“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: For Ireland, Softheaded Advice From Hard-Money Enthusiasts
As Ireland attempts to overcome its economic difficulties, European hard-money types are proposing Latvia as a model for Ireland to emulate. Their argument goes like this: Sure, Iceland, which devalued the krona after the crisis struck in 2008, has begun to recover – but so have Latvia and Estonia, even though they kept their currencies firmly pegged to the euro.
To quote from Charles Duxbury’s commentary, which was published online by The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 10 (bluntly titled “Irish should look to Baltics, not Iceland”): “Both Estonia and Latvia revised up their third-quarter G.D.P. figures Thursday, leading analysts to pronounce that, as for Iceland, a corner had been turned … So the good news for Ireland is that adding zeros to your bank notes is not the only way to beat a crisis.”
But, Mr. Duxbury explains, “the bad news is that both options mean you have less money left once you’ve bought the basics. It doesn’t matter if your hand is down the back of the sofa feeling for kroons, lats, kronur or euros, it still chafes.”
Laura Flanders: Widening Concern for Public Workers
It’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, the holiday that celebrates the Nobel Peace Prize-winner’s birth and life. The Reverend King wasn’t assassinated, as Rep. Gabrielle Giffords almost was, at a Congress on Your Corner. Or on a civil rights march.
He was assassinated in Memphis, where he was showing up to support the right of public employees to organize and strike.
What have civil rights got to do with public workers’ rights? To use President Obama’s language in Tucson, we need to “widen our circle of concern”-as King did-when it comes to civil rights.
Ben Barber: Why Haiti can’t get it together
Today, despite more than $5 billion pledged in foreign aid, Haiti seems unable to rebuild after the quake, just as previously it proved unable to stop deforestation, halt crime, nurture export industries, educate its children and establish security. UN peacekeepers have run the island for a decade.
What is the reason for this legacy of failure?
Unfortunately, Haiti’s own society, culture and social divisions, augmented by the outside influence of the powerful United States, have barred the door to change.
Tim Fitzsimons: What’s Going On in Beirut?
Why the Lebanese government collapsed, and why you should care.
BEIRUT-On Wednesday, Hezbollah and its allies abruptly withdrew from the Lebanese Cabinet, forcing the collapse of Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s government just moments after he finished meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington.
What may seem like mere parliamentary maneuvering in a country about the size and population of Connecticut was actually the climax of a yearslong drama rife with murder, international conspiracy, espionage, backstabbing, and whisper campaigns.
Joe Conason: How We Enable Crimes of Insanity
The deranged expression on the face of Jared Lee Loughner in the mug shot released by the police-taken within hours after he allegedly killed six innocent people and wounded 14 more, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords-suggests that we may never fully understand whatever illness afflicts him. The law requires us to assess his mental state and motivations, but we might do better to analyze our own craziness.
That doesn’t mean trying to determine whether events like the Tucson massacre result from violent political rhetoric-a debate that swiftly and predictably devolved into a self-pity party for Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and all of their imitators.
There are few scenarios more frightening for America than a domestic nuclear terrorist incident, which could kill tens of thousands of people, devastate the economy and turn America into a police state. As a March 2010 Harvard study reported, Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile “faces a greater threat from Islamic extremists seeking nuclear weapons than any other nuclear stockpile on earth.”
The single most significant revelation of the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks is that U.S. policy is actually increasing the danger of a nuclear incident. The U.S. has so alienated the Pakistani people that their government fears cooperating with Washington on nuclear matters: The U.S. signed a nuclear energy agreement with India that has convinced Pakistani officials to enlarge their already unstable nuclear stockpile, and Washington has expanded U.S. military operations into Pakistan in a way that Ambassador Anne Patterson herself secretly admitted “risks destabilizing the Pakistani state” (9-23-09 cable). These newly disclosed official U.S. cables, which strongly point to the growing threat to Americans from mismanaged U.S. policy, require urgent congressional hearings, greater media investigation and public protest.
John Nichols: Don’t Tone It Down, Tone It Up: Make Debate “Worthy of Those We Have Lost”
Toward the end of the remarkable speech he delivered to the mourning citizens of Tucson Wednesday night, President Obama recalled that a photo of the youngest victim of Saturday’s shooting rampage — nine year-old Christina Taylor Green — was featured in a book about children born on September 11, 2001. Next to the photo were “simple wishes for a child’s life,” one of which read: “I hope you know all the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart.” . . . . . .
The president chose in Tucson to present an almost absurdly idealistic appeal to a “one nation” Americanism that only the most hopeful of our leaders — and the most hopeful of our citizens — have dared imagine. Obama took a risk in expressing it. His critics will, as is their wont, accuse him not just of naïveté but of cynicism.
So be it. We are a better nation when we are undimmed by cynicism and vitriol. And for a few minutes on Wednesday night, we dared with our president to answer cynicism with idealism, to answer tragedy with hope, to answer division as one nation, indivisible.
Linn Washington, Jr: Not a Video Game: Grand Theft – the Constitution
Maybe it’s not a violation of criminal statutes.
But the misappropriation of the U.S. Constitution by conservatives for their partisan posturing – as illustrated in last week’s reading of the nation’s founding document in the House – does fit the definition of theft: taking property without consent…in this instance the ‘consent’ of the governed.
However, this is a heist conservatives’ have successfully pulled off before as evidenced by their politicized appropriation of the American Flag, the Pledge of Alliance, national security, God, mom, apple pie, etc. etc…
This brazen theft by deception of the Constitution – the foundational document of the U.S. government – happens on three levels: dismissive; disturbing and downright dangerous.
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