“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”.
New York Times Editorial: The Global Economy at Risk
Anxieties about Europe dominated this week’s meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Fund officials warned that the euro-zone crisis poses a grave danger to a weak global economy. Europe’s leaders, masters of denial, are still insisting on destructive austerity.
The danger was underscored by the latest Brookings Institution-Financial Times index of global economic recovery. The index, which measures economic and financial activity as well as confidence, shows that the world economy has deteriorated since last fall.
Olivier Guez: Voting for Yesterday in France
FROM the subject of halal meat to the matter of driver’s licenses, the French presidential campaign that culminates in voting on Sunday has been marked by peripheral squabbles and endless invective among the 10 candidates. But few things have been said about the gravity of the French economic crisis: the deficits in France’s public accounts and balance of payments; its drop in competitiveness; its decline in international commerce; its apathetic growth.
Nor have we heard much about the threat of increased unemployment and reduced purchasing power from the austerity measures that the markets expect any president to take – right after the election, of course. As for civil war in Syria, the perilous transitions in Arab countries, Al Qaeda’s progress in the Sahel, or Iran’s nuclear program, the candidates have behaved as if nothing were the matter – as if France were tacitly abandoning all influence abroad.
These omissions say a great deal about the state of a country that has rarely seemed so avid in its navel-gazing, so inward-looking. In short, France in 2012 is an old nation that increasingly cultivates the temptation to be an island unto itself.
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign launched its first Spanish-language ads this week, just after he returned from the Summit of the Americas. He spent three days in Colombia, longer than any president in U.S. history. The trip was marred, however, by a prostitution scandal involving the U.S. military and Secret Service. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “We let the boss down, because nobody’s talking about what went on in Colombia other than this incident.” Dempsey is right. It also served as a metaphor for the U.S. government’s ongoing treatment of Latin America.
The scandal reportedly involves 11 members of the U.S. Secret Service and five members of the U.S. Army Special Forces, who allegedly met prostitutes at one or more bars in Cartagena and took up to 20 of the women back to their hotel, some of whom may have been minors. This all deserves thorough investig
Eugene Robinson: The Right-Wing Bully Machine
Not all overheated political rhetoric is alike. Delusional right-wing crazy talk-the kind of ranting we’ve heard recently from washed-up rock star Ted Nugent and tea party-backed Rep. Allen West-is a special kind of poison that cannot be safely ignored.
Let me be clear: I’m saying that the extreme language we hear from the far right is qualitatively different from the extreme language we hear from the far left-and far more damaging to the ties that bind us as a nation. Tut-tutting that both sides should tone it down is meaningless. For all intents and purposes, one side is the problem.
David Sirota: Contradiction Where Religion and American Politics Meet
Here’s a newspaper headline that might induce a disbelieving double take: “Christians ‘More Likely to Be Leftwing’ And Have Liberal Views on Immigration and Equality.” Sounds too hard to believe, right? Well, it’s true-only not here in America, but in the United Kingdom.
That headline, from London’s Daily Mail, summed up the two-tiered conclusion of a new report from the British think tank Demos, which found that in England 1) “religious people are more active citizens (who) volunteer more, donate more to charity and are more likely to campaign on political issues” and 2) “religious people are more likely to be politically progressive (people who) put a greater value on equality than the non-religious, are more likely to be welcoming of immigrants as neighbours (and) more likely to put themselves on the left of the political spectrum.”
Joe Conason: What Mitt Romney Seems to Believe (and Why He’s So Disliked)
With the Republican primary contest over and the general election under way, Mitt Romney faces a voting public whose disdain for him has reached levels that pollsters describe as “historic.” From his embittered opponents as well as from Romney and his campaign, Americans have learned that the former Massachusetts governor simply won’t uphold any political position, issue or achievement he thinks might cost him votes. He doesn’t seem to understand that his inconstancy forfeits more respect than any disagreeable opinion would.
No matter how carefully the former Massachusetts governor parses and prevaricates, many voters, including more than a few conservatives, evidently feel they’ve detected the inner Mitt: a man with utmost regard for himself and people like him-and a profound disregard for people like most of them. They’ve observed him straining to express concern for the unemployed, the poor and the powerless, while sounding sincerely resentful whenever the privileged are held accountable. They’ve perceived an attitude of entitlement, whether he is withholding tax returns, defending tax breaks for billionaires or spending vast amounts to defame opponents. And they don’t like it, no matter what they may feel about Barack Obama.
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