“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”.
Robert Reich: The Dangerous Hi-Jinks of the GOP’s Juveniles
I’ve spent enough of my life in Washington to take its theatrics with as much seriousness as a Seinfeld episode. A large portion of what passes for policy debate isn’t at all – it’s play-acting for various constituencies. The actors know they’re acting, as do their protagonists on the other side who are busily putting on their own plays for their own audiences.
Typically, though, back stage is different. When the costumes and grease paint come off, compromises are made, deals put together, legislation hammered out. Then at show time the players announce the results – spinning them to make it seem they’ve kept to their parts.
At least that’s the standard playbook.
But this time there’s no back stage. The kids in the GOP have trashed it. The GOP’s experienced actors – House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McDonnell – have been upstaged by juveniles like Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, who don’t know the difference between playacting and governing. They’re in league with tea party fanatics who hate government so much they’re willing to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States. Washington has gone from theater to reality TV – a game of hi-jinks chicken that could end in a crash.
Paul Krugman: Inflation Hawks Demand That Britain Leap Into Folly
The economist Adam Posen of the Bank of England gave a talk recently about British monetary policy that drives home a point I’ve been meaning to make: namely, that what’s happening in Britain on the monetary front right now is very much a teachable moment about monetary policy more generally.
The Bank of England faces the same kind of conflict between what it should be doing and what it’s under pressure to do that the Federal Reserve does, but in starker form. And if the Bank of England holds its ground, we should soon have a clear demonstration that one side is right and the other is wrong.
It is time to stop giving Herman Cain’s unapologetic bigotry a free pass. The man and his poison need to be seen clearly and taken seriously.
Imagine the reaction if a major-party presidential candidate-one who, like Cain, shows actual support in the polls-said he “wouldn’t be comfortable” appointing a Jew to a Cabinet position. Imagine the outrage if this same candidate loudly supported a community’s efforts to block Mormons from building a house of worship.
But Cain’s prejudice isn’t against Mormons or Jews, it’s against Muslims. Open religious prejudice is usually enough to disqualify a candidate for national office-but not, apparently, when the religion in question is Islam.
Joe Nocera: The Tables Are Turned on Murdoch
You have to love the fact that when John Yates resigned on Monday as the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London – a k a Scotland Yard – he complained about the “huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and, on occasion, downright malicious gossip” that had finally forced his hand.
My first thought was: He didn’t really say that, did he? My second thought was: Can any human being truly be that unaware?
New York Times Editorial: Signing Away the Right to Govern
It used to be that a sworn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution was the only promise required to become president. But that no longer seems to be enough for a growing number of Republican interest groups, who are demanding that presidential candidates sign pledges shackling them to the corners of conservative ideology. Many candidates are going along, and each pledge they sign undermines the basic principle of democratic government built on compromise and negotiation.
Both parties have long had litmus tests on issues – abortion, taxation, the environment, the social safety net. The hope was that the candidates would keep their promises, and, when they didn’t, voters who cared deeply about those issues could always pick someone else next time. Human beings, after all, do not come with warranties.
Roger Cohen: The Cameron Collapse
Peter Oborne, writing in the conservative Daily Telegraph, recently suggested that the Conservative British prime minister, David Cameron, was not merely in a mess, he “is in a sewer.”
That seems about right. Cameron lost it over Rupert Murdoch. He showed staggering lack of judgment in hiring Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, as his first director of communications at Downing Street, a hubristic decision made against the best advice and apparently with a dual aim: to show he was not an old Etonian “toff” and to get favorable treatment from the 37 percent of the British print media owned by Murdoch.
He then spent a fair chunk of time during his first year in office in 26 meetings with various News Corp. honchos, including Rebekah Brooks, who was arrested by the British police Sunday.
John Nichols: Elizabeth Warren Says She’ll Consider Massachusetts Senate Run
On Sunday, when President Obama let it be known that he would not appoint Elizabeth Warren as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it was pretty clear that the Harvard law professor who has become a hero to progressives was going to need a new approach to Washington. It was equally clear that the logical approach was to consider making a run for Ted Kennedy’s old US Senate seat representing Massachusetts.
Warren agreed.
Asked Monday whether she would consider making a run for the seat now occupied by US Senator Scott Brown, R-Wall Street, Warren replied: “I’ve been working 14 hours a day on trying to stand this… agency up, really for more than a year now…. It’s time for a little vacation for me. When I go home, I’ll do more thinking then. But I need to do that thinking not from Washington.”
George Zornich: Who Is Richard Cordray?
When Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a liberal member of the House Financial Services Committee, heard over the weekend that President Obama had nominated Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he wasn’t sure what to think. Not because he was unsure about Cordray’s record- Gutierrez just didn’t know who he was.
“I am not familiar with Attorney General Richard Cordray, but a quick Google search was very reassuring,” Gutierrez said in a statement Monday. “He is the type of strong, experienced leader we need to get the agency fully up and running.”
Cordray may have a very low national profile, but in Ohio-where he’s been active in Democratic politics since the early 90s, and served as state attorney general for two years beginning in 2009-he’s much more of a known commodity.
1 comments
Author