And where’s my debt crisis?) Beyond that, America’s overall retirement system is in big trouble. There’s just one part of that system that’s working well: Social Security. And this suggests that we should make that program stronger, not weaker.

New York York Editorial Board: Democracy Returns to the Senate

For five years, Senate Republicans have refused to allow confirmation votes on dozens of perfectly qualified candidates nominated by President Obama for government positions. They tried to nullify entire federal agencies by denying them leaders. They abused Senate rules past the point of tolerance or responsibility. And so they were left enraged and threatening revenge on Thursday when a majority did the only logical thing and stripped away their power to block the president’s nominees.

In a 52-to-48 vote that substantially altered the balance of power in Washington, the Senate changed its most infuriating rule and effectively ended the filibuster on executive and judicial appointments. From now on, if any senator tries to filibuster a presidential nominee, that filibuster can be stopped with a simple majority, not the 60-vote requirement of the past. That means a return to the democratic process of giving nominees an up-or-down vote, allowing them to be either confirmed or rejected by a simple majority.

Jim Sensenbrenner: The NSA overreach poses a serious threat to our economy

Genuine NSA reform is a Constitutional and economic necessity. Transparency and privacy are critical for citizens and tech firms

Technology companies revolutionized the global economy by creating an interconnected, high-speed international marketplace.

Internet and telecommunication companies empower businesses to conduct complex transactions and connect with customers, clients and governments across the globe, placing a premium on privacy, accountability and transparency.  These principles are the currency of their success, because as private citizens, we entrust these companies with very personal information.

The overreach by the National Security Agency (NSA) does more than infringe on American civil liberties. It poses a serious threat to our economic vitality. Reports from the business community are clear: indiscriminate collection of data by the NSA damages American companies’ growth, credibility, competitive advantage and bottom line.

John Nichols: If Congress Is Safe From the War on Drugs, Why Not Everyone Else?

Florida Congressman Trey Radel, who has wisely determined that he does not want to become an American version of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, says he will take a leave of absence from the US House of Representatives to address his penchant for cocaine. [..]

But it would be good for Radel and his colleagues to note that he has identified his challenge as a disease, not a bad habit.

That’s a very different line than was taken by the House Republicans Caucus (of which Radel has been an enthusiastic member) when the chamber this year gave voice-vote approval to an amendment that allows states to require drug-testing of food stamp recipients. Why would they seek to penalize victims of what the congressman says is a disease? Why would they go after the neediest Americans in what Congressman Jim McGovern-the House’s most ardent advocate for nutrition programs-with a “degrading and mean-spirited” approach?

Dawood Ahmed: America’s ‘army of lawyers’ is almost as deadly as its drones

The US has relentlessly argued that targeted killings are legal under international law. The third world has to push back

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Some ascribe this quote to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels; others say Hitler authored the idea. In Mein Kampf he did speak of the invention of a lie so “colossal” that few would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.

Whoever coined the idea, the point is this: controlling the narrative matters immensely.

Military prowess is not enough in this age. And the United States knows it. America’s “other army” – its less visible but equally potent cadre of skillful lawyers (in government and even in private institutions) – dutifully got busy crafting appropriate international law narratives for the War on Terror. They realized that winning the battle for defining “legality” on the world stage was critical.

Patrick Toomey & Brett Max Kaufman: How did we let the NSA spying get this bad?

A secret court’s backwards logic opened the floodgates for the NSA to gather metadata. We’re still feeling the repercussions

After yet another avalanche of documents showing how the NSA has spied on our communications for years, Americans should be asking, how did we get here?

The answer is simple: secrecy poisoned our system of checks and balances. Both our courts and Congress failed to put meaningful limits on the NSA’s surveillance, trading away our privacy in the process. The American people never consented to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) effort to “collect it all” by tracking and inspecting every digital footprint we leave behind. Instead, the secret opinions of a secret court retroactively blessed a vast NSA surveillance program years after it began.

The more we learn, the clearer it is that our surveillance laws and oversight rules are in dramatic need of reform, like the USA Freedom Act, that provide both transparency and real protections for privacy.

On This Day In History November 22

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.

November 22 is the 326th day of the year (327th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 39 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1990, Margaret Thatcher, the first woman prime minister in British history, announces her resignation after 11 years in Britain’s top office.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (born 13 October 1925) served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. Thatcher is the only woman to have held either post.

Born in Grantham in Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, Thatcher went to school at Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School in Grantham, where she was head girl in 1942-43. She read chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford and later trained as a barrister. She won a seat in the 1959 general election, becoming the MP for Finchley as a Conservative. When Edward Heath formed a government in 1970, he appointed Thatcher Secretary of State for Education and Science. Four years later, she backed Keith Joseph in his bid to become Conservative Party leader but he was forced to drop out of the election. In 1975 Thatcher entered the contest herself and became leader of the Conservative Party. At the 1979 general election she became Britain’s first female Prime Minister.

In her foreword to the 1979 Conservative manifesto, Thatcher wrote of “a feeling of helplessness, that a once great nation has somehow fallen behind.” She entered 10 Downing Street determined to reverse what she perceived as a precipitate national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation, particularly of the financial sector, flexible labour markets, and the selling off and closing down of state owned companies and withdrawing subsidy to others. Amid a recession and high unemployment, Thatcher’s popularity declined, though economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support and she was re-elected in 1983. She took a hard line against trade unions, survived the Brighton hotel bombing assassination attempt and opposed the Soviet Union (her tough-talking rhetoric gained her the nickname the “Iron Lady”); she was re-elected for an unprecedented third term in 1987. The following years would prove difficult, as her Poll tax plan was largely unpopular, and her views regarding the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister in November 1990 after Michael Heseltine’s challenge to her leadership of the Conservative Party.

Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister was the longest since that of Lord Salisbury and the longest continuous period in office since Lord Liverpool in the early 19th century. She was the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom, and the first of only four women to hold any of the four great offices of state. She holds a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which entitles her to sit in the House of Lords.

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

Gail Collins: The Public Needs a Nap

One of the many problems with the Senate filibuster rule is that it requires us to think about the Senate filibuster rule.  The American public has other things to do! The American public is extremely busy! The holidays are coming up, and the American public’s workload is somewhat larger than, say, that of the House of Representatives, which is planning to show up for four full days in the month of December.

So give the American public a break. [..]

And the bottom line is that it’s a good thing to give the minority party some muscle to stop bad or extremist nominees from getting lifetime judicial appointments. But we have crossed the line to crazy when the minority party can announce that the woman who argued 32 cases before the Supreme Court can’t be on the D.C. District Circuit Court of Appeals because it’s too expensive.

Change the rules.

Glen Ford: Obama and Holder Let Gangsters Pay Fine, Continue Business As Usual

Imagine if Charles “Lucky” Luciano and his “Commission” representing the five reigning New York Mafia families plus the Chicago mob had been immune from law enforcement meddling in their activities, from the establishment of the “Syndicate” in 1931 to the present day. By now, Luciano’s gangster heirs would be the unchallenged rulers of economic and political life in the United States and, by imperial extension, the entire capitalist world. [..]

The latest Obama administration “settlement” of JP Morgan’s ongoing criminal enterprise amounts to a $13 billion fine, a mere speed bump in the unbroken spree of lawlessness that “helped create a financial storm that devastated millions of Americans,” in the words of Associate Attorney General Tony West. Although it is “the largest penalty in history,” Dimon and his fellow banksters are also the richest criminals in history – the most powerful cartel of all time – who can easily afford the levy. The bursting of their housing securities bubble may have wrecked much of the global economy in 2008, but Dimon and his boys made out like pure bandits in the aftermath, consolidating their positions at the center of a dying system. JP Morgan emerged as the biggest U.S. bank in terms of assets, a gleaming tower standing amid the ruins it created. Such is the logic of late stage finance capitalism: catastrophe becomes “creative destruction,” which begets greater economic monopoly, resulting in unchallengeable political supremacy, which makes Dimon too big to jail, whether he’s actually a friend of Obama, or not.

Kevin Gosztola: In Yemen, Terrorism Comes from Above

“What could possibly justify terrorizing a community of 250,000 just for the purpose of killing one person?”

Can anyone imagine the demoralization and powerlessness that could consume a person living in a village where militant thugs from al Qaeda take over the village and are driven out by the community without any support from a government that is supposed to be allied with the US government in a fight against al Qaeda? Can anyone imagine thinking you have driven out all of these people when suddenly the skies erupt and a drone fires a Hellfire missile at someone in your village? Can anyone imagine those victims then being people who may not be al Qaeda members? And then, finally, can anyone imagine witnessing the return of militant thugs from al Qaeda, who wish to come back and take advantage of the drone strike by recruiting people to join their fight against the Yemeni government and America?

It is a circle of terror that no community should ever have to experience, and it is one of the many glaring examples of the bankruptcy of America’s drone policy.

Mike Lux: Elizabeth Warren Nails It: We Shouldn’t Be Fighting Each Other for a Handful of Crumbs

Elizabeth Warren showed again yesterday how she has become our country’s leading fighter for the middle class and those in poverty. In a passionate speech about Social Security, she tore apart the phony argument that greedy seniors were taking money away from our kids, and she showed why we should be increasing Social Security benefits right now, not cutting them. Warren laid out the facts about a pension system in tatters, that those retiring have less savings and wealth in their homes, and how the necessities of life — food, groceries, energy costs, health care — are running higher than the general inflation number, not lower. She took on the chained CPI cut that the president has proposed directly and took it apart point by point. [..]

Those of who have worked with lower and even middle income seniors know how much every dollar matters to them. These retirees are not greedy, and they are not living in luxury. In the years to come, most will not have pensions, many will have little to nothing in savings, and if they have homes they may not be worth nearly as much as they once were. What the facts, common sense, and compassion all call for is expanding Social Security benefits, not cutting them. This should be a core issue for all Democrats, not just the progressives like Elizabeth Warren. This is a fundamental values issue, not something to be traded away.

Chris Weigant: Launch the ‘Nuke,’ Harry

There’s an old adage in politics that the way to win political struggles is to “bring a gun to a knife fight.” If this imagery isn’t violent enough for you, the subject on the table now is whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is considering what is called the “nuclear option.” If bringing a gun wins a knife fight, then I guess dropping a “nuke” would pretty much obliterate the opposition. Which is why the term “nuclear option” was coined in the first place — to show what a radical move it would be. [..]

So far, it hasn’t happened. Instead, what might be called “nuclear deterrence” has worked. Merely threatening to “go nuclear” has been sufficient to make the opposition party back down, usually after some “Gang Of (insert number)” group hashes out a détente of sorts. This time, however, this doesn’t appear to be a viable route.

Robert Sheer: Be Thankful for the People Struggling to Limit NSA Spying

On Monday the Supreme Court, ruling on an emergency petition, declined to do the right thing and hear a case challenging the massive government surveillance of Americans, revealed by the leaks from Edward Snowden. For the time being, the court acceded to the Obama administration’s argument that it has the legal right to continue its unprecedented bulk collection of American phone records without any restraint. That throws the ball back to Congress, where a historic battle, crossing party lines, is already underway.

On one starkly polarizing side is the dark figure of Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat and reigning chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. One of the first to denounce Snowden for treason for letting the public know the ugly truths about government spying she had long concealed, Feinstein already has pushed a bill though her committee that provides the NSA’s spying with additional legal cover.  

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