Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

HE was born this way.

Bi.

Not bisexual. Not even bipartisan. Just binary.

Our president likes to be on both sides at once.

In Afghanistan, he wants to go but he wants to stay. He’s surging and withdrawing simultaneously. He’s leaving fewer troops than are needed for a counterinsurgency strategy and more troops than are needed for a counterterrorism strategy – and he seems to want both strategies at the same time. Our work is done but we have to still be there. Our work isn’t done but we can go.

On Libya, President Obama wants to lead from behind. He’s engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi while telling Congress he’s not engaging in hostilities against Qaddafi.

Mark Weisbrot: European Authorities Risking Financial Contagion in Greek Showdown; Where Is the U.S. Government?

The US had better be ready for the economic shock

The European authorities are playing a dangerous game of “chicken” with Greece right now. It is overdue for US members of Congress to exercise some oversight as to what our government’s role is in this process, and how we might be preparing for a Greek debt default. Depending on how it happens, this default could have serious repercussions for the international financial system, the US economy and, indeed, the world economy.

New York Times Editorial: Whose Stimulus?

Big businesses are telling Washington that they are willing to do their bit for the economy – if the price is right. Multinational companies say they could repatriate hundreds of billions in foreign profits and pump them into domestic investment and hiring, but only if Congress and the White House agree to cut the tax rate on those profits to 5.25 percent from 35 percent. They call their plan “the next stimulus.” Sounds more like extortion.

In the last five years American businesses have kept abroad more than $1 trillion worth of foreign earnings, according to government data. An article by David Kocieniewski in The Times last week noted that Microsoft has $29 billion offshore, Google has $17 billion and Apple has $12 billion.

Robert Naiman: Kucinich: Ensure Safety of U.S. Citizens on The Audacity of Hope

In many arenas of human endeavor, there is no plausible way to convince someone through abstract argument that an endeavor that appears to be incredibly difficult is nonetheless not impossible. There’s nothing for it but to create an example.

Efforts to get Members of Congress to do anything related in any way to the basic human rights of Palestinians that is not slavishly pro-Likud is a prime example of this phenomenon. Many are convinced – not without evidence that makes their position seductive – that it is an immutable law of the universe that all Members of Congress must always express fealty to right-wing views on this topic.

Frank Bruni: To Know Us Is to Let Us Love

IN the mid-1980s, when I was in college, what concerned and frustrated my peers and me was how few states had basic statutes forbidding discrimination against gay men and lesbians: laws that merely prevented someone from being denied a job or apartment on the basis of whom he or she loved. At that point only Wisconsin and the District of Columbia provided such protection. The decade would end with just one addition, Massachusetts, to that meager list.

Same-sex marriage? I don’t recall our talking – or dreaming – much about that. We considered ourselves realists. Sometimes idealists. But never fantasists.

John Nichols: Wisconsin Governor Walker’s Chief Judicial Ally Accused of Physically Attacking Jurist Who Defended Rule of Law

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, who mentored controversial Governor Scott Walker when both served as Republican legislators, has positioned himself as the primary defender of Walker’s radical anti-labor and anti-local democracy agenda on the court.

And it appears that the justice, whose unstable behavior and violent language has been highlighted in media reports, is willing to go to any length to protect Walker from legal accountability.

Justice Prosser, who retained his seat on the court only after the recount of results from an April statewide election that saw charges of fraud and political abuse aimed at the justice’s campaign, now stands accused of physically attacking a justice who disagreed with his push to make the high court an amen corner for the governor.