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:

Up with Chris Hayes: The guest list had not been announced at the time this diary was published.

The Melissa Harris-Perry Show: The guest list had not been announced at the time this diary was published.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: This Week’s guests Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), debate President Obama’s historic shift in support of same-sex marriage; and the roundtable debates all the week’s politics, with Republican strategist Mary Matalin, former New York governor and host of Current TV’s “Viewpoint” Eliot Spitzer, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder and chairman Ralph Reed, Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, and Politico senior political reporter Maggie Haberman.

Let’s hope that the George & his panel hold bigoted lying Reed’s feet to the fire like Chris Matthews did.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are former Solicitor General and opponent of California’s anti gay marriage Prop 8, Ted Olson; Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) will discuss same sex marriage and the President’s announcement. A panel with Tony Perkins, the former head of the Christian Coalition; Clay Aiken, singer and winner of American Idol ; Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry; and Mark McKinnon, Newsweek Contributor will debate LGBT issues and marriage equality. Also, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) on the latest alleged terrorist threat. In honor of mother’s day, four moms talk about the women’s vote and Campaign 2012: Former White House Communications Director for Pres. Obama Anita Dunn; Conservative strategist Bay Buchanan; the Washington Post‘s Melinda Henneberger and CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Norah O’Donnell.

Bay Buchanan wrote a book, prepared for the hype.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests are Gloria Borger, CNN

Senior Political Analyst; Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast Editor, The Dish; Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor; and Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post National Political Reporter

Meet the Press with David Gregory: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon joins MTP for an exclusive interview after his company announced a market-shaking $2 billion trading loss; the head of the Republican party, Reince Priebus, joins us for an overview of the campaign and a preview of the battle ahead; Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) joins MTP exclusively to respond to Jamie Dimon and make his case for why more government oversight could have prevented JPMorgan Chase’s loss; the co-anchor of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Andrew Ross Sorkin joins us to help to break it all down.

The roundtable weighs in: Lt. Governor of California Gavin Newsom; Chairman of the American Conservative Union Al Cardenas; Washington Post columnists Kathleen Parker and Jonathan Capehart; and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Dick Durban (D- IL) and Sen John Cornyn (R-TX) discuss the Senate elections; Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper weighs in with an up date on his push for  Civil Unions in his state; Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer will judge Mitt Romney’s evangelical tightrope; and more om fear and terror with Homeland Security Chairman Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Congressman Peter King (R-NY).

Mothers’ Day breakfast order: French Toast, crisp bacon and Mimosas. Happy Mothers’ Day

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

   I decided to devote most of the recipes this week to dishes that involve cooking lettuce. I couldn’t resist one simple romaine and radish salad, but the rest of the dishes are cooked. I used the tough outer leaves of romaine or leaf lettuce in blended sauces and entire heads in soups. I tested several classic French braised lettuce recipes, but as promising as these looked on paper, they didn’t appeal to me nearly as much as the more vibrant Chinese stir-fried lettuce dishes I tried, or the puréed soups. In the French braised dishes, the life seemed to be cooked out of the lettuces.

   I used sturdy lettuces like romaine and leaf lettuce for the cooked dishes, not tender spring mixes, which really should be dedicated to salads. Bitter lettuces with tough outer leaves, like curly endive (a k a escarole or chicory) and Batavia, stand up to cooking the same way greens like kale do. Use the recipes not only when you have a surfeit of lettuce in your C.S.A. basket, but also for the tough outer leaves of the one head of romaine in your fridge that you don’t want to include in your salads.

~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

Paul Krugman: Obama Campaign Lacks Focus

Edward Luce says what many of us have been thinking: there’s a dangerous lack of focus in the Obama campaign, all too reminiscent of previous episodes.

Mr. Luce, a columnist at the Financial Times, wrote on April 22: “In the absence of a lift-off, Mr. Obama will be vulnerable to the question Reagan posed to voters in 1980 when he turned Jimmy Carter into a one-term president: ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ Mr. Carter had no real comeback. Mr. Obama is still struggling to find his.”

Above all, President Obama isn’t telling a clear story about the economy.

Robert Reich: Of Bedrooms and Boardrooms

The 2012 election should be about what’s going on in America’s boardrooms, but Republicans would rather it be about America’s bedrooms.

Mitt Romney says he’s against same-sex marriage; President Obama just announced his support. North Carolina voters have approved a Republican-proposed amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage. Minnesota voters will be considering a similar amendment in November. Republicans in Maryland and Washington State are seeking to overturn legislative approval of same-sex marriage there.

Meanwhile, Republicans have introduced over four hundred bills in state legislatures aimed at limiting womens’ reproductive rights – banning abortions, requiring women seeking abortions to have invasive ultra-sound tests beforehand, and limiting the use of contraceptives.

The Republican bedroom crowd doesn’t want to talk about the nation’s boardrooms because that’s where most of their campaign money comes from. And their candidate for president has made a fortune playing board rooms like checkers.

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.

“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 The Human Cost of Ideology

For more than a year, House Republicans have energetically worked to demolish vital social programs that have made this country both stronger and fairer over the last half-century. At the same time, they have insisted on preserving bloated military spending and unjustifiably low tax rates for the rich. That effort reached a nadir on Thursday when the House voted to prevent $55 billion in automatic cuts imposed on the Pentagon as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, choosing instead to make all those cuts, and much more, from domestic programs. [..]

House Democrats offered an alternative bill that would replace the $109 billion sequester by raising taxes on the wealthy, ending oil company tax loopholes and cutting farm subsidies, but it was rejected. Republicans are determined to protect millionaires and defense contractors, no matter the costs to the country.

Paul Krugman: Easy Useless Economics

A few days ago, I read an authoritative-sounding paper in The American Economic Review, one of the leading journals in the field, arguing at length that the nation’s high unemployment rate had deep structural roots and wasn’t amenable to any quick solution. The author’s diagnosis was that the U.S. economy just wasn’t flexible enough to cope with rapid technological change. The paper was especially critical of programs like unemployment insurance, which it argued actually hurt workers because they reduced the incentive to adjust.  

O.K., there’s something I didn’t tell you: The paper in question was published in June 1939. Just a few months later, World War II broke out, and the United States – though not yet at war itself – began a large military buildup, finally providing fiscal stimulus on a scale commensurate with the depth of the slump. And, in the two years after that article about the impossibility of rapid job creation was published, U.S. nonfarm employment rose 20 percent – the equivalent of creating 26 million jobs today.

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.

“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

Joseph E. Stiglitz: After Austerity

New York – This year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund made clear that Europe and the international community remain rudderless when it comes to economic policy. Financial leaders, from finance ministers to leaders of private financial institutions, reiterated the current mantra: the crisis countries have to get their houses in order, reduce their deficits, bring down their national debts, undertake structural reforms, and promote growth. Confidence, it was repeatedly said, needs to be restored.

It is a little precious to hear such pontifications from those who, at the helm of central banks, finance ministries, and private banks, steered the global financial system to the brink of ruin – and created the ongoing mess. Worse, seldom is it explained how to square the circle. How can confidence be restored as the crisis economies plunge into recession? How can growth be revived when austerity will almost surely mean a further decrease in aggregate demand, sending output and employment even lower?

Paul Krugman: Britain’s Leaders Force Nation Down Wrong Economic Path

When David Cameron became prime minister of Britain and announced his austerity plans – buying completely into both the confidence fairy and the invisible bond vigilantes – many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic.

Pundits in the United States urged President Obama to “do a Cameron”; Mr. Cameron and George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, were the toast of Very Serious People everywhere.

Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.

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 10 is the 130th day of the year (131st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 235 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East.

Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.

Route

The Union Pacific laid 1,087 miles (1,749 km) of track, starting in Council Bluffs, and continuing across the Missouri River and through Nebraska (Elkhorn, now Omaha, Grand Island, North Platte, Ogallala, Sidney, Nebraska), the Colorado Territory (Julesburg), the Wyoming Territory (Cheyenne, Laramie, Green River, Evanston), the Utah Territory (Ogden, Brigham City, Corinne), and connecting with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit. The route did not pass through the two biggest cities in the Great American Desert — Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah. Feeder lines were built to service the two cities.

The Central Pacific laid 690 miles (1,100 km) of track, starting in Sacramento, California, and continuing over the Sierra Nevada mountains into Nevada. It passed through Newcastle, California and Truckee, California, Reno, Nevada, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko, and Wells, Nevada, before connecting with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory. Later, the western part of the route was extended to the Alameda Terminal in Alameda, California, and shortly thereafter, to the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point in Oakland, California. When the eastern end of the CPRR was extended to Ogden, it ended the short period of a boom town for Promontory. Before the CPRR was completed, developers were building other railroads in Nevada and California to connect to it.

At first, the Union Pacific was not directly connected to the Eastern U.S. rail network. Instead, trains had to be ferried across the Missouri River. In 1873, the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge opened and directly connected the East and West.

Modern-day Interstate 80 closely follows the path of the railroad, with one exception. Between Echo, Utah and Wells, Nevada, Interstate 80 passes through the larger Salt Lake City and passes along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake. The Railroad had blasted and tunneled its way down the Weber River canyon to Ogden and around the north shore of the Great Salt Lake (roughly paralleling modern Interstate 84 and State Route 30). While routing the railroad along the Weber River, Mormon workers signed the Thousand Mile Tree, to commemorate the milestone. A historic marker has been placed there. The portion of the railroad around the north shore of the lake is no longer intact. In 1904, the Lucin Cutoff, a causeway across the center of the Great Salt Lake, shortened the route by approximately 43 miles (69 km), traversing Promontory Point instead of Promontory Summit.

“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

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day

Katrina vanden Heuvel: On Saving Good Journalism

New models will allow investigative journalism to thrive

Last week, we awoke to a headline as sensational as anything the now-defunct News of the World might have printed: “Rupert Murdoch not fit to run a major company.” It was quite the fall for someone whose hope, reportedly, was “to conquer the world.” Murdoch’s protracted tumble from the top has exposed the incestuous relationships between the media, political and financial elite of England, and the corruption that imperils the very institution of British journalism. But here in America, where accountability journalism is also under siege, we would be wise to see the crisis across the pond as a cautionary tale. [..]

If we are to successfully combat the corporatization and gutting of media, we must develop new public funding sources for accountability journalism, and train the next generation of reporters to honestly and boldly seek the truth. This is not a radical proposition; other countries, including those at the top of The Economist’s index of free and democratic states – publicly fund independent journalism. But necessary change will not come until an engaged society demands it.

Bryce Covert: The Great Recession Is Pushing Women Out of the Workforce

Friday’s jobs report seemed to grab headlines for one aspect in particular: the labor force participation rate, i.e., the number of people either working or looking for a job, fell to 63.8 percent, the lowest level since 1981. That means more and more people are dropping out-retiring, turning to something else like grad school or just giving up on the prospect of a job altogether. But there was a debate about how much of a bad sign this is. Is it because the recession has made people lose hope of finding gainful employment? Or is it just because baby boomers are hitting prime retirement age and moving to Miami?

It’s likely a combination of factors. But there seems to be a big difference in what’s driving men and women to leave the labor force.

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 9 is the 129th day of the year (130th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 236 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1860, James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, is born in Scotland.

Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him in writing about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The ), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, a “fairy play” about this ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. This play quickly overshadowed his previous work and although he continued to write successfully, it became his best-known work, credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon previously. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them.

The classic Peter Pan starring Mary Martin. This is the 1960 version for NBC. Has been very limited in its showing. The DVD is long out of print and expensive to own.