December 16, 2012 archive

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Cartnoon

Tar and Feathers.

On This Day In History December 16

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

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.

December 16 is the 350th day of the year (351st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 15 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships moored in Boston Harbor and dump 342 chests of tea into the water.

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government and the monopolistic East India Company that controlled all the tea coming into the colonies. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and other political protests often refer to it.

The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protestors would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.

The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston’s commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

Heroic Sandy Hook staff saved many lives as the killer struck

School employees praised as stories emerge of how they shielded their pupils

 EMILY DUGAN    SUNDAY 16 DECEMBER 2012

When Adam Lanza stormed into Victoria Soto’s first-grade classroom, he was armed with semi-automatic weapons with which he had already killed 20 small children. She had only her courage, and her instinct to protect her class.

Ms Soto, 27, faced the killer, and saved her children. Accounts of what happened differ. One, posted on Tumblr by a friend, says that she had bundled the class into a large closet, and told the gunman that they had gone to the gym. Another says she was found huddled over the children. Either way, Lanza shot her, and then turned the gun on himself. Her cousin, Jim Wiltsie, told ABC News: “I’m just proud that Vicki had the instincts to protect her kids from harm. It brings peace to know that Vicki was doing what she loved, protecting the children, and in our eyes she’s a hero.”




Sunday’s Headlines:

EGYPT

Egypt ends first round of constitutional referendum

Ivory sales must stop or Africa’s elephants could soon be extinct, says Jane Goodall

Anxious Japan tipped to swing back to the right

What are the health risks of space travel?

An Afghan Mystery: Why Are Large Shipments of Gold Leaving the Country?

The Maestro on LIBOR

I understand that nothing can shock your inured souls, for I too am made dust by self-pulverization at the brazenness of the lies, the vacuum of accountability, and public indifference…

…but allow me, for the fourteen-millionth time, to insist that, “Nobody could have predicted” financial parasitism:

“Through all of my experience, what I never contemplated was that there were bankers who would purposely misrepresent facts to banking authorities,” Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, said in a phone interview. “You were honor-bound to report accurately, and it never entered my mind that, aside from a fringe element, it would be otherwise. I was wrong.”

Apex parasites cheat.  Who knew?  Certainly not the Supreme Parasite, whose poor psycho’s [conscience?] requires immediate defibrillation.  Maybe a stun gun would do the trick.

However habituated I seem to be to their chronic lies, murder, and thievery, occasionally they throw me a medicine ball that hits my solar plexus just so, and I’m crumpled and breathless at the most ordinary thing.

Of all people!  Dishonest bankers?  Father!  Take my soul to heaven, now!

Dean Baker: The Fiscal Myth

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The Biggest Myth in Obama-GOP Spending Showdown is the “Fiscal Cliff” Itself

As negotiations continue between the White House and House Speaker John Boehner, leading economist Dean Baker joins us to discuss the myths about the so-called fiscal cliff. With little more than two weeks before the deadline, President Obama insists on an immediate increase in the top two income-tax rates as a condition for further negotiations on changes to spending and entitlement programs. But Boehner said Washington’s “spending problem” is the biggest roadblock to reaching a deal and has urged the White House to identify more spending cuts. “This idea that, somehow, if we don’t get a deal by the end of the year we’re going to see the economy collapse, go into a recession, really that’s just totally dishonest,” says Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “The basis for this is that we don’t have a deal all year. And the fact that you don’t have a deal December 31st does not mean you don’t get a deal by December 31st, 2013.”

Transcript can be read here.

What We Now Know

MSNBC host Chris Hayes and guest discuss what they know since last week began.

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Photobucket Pictures, Images and Photos

Our regular featured content-

This weekly feature-

And this featured article-

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Write more and often.  This is an Open Thread.

The Stars Hollow Gazette