Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The Lusitania sunk in World War I; Nazi Germany signs surrender in World War II; Vietnam’s Battle of Dien Bien Phu; Composer Peter Illych Tchaikovsky born; Glenn Miller records ‘Chattanooga Choo-Choo.’
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate.
Guardian and Bellingcat investigation finds more than two dozen Islamic religious sites partly or completely demolished since 2016
Around this time of the year, the edge of the Taklamakan desert in far western China should be overflowing with people. For decades, every spring thousands of Uighur Muslims would converge on the Imam Asim shrine, a group of buildings and fences surrounding a small mud tomb believed to contain the remains of a holy warrior from the eighth century.
Pilgrims from across the Hotan oasis would come seeking healing, fertility, and absolution, trekking through the sand in the footsteps of those ahead of them. It was one of the largest shrine festivals in the region. People left offerings and tied pieces of cloth to branches, markers of their prayers.
Istanbul mayoral vote to be held again, election officials rule
President Erdogan had argued that the margin of votes was too small for the opposition party win to be valid. The man who won the vote said the electoral body had made a “treacherous decision.”
Turkey’s electoral authority has ordered that the vote for mayor of Istanbul be rerun, state media reported on Monday, after the March 31 vote was narrowly won by the opposition CHP party.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party had filed a motion with the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) on April 16 to nullify the election, alleging “irregularities.” The objection also claimed that a margin of only 15,000 votes in a city as large as Istanbul was too close to be fair.
France faces legal challenge for refusing to allow jihadists’ children to return
The grandparents of two children stranded with their French jihadist mother at a camp in Kurdish-held Syria filed a lawsuit at Europe’s top rights court Monday over France’s refusal to allow them home, lawyers said.
It was the latest challenge to the French government’s opposition to returning the children of suspected jihadists in Syria or Iraq.
The four-year-old boy and three-year-old girl, who were born in Syria, are among an estimated 500 children of French citizens who joined the Islamic State’s so-called “caliphate” before the jihadists’ last Syrian redoubt was overrun in March.
‘Psychological warfare’: Iran dismisses US naval deployment
Official says US announcement on sending carrier strike group to Middle East is ‘clumsy use of an out-of-date event’.
Iran labelled the US announcement that it was deploying a naval strike group to the Middle East to deliver the Islamic Republic a message as “psychological warfare”.
The dismissal on Monday came a day after John Bolton, US national security adviser, said Washington was sending the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and a bomber task force as a “clear and unmistakable message” that it will retaliate against any attack on its interests or its allies by Iran.
Drone flights reported again near Imperial Palace, other locations in Tokyo
Police are investigating witness reports of a drone being flown Monday evening near the Imperial Palace and other downtown Tokyo areas, after a number of similar sightings were noted last week following the enthronement of Emperor Naruhito.
The flying of drones is banned in central Tokyo. Riot police observed what they thought was a drone flying over the Kitanomaru Garden located just north of the palace at around 7:30 p.m. Monday, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
Further reports were made later saying a drone had been spotted flying over Tokyo’s Nagatacho district, where the country’s parliament and the prime minister’s office are located, as well as in the Yotsuya and Roppongi areas of the city, according to the police.
I suppose the shocking Oedipal revelation does kind of make the gouging of eyeballs superfluous but it’s an important bit of staging that wows the audience every time. Still pretending it’s not Justice Theater? Consider whom we share the practice with.
This is why the maximum penalty I can endorse is a cell and a long life.
Pondering 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 “Pondering the Pundits”.
With a field this large, let’s not jump to conclusions.
Joe Biden opened his presidential campaign with a sharp, if familiar, message. “I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time,” he said in his announcement video. “But if we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation.” On the stump, Biden has highlighted his relationships with individual Republican lawmakers and he tries to distinguish the larger party from its leader, to appeal to Republican voters who might be alienated by the president. “This,” Biden says referring to Trump, “is not the Republican Party.”
Hillary Clinton took a similar tack in 2016 when she reached out to moderate Republicans and took on Trump as an unfit demagogue who amplified and sympathized with white supremacists. She lost. But Biden thinks he can do something similar and run against four actual years of the president’s behavior, versus the hypotheticals envisioned by Clinton. Democratic primary voters seem to agree. After a little less than two weeks in the race, he is the front-runner for the nomination, with many Democrats convinced of his ability to beat Trump.
Before they commit to him, however, Democrats should not take Biden’s presumed electability for granted. Yes, there is evidence he is well positioned to challenge Trump, but it’s also possible that Biden represents a doomed attempt to fight the last war, with similar results.
As Nixon learned, Congress will not abide a president who defies its subpoenas.
On July 30, 1974, nine days before President Richard Nixon resigned, the House Judiciary Committee added a third article to its impeachment charges against the president. The first two had dealt with obstruction of justice and abuse of power; Article III charged that Nixon had failed to comply with eight congressional subpoenas related to the Watergate investigation.
Now, with President Trump and William Barr, his attorney general, refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations, the Democrats in the House should take yet another lesson from Watergate. They are reportedly already preparing impeachment articles on obstruction of justice; they should add failure to comply with Congress to the list. [..]
Yet Mr. Trump’s defiance can, in and of itself, form the basis for an additional impeachment article — a fact that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, recognized on Thursday. “Ignoring subpoenas of Congress, not honoring subpoenas of Congress — that was Article III of the Nixon impeachment,” she said.
President Trump’s assertion that there is nothing left to learn from congressional hearings — which, unlike the Mueller investigation, would be televised — may be correct. But that is beside the point; it is up to Congress, not him, to decide.
Expression, and the right to publish it, is a human right. And yet, President Trump continues to disregard this.
The media is not the enemy of the people. The enemy of the people is ignorance — obliviousness to truth, ignoring it or having incredulity about it.
There is no way to have a functioning democracy without a thriving press.
One of the great missions of the press is to hold power accountable by revealing what those in power would rather hide. Corruption depends on concealment. Accountability hinges on disclosure.
The founders of this country knew that. I also think Donald Trump knows that and that he is purposely attempting to prune that function.
A free and fearless press is the greatest ally to a free and prosperous people. And, the kind of dogged, unrelenting pressure that reporting requires demands a professional press. People who can make a living and feed a family as they labor away ferreting out the truth. And, I speak here liberally about the profession, from cable news to YouTube, from a big city daily to a blog.
No one loves a catchphrase more than Trump. He loves labeling. He loves to yoke his enemies with silly, derisive monikers, to reduce perceived weakness to bumper sticker legibility.
This would be a trifle, a quirk, coming from others. But Trump is president.
The presidential bully pulpit is as powerful, or possibly more powerful, than any media outlet, in part because it is often propagated by those same outlets.
As such, his repeated attacks on the press — including on individual journalists — amounts to a maximum breach of protocols, and I would say constitutional responsibility, as it represents one of the many measurable casualties of this presidency.
Nature is being eroded at rates unprecedented in human history but we still have time to stave off mass extinctions
A colleague recently described how fish would swim into her clothing when she was a child bathing in the ocean off the coast of Vietnam, but today the fish are gone and her children find the story far-fetched.
Another recalled his experiences just last year in Cape Town – one of the world’s most attractive tourism and leisure destinations – when more than 2 million people faced the nightmare prospect of all taps, in every home and business, running dry.
These instances, on opposite sides of the world, are two faces of the same problem; the relentless pressure we are putting on biodiversity and the contributions that nature makes to our wellbeing, and the way we humans are changing the Earth’s climate.
The core issue is the common good. Measles travels through the air – and if enough people opt out of vaccinations, they put everyone at a higher risk
I remember having measles as a kid. Believe me, it was no fun. Also, measles could cause birth defects if a pregnant women got infected. If you were elderly, measles could be fatal.
Eventually, after vaccinations became nearly universal in America, measles was declared eliminated from the US in 2000.
But now the measles are back – already surpassing 700 cases this year, in 22 states. So far, 66 people have been hospitalized, a third of them with pneumonia.
What happened? We stopped vaccinating everyone. More than 500 of the new cases are in people who had not been vaccinated. [..]
The core issue here is the common good. If enough people are vaccinated, everyone benefits. But if enough people decide to opt out of vaccinations, for whatever reason, they put everyone at a higher risk of contracting disease.
So what’s the incentive to get yourself and your child vaccinated when you might prefer to rely on everyone else vaccinating themselves and their kids instead?
Seriously, it sucked this week for about the 3rd week in a row. Certainly having Adam Sandler constantly there as a reminder of the ’90s gave it that Episode 2, pounding our way out of a coffin feel, well, that and Zombie Chris Farley.
Yes, it is too soon. Why do you ask? It’s not that Farley was any great shakes, a parody of an imitation, it’s just ghoulish to dwell on it.
I’m cutting a lot for time so I can fit in more whining about how Chris Farley is still dead and I got fired to persue my career of low budget rom-coms.
What?! Are you sure Pete Davidson still has a job?
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
The hydrogen-filled airship Hindenburg explodes and crashes; Psychologist Sigmund Freud and actor-director Orson Welles born; Roger Bannister is the first athlete to run a mile in fewer than four minutes.
Forty-one people died after a Russian plane made an emergency landing and burst into flames just after takeoff from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.
Dramatic video shows passengers using emergency exit slides to escape the burning Aeroflot aircraft.
Survivors suggest the plane was struck by lightning, but Russia’s national carrier said only that it returned to the airport for technical reasons.
Two children are among the dead. The jet had 73 passengers and five crew.
Initial reports suggested the plane had landed on fire, but sources quoted by Russian news agency Interfax said the jet caught fire after a very bumpy landing.
From Spain to Turkey, the rise of the far right is a clash of cultures not civilisations
Vox and other extremists are making huge political gains for the first time in years. Their success risks tearing societies apart
I spent part of my childhood in Ankara and part of it in Madrid. Commuting between Spain and Turkey in the early 1980s was a strange experience. Spain had recently returned to democracy after years of dictatorship, and Turkey had experienced yet another military coup. Both countries were at the fringes of Europe, neither part of the EU. It was said that “Europe finishes at the start of the Pyrenees”, but if the mountain range between France and Spain was regarded as a border, another frontier was the waters of the Bosphorus. It often felt as though I was travelling from one end of Europe to the other.
The Spain that I experienced was vibrant, welcoming and warm-hearted. Despite the occasional pro-Franco mutterings of an older generation, Spainembraced democracy. How I wanted my motherland to follow suit. But one day, on my way to school, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. All the walls down the street were plastered with posters of dead babies thrown into bins. I froze. The disturbing and distorted images had been distributed by an ultraconservative Catholic group that claimed family values were being attacked, women had gone too far in the name of emancipation. A patriarchal backlash still lurked under the surface. The culture wars were under way.
Brunei suspends death penalty for homosexuality after backlash
The sultan of Brunei said the country won’t enforce new laws that include stoning to death for adultery and gay sex. The announcement comes after a global backlash to the laws, including calls for a boycott
Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said a moratorium on the death penalty will be extended to the county’s Islamic penal code.
Algeria’s turmoil adds obstacle to saving historic Casbah
By Adam Nossiter
Much of the capital is boiling over with stifled anger at 20 years of police-state repression. But the Casbah, in the heart of Algiers, is strangely quiet, the ancient stone alleys empty in the glare of the sun.
There is no need for demonstrations in the historic district to underscore the dead hand of the state. It is evident all around.
Ruins punctuate the beguiling maze of whitewashed buildings that cascade down the slope to the Mediterranean, where Renoir said he had “discovered whiteness,” and Guy de Maupassant found a “city of snow under dazzling light.”
Trump warns presidency is being stolen amid Mueller angst
Donald Trump — warning that his presidency is being stolen — sure seems threatened by Robert Mueller — especially considering his declaration that the special counsel handed him“complete and total exoneration.”
Trump on Sunday called for Mueller to be barred from testifying to Congress — in a hearing that could come as soon as May 15 — as his anxiety exploded in a double barreled tweet that reversed a position expressed only two days earlier.
“After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents – all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION – why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller to testify…….,” Trump wrote Sunday.
Future role of Japan’s imperial women in spotlight as family numbers decline
With Wednesday’s ascension of Emperor Naruhito following his father’s abdication, questions are now being asked about the roles women will play in the imperial family amid concerns over future successions and the imperial male bloodline, and how public duties should be shouldered in an ever-shrinking household.
Under the 1947 Imperial House Law, only men descended through the male line can ascend to the throne. Women who marry commoners must leave the imperial family.
Of the current 18 imperial family members including Emperor Emeritus Akihito, 85, and Empress Emerita Michiko, 84, who no longer perform official duties, 13 are women.
The name simply means “The Fifth of May” and it’s an oddly U.S. American holiday.
Except in the State of Puebla they don’t much celebrate the victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla in Mexico which makes it much more like Patriot’s Day that we here in New England get to celebrate almost every year as an extra filing day (I understand there’s also a foot race in Boston).
Interestingly enough it was a stand up fight against the banksters which they lost (those who do not remember history…). Some people say that the French intervention was intended to establish a supply line to aid the Slave Owner’s Rebellion (or as the more charitable put it, The War of the Rebellion).
Not Congressionally recognized until 2005, celebrations started in California as early as the mid 1860s and for over 100 years were most common in Southwestern States with a large population of people of Mexican descent. Now of course it’s just another excuse to over consume the cheap crappy Tequila and Beer that Mexico exports (don’t get me wrong, there are good Mexican Beers and Tequila but Corona, Dos Equis, and Jose Cuervo are not them) and ignore real, actual factual Mexican history because we’re so fucking exceptional that understanding and caring about the countries we border is as beneath us as even knowing which ones they are.
This article was adapted from the original that was published on May 5, 2011. It is a brief history of the origins of the Cinco de Mayo holiday which is not Mexico’s Independence Day.
Certain that French victory would come swiftly in Mexico, 6,000 French troops under General Charles Latrille de Lorencez set out to attack Puebla de Los Angeles. From his new headquarters in the north, Juarez rounded up a rag-tag force of loyal men and sent them to Puebla. Led by Texas-born General Zaragoza, the 2,000 Mexicans fortified the town and prepared for the French assault. On the fifth of May, 1862, Lorencez drew his army, well-provisioned and supported by heavy artillery, before the city of Puebla and began their assault from the north. The battle lasted from daybreak to early evening, and when the French finally retreated they had lost nearly 500 soldiers to the fewer than 100 Mexicans killed.
Although not a major strategic victory in the overall war against the French, Zaragoza’s victory at Puebla tightened Mexican resistance, and six years later France withdrew. The same year, Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, who had been installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon in 1864, was captured and executed by Juarez’ forces. Puebla de Los Angeles, the site of Zaragoza’s historic victory, was renamed Puebla de Zaragoza in honor of the general.
Cinco de Mayo is a regional holiday limited primarily to the state of Puebla. There is some limited recognition of the holiday in other parts of the country.
United States
In a 1998 study in the Journal of American Culture it was reported that there were more than 120 official U.S. celebrations of Cinco de Mayo, and they could be found in 21 different states. An update in 2006, found that the number of official Cinco de Mayo events was 150 or more, according to Jose Alamillo, professor of ethnic studies at Washington State University in Pullman, who has studied the cultural impact of Cinco de Mayo north of the border.
In the United States Cinco de Mayo has taken on a significance beyond that in Mexico. The date is perhaps best recognized in the United States as a date to celebrate the culture and experiences of Americans of Mexican ancestry, much as St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, and the Chinese New Year are used to celebrate those of Irish, German, and Chinese ancestry respectively. Similar to those holidays, Cinco de Mayo is observed by many Americans regardless of ethnic origin. Celebrations tend to draw both from traditional Mexican symbols, such as the Virgen de Guadalupe, and from prominent figures of Mexican descent in the United States, including Cesar Chavez. To celebrate, many display Cinco de Mayo banners while school districts hold special events to educate pupils about its historical significance. Special events and celebrations highlight Mexican culture, especially in its music and regional dancing. Examples include baile folklorico and mariachi demonstrations held annually at the Plaza del Pueblo de Los Angeles, near Olvera Street. Commercial interests in the United States have capitalized on the celebration, advertising Mexican products and services, with an emphasis on beverages, foods, and music.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space; France’s Napoleon Bonaparte dies; Philosopher Karl Marx born; IRA member Bobby Sands dies during a prison hunger strike; Carnegie Hall opens in New York.
Things keep heating up in Venezuela, with possible “military options” now being seriously discussed at the Pentagon. And of course you know what that means! That’s right, it means we can expect to see even more lies and manipulations from the political/media class as the narrative managers try to get their rapey little fingers into our minds to manufacture support for unconscionable acts.
This can create a very confusing environment for everyone, where up means down and black means white and “humanitarian intervention” means “murdering thousands and thousands of innocent human beings”. With that in mind, here’s a handy translation key to help you understand what the establishment mouthpieces are really saying:
~
“I stand with the people of Venezuela” = I stand with some of the people in Venezuela, specifically the ones who support US government interests.
“Interim President” = Some guy most Venezuelans had never heard of until January of this year.
“Brutal dictator” = Elected leader who opposes US dictates.
“Usurper” = The guy calling the shots and leading the country.
After 40 years of market fundamentalism, America and like-minded European countries are failing the vast majority of their citizens. At this point, only a new social contract – guaranteeing citizens health care, education, retirement security, affordable housing, and decent work for decent pay – can save capitalism and liberal democracy.
NEW YORK – Three years ago, US President Donald Trump’s election and the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum confirmed what those of us who have long studied income statistics already knew: in most advanced countries, the market economy has been failing large swaths of society.
Nowhere is this truer than in the United States. Long regarded as a poster child for the promise of free-market individualism, America today has higher inequality and less upward social mobility than most other developed countries. After rising for a century, average life expectancy in the US is now declining. And for those in the bottom 90% of the income distribution, real (inflation-adjusted) wages have stagnated: the income of a typical male worker today is around where it was 40 years ago.
Meanwhile, many European countries have sought to emulate America, and those that succeeded, particularly the UK, are now suffering similar political and social consequences. The US may have been the first country to create a middle-class society, but Europe was never far behind. After World War II, in many ways it outperformed the US in creating opportunities for its citizens. Through a variety of policies, European countries created the modern welfare state to provide social protection and pursue important investments in areas where the market on its own would underspend.
