Tag: Open Thread

Oct 03 2011

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”.

Paul Krugman: Holding China to Account

The dire state of the world economy reflects destructive actions on the part of many players. Still, the fact that so many have behaved badly shouldn’t stop us from holding individual bad actors to account.

And that’s what Senate leaders will be doing this week, as they take up legislation that would threaten sanctions against China and other currency manipulators.

Respectable opinion is aghast. But respectable opinion has been consistently wrong lately, and the currency issue is no exception.

Ask yourself: Why is it so hard to restore full employment? It’s true that the housing bubble has popped, and consumers are saving more than they did a few years ago. But once upon a time America was able to achieve full employment without a housing bubble and with savings rates even higher than we have now. What changed?

Robert Reich: The American Jobs Depression, and How to Get Out of It

The Reverend Al Sharpton and various labor unions have announced a March for Jobs. But I’m afraid we’ll need more than marches to get jobs back.

Since the start of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, America’s potential labor force – that is, working-age people who want jobs – has grown by over 7 million. But since then, the number of Americans who actually have jobs has shrunk by more than 300,000.

In other words, we’re in a deep hole and the hole is deepening. In August, the United States created no jobs at all. Zero.

America’s ongoing jobs depression – which is what it deserves to be called – is the worst economic calamity to hit this nation since the Great Depression. It’s also terrible news for President Obama, whose chances for re-election now depend almost entirely on the Republican party putting up someone so vacuous and extremist that the nation rallies to Obama regardless.

Maajid Nawaz: US Drone Killing of Anwar al-Awlaki Reinforces Terrorists

In the extra-judicial killing of a US citizen accused of inspiring terror attacks, America has abandoned its own values

As Anwar al-Awlaki became the first individual to be summarily executed by his own government in the “war on terror” on Friday, we are reminded of the dark side in this relentless pursuit for security.

Awlaki was an evil man who preached against humanity. As a counter-extremism adviser, I dedicate all my energies to discrediting his ilk. I am under no illusion of the danger that he posed. I live with such danger every day, through my work. Awlaki’s desire to arbitrarily kill, deny rights and bypass due process is what made him evil. In summarily executing him in this way, the US has just called the kettle black.

Just as achieving liberty takes years of bloody struggle, its violation is rarely brought about overnight. Arbitrary detention, extraordinary rendition, targeted killings and “enhanced interrogation” – otherwise known as torture – are but some of the measures that have slowly been re-introduced into human practice by the US. Now, add to that list the summary execution of a citizen.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Can the Left Stage a Tea Party?

Why hasn’t there been a tea party on the left? And can President Obama and the American left develop a functional relationship?

That those two questions are not asked very often is a sign of how much of the nation’s political energy has been monopolized by the right from the beginning of Obama’s term. This has skewed media coverage of almost every issue, created the impression that the president is far more liberal than he is, and turned the nation’s agenda away from progressive reform.

A quiet left has also been very bad for political moderates. The entire political agenda has shifted far to the right because the tea party and extremely conservative ideas have earned so much attention. The political center doesn’t stand a chance unless there is something like a fair fight between the right and the left.

Robert Parry: Would the Founders Back Health Law?

Today’s American Right is fond of pushing the idea of “originalist” thinking by the Founders to rally opposition to government initiatives that address modern-day problems. The claim is that if George Washington, James Madison and other drafters of the Constitution didn’t anticipate something, the federal government must not act on it.

This approach, which fits with what conservatives call “strict constructionism,” has a facile appeal to many Americans, especially Tea Partiers who like to dress up in Revolutionary-era garb and channel the Founders’ supposed hatred for the federal government. The argument is sure to reappear as the rightist-dominated U.S. Supreme Court considers the new health care law next year.

However, the truth is that the Founders devised the federal government to be a powerful and adaptable entity with broad implicit powers, comparable to a sophisticated software platform that can handle a variety of tasks, anticipated and unanticipated.

Most significantly on this point, the Constitution gives Congress the power to “regulate commerce with foreign Nations and among the several states,” the so-called “commerce clause,” which traces back to the very first substantive presentation at the Constitutional Convention on May 29, 1787.

Oct 03 2011

On This Day In History October 3

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.

October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 89 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1967, Woody Guthrie, godfather of the 1950s folk revival movement, dies.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was asked by the authors of a forthcoming book on Woody Guthrie to contribute a 25-word comment summarizing his thoughts on the man who had probably been his greatest formative influence. Dylan responded instead with a 194-line poem called “Thoughts on Woody Guthrie,” which took as its theme the eternal human search for hope. “And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin’?” Dylan asks in the poem, before proceeding to a kind of answer:

You can either go to the church of your choice

Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital

You’ll find God in the church of your choice

You’ll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children’s songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his guitar. His best-known song is “This Land Is Your Land”, which is regularly sung in American schools. Many of his recorded songs are archived in the Library of Congress. Such songwriters as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton have acknowledged their debt to Guthrie as an influence.

Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California and learned traditional folk and blues songs. Many of his songs are about his experiences in the Dust Bowl era during the Great Depression, earning him the nickname the “Dust Bowl Troubadour”. Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States communist groups, though he was never an actual member of any.

Guthrie was married three times and fathered eight children, including American folk musician Arlo Guthrie. He is the grandfather of musician Sarah Lee Guthrie. Guthrie died from complications of Huntington’s disease, a progressive genetic neurological disorder. During his later years, in spite of his illness, Guthrie served as a figurehead in the folk movement, providing inspiration to a generation of new folk musicians, including mentor relationships with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan.

Folk revival and Guthrie’s death

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new generation of young people were inspired by folk singers including Guthrie. These “folk revivalists” became more politically aware in their music than those of the previous generation. The American Folk Revival was beginning to take place, focused on the issues of the day, such as the civil rights movement and free speech movement. Pockets of folk singers were forming around the country in places such as Cambridge, Massachusetts and the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. One of Guthrie’s visitors at Greystone Park was the 19-year-old Bob Dylan, who idolized Guthrie. Dylan wrote of Guthrie’s repertoire: “The songs themselves were really beyond category. They had the infinite sweep of humanity in them.” After learning of Guthrie’s whereabouts, Bob Dylan regularly visited him. Guthrie died of complications of Huntington’s disease on October 3, 1967. By the time of his death, his work had been discovered by a new audience, introduced to them in part through Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, his ex-wife Marjorie and other new members of the folk revival, and his son Arlo.

Huntington’s Disease Society of America

Oct 02 2011

Rant of the Week: Stephen Colbert

I Think, Therefore I Brand

Web searches are enshrined in America’s founding documents, and cigarettes have a First Amendment right to be alive with pleasure.

Google searches for “Santorum” and “Rick Santorum for your edification. 😉

Oct 02 2011

On This Day In History October 2

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.

October 2 is the 275th day of the year (276th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 90 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1959, “The Twilight Zone” premiered on CBS television.

The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising plot twist and was usually brought to closure with some sort of message. The series was also notable for featuring both established stars (e.g. Cliff Robertson, Ann Blyth, Jack Klugman) and younger actors who would later became famous (e.g. Robert Redford, William Shatner, Mariette Hartley, Shelley Fabares). Rod Serling served as executive producer and head writer; he wrote or co-wrote 92 of the show’s 156 episodes. He was also the show’s host, delivering on- or off-screen monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. During the first season, except for the season’s final episode, Serling’s narrations were off-camera voiceovers; he only appeared on-camera at the end of each show to promote the next episode (footage that was removed from syndicated versions but restored for DVD release, although some of these promotions exist today only in audio format).

The “twilight zone” itself is not presented as being a tangible plane, but rather a metaphor for the strange circumstances befalling the protagonists. Serling’s opening and closing narrations usually summarized the episode’s events in tones ranging from cryptic to pithy to eloquent to unsympathetic, encapsulating how and why the main character(s) had “entered the Twilight Zone”.

Oct 02 2011

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour:GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain is a guest.

The roundtable, with George Will, ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper, Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace and Democratic strategist Mark Penn, debate the Cain surge, Gov. Rick Perry’s slump and Gov. Chris Christie’s big decision. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz joins the “This Week” roundtable and shares his ideas to fix Washington and bring America back.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer talks to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about foreign policy, Campaign 2012, and the economy; Plus, Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) and Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) weigh in on the key issues of the week.

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests, Nia-Malika Henderson, The Washington Post National Political Reporter, John Heilemann, New York Magazine National Political Correspondent, Rana Foroohar, TIME Magazine Assistant Managing Editor and David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist, will discuss:

Is America Beginning A Long-term Decline?

How Is Chris Christie Making Mitt Romney Look Unacceptable?

Meet the Press with David Gregory:  Guests are Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.

The Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus in the House, Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA); Republican strategist, Mike Murphy; Washington Post columnist, EJ Dionne; and the Wall Street Journal’s, Peggy Noonan will discuss the GOP candidates and the primary calendar changes.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, a former State Department official and national security advocate, Liz Cheney will no doubt cheer the assassination of American citizen, Anwar Al-Awlaki. And to continue the celebration former NSA and CIA Director, Gen. Michael Hayden and former congresswoman, Jane Harman join the party.

Michael Rattner: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Extrajudicial Murder

The law on the use of lethal force by executive order is specific. This assassination broke it – that creates a terrifying precedent

Is this the world we want? Where the president of the United States can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then have him murdered by drone strike.

This was the very result we at the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU feared when we brought a case in US federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki’s father, hoping to prevent this targeted killing. We lost the case on procedural grounds, but the judge considered the implications of the practice as raising “serious questions”, asking:

   “Can the executive order the assassination of a US citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organisation?”

Nicholas D. Kristof: The Bankers and the Revolutionaries

AFTER flying around the world this year to cover street protests from Cairo to Morocco, reporting on the latest “uprising” was easier: I took the subway.

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has taken over a park in Manhattan’s financial district and turned it into a revolutionary camp. Hundreds of young people chant slogans against “banksters” or corporate tycoons. Occasionally, a few even pull off their clothes, which always draws news cameras.

“Occupy Wall Street” was initially treated as a joke, but after a couple of weeks it’s gaining traction. The crowds are still tiny by protest standards – mostly in the hundreds, swelling during periodic marches – but similar occupations are bubbling up in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Washington. David Paterson, the former New York governor, dropped by, and labor unions are lending increasing support.

New York Times Editorial: The Supercommittee’s Stark Choice

In August, Congressional Republicans tried to box in Democrats and the White House by demanding huge deficit cuts in exchange for preventing a government default. Then they joined in the creation of a “supercommittee” on deficit reduction that they hoped would take taxes off the table and focus entirely on cuts in spending.

But that supposed victory has forced many Republicans into an equally tight corner. They are starting to realize that if they remain adamant, the resulting across-the-board cuts will disproportionately affect programs they support, starting with military spending.

The joint committee created by the debt-ceiling agreement is desperately groping behind closed doors for ways to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit. Republican leaders want it all to come from spending cuts; Democratic leaders want a mix of cuts and revenue increases. If the two sides cannot agree, there will be automatic cuts, which largely spare social-welfare programs but would severely reduce military and security spending.

Maureen Dowd: Cooperation in Evil

MAYBE it’s the Mario Lanza in him. But Nino Scalia relishes being operatically imprudent.

The Supreme Court justice’s latest supreme lapse of judgment involves poking his nose in a local legal wrangle about the place where I slept for four years: the Catholic University dorms.

In a speech last weekend at Duquesne University Law School, a Catholic institution in Pittsburgh, Justice Scalia defended religion in public life.

“Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent on diversity in all other aspects of life, seems bent on eliminating the diversity of moral judgment, particularly moral judgment based on religious views,” the devout Catholic said

Oct 01 2011

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness 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.

Yogurt: Much More Than a ‘Health Food’

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In countries where yogurt is part of the culinary landscape, it’s used in many savory dishes.

To thicken yogurt, simply put it into a cheesecloth-lined strainer set over a bowl and refrigerate for several hours. Or buy already thick Greek yogurt or lebna in Middle Eastern markets. But whatever you do, buy organic yogurt that has only two ingredients on the label: milk and live active cultures

Plain low-fat (not nonfat) yogurt was usd in this week’s recipes; full-fat yogurt will work too, but nonfat is too watery and often quite sour.

Grilled Albacore With Yogurt-Dill Sauce on a Bed of Arugula

Based on a recipe for red mullet from “Classic Turkish Cooking” by Ghillie Basan.

Turkish Hummus With Yogurt

This dish is much like the familiar Middle Eastern chickpea purée, but instead of tahini, the chickpeas are blended with yogurt.

Mache Salad With Yogurt Dressing

The mild, subtle mâche, also known as lamb’s lettuce, contrasts nicely with the sharp, pungent garlic-spiked yogurt.

Summer Squash, Tahini and Yogurt Dip

From Paula Wolfert’s book “The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean,” a simple combination of cooked squash, drained yogurt, garlic and tahini that proves you can make yogurt dips with just about any vegetable.

Eggplant, Bulgur and Tomato Casserole with Yogurt Topping

A vegetarian moussaka, with bulgur standing in for meat.

Oct 01 2011

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”.

Robert Reich: America Faces a Jobs Depression

Keynes was right: only government can get us out of this jobs slump. And only taxing wealth can restore US prosperity

The Reverend Al Sharpton and various labor unions announced Wednesday a March for Jobs. But I’m afraid we’ll need more than marches to get jobs back.

Since the start of the Great Recession at the end of 2007, the potential labor force of the United States – that is, working-age people who want jobs – has grown by over 7 million. But since then, the number of Americans who actually have jobs has shrunk by more than 300,000.

In other words, we’re in a deep hole – and the hole is deepening. In August, the United States created no jobs at all. Zero.

America’s ongoing jobs depression – which is what it deserves to be called – is the worst economic calamity to hit this nation since the Great Depression. It’s also terrible news for President Obama, whose chances for re-election now depend almost entirely on the Republican party putting up someone so vacuous and extremist that the nation rallies to Obama regardless.

New York Times Editorial: Improving No Child Left Behind

The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act focused the country’s attention on school reform as never before, but the law is far from perfect. The Obama administration is wise to address its flaws, since Congress is four years overdue in updating the law.

The Department of Education’s plan gives states that agree to several reforms – including stringent teacher evaluation systems and new programs for overhauling the worst schools – an exemption from many of the law’s requirements. It would permit the states to change the way they evaluate most schools for the purpose of compliance, allowing indicators other than just reading and math scores to be considered. And it would lift the law’s provision that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014, which was never going to happen anyway because there were so many loopholes.

The administration, however, must not allow the new waiver system to become a way for states to elude the purpose of the act, which is to raise student achievement across the board.

Eugene Robinson: Chris Christie’s Big Problem

Whether or not he lets himself be persuaded to run for president, Chris Christie needs to find some way to lose weight. Like everyone else, elected officials perform best when they are in optimal health. Christie obviously is not.

You could argue that this is none of my business, but I disagree. Christie’s problem with weight ceased being a private matter when he stepped into the public arena-and it’s not something you can fail to notice. Obesity is a national epidemic whose costs are measured not just in dollars and cents, but in lives. Christie’s weight is as legitimate an issue as the smoking habit that President Obama says he has finally kicked.

Davis Sirota: How Baseball Explains Modern Racism http://www.truthdig.com/report…

Despite recent odes to “post-racial” sensibilities, persistent racial wage and unemployment gaps show that prejudice is alive and well in America. Nonetheless, that truism is often angrily denied or willfully ignored in our society, in part because prejudice is so much more difficult to recognize on a day-to-day basis. As opposed to the Jim Crow era of white hoods and lynch mobs, 21st century American bigotry is now more often an unseen crime of the subtle and the reflexive-and the crime scene tends to be the shadowy nuances of hiring decisions, performance evaluations and plausible deniability.

Thankfully, though, we now have baseball to help shine a light on the problem so that everyone can see it for what it really is.

Today, Major League Baseball games using the QuesTec computerized pitch-monitoring system are the most statistically quantifiable workplaces in America. Match up QuesTec’s accumulated data with demographic information about who is pitching and who is calling balls and strikes, and you get the indisputable proof of how ethnicity does indeed play a part in discretionary decisions of those in power positions.

Tim Karr: High Noon for Internet Freedom

As democracy movements worldwide struggle to speak out via the Internet, many here in the U.S. may have overlooked an effort in Congress to undermine this basic freedom.

It takes the form of an arcane “resolution of disapproval” now wending its way through the Senate. If it passes, the resolution would void a recent Federal Communications Commission rule that seeks to preserve long-held Internet standards that protect users against blocking and censorship.

The resolution would remove these protections. It was put forth by industry-funded members of Congress who don’t mind letting the few corporations who sell Internet access in America decide what we get to see, hear and read on the Internet.

Jeff Biggers: House Committee Censors Testimony of Appalachian Activists

The House Natural Resources Committee has some explaining to do.

In a blatant disregard of the concerns of affected West Virginia coalfield residents who actually live under the fallout of devastating mountaintop removal operations, a press release summary from the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources’ field hearing on “Jobs at Risk: Community Impacts of the Obama Administration’s Effort to Rewrite the Stream Buffer Zone Rule” completely deleted any mention of the official testimonies by Appalachian coalfield leaders Maria Gunnoe and Bo Webb. The press release reported exclusively on testimony from coal industry representatives, Big Coal-bankrolled politicians and hired coal industry supporters.

“Yesterday a House Natural Resources subcommittee tried its very hardest not to hear West Virginians’ concerns about the destruction and heartbreak of mountaintop removal in their communities,” noted Natural Resources Defense Council staff Melissa Waage. “Now the subcommittee leadership is trying to pretend these people don’t even exist.”

Oct 01 2011

On This Day In History October 1

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.

October 1 is the 274th day of the year(275th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 91 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1946, 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted.

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military, held by the main victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945-46, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 22 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. It was held from November 20, 1945 to October 1, 1946. The second set of trials of lesser war criminals was conducted under Control Council Law No. 10 at the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT); among them included the Doctors’ Trial and the Judges’ Trial.

The Main Trial

The International Military Tribunal was opened on October 18, 1945, in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. The first session was presided over by the Soviet judge, Nikitchenko. The prosecution entered indictments against 24 major war criminals and six criminal organizations – the leadership of the Nazi party, the Schutzstaffel (SS) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Gestapo, the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the “General Staff and High Command,” comprising several categories of senior military officers.

The indictments were for:

  1. Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace

  2. Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace

  3. War crimes

  4. Crimes against humanity

Sep 30 2011

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”.

Paul Krugman: Phony Fear Factor

The good news: After spending a year and a half talking about deficits, deficits, deficits when we should have been talking about jobs, job, jobs we’re finally back to discussing the right issue.

The bad news: Republicans, aided and abetted by many conservative policy intellectuals, are fixated on a view about what’s blocking job creation that fits their prejudices and serves the interests of their wealthy backers, but bears no relationship to reality.

Listen to just about any speech by a Republican presidential hopeful, and you’ll hear assertions that the Obama administration is responsible for weak job growth. How so? The answer, repeated again and again, is that businesses are afraid to expand and create jobs because they fear costly regulations and higher taxes. Nor are politicians the only people saying this. Conservative economists repeat the claim in op-ed articles, and Federal Reserve officials repeat it to justify their opposition to even modest efforts to aid the economy.

Robert Sheer: The Men We Trusted to Lead Us

Now he tells us. On Wednesday Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke referred to the nation’s unemployment rate as a “national crisis,” an obvious if depressing fact of life to the 25 million Americans who have been unsuccessfully attempting to find full-time employment.

But to finally hear those words from the man George W. Bush and Barack Obama both appointed to lead us out of the great recession is a bracing reminder of how markedly the policies of both those presidents have failed: “We’ve had close to 10 percent unemployment now for a number of years, and of the people who are unemployed, about 45 percent have been unemployed for six months or more,” Bernanke said. “This is unheard of.”

But why is Bernanke just now discovering this after having overseen the Fed’s purchase of trillions in toxic mortgage-backed securities from the too-big-to-fail banks that sacrificed people’s homes in a giant Ponzi scheme? Why did he throw all of that money at the banks without getting anything back in the way of relief for the people the bankers swindled?

John Nichols: Club for Growth Pressures Republican Candidates to Choose China Over US in Currency Manipulation Fight

Just when you think that the race for the Republican presidential nomination could not get any more cruel and unusual, the party plays the next card off the bottom of the czazy deck.

Remember when Rick Perry got in trouble for correctly pointed out that bigots would deny immgrant youth an education don’t “have a heart”? Things turned so ugly that Perry had to come out for heartlessness.

Now, Mitt Romney is in trouble for opposing Chinese currency manipulation that harms the US economy.

Romney’s otherwise lame economic plan featured robust criticism of China for its money machinations. Indeed, Romney called for a “Reagan economic zone” of countries that don’t manipulate their currency.

That did not sit well with the Club for Growth, the exceptionally well-financed conservative pressure group that takes bushels of money from Wall Street speculators-who, of course, like nothing better than a little currency manipulation.

Chris Hedges: The Best Among Us

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

To be declared innocent in a country where the rule of law means nothing, where we have undergone a corporate coup, where the poor and working men and women are reduced to joblessness and hunger, where war, financial speculation and internal surveillance are the only real business of the state, where even habeas corpus no longer exists, where you, as a citizen, are nothing more than a commodity to corporate systems of power, one to be used and discarded, is to be complicit in this radical evil. To stand on the sidelines and say “I am innocent” is to bear the mark of Cain; it is to do nothing to reach out and help the weak, the oppressed and the suffering, to save the planet. To be innocent in times like these is to be a criminal. Ask Tim DeChristopher.  

Linh Dinh: Banker Brutality: Beyond Tony Bologna

At the Wall Street protest, a young woman carried a sign, “REVOLUTION IS FUN,” and I don’t doubt that she was having a great time, because it can be exhilarating to engage in a just and noble fight, and to feel that you are an agent of change, a participant in history even, and not just one of its faceless victims, as is the common lot. So fun, yes, at least for her, and at least up to that moment, until the violence explodes, as nearly always happens in anything approaching a political revolution.

The violence of September 24th, the 8th day of the anti-Wall Street Protest, appears to not have caused severe or permanent injuries, though it was brutal enough, and some outrage has even flared in the mainstream media. Anthony Bologna, a 28-year-veteran of the New York Police Department, has emerged as a clear cut villain. Without provocation, he pepper sprayed two young women in the faces, and for this he should certainly be fired, then locked up, but this commotion has overshadowed, at least momentarily, the real target and meaning of this protest. Though police brutality is never to be taken lightly, Occupy Wall Street is aiming to expose and hold to account goons much more vicious than any garden variety Anthony Bologna. Though they maim and cripple countless households, even entire countries, these bigger thugs are rarely condemned and never indicted. In fact, some are given plush jobs in the US Treasury, if not a Cabinet appointment.

Tom Engelhardt: Terminator Drones and Washington’s Field of Screams

The Latest in Guarding the Empire

In the world of weaponry, they are the sexiest things around.  Others countries are desperate to have them.  Almost anyone who writes about them becomes a groupie.  Reporters exploring their onrushing future swoon at their potentially wondrous techno-talents.  They are, of course, the pilotless drones, our grimly named Predators and Reapers.

As CIA Director, Leon Panetta called them “the only game in town.”  As Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates pushed hard to up their numbers and increase their funding drastically.  The U.S. Air Force is already training more personnel to become drone “pilots” than to pilot actual planes.  You don’t need it in skywriting to know that, as icons of American-style war, they are clearly in our future — and they’re even heading for the homeland as police departments clamor for them.

David Morris: GOP Goes Batty on the Postal Service

Will we let the Republicans destroy this most public of all public institutions?

In the next few days we may decide the future of the Post Office. The signs are not auspicious. President Obama has agreed to a plan to cut Saturday delivery. The Post Service’s management wants to close 2500 post offices immediately and up to 16,000 by 2020. Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) has introduced a bill that could end free door-to-door delivery.Republicans have been railing at the government post office for many years. But for most of us, it is a “wondrous American creation”.

“Six days a week it delivers an average of 563 million pieces of mail-40 percent of the entire world’s volume”, observes BusinessWeek. “For the price of a 44¢ stamp (the lowest postal rate in the world), you can mail a letter anywhere within the nation’s borders. The service will carry it by pack mule to the Havasupai Indian reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Mailmen on snowmobiles take it to the wilds of Alaska. If your recipient can no longer be found, the USPS will return it at no extra charge. It may be the greatest bargain on earth.”

Sep 30 2011

On This Day In History September 30

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.

September 30 is the 273rd day of the year (274th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 92 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1791, The Magic Flute, Die Zauberflote, an opera in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder, premiered in Vienna at the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden. Mozart conducted and Schikaneder played Papageno, while the role of the Queen of the Night was sung by Mozart’s sister-in-law Josepha Hofer. This was Mozart’s last opera.

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