“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”.
Nancy Goldstein: Not Exactly a Profile in Courage: New York Finally Passes Gay Marriage
Hurrah! New York has, at long last, decided to join the twenty-first century and recognize the right of same-sex couples to civil marriage.
Make no mistake: this is a Big Deal. With the exception of Iowa, New York is the first state outside of the New England region to marry queers; it’s also the most populous. What a relief to end this embarrassing episode in history, when the Sodom and Gomorrah of the world lagged behind Catholic strongholds like Portugal, Mexico City, Spain, Argentina and Brazil in supporting marriage equality.
Gred Sargent: Marriage equality is set to become law in New York, and history marches on
In a big step forward for the human race, the marriage equality bill just passed the New York state senate, 33-29. New York is on the verge of becoming the sixth and most populous state to enshrine marriage equality into law, a huge victory for the national gay rights movement, and a huge victory for equality itself.
This is another major defeat for those self-described “conservatives” who hate government except when it’s enforcing a form of legalized discrimination that comports with their prejudices. But this isn’t about them. It’s about everyone but them.
House Speaker John Boehner, whose incoherent approach to the constitutional mandate that Congress check and balance presidential war-making has so served the interests of the Obama administration’s Libya project, steered the House into conflict with itself Friday.
Boehner advanced two proposals (under the sponsorship of the speaker’s close allies) relating to the president’s decision to involve US forces in an ongoing, if largely dysfunctional, NATO led assault on Libya.
One proposal would have authorized the president’s war of whim.
The other would have cut funding for Obama’s latest war, thus bringing the initiative to a swift conclusion.
New York Times Editorial: An Unfair Burden
For all of the economic hardship of the last several years, there was reason to hope that the nation could avoid a crushing increase in the number of Americans living in poverty. That hope is fading fast.
In 2008, amid a deepening recession, a Census Bureau measure showed that the number of poor Americans rose by 1.7 million to nearly 47.5 million. In 2009, thanks in large part to the Obama stimulus, the rise in poverty was halted – a significant accomplishment at a time of worsening unemployment. When data for 2010 are released in the fall, poverty is expected to have stayed in check because the stimulus, including aid to states and bolstered unemployment benefits, was still in effect last year.
Charles M. Blow: Them That’s Not Shall Lose
“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.”
James Baldwin penned that line more than 50 years ago, but it seems particularly prescient today, if in a different manner than its original intent.
Baldwin was referring to the poor being consistently overcharged for inferior goods. But I’ve always considered that sentence in the context of the extreme psychological toll of poverty, for it is in that way that I, too, know well how expensive it is to be poor.
Steve Rattner: The Great Corn Con
FEELING the need for an example of government policy run amok? Look no further than the box of cornflakes on your kitchen shelf. In its myriad corn-related interventions, Washington has managed simultaneously to help drive up food prices and add tens of billions of dollars to the deficit, while arguably increasing energy use and harming the environment.
Even in a crowd of rising food and commodity costs, corn stands out, its price having doubled in less than a year to a record $7.87 per bushel in early June. Booming global demand has overtaken stagnant supply.
Ari Melber: Van Jones Returns, Launches Liberal Alternative to The Tea Partyn
Over one thousand liberal activists gathered in Manhattan on Thursday night, in a bid to counter the Tea Party and elevate a progressive who can tangle with the Becks and Bachmanns that dominate today’s outraged populism. The event launched “Rebuild the Dream,” a MoveOn-backed effort to organize around economic issues.
The crowd that filed into Town Hall in midtown Manhattan was a mix of progressives old and young, in work clothes and casual attire. While they mingled and waited for music by The Roots, a second event was staged in a nearby press room. There reporters and bloggers heard from the would-be leader of a liberal Tea Party — the attorney, author and former Obama official Van Jones. Bowing to the lexicon of today’s Left, however, it was clear that Jones was not announcing a “campaign,” (despite the flashy website, social media strategy and PR campaign). He was not launching a lobbying “coalition,” either, (even though the effort was backed by MoveOn, labor unions, USAction, TrueMajority and “many others to be announced”). The event promised the beginning of a movement.
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