Tag: Open Thread

Apr 09 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”

Joe Conason: Ryan’s Plan Neither Serious Nor Courageous

What the meteoric career of Paul Ryan demonstrates is how easily impressed we are whenever a politician purports to restore solvency by punishing the poor and the elderly (while coddling the rich). The Wisconsin Republican congressman’s fiscal plan has won rave reviews from both the usual right-wing suspects and some self-styled centrists, who have praised him and his proposals as “serious,” “courageous” and even “uplifting.”

By now, however, those who have actually examined the Ryan plan with care and competence know that those acclamations are highly exaggerated, which is probably a far too polite description.

Paul Krugman: The Value of an Educated Mind in a High-Tech World

And now for something completely different. About 15 years ago, before I became a regular columnist, The New York Times asked me and other people to contribute to a special edition celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Sunday magazine. The stated rule was that the pieces should be written as if submitted in 2096, looking back at the magazine’s second century.

As I recall, I was the only contributor who obeyed instructions; everyone else was too concerned about loss of dignity. Anyway, I decided to write the piece around a conceit: that information technology would end up reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers, because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing – indeed, replaced more easily than many types of manual labor. It was titled “White Collars Turn Blue.”

So here’s the question: Is this starting to happen?

Dave Johnson: Republican Shutdown Shuts Down the Economy – So Do the Cuts They Demand

Progressive Caucus co-chairman Rep. Keith Ellison, (D-Minnesota), and other members of the Progressive Caucus react to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal.

Here we are only four months into Republican control of the House of Representatives and the government is shutting down! When you give power to people who hate the government, what do you think they’re going to do? Since the election the Republicans have been itching to gut or shut the government. It has been a drumbeat that they either get everything they want or shut it down. And getting everything they want guts the government.

Either way our economy takes a big, big hit.

John Nichols: GOP Clerk ‘Finds’ Votes to Reverse Defeat of Conservative Wisconsin Justice

Suppose the Democratic governor of Illinois had proposed radical changes in how the state operates, and suppose anger over those proposed changes inspired a popular uprising that filled the streets of every city, village and town in the state with protests. Then, suppose there was an election that would decide whether allies of the governor controlled the state’s highest court. Suppose the results of that election showed that an independent candidate who would not be in the governor’s pocket narrowly won that election.

Then, suppose it was announced by a Democratic election official in Chicago that she had found 14,000 votes in a machine-controlled ward that overwhelmingly favored the candidate aligned with the Democratic governor. And suppose the Democratic official who “found” the needed ballots for the candidate favored by the Democratic governor had previously been accused of removing election data from official computers and hiding the information on a personal computer, that the official’s actions had been censured even by fellow Democrats and that she her secretive and erratic activities had been the subject of an official audit demanded by the leadership of the Cook County Board.

Jodi Jacobson Averting a Government Shutdown? GOP Says Over Your Dead Body. And They Mean It

As of this morning, we are in a situation that could have been predicted at least two months ago when the first loud whispers of government shutdown became routine among members of the GOP/Tea Party in Congress, a situation that became a virtual certainty after a rally last week in which Tea Party members shouted like drunken frat boys to “shut it down.”

What is that situation? A government shutdown that the radical right now governing the House of Representatives says can only be averted by one thing: Accepting policies that will destroy the health and wellbeing of American citizens.

In short, the GOP/Tea Party has two words for the American people: Drop Dead.

Patrice Woeppel: One Hundred Years After the Triangle Fire, Disregard for Worker Safety Still the Rule

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on March 25, 1911, killed 146 young women, most between the ages of 14 and 23. It was a Saturday, the shorter eight-hour day of their six-day work week. On the entire nine-floor factory, only one door was unlocked, and that opened inward; only a few workers were able to escape.

A small number made it into the elevator. Fire ladders were unable to reach beyond the sixth floor, fire escapes collapsed and 27 buckets of water – the only fire prevention available – was no match for the conflagration. Many of the young women burned to death. Most leaped to their deaths in desperate attempts to escape the flames by the fire ladders or the fire blankets, the latter of which collapsed from the weight of their falls.

In the previous year, a successful union movement had established the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in New York City. The Triangle Factory was a holdout, leaving these young women at the mercy of unscrupulous owners and unsafe working conditions.

Michelle Chen: States’ Shameful Trade-Off: Putting Prisons over Public Schools

The state lawmakers who are pushing hard for “austerity” aren’t so much enemies of government “waste” as they are expert money launderers in the business of politics. Education is at the center of their shell game.

Across the country, conservatives are fixated on a curious formula for deficit reduction: wholesale disinvestment in schools (coupled with erosion of union rights and working conditions for teachers), plus a race to pump tax breaks for the rich and stifle health care for the poor. And in many areas, one sacred cow continues to fatten while students starve: our bloated prison system.

Thom Hartmann: With or Without a Government Shutdown – Republicans have Already Won the Debate

With or without a government shutdown, Republicans have already won the debate on our nation’s budget. Why? Because the corporate media is on their side.

Make the wealthy pay their fair share.

A budget shouldn’t just focus on spending cuts directed at the poor and middle-class – it should also include revenue raisers like closing corporate loopholes and asking millionaires and billionaires to cough up a few extra bucks a year. Let’s cut some wasteful spending, but let’s also raise a few taxes. But this common sense narrative has been lost inside the main stream corporate media – where there’s only one question that’s being asked today, and that is “how much spending needs to be cut?”

David Sirota: The Real Madness of March

Lowell Bergman is the rare skunk who regularly finds his way into the power elite’s garden parties. As tobacco executives celebrated huge revenues in the 1990s, he was the journalist whose reporting about cancer and nicotine addiction stopped the festivities. As credit card executives toasted their holiday-season profits, his 2004 New York Times investigation humiliated the lending industry by showing how it traps unsuspecting consumers in perpetual debt. So it was no surprise that as the sports establishment concluded its perennial orgy of profit known as March Madness, Bergman was at it again, this time exposing the corruption beneath all the school spirit.

In Bergman’s damning special now available on PBS’s “Frontline” website, viewers are shown the side of “amateur” athletics that’s almost never discussed inside the beery bubble of sports media. We see, for instance, an NCAA that makes billions off television contracts, while student athletes receive only a tiny fraction of that revenue in the form of scholarships. We see coaches making millions off long-term contracts, while players remain perpetually at risk of losing their meager financial aid. We see, in short, an Athletic-Industrial Complex that turns schools into support systems for sports – rather than the other way around.

Apr 09 2011

On This Day In History April 9

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.

April 9 is the 99th day of the year (100th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 266 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia at the McLean House in the village of Appomattox Court House. In an untraditional gesture and as a sign of Grant’s respect and anticipation of peacefully restoring Confederate states to the Union, Lee was permitted to keep his sword and his horse, Traveller.

At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option.

In retreating from the Union army’s Appomattox Campaign, the Army of Northern Virginia had stumbled through the Virginia countryside stripped of food and supplies. At one point, Union cavalry forces under General Philip Sheridan had actually outrun Lee’s army, blocking their retreat and taking 6,000 prisoners at Sayler’s Creek. Desertions were mounting daily, and by April 8 the Confederates were surrounded with no possibility of escape. On April 9, Lee sent a message to Grant announcing his willingness to surrender. The two generals met in the parlor of the Wilmer McLean home at one o’clock in the afternoon.

Lee and Grant, both holding the highest rank in their respective armies, had known each other slightly during the Mexican War and exchanged awkward personal inquiries. Characteristically, Grant arrived in his muddy field uniform while Lee had turned out in full dress attire, complete with sash and sword. Lee asked for the terms, and Grant hurriedly wrote them out. All officers and men were to be pardoned, and they would be sent home with their private property–most important, the horses, which could be used for a late spring planting. Officers would keep their side arms, and Lee’s starving men would be given Union rations.

Shushing a band that had begun to play in celebration, General Grant told his officers, “The war is over. The Rebels are our countrymen again.” Although scattered resistance continued for several weeks, for all practical purposes the Civil War had come to an end

Apr 09 2011

from firefly-dreaming 08.4.11

This is an Open Thread

Essays Featured Friday the 8th of April:

Late Night Karaoke features Angie, mishima DJs

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

Labor Murals are on slksfca‘s mind in Friday Open Thoughts

Wendys Wink is Perambulating the Neighborhood, republished by RiaD

from Timbuk3: The 100 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time!

Tonight #86  

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

Apr 08 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: Ludicrous and Cruel

Many commentators swooned earlier this week after House Republicans, led by the Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan, unveiled their budget proposals. They lavished praise on Mr. Ryan, asserting that his plan set a new standard of fiscal seriousness.

Well, they should have waited until people who know how to read budget numbers had a chance to study the proposal. For the G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless.

How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways – or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in the plan than I can cover in one column.

New York Times Editorial: It’s Not Really About Spending

If the federal government shuts down at midnight on Friday – which seems likely unless negotiations take a sudden turn toward rationality – it will not be because of disagreements over spending. It will be because Republicans are refusing to budge on these ideological demands:

No federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions. Instead, state administration of federal family planning funds, which means that Republican governors and legislatures will not spend them.

• No local financing for abortion services in the District of Columbia.

• No foreign aid to countries that might use the money for abortion or family planning. And no aid to the United Nations Population Fund, which supports family-planning services.

• No regulation of greenhouse gases by the Environmental Protection Agency.

• No funds for health care reform or the new consumer protection bureau established in the wake of the financial collapse.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: The Right’s War on Moderation

Political moderates and on-the-fencers have had it easy up to now on budget issues. They could condemn “both sides,” and insist on the need for “courage” in tackling the deficit.

Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget and the Republicans’ maximalist stance in negotiations to avert a government shutdown, the days of straddling are over.

Ryan’s truly outrageous proposal, built on heaping sacrifice onto the poor, slashing scholarship aid to college students and bestowing benefits on the rich, ought to force middle-of-the-roaders to take sides. No one who is even remotely moderate can possibly support what Ryan has in mind.

Eugene Robinson: Trumped by Political Failure

In political terms, who has the most to lose from this appalling brinksmanship over a federal government shutdown? House Speaker John Boehner? President Obama? Senate Democrats? Tea party Republicans?

The clear answer is all of the above, plus American democracy itself. As proof, we need look no further than a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll indicating that Donald Trump is running second behind Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination.

Donald Trump.

William Rivers Pitt: A Festival of Dumb

Every time I think I’ve seen everything, politically speaking, a new wave of nonsense comes crashing ashore and bowls me right over. Today’s installment features a game of budgetary chicken being played among the Tea Partiers in the House, the Democrats in the Senate, and an alarmingly conciliatory Obama administration. If someone doesn’t blink by midnight on Friday, the federal government will shut down and a great deal of fresh Hell will be unleashed.

Just a few short weeks ago, the concept of a government shutdown seemed remote. The GOP proposed a broad swath of brutal and highly dubious budget cuts crafted by a raft of right-bent House freshmen who are looking to placate the “Keep-Your-Damn-Government-Hands-Off-My-Medicare” wing of their party’s base…which is grimly amusing, considering that a key element of their spending plan involves the slow and certain annihilation of Medicare itself.

House Speaker Boehner is looking more orange than usual while tip-toeing

Ari Berman: GOP Would Shut Down Government Over EPA, Planned Parenthood

A deal to prevent a government shutdown has yet to be reached, and the clock is ticking ominously toward a shutdown on Friday. After a late-night meeting between President Obama, Harry Reid and John Boehner, sources said a tentative agreement was reached to cut around $34.5 billion in fiscal year 2011-12, according to the Huffington Post (the specifics of the cuts remain secret). But the sticking point concerns GOP “riders” focused on hot-button issues unrelated to the deficit, such as defunding family planning services at Planned Parenthood and preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions-two highlights of the budget passed by House Republicans in February.

Just yesterday, the Senate rejected the House Republicans’ EPA provision, and would almost certainly do the same regarding the Planned Parenthood amendment, which saves only $330 million but targets much-needed services for low-income families, such as preventative healthcare and cancer screenings (for more on the Title X program, read this primer from HHS). “We’re on the runway now and waiting for the speaker to come in for a landing,” Senator Chuck Schumer said today. “We have an agreement in principle…. We pretty much have a consensus on the cuts and numbers…. Ideological riders that have nothing to do with the deficit are standing in our way.”

Richard (RJ) Escow: What the President Should Have Said About J.T. Henderson — and Other ‘Real People’

Last night the President took a lofty, almost disinterested stance regarding budget deadlock in Congress. He seemed to chastise Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner equally, focusing on the consequences of a shutdown and ignoring the consequences of making a bad deal to avoid a shutdown.

A Federal shutdown would have “real consequences for real people,” said the President, mentioning one “real” person by name: J.T. Henderson of Louisville, Kentucky.

So let’s talk about J.T. Henderson – and about all the other J.T. Hendersons who are just as real, and just as important, as our friend in Louisville. You’d be surprised how many there are.

Johann Hari: We’re not being told the truth on Libya

The most plausible explanation is that this is a way of asserting raw Western power and trying to arrange the fallout in our favour

Most of us have a low feeling that we are not being told the real reasons for the war in Libya. David Cameron’s instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region’s dictators selling them the most hi-tech weapons of repression available. Nicolas Sarkozy’s instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama’s instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: “I would not refer to him as a dictator.”

Yet now we are told that these people have turned into the armed wing of Amnesty International. They are bombing Libya because they can’t bear for innocent people to be tyrannised, by the tyrants they were arming and funding for years. As Obama put it: “Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different”. There was a time, a decade ago, when I took this rhetoric at face value. But I can’t now. The best guide through this confusion is to look at two other wars our government is currently deeply involved in – because they show that the claims made for this bombing campaign can’t be true.

Apr 08 2011

On This Day In History April 8

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.

April 8 is the 98th day of the year (99th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 267 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s legendary record of 714 homers. A crowd of 53,775 people, the largest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, was with Aaron that night to cheer when he hit a 4th inning pitch off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Al Downing. However, as Aaron was an African American who had received death threats and racist hate mail during his pursuit of one of baseball’s most distinguished records, the achievement was bittersweet.

Breaking Ruth’s record

Although Aaron himself downplayed the “chase” to surpass Babe Ruth, baseball enthusiasts and the national media grew increasingly excited as he closed in on the home run record. During the summer of 1973 Aaron received thousands of letters every week; the Braves ended up hiring a secretary to help him sort through it.

At the age of 39, Aaron hit 40 home runs in 392 at-bats, ending the season one home run short of the record. He hit home run number 713 on September 29, 1973, and with one day remaining in the season, many expected him to tie the record. But in his final game that year, playing against the Houston Astros (led by manager Leo Durocher, who had once roomed with Babe Ruth), he was unable to achieve this. After the game, Aaron stated that his only fear was that he might not live to see the 1974 season.

Over the winter, Aaron was the recipient of death threats and a large assortment of hate mail from people who did not want to see a black man break Ruth’s nearly sacrosanct home run record. The threats extended to those providing positive press coverage of Aaron. Lewis Grizzard, then editor of the Atlanta Journal, reported receiving numerous phone calls calling them “nigger lovers” for covering Aaron’s chase. While preparing the massive coverage of the home run record, he quietly had an obituary written, scared that Aaron might be murdered.

Sports Illustrated pointedly summarized the racist vitriol that Aaron was forced to endure:

   “Is this to be the year in which Aaron, at the age of thirty-nine, takes a moon walk above one of the most hallowed individual records in American sport…? Or will it be remembered as the season in which Aaron, the most dignified of athletes, was besieged with hate mail and trapped by the cobwebs and goblins that lurk in baseball’s attic?”

Aaron received an outpouring of public support in response to the bigotry. Newspaper cartoonist Charles Schulz satirized the anti-Aaron camp in a series of Peanuts strips printed in August 1973, in which Snoopy attempts to break the Ruth record, only to be besieged with hate mail. (As Lucy puts it in the August 11 strip, “Hank Aaron is a great player…but you! If you break Babe Ruth’s record, it’ll be a disgrace!”) Babe Ruth’s widow, Claire Hodgson, even denounced the racism and declared that her husband would have enthusiastically cheered Aaron’s attempt at the record. Ruth, who was unprejudiced, had himself been subjected to racial taunts during his youth, by those who fancied that he had Negroid features.

As the 1974 season began, Aaron’s pursuit of the record caused a small controversy. The Braves opened the season on the road in Cincinnati with a three-game series against the Cincinnati Reds. Braves management wanted him to break the record in Atlanta, and were therefore going to have Aaron sit out the first three games of the season. But Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ruled that he had to play two games in the first series. He played two out of three, tying Babe Ruth’s record in his very first at bat off Reds pitcher Jack Billingham, but did not hit another home run in the series.

The team returned to Atlanta, and on April 8, 1974, a crowd of 53,775 people showed up for the game-a Braves attendance record. In the fourth inning, Aaron hit career home run number 715 off Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing. Although Dodgers outfielder Bill Buckner nearly went over the outfield wall trying to catch it, the ball landed in the Braves’ bullpen, where relief pitcher Tom House caught it. While cannons were fired in celebration, two white college students, Cliff Courtney and Britt Gaston, sprinted onto the field and jogged alongside Aaron for part of his circuit around the bases, temporarily startling him. As the fans cheered wildly, Aaron’s parents ran onto the field as well.

Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully addressed the racial tension – or apparent lack thereof – in his call of the home run:

   “What a marvelous moment for baseball; what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia; what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron. … And for the first time in a long time, that poker face in Aaron shows the tremendous strain and relief of what it must have been like to live with for the past several months.”

A few months later, on October 5, 1974, Aaron hit his 733rd and final home run as a Brave, which stood as the National League’s home run record until it was broken in 2007. Thirty days later, the Braves traded Aaron to the Milwaukee Brewers for Roger Alexander and Dave May. On May 1, 1975, Aaron broke baseball’s all-time RBI record, previously held by Ruth with 2,217. That year, he also made the last of his 21 record-tying (with Musial and Mays) All-Star appearances; he lined out to Dave Concepcion as a pinch-hitter in the second inning. This All-Star game, like his first in 1955, was before a home crowd at Milwaukee County Stadium.

On July 20, 1976, Hank Aaron hit his 755th and final home run at Milwaukee County Stadium off Dick Drago of the California Angels.

Apr 07 2011

from firefly-dreaming 07.4.11

This is an Open Thread

Essays Featured Thursday the 7th of April:

Late Night Karaoke takes us Higher & Higher, mishima DJs

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

mplo ponders Fiction and/or real life in books and movies in Thursday Open Thoughts

Cornucopia Thursday, a weekly feature from Ed Tracey brings a delightful collection of items and ….well, just plain whimsy…..

fake consultant has a fascinating hypothesis On Reincarnation, Or, Was Glenn Beck Just Promoted?

Cactus Syrup & Sheriff Sam from Wendys Wink, republished by RiaD

from Timbuk3: The 100 Greatest Rock Songs of All Time!

Tonight #87  

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

Apr 07 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”

E. J. Dionee, Jr.: For moderates, no more fence-straddling on the budget

Political moderates and on-the-fencers have had it easy up to now on budget issues. They could condemn “both sides” and insist on the need for “courage” in tackling the deficit.

Thanks to Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget and the Republicans’ maximalist stance in negotiations to avert a government shutdown, the days of straddling are over.

Ryan’s truly outrageous proposal, built on heaping sacrifice onto the poor, slashing scholarship aid to college students and bestowing benefits on the rich, ought to force middle-of-the-roaders to take sides. No one who is even remotely moderate can possibly support what Ryan has in mind.

Greg Mitchell: Dan Ellsberg and ‘Saving Private Manning’

After many months in the shadows, Pvt. Bradley Manning, who sits in the brig at the Quantico base in Virginia in near-solitary confinement, has recently drawn some high-level defenders, from Hillary Clinton’s former chief spokesman at the State Department to editors at The New York Times and The Guardian.   But none of them stand by Manning for his alleged crimes – he’s accused of leaking a massive number of classified documents to WikiLeaks — but instead  protest the conditions of his harsh confinement.

One person, however, has spoken up for Manning for his actual (alleged) actions as a whistleblower ever since his arrest last May. That would be Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked The Pentagon Papers four decades ago. He was even arrested twice in two days last month as part of his pro-Manning activism.

Ari Berman: Government Shutdown? Blame GOP Heartlessness and Democratic Cowardice

InTrade says there’s a 52 percent chance there will be a government shutdown before July. The brinksmanship and theatrics aside, I’ve long believed a shutdown would be averted and a budget deal reached for 2011-12. Now I’m not so sure. Some in the GOP are eagerly cheering on the prospect of a shutdown (literally), with the conservative Republican Study Committee even unveiling a countdown clock on its website (as of this post, there’s two days, ten hours, three minutes and five seconds left).

Glenn Greenwald: The Impotence of the Loyal Partisan Voter

Rachel Maddow last night issued a very harsh and eloquent denunciation of Obama’s decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission at Guantanamo rather than a real court. At the end of her monologue, Maddow focused on the contrast between how the Republicans treat their base and how Democrats treat theirs, specifically emphasizing that the White House announced this decision on the same day it kicked off Obama’s re-election bid. About that point, Rachel said this:

   A Democratic President kicks his base in the teeth on something as fundamental as civil liberties — he puts the nail in the coffin of a civil liberties promise he made on his first full day in office — and he does it on the first day of his re-election effort. And Beltway reaction to that is. . . huh, good move. That’s the difference between Republican politics and Democratic politics. The Republicans may not love their base, but they fear them and play to them. The Democratic Party institutional structures of D.C., and the Beltway press in particular, not only hate the Democratic base — they think it’s good politics for Democratic politicians to kick that base publicly whenever possible.

   Only the base itself will ever change that.

How will that happen? How can the base itself

possibly change this dynamic, whereby politicians of the Democratic Party are not only willing, but eager, to “kick them whenever possible,” on the ground (among others) that doing so is good politics? I’d submit that this is not only one of the most important domestic political questions (if not the most important), but also the one that people are most eager to avoid engaging. And the reason is that there are no comforting answers.

Amanda Marcotte: How The “U-Word” Exposes the Anti-Choice Movement

Periodically in politics, there are events that create a dual reaction in all thinking people: 1) peals of laughter at the absurdity of it all and 2) the dreaded realization that many of our leaders are completely out of touch.  Such was the dual reaction to the news that the Republican leadership of the Florida state legislature wishes to censor the word “uterus” from being said aloud in their chambers, in response to a Democrat making a joke about how his wife should incorporate her uterus if she wants to maintain her right to bodily autonomy.  Obviously, the Republicans really just didn’t like the joke, which hit too close to home, and were looking for an excuse to condemn it.  But the excuse was real life concern trolling, in the guise of claiming “uterus” was a dirty word, with a side  helping of “think about the children!”

The internet responded with the requisite contempt to this censorship.  The hashtag #uterus exploded, and the general sentiment was that people who can’t tolerate hearing the syllables you-ter-us spoken aloud should not be filing 18 separate bills aimed at snatching control of the organs away from the rightful owners.  If you want to control something that badly, you should be able to say it out loud.

Ray McGovern: Military Tribunal May Keep 9/11 Motives Hidden

The Obama administration’s decision to use a military tribunal rather than a federal criminal court to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others means the real motives behind the 9/11 attacks may remain obscure.

The Likud Lobby and their allied U.S. legislators can chalk up a significant victory for substantially shrinking any opportunity for the accused planners of 9/11 to tell their side of the story.

What? I sense some bristling. “Their side of the story?” Indeed! We’ve been told there is no “their side of the story.”

Robert Sheer: The Peasants Need Pitchforks

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”

The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income-an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

Gail Collins: Medicine on the Move

Sometimes, you really do want to tell the medical profession to just make up its mind.

We got word this week that estrogen therapy, which was bad, is good again. Possibly. In some cases.

This was not quite as confusing as the news last year that calcium supplements, which used to be very good, are now possibly bad. Although maybe not. And the jury’s still out.

Or the recent federal study that suggested women be told to stop checking their breasts for lumps. Or the recommendations on when to get a mammogram, which seem to fluctuate between every five years and every five minutes.

We certainly want everyone to keep doing studies. But it’s very difficult to be a civilian in the world of science.

Amy Goodman: One Guantanamo Trial That Will Be Held in New York

On the same day President Barack Obama formally launched his re-election campaign, his attorney general, Eric Holder, announced that key suspects in the 9/11 attacks would be tried not in federal court, but through controversial military commissions at Guantanamo. Holder blamed members of Congress, who he said “have intervened and imposed restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States.” Nevertheless, one Guantanamo case will be tried in New York. No, not the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any of his alleged co-conspirators. This week, the New York state Supreme Court will hear the case against John Leso, a psychologist who is accused of participating in torture at the Gitmo prison camp that Obama pledged, and failed, to close.

The case was brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) on behalf of Steven Reisner. Reisner, a New York psychologist and adviser to Physicians for Human Rights, is at the center of a growing group of psychologists campaigning against the participation of psychologists in the U.S. government’s interrogation programs, which they say amounts to torture. Unlike the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the largest association of psychologists in the world, has refused to implement a resolution passed by its membership barring APA members from participating in interrogations at sites where international law or the Geneva Conventions are being violated. Reisner, a child of Holocaust survivors, is running for president of the APA, in part to force it to comply with the resolution.

Apr 07 2011

On This Day In History April 7

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.

April 7 is the 97th day of the year (98th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 268 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1948, The World Health Organization is founded. WHO is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on April 7, 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which was an agency of the League of Nations.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is one of the original agencies of the United Nations, its constitution formally coming into force on the first World Health Day, (April 7, 1948), when it was ratified by the 26th member state. Jawaharlal Nehru, a major freedom fighter of India had given an opinion to start WHO. Prior to this its operations, as well as the remaining activities of the League of Nations Health Organization, were under the control of an Interim Commission following an International Health Conference in the summer of 1946. The transfer was authorized by a Resolution of the General Assembly. The epidemiological service of the French Office International d’Hygiène Publique was incorporated into the Interim Commission of the World Health Organization on January 1, 1947.

Activities

Apart from coordinating international efforts to control outbreaks of infectious disease, such as SARS, malaria, tuberculosis, influenza, and HIV/AIDS, the WHO also sponsors programmes to prevent and treat such diseases. The WHO supports the development and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, pharmaceutical diagnostics, and drugs. After over two decades of fighting smallpox, the WHO declared in 1980, that the disease had been eradicated – the first disease in history to be eliminated by human effort. The WHO aims to eradicate polio within the next few years.

The organization develops and promotes the use of evidence-based tools, norms and standards to support Member States to inform health policy options. It regularly publishes a World Health Report including an expert assessment of a specific global health topic. The organization has published tools for monitoring the capacity of national health systems and health workforces to meet population health needs, and endorsed the world’s first official HIV/AIDS Toolkit for Zimbabwe (from 3 October 2006), making it an international standard.

In addition, the WHO carries out various health-related campaigns – for example, to boost the consumption of fruits and vegetables worldwide and to discourage tobacco use. The organization relies on the expertise and experience of many world-renowned scientists and professionals to inform its work. Experts met at the WHO headquarters in Geneva in February, 2007, and reported that their work on pandemic influenza vaccine development had achieved encouraging progress. More than 40 clinical trials have been completed or are ongoing. Most have focused on healthy adults. Some companies, after completing safety analysis in adults, have initiated clinical trials in the elderly and in children. All vacciness so far appear to be safe and well-tolerated in all age groups tested.

The WHO also promotes the development of capacities in Member States to use and produce research that addresses national needs, by bolstering national health research systems and promoting knowledge translation platforms such as the Evidence Informed Policy Network (EVIPNet). WHO and its regional offices are working to develop regional policies on research for health – the first one being the Pan American Health Organization/Regional Office for the Americas (PAHO/AMRO) that had its Policy on Research for Health approved in September 2009 by its 49th Directing Council Document CD 49.10.

WHO also conducts health research in communicable diseases, non-communicable conditions and injuries; for example, longitudinal studies on ageing to determine if the additional years we live are in good or poor health, and, whether the electromagnetic field surrounding cell phones has an impact on health. Some of this work can be controversial, as illustrated by the April, 2003, joint WHO/FAO report, which recommended that sugar should form no more than 10% of a healthy diet. This report led to lobbying by the sugar industry against the recommendation, to which the WHO/FAO responded by including in the report the statement “The Consultation recognized that a population goal for free sugars of less than 10% of total energy is controversial”, but also stood by its recommendation based upon its own analysis of scientific studies.

The World Health Organization’s suite of health studies is working to provide the needed health and well-being evidence through a variety of data collection platforms, including the World Health Survey covering 308,000 respondents aged 18+ years and 81,000 aged 50+ years from 70 countries and the Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE) covering over 50,000 persons aged 50+ across almost 23 countries. The World Mental Health Surveys, WHO Quality of Life Instrument, WHO Disability Assessment Scales provide guidance for data collection in other health and health-related areas. Collaborative efforts between WHO and other agencies, such as the Health Metrics Network and the International Household Surveys Network, serve the normative functions of setting high research standards.

WHO has also worked on global initiatives in surgery such as the Global Initiative for Emergency and Essential Surgical Care and the Guidelines for Essential Trauma Care focussed on access and quality. Safe Surgery Saves Lives addresses the safety of surgical care. The WHO Surgical Safety Checklist is in current use worldwide in the effort to improve safety in surgical patients.

Apr 06 2011

Under the Radar: Busy, Busy

With the imminent shut down of the Federal government looming and the past couple of week’s news dominated by Japan’s nuclear crisis and the Libyan revolt, here are a few of the background bits and pieces that make you go hmmmmmm

  • Some good news, I guess, about Glen Back from Raw Story:

    Glenn Beck’s Fox News show ending ‘later this year’

    By Stephen C. Webster

    Conservative conspiracy host Glenn Beck announced plans Wednesday to “transition off” his Fox News program in favor of a realigned agreement between Fox and his production company, Mercury Radio Arts.

    The deal will see Beck’s company designing unspecified new media for the Fox News Channel and other Fox online properties, a news release said.

    The release was not specific as to when he would be off the air, saying only that it would happen “later this year.”

    Moments after the announcement, Beck’s website The Blaze, which hosted the release, went offline.

    Too embarrassing even for Rupert and Roger?

  • From Think Progress in this morning’s Think Fast the Republicans are still worried about those brown people and their “anchor” babies. If first you don’t succeed:

    Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and “three colleagues on Tuesday announced a bill that would restrict” birthright citizenship, a move that is likely unconstitutional. “It is astounding that the U.S. government allows individuals to exploit the loopholes of our immigration system in this manner,” said Vitter of his legislation.

    Damn that Constitution we swore to uphold.

  • Look this way, do not pay any attention to that man behind the curtain. Alternet‘s Don Monkerud enumerates the distractions ad infinitum:

    Republicans Have an Infinite Supply of Crazy Ideas to Distract the Public from Dealing with the Country’s Pressing Issues

    Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. When are we going to get wise to their tactics?

    Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. Morality praised as the key national issue.

    American politics are getting more bizarre and in some cases, border on the nutty. Current politics include Republican legislatures in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Minnesota fighting for their “rights” to reject energy efficiency light bulbs, while South Carolina will manufacture their own state’s rights incandescent bulbs.

    Alaska wants to eliminate federal protection of salmon, polar bears, seals and wolves in favor of “state sovereignty.” Dozens of states pledge to roll back “Obamacare,” and protect their citizens’ right to high-priced monopoly healthcare.

    A GOP legislator in New Hampshire recommends sending the disabled and homeless to Siberia where it’s cheaper to live.

    Read on, there are two pages of brilliant ideas to take America back to the 18th century or better.

    • Apr 06 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”

    Dana Milbank: Paul Ryan’s dogmatic budget

    “This is not a budget,” Paul Ryan said as he introduced the Republicans’ 10-year budget plan. “This is a cause.”

    Truer words have never been spoken.

    The document released by the chairman of the House Budget Committee isn’t a serious budget proposal because it fails at the central mission of ending the deficit and taming the debt.

    Without question, Ryan makes some severe cuts: Taking hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, ending the Medicare entitlement, and slashing planned spending on transportation, energy, education, veterans benefits, agriculture payments, counterterrorism and more.

    Robert Reich: Paul Ryan’s Plan, the Coming Shutdown, and What’s Really at Stake

    I was in Washington in 1995 when the government closed because of a budget stalemate. I had to tell most of the Labor Department’s 15,600 employees to go home and not return the next day. I also had to tell them I didn’t know when they’d next get a paycheck.

    There were two shutdowns, actually, rolling across the government in close succession, like thunder storms.

    It’s not the way to do the public’s business.

    Dean Baker: The Real Story Behind Job Creation

    When the labour department announced that the US economy had created 216,000 jobs in March, it set off a round of celebrations throughout Washington policy circles. The word in the New York Times, the Washington Post and other major news outlets was that the economy was back on course; we were on the right path.

    Those who know arithmetic were a bit more sceptical. If the economy sustained March’s rate of job growth, it will be more than seven years before we get back to normal rates of unemployment. Furthermore, some of this growth likely reflected a bounceback from weaker growth the prior two months. The average rate of job growth over the last three months has been just 160,000. At that pace, we won’t get back to normal rates of unemployment until after 2022.

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