“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”.
John Nichols: How the Wounding of a Vet Who Dared to Dissent Has Stirred More Dissent
“We Are All Scott Olsen!” was the message of vigils held across the United States Thursday night, held in answer to a call from Iraq Veterans Against the War and Occupy Oakland for “occupations across America and around the world to hold solidarity vigils” recognizing Olsen, the former Marine and Iraq War veteran who activists say “sustained a skull fracture after being shot in the head on October 25 with a police projectile while peacefully participating in an Occupy Oakland protest.
In cities across the United States and around the world, “We Are Scott Olsen” vigils, rallies and marches were held. Thousands attended a candlelight vigil in Oakland. In Las Vegas, an image of Olsen was projected at the site of the Occupy encampment. In New York, Occupy Wall Street activist took to the streets chanting “New York is Oakland, Oakland is New York.” As far away as London, images of Olsen were displayed at gatherings. The buzz about the wounding of the 24-year-old veteran seemed to be everywhere, and was perhaps best summed up by a message from an activist who had protested at Wisconsin’s state Capitol with Olsen in February. It read: “He could be any one of us.”
Dahlia Lithwick: Occupy the No-Spin Zone
One of the best things about Occupy Wall Street is the way it confuses and ignores the shrill pundit class.
I confess to being driven insane this past month by the spectacle of television pundits professing to be baffled by the meaning of Occupy Wall Street. Good grief. Isn’t the ability to read still a job requirement for a career in journalism? And as last week’s inane “What Do They Want?” meme morphs into this week’s craven “They Want Your Stuff“ meme, I feel it’s time to explain something: Occupy Wall Street may not have laid out all of its demands in a perfectly cogent one-sentence bumper sticker for you, Mr. Pundit, but it knows precisely what it doesn’t want. It doesn’t want you.
What the movement clearly doesn’t want is to have to explain itself through corporate television. To which I answer, Hallelujah. You can’t talk down to a movement that won’t talk back to you.
Just as the president gets his political footing, his arrogant chief of staff trips him up
Politico’s Roger Simon has an “exclusive” interview with White House chief of staff Bill Daley, and you really have to read it to believe it. It’s a portrait of arrogant self-promotion. The piece is headlined, “Bill Daley, Unplugged.” I hope that President Obama reads it, and decides to unplug Daley, for good. Yes, I know he has announced he’s leaving after the 2012 election. That’s not nearly soon enough.
Former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was no slouch when it came to arrogant self-promotion, either. Remember when he was the obvious unnamed source behind two Washington Post puff pieces, “Why Obama Needs Rahm at the Top” and “Hotheaded Emanuel May Be White House Voice of Reason,” at the height of the administration’s early 2010 disarray? (If you don’t have time to click the links, it’s OK, the headlines say it all.)
Cenk Uygur: Why Republican Voters Can’t Make Up Their Mind
It seems like every couple of weeks we have a new leader in the Republican field. Michele Bachmann has been there, so have Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, and now Herman Cain sits atop the field. Why can’t Republican voters make up their minds?
Here’s why — they don’t even believe their own positions. They want someone who is massively conservative and at the same time agrees with them on policy. The problem is the voters aren’t nearly as conservative as they think they are. So they love the tough talking governor from Texas until they find out he wants to get rid of Social Security. They like that Michele Bachmann doesn’t believe in global warming until they realize that she doesn’t believe in it because she’s bat-shit crazy.
If you choose ignorance as your party ideology why should it surprise you that you have completely ignorant party leaders? But it does, every single time. Watch, it’ll happen again. This time with Herman Cain.
Ruth Coniff: Elizabeth Warren Is Scary!
The Republicans are trying to sink Elizabeth Warren by linking her to the Occupy Wall Street protests. But the nation’s top financial reformer is not backing down.
The furor started when Warren told the Daily Beast, “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.”
The Republicans jumped all over what they view as an exciting new weapon in the contentious Massachusetts Senate race.
Check out “”Matriarch of Mayhem,” the Massachusetts Republican Party’s ad, which uses protest images and quotes taken out of context to imply that Elizabeth Warren advocates actual, physical violence.
Even among negative campaign ads, this is a new low.
You knew Wall Street and the Republicans were afraid of Warren and her idea for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. But you haven’t seen the depths of their nightmarish fears until you’ve listened to the scary music and seen the video.
1 comments
rich pig ass kisser fucking over the 99% for the rich pigs …
YAWN.
rmm.