Tag: Open Thread

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.

February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 316 days remaining until the end of the year (317 in leap years).

On this day in 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous, and famously controversial, novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Considered as one of the Great American Novels, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective).

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

The work has been popular with readers since its publication and is taken as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It has also been the continued object of study by serious literary critics. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur “nigger”, despite that the main protagonist, and the tenor of the book, is anti-racist. According to the January 20, 2011 Chase Cook/The Daily article, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel will be released in a new edition. Two words will be changed throughout the whole book, “injun” and “nigger” to “indian” and “slave”. The book is being changed as quoted in the article, “only to make it viable to the 21st century”.

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.

February 17 is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 317 days remaining until the end of the year (318 in leap years).

On this day in 1904,  Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly premieres at the La Scala theatre in Milan, Italy.

The young Puccini decided to dedicate his life to opera after seeing a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida in 1876. In his later life, he would write some of the best-loved operas of all time: La Boheme (1896), Tosca (1900), Madame Butterfly (1904) and Turandot (left unfinished when he died in 1906). Not one of these, however, was an immediate success when it opened. La Boheme, the now-classic story of a group of poor artists living in a Paris garret, earned mixed reviews, while Tosca was downright panned by critics.

Madama Butterfly (Madame Butterfly) is an opera in three acts (originally two acts) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. Puccini based his opera in part on the short story “Madame Butterfly” (1898) by John Luther Long, which was dramatized by David Belasco. Puccini also based it on the novel Madame Chrysantheme (1887) by Pierre Loti. According to one scholar, the opera was based on events that actually occurred in Nagasaki in the early 1890s.

The original version of the opera, in two acts, had its premiere on February 17, 1904, at La Scala in Milan. It was very poorly received despite the presence of such notable singers as soprano Rosina Storchio, tenor Giovanni Zenatello and baritone Giuseppe De Luca in the lead roles. This was due in large part to the late completion and inadequate time for rehearsals. Puccini revised the opera, splitting the second act into two acts and making other changes. On May 28, 1904, this version was performed in Brescia and was a huge success.

The opera is set in the city of Nagasaki. Japan’s best-known opera singer Tamaki Miura won international fame for her performances as Cio-Cio San; her statue, along with that of Puccini, can be found in Nagasaki’s Glover Garden.

Butterfly is a staple of the standard operatic repertoire for companies around the world and it is the most-performed opera in the United States, where it ranks as Number 1 in Opera America’s list of the 20 most-performed operas in North America.

“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:

Up with Chris Hayes: Joining Chris will be: Ben Jealous (@BenJealous), President and CEO of NAACP; James Poulos (@jamespoulos), producer for HuffPost Live, contributor to “Forbes” and “Vice'” Jamie Manson, columnist for the “National Catholic Reporter;” Gadeir Abbas, staff attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Saadiq Long, U.S. Air Force veteran who was barred from boarding a flight from Oklahoma to Qatar; Tyson Slocum (@TysonSlocum), producer for HuffPo Live, contributor to “Forbes” and “Vice;” Jen Daskal (@jendaskal), fellow at Georgetown University’s Center on National Security and the Law; Bill McKibben (@billmckibben), founder of 350.org, author of “EAARTH: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet;” Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd), national correspondent for “The American Conservative;” Father Bill Dailey, Roman Catholic priest, lecturer in law at the University of Notre Dame Law School and Thomas More fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture; and Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation, member of the Yinka Dene Alliance

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests on “This Week” are House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI); newly-appointed White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; and Dr. Ben Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.

The roundtable debates all the week’s politics, with ABC News’ George Will; Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-Texas; Former House Speaker and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich; Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus; and Romney 2012 campaign senior adviser Stuart Stevens.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffers’s guests this Sunday are White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; his Eminence Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington; former Governor Haley Barbour, R-Miss., and Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker.

The foreign policy panel guests are CBS News State Department Correspondent Margaret Brennan, the Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, and Foreign Policy Magazine‘s Tom Ricks.

Panel guests discussing politics are the Cook Political Report‘s Amy Walter, the Washington Post‘s Michael Gerson and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson.

The Chris Matthews Show: Joiing Mr. Matthews this Sunday are Michael Beschloss, Author; Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post National Political Reporter; David Leonhardt, The New York Times Washington Bureau Chief; and Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report National Editor

Meet the Press with David Gregory: This Sunady on MTP the guests are new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; Senator John McCain (R-AZ); and retired Space Shuttle Commander Mark Kelly.

The roundtable guests are Lt. Governor of California Gavin Newsom; Founder and Chair of Good 360, Carly Fiorina; Republican strategist Alex Castellanos; and host of MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are New York Senator Chuck Schumer; Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, and Intelligence Committee Chairman, Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers.

Joining her for a rountable discussion are former Republican Congressman Steven LaTourette; former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain; Jeff Zeleny from the New York Times, and CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash.

MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes host, Chris Hayes discusses what we have learned this week with panel guests Dedrick Muhammad, senior economic director for the NAACP; Goldie Taylor, MSNBC contributor; Diane Schansenbach, Northwest University; and Derrell Bradford, executive director of Better Education for Kids.

Marco Rubio’s ‘Working Class’ Home Is For Sale For $675,000

Rubio failed to mention his “working class” pool home in West Miami is on the market for a whopping $675,000 — and he’s moving his family to Washington, D.C.

West Miami is indeed less posh than its southeastern neighbor, Coral Gables. But public records show Rubio and his wife paid more than half a million dollars — $550,000 in fact — in 2005 for their two-story, four-bedroom, 2,649-square foot pad, which features a double-height living area, stainless steel appliances, manicured lawn, and outdoor entertaining space. As Ameriblog points out, the surrounding streets contain more quintessentially blue collar homes, but Rubio’s cul-de-sac of 5 pool homes is a “luxury enclave,” a “little white-collar heaven” in blue collar Miami.

Stop using the “wives, mothers, & daughters” rhetorical frame that defines women by their relationships to other people.

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama said: “We know our economy is stronger when our wives, mothers, and daughters can live their lives free from discrimination in the workplace and free from the fear of domestic violence.”

This “our wives, mothers, and daughters” phrase is one he routinely employs, but it is counterproductive to the women’s equality the President is ostensibly supporting.

Defining women by their relationships to other people is reductive, misogynist, and alienating to women who do not define ourselves exclusively by our relationships to others. Further, by referring to “our” wives et al, the President appears to be talking to The Men of America about Their Women, rather than talking to men AND women.

Please embrace inclusive language, Mr. President.

Italy’s ex-intelligence chief given 10-year sentence for role in CIA kidnapping

by Glenn Greenwald. The Guardian

Such accountability for high-level government officials is inconceivable in the US, highlighting its culture of impunity

A US State Department official on Monday “expressed concern” about what he called “a ‘climate of impunity’ over abuses by police and security forces” – in Egypt. The official, Michael Posner, warned that failure to investigate Egyptian state agents responsible for “cruel treatment of those in their custody” – including torture – creates “a lack of meaningful accountability for these actions”. Last week, I wrote that “I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur of US government statements that are so drowning in obvious, glaring irony that the officials uttering them simply must have been mischievously cackling to themselves when they created them,” and this American denunciation of Egypt’s “climate of impunity” almost certainly goes to the top of the list.

After all, Michael Posner works for the very same administration that not only refused to prosecute or even investigate US officials who tortured, kidnapped and illegally eavesdropped, but actively shielded them all from all forms of accountability: criminal, civil or investigative. Indeed, Posner works for the very same State Department that actively impeded efforts by countries whose citizens were subjected to those abuses – such as Spain and Germany – to investigate them. Being lectured by the US State Department about a “culture of impunity” is like being lectured by David Cameron about supporting Arab dictators.

Welcome 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

When I lived in Europe I got hooked on blood oranges, small oranges with dark ruby red pulp and mottled orange-red skins. Their flavor is deep and multidimensional, with nuances of berries and cherries. And like berries, cherries and other highly nutritious dark red, blue and purple fruits and vegetables, blood oranges have high levels of antioxidant-rich anthocyanins.

The same farmer I bought blood oranges from at my farmers’ market was selling over-ripe fuyu persimmons at a bargain price. I bought a few pounds for pureé, some of which I used for a sweet persimmon spice bread and some of which I froze. Persimmons are another fruit rich in phytonutrients like lutein and lycopene, zeaxanthin and cryptoxanthi, which are all reported to be rich in antioxidants.

~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: Renew the Violence Against Women Act

This week’s 78-to-22 vote in the Senate to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act provided a refreshing demonstration of bipartisanship that the House would do well to emulate. Last year, the Republican-led House blocked the act’s renewal over objections to new protections for gay, immigrant and American Indian victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It falls to Speaker John Boehner to see that this does not happen again.  [..]

Seventeen Republican members have written to Mr. Boehner urging action on a Violence Against Women Act renewal that reaches “all victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.” This is a sign that the G.O.P.’s rejection by female voters in November is causing some rethinking. Mr. Boehner should allow a vote on the Senate bill.

Gail Collins: Senators Overboard!

We seem to be short one secretary of defense.

Well, there’s Leon Panetta, who has already had his farewell ceremony, given his farewell briefing and his farewell address, then flown home to California. But the Pentagon probably still has his cell number in case a war breaks out.

And there’s Chuck Hagel, nominated yet totally-still-not-confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A Senate that is beginning to resemble a bad Carnival cruise. They’re dead in the water, nothing’s working and the chief engineer is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

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.

February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 318 days remaining until the end of the year (319 in leap years).

On this day in 2006, the last Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army. The Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) refers to a United States Army medical unit serving as a fully functional hospital in a combat area of operations. The units were first established in August 1945, and were deployed during the Korean War and later conflicts.

The MASH unit was conceived by Michael E. DeBakey and other surgical consultants as the “mobile army surgical hospital.” Col. Harry A. Ferguson, the executive officer of the Tokyo Army Hospital, also aided in the establishment of the MASH program. It was an alternative to the system of portable surgical hospitals, field hospitals, and general hospitals used during World War II. It was designed to get experienced personnel closer to the front, so that the wounded could be treated sooner and with greater success. Casualties were first treated at the point of injury through buddy aid, then routed through a battalion aid station for emergency stabilizing surgery, and finally routed to the MASH for the most extensive treatment. This proved to be highly successful; it was noted that during the Korean War, a seriously wounded soldier that made it to a MASH unit alive had a 97% chance of survival once he received treatment.

The MASH unit made its way into popular culture through the 1968 novel M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker, the 1970 feature film based on the novel, and the long-running television sitcom (1972-1983) based on the movie. A 1953 film, Battle Circus, also took place at a MASH.

MASH units continued to serve in various conflicts including the Vietnam War. In October 1990 the 5th MASH, 44th Medical Brigade, XVIIIth AirBorne Corps, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, deployed to Saudi Arabia and was the first fully functional Army Hospital in country. This unit moved forward six times, always as the first up hospital for the region. In March 1991 the 5th MASH was operationally attached to the 24th Infantry Division to provide forward surgical care (often right on the front battle lines) to the combat units that attacked the western flank of Iraqi Army. In March 1991, the 159th MASH of the Louisiana Army National Guard operated in Iraq in support of the 3rd Armored Division during Operation Desert Storm.

In 1997, the last MASH unit in South Korea was deactivated. A deactivating ceremony was held in South Korea, which was attended by several members of the cast of the M*A*S*H television series, including Larry Linville (who played Frank Burns), and David Ogden Stiers, (who played Charles Winchester). MASH units have since been replaced by the U.S. Army’s Combat Support Hospitals.

Worldwide, the last MASH unit was deactivated on October 16, 2006. The 212th MASH – based in Miesau Ammo Depot, Germany – was the first U.S. Army hospital established in Iraq in 2003, supporting coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was the most decorated combat hospital in the U.S. Army, with 28 Campaign streamers on the organizational colors. The 212th MASH’s last deployment was to Pakistan to support the 2005 Kashmir earthquake relief operations. The U.S. State Department bought the MASH’s tents and medical equipment, owned by the DoD, and donated the entire hospital to the Pakistani military, a donation worth $4.5 million.

The 212th MASH’s unit sign now resides at the Army Medical Department’s Museum in San Antonio, Texas.

MASH in M*A*S*H

Out of necessity, the “4077th MASH” unit depicted in the television series was considerably smaller than many of the MASH units deployed by the United States in the Korean War. In the series, about four surgeons depicted as being assigned to the unit, the administrative staff consists of the C.O. and his assistant, and few soldiers were shown to be present. By comparison, the 8063rd Mobile Army Surgical Hospital had personnel including twelve nurses, eighty-nine enlisted soldiers of assorted medical and non-medical specialties, one Medical Service Corps (MSC) officer, one Warrant Officer and ten other commissioned officers of assorted specialties. On one occasion, the unit handled over 600 casualties in a 24 hour period.

“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 Defense Secretary, Blocked by Politics

For the last four years, Senate Republicans have used the power of the filibuster to block legislation, bottle up nominees to courts and government departments, and strangle federal agencies, even though they are in the minority. On Thursday, they hit a new low. They successfully filibustered Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, the first time a cabinet nominee for this post has been prevented from receiving an up-or-down vote.

The Constitution says the Senate must give or withhold its consent to presidential nominees; it does not give minority blocs the power to determine the outcome. The Senate could have restored the power of a majority last month if Mr. Reid had agreed to a proposal to reduce this abuse, but he did not. Though Republicans are determined to turn cabinet nominations into tortuous ordeals, Democrats gave them the power to do so.

Paul Krugman: Rubio and the Zombies

The State of the Union address was not, I’m sorry to say, very interesting. True, the president offered many good ideas. But we already know that almost none of those ideas will make it past a hostile House of Representatives.

On the other hand, the G.O.P. reply, delivered by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, was both interesting and revelatory. And I mean that in the worst way. For Mr. Rubio is a rising star, to such an extent that Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him “The Republican Savior.” What we learned Tuesday, however, was that zombie economic ideas have eaten his brain.

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.

February 15 is the 46th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 319 days remaining until the end of the year (320 in leap years).

On this day in 1903, toy store owner and inventor Morris Michtom places two stuffed bears in his shop window, advertising them as Teddy bears. Michtom had earlier petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt for permission to use his nickname, Teddy. The president agreed and, before long, other toy manufacturers began turning out copies of Michtom’s stuffed bears, which soon became a national childhood institution.

The name Teddy Bear comes from former United States President Theodore Roosevelt, whose nickname was “Teddy”. The name originated from an incident on a bear-hunting trip in Mississippi in November 1902, to which Roosevelt was invited by Mississippi Governor Andrew H. Longino. There were several other hunters competing, and most of them had already killed an animal. A suite of Roosevelt’s attendants, led by Holt Collier, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American Black Bear to a willow tree after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested that he should shoot it. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a white handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter.

Morris Michtom saw the drawing of Roosevelt and the bear cub and was inspired to create a new toy. He created a little stuffed bear cub and put it in his shop window with a sign that read “Teddy’s bear,” after sending a bear to Roosevelt and receiving permission to use his name. The toys were an immediate success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co.

At the same time in Germany, the Steiff firm, unaware of Michtom’s bear, produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff‘s designs. They exhibited the toy at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903 and exported 3,000 to the United States.

By 1906 manufacturers other than Michtom and Steiff had joined in and the craze for “Roosevelt Bears” was such that ladies carried them everywhere, children were photographed with them, and Roosevelt used one as a mascot in his bid for re-election.

American educator Seymour Eaton wrote the children’s book series The Roosevelt Bears, while composer John Bratton wrote “The Teddy Bear Two Step” which, with the addition of Jimmy Kennedy‘s lyrics, became the song “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic”.

Early teddy bears were made to look like real bears, with extended snouts and beady eyes. Today’s teddy bears tend to have larger eyes and foreheads and smaller noses, babylike features that make them more attractive to buyers because they enhance the toy’s cuteness, and may even be pre-dressed.