“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”.
Katha Politt: HHS: Let’s Treat ALL Women Like Children
Did you assume the politicization of science was gone with the Bush Administration and the reality-based community was back in charge? Think again. In a surprise move that has outraged women’s rights activists, HHS head Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA’s proposal to make Plan B One-Step, a single-pill form of emergency contraception, available over the counter. According to the New York Times, this is the first time in our history that a health secretary has overruled the FDA. [..]
This is politics. Pure politics. The Obama administration values the Catholic bishops, the Family Research Council, Rush Limbaugh and the swing voters of Ohio more than the pro-choice Democratic women who make up way more than their share of his base – women who campaigned for him, donated to him, knocked on doors for him, left Hillary Clinton for him. He must be assuming that we are captive voters – we have no place to go. That may be true, but there’s trudging to the polls and there’s passion. Obama is never going to get passion from anti-choicers and swing voters. And it looks increasingly likely that he won’t get it from pro-choice women either.
Paul Krugman: All the G.O.P.’s Gekkos
Almost a quarter of a century has passed since the release of the movie “Wall Street,” and the film seems more relevant than ever. The self-righteous screeds of financial tycoons denouncing President Obama all read like variations on Gordon Gekko’s famous “greed is good” speech, while the complaints of Occupy Wall Street sound just like what Gekko says in private: “I create nothing. I own,” he declares at one point; at another, he asks his protégé, “Now you’re not naïve enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you, buddy?”
Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the movie went a little off at the end. It closes with Gekko getting his comeuppance, and justice served thanks to the diligence of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In reality, the financial industry just kept getting more and more powerful, and the regulators were neutered.
And, according to the prediction market Intrade, there’s a 45 percent chance that a real-life Gordon Gekko will be the next Republican presidential nominee.
President Obama borrowed sound rhetoric and ideas from Teddy Roosevelt when he spoke in Kansas this week.
Now, Obama should borrow sound practices from the twenty-sixth president, as he responds to the intransigence of the senators who represent Wall Street rather than Main Street. [..]
The president should pull a Teddy Roosevelt and make a recess appointment during the upcoming Congressional break for the holidays.
Roosevelt was known for making bold moves, especially when he was taking on the robber barons and the trusts that had their way with Washington before the dawn of the Progressive Era. He recognized that there were times when a president had to use the bully pulpit and all the powers afforded him to make a point about the corruption of both our politics and our economy.
Danny Schechter: What happens in Europe doesn’t stay in Europe
New York, New York – Some years back, the Comedy Channel featured a map illustrating how most Americans see the world. The biggest part of it was pictured as “US”; the rest of the world was shown as “THEM”.
This may be true of public understanding – in part, because of the way our media works or doesn’t work – but it’s not true of the way our government operates as an often stealth force in global affairs.
For many, the crisis in Europe resembles the saying “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” – they see it as a clash of countries rather than currencies or interests, ignoring America’s omnipresent financial presence and role in a number of Europe’s problems that were undeniably made worse by irresponsible spending on every level.
In fact, it was American firms and banks that shovelled many of the loans into European countries that they are struggling to pay back. It was they who encouraged Europe’s banks to take on much of the very debt that they are now complaining about.
Eugene Robinson: Republican Reality Show Gets Weirder and Weirder
I guess I was wrong. I thought Republicans surely would have come to their senses by now. Instead, they seem to be rushing deeper into madness.
With less than a month to go before the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney, the candidate shown by polls to have the best chance of defeating President Obama, evidently remains unacceptable to most of his party. He has spent the summer and fall playing second fiddle to a series of unconvincing “front-runners” who fade into the shadows once their shortcomings become obvious.
The latest is Newt Gingrich, a man with more baggage than Louis Vuitton-and the taste for fine jewelry of Louis XIV, judging by his Tiffany’s bill. Be honest: Is there anybody out there who believes Gingrich would make it through a general election campaign against Obama without self-destructing? I didn’t think so.
New York Times Editorial: The Real Way to Help Small Business
With only a week to go before Congress adjourns for the holidays, Congress has yet to renew federal unemployment benefits or the payroll tax cut that will expire at year-end. Unfortunately, Republican leaders seem far more interested in advancing their partisan aims than helping millions of struggling American families.
The House leadership weighed in on Thursday with a particularly bad proposal. It would extend the current payroll tax cut but gradually reduce the duration of unemployment benefits. And it proposes to pay for both with changes to social spending programs and by freezing pay for federal workers. The bill is also larded up with deplorable amendments, including one that would weaken clean air rules and another that would rush ahead with a potentially dangerous oil sands pipeline from Canada.
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