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: Media Unwittingly Plays Republicans’ Deficit Game … Again

Who could have seen this coming?

The Washington Post editorial board was shocked (shocked!) to discover in early January that incoming congressional Republicans aren’t serious about deficit reduction.

“You could listen to their rhetoric – or you could read the rules they are poised to adopt at the start of the new Congress,” they wrote in a Jan. 2 editorial. “The former promises a new fiscal sobriety. The latter suggests that the new G.O.P. majority is determined to continue the spree of unaffordable tax-cutting.”

By “fiscal sobriety,” I imagine The Post was referring to a Republican policy that basically requires lawmakers to offset any new spending by cutting other programs or by raising revenue, not by raising taxes. Of course, The Post was supportive of the deal President Obama struck with Republicans at the end of 2010 to extend the Bush-era tax cuts to all Americans (which means a revenue loss of $3.9 trillion over 10 years, according to the United States Treasury Department), calling it an achievement “to be celebrated” in an editorial on Dec. 23. This achievement to be celebrated is now called unaffordable tax-cutting less than a month later.

I was going to be snarky, but this requires seriousness: the gullibility of much of the media establishment in the United States regarding this issue is ridiculous. Their inability to spot the hollowness of Republican claims to fiscal responsibility amounts to journalistic malpractice.

Mark Weisbrot: Aristide Should Be Allowed to Return to Haiti

Haiti’s infamous dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier, returned to his country this week, while the country’s first elected President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is kept out. These two facts really say everything about Washington’s policy toward Haiti, and our government’s respect for democracy in that country and in the region.

Asked about the return of Duvalier, who had thousands tortured and murdered under his dictatorship, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, “this is a matter for the Government of Haiti and the people of Haiti.”

But when asked about Aristide returning, he said “Haiti does not need, at this point, any more burdens.”

Wikileaks cables released in the last week show that Washington put pressure on Brazil, which is heading up the United Nations forces that are occupying Haiti, not only to keep Aristide out of the country but to keep him from having any political influence from exile.

Laila Lalami: Tunisia Rising

In conventional thinking about the Middle East, perhaps the most persistent cliché is “moderate Arab country.” The label seems to apply indiscriminately to monarchies and republics, ancient dictatorships and newly installed ones, from the Atlantic Coast to the Persian Gulf, so long as the country in question is of some use to the United States. And, almost always, it crops up in articles and policy papers vaunting the need for America to support these countries, bulwarks against growing Islamic extremism in the Arab world.

A perfect example is Tunisia. Just three summers ago, Christopher Hitchens delivered a 2,000-word ode to the North African nation in Vanity Fair, describing it as an “enclave of development” menaced by “the harsh extremists of a desert religion.” This is a country with good economic growth, a country where polygamy was outlawed in 1956, a country with high levels of education, a country with perfect sandy beaches. And, Hitchens wrote, it “makes delicious wine and even exports it to France.”

Never mind that the president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, in power for twenty-three years, was regularly winning elections with 90 percent of the vote. Never mind that his wife, Leila Trabelsi, a former hairdresser, had a stake in almost all of the country’s businesses. Never mind that the unemployment rate among college graduates was reportedly as high as 20 percent. Never mind that there was a police officer for every forty adults and that the Internet was censored. In January all these things added up, making the ouster of Ben Ali seem not only possible but probable, and later inevitable.

Joe Conanson: Fudging the Facts on Health Care and Deficits

Facts always matter, but never more than when politicians deal with issues of real consequence, like health care and budget deficits. . . . . .

Yet the Republican leaders in Congress are now insisting on their own “facts” concerning health care and deficits, which directly contradict the careful studies of the Congressional Budget Office. They have gone so far as to denigrate the CBO, among the most respected agencies in Washington since its founding in 1974, by accusing its analysts of using “rigged” assumptions to reach its conclusions.

Why? The agency’s conclusions are irritating to the Republicans, especially Speaker John Boehner and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, because the CBO found that health care reform will reduce the federal deficit by more than $230 billion during the first decade after it goes into effect-and then by trillions of dollars in the decades that follow.

Ari Berman: Obama: Triangulation 2.0?

Immediately following the Democrats’ 2010 electoral shellacking, a broad spectrum of pundits urged President Obama to “pull a Clinton,” in the words of Politico: move to the center (as if he wasn’t already there), find common ground with the GOP and adopt the “triangulation” strategy employed by Bill Clinton after the Democratic setback in the 1994 midterms. “Is ‘triangulation’ just another word for the politics of the possible?” asked the New York Times. “Can Obama do a Clinton?” seconded The Economist. And so on. The Obama administration, emphatic in charting its own course, quickly took issue with the comparison. According to the Times, Obama went so far as to ban the word “triangulation” inside the White House. Politico called the phrase “the dirtiest word in politics.”

Obama’s distaste for the Clinton-era buzzword seemed a tad ironic, given that he had packed the White House with insiders from the Clinton administration and began year three with prominent Clinton alums as his chief of staff (Bill Daley), top economic adviser (Gene Sperling) and budget director (Jack Lew). Obama’s first legislative deal after the election, on the Bush tax cuts, included major concessions to the GOP in a highly Clintonian compromise. And there was the Big Dog himself, at the White House press podium on December 10, defending the agreement while Obama was under fire from the left, a predicament Clinton was no stranger to. One could be forgiven for believing that the Clinton era had returned. The parallels between now and then are indeed striking.

Michelle Chen: Halfway Through Term, Obama Still Hasn’t Earned His Nobel Prize

When President Obama took office, he vowed to repair the damage done to America’s moral standing on the global stage. You may have hoped that human rights would become an organizing principle of our foreign policy. That the U.S. would finally try to engage pariah states like Iran and North Korea, or that Obama’s presidency would elevate the voices of grassroots movements in economic and environmental policy discussions. In 2011, you’ve probably either lowered your expectations or discarded your hopes.

About a year ago, Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, anticipated the impending disappointment, warning in an op-ed, “President Obama recognizes the importance of redeeming America’s reputation on human rights after the dark Bush years. But it will take more than impressive rhetoric to succeed. Words must be followed by deeds.”