“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”.
Eugene Robinson: GOP Candidates Rush From Judgment
How’s this for political cowardice? Right-wing bloviator Rush Limbaugh launches a vile attack, full of sexual insults and smarmy innuendo, against a young woman whose only offense was to speak her mind. Asked to comment, the leading Republican presidential candidates-who bray constantly about “courage” and “leadership”-run from the bully and hide. [..]
What does this say about these men? To me, it suggests that maybe Romney isn’t as smart and disciplined as he’s said to be. Maybe Santorum isn’t as sincere, compassionate or moralistic as he appears. Maybe Gingrich’s vaunted intellectual courage is afraid of its own shadow.
Katrina vanden Heuval: Challenging the Self-Made Myth
Over the last thirty years, anti-government arguments by conservative pundits and politicians have gained prominence, and the rhetoric this 2012 campaign season seems more toxic than ever. Republicans are relentlessly pushing the notion that lower taxes, less regulation and small government (except for defense) will magically end the recession and create a better country, and “job creators” will lift all boats.
It’s BS. As Congressman Barney Frank recently said, “I’ve never seen a tax cut put out a fire. I’ve never seen a tax cut build a bridge.”
Americans benefit every day from government-from consumer protection to roads and bridges to food and safety regulation-even people who claim to hate an “activist government” are some of the prime beneficiaries of the safety net at a moment when there are still over four unemployed workers for every available job and nearly one in six Americans lives in poverty.
But the GOP has wagered its future on ruthlessly and relentlessly attacking government-it isn’t about to let reality get in the way of its crusade.
Americans seem confident in the mythical notion that the United States is a free nation dedicated to reproducing the principles of equality, justice and democracy. What has been ignored in this delusional view is the growing rise of an expanded national security state since 2001 and an attack on individual rights that suggests that the United States has more in common with authoritarian regimes like China and Cuba “than anyone may like to admit.”(1) I want to address this seemingly untenable notion that the United States has become a breeding ground for authoritarianism by focusing on four fundamentalisms: market fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism, educational fundamentalism and military fundamentalism. This is far from a exhaustive list, but it does raise serious questions about how the claim to democracy in the United States has been severely damaged, if not made impossible.
Carl Bloice: And Now, the Catfood Party
Like most establishment pundits, Thomas Friedman (and apparently most of the rest of the nation) came away from the awful reality show called the Republican Presidential debates quite discouraged. While some prominent conservatives in the party are openly casting about for a way to inject some sanity into the race and perhaps another candidate the New York Times columnist is talking up another party. “Eventually the `circular firing squad’ that is the Republican primary will be over and the last man standing will be the party’s nominee for president,” wrote the scribe of flat earth fame. “If that candidate is Rick Santorum, I think there is a good chance a Third Party will try to fill the space between the really `severely conservative’ Santorum (or even Mitt Romney) and the left-of-center Barack Obama.” (Notice how he puts the unnamed party in capital letters, probably to set it off from the already existing alternatives, like the Green Party, or Socialist Party.)
New York Times Editorial: A Weakened Miranda Rule
The Supreme Court recently did significant damage to the Miranda rule, which requires that suspects in custody be told of their right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present, and that any statements they make could be used against them in criminal proceedings.
Without these warnings, statements made are inadmissible as evidence, the court said in the 1966 case Miranda v. Arizona, because “the very fact of custodial interrogation exacts a heavy toll on individual liberty, and trades on the weaknesses of individuals.”
That is exactly the principle violated by the court’s new ruling in Howes v. Fields. The case involved Randall Lee Fields, who was in jail in Michigan for disorderly conduct, was interrogated by sheriffs there and, based on what he said, was sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for a sex crime.
George Monbiot: How Ayn Rand Became the New Right’s Version of Marx
Her psychopathic ideas made billionaires feel like victims and turned millions of followers into their doormats
It has a fair claim to be the ugliest philosophy the postwar world has produced. Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power. It has already been tested, and has failed spectacularly and catastrophically. Yet the belief system constructed by Ayn Rand, who died 30 years ago today, has never been more popular or influential.
Rand was a Russian from a prosperous family who emigrated to the United States. Through her novels (such as Atlas Shrugged) and her nonfiction (such as The Virtue of Selfishness) she explained a philosophy she called Objectivism. This holds that the only moral course is pure self-interest. We owe nothing, she insists, to anyone, even to members of our own families. She described the poor and weak as “refuse” and “parasites”, and excoriated anyone seeking to assist them. Apart from the police, the courts and the armed forces, there should be no role for government: no social security, no public health or education, no public infrastructure or transport, no fire service, no regulations, no income tax.
Danny Schechter: Sweet Home Chicago: G8 Summit Moved but Protests Will Continue
Did the Obama alumni Association in Chicago—David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Bill Daley—get nervous and call the White House, or was it Barack himself, having disposed/co-opted one threat by the name of Netanyahu who recognized he had a more serious problem on the horizon.
The president has been playing Ronald Reagan these days, talking tough while feinting towards the center. What he most decidedly does not want to do is play Hubert Humphrey and relive the summer of 1968 in Chicago. That’s why the G8 meeting was shifted from contested ground there to safe space in the ultra secure well-guarded environment of Maryland’s Camp David.
The last thing the president needs in the middle of his campaign is another police riot in the second city.
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