“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”.
Paul Krugman: Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity
Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give public lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.
Well, whaddya know?
Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion – both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.
Eugene Robinson: Afghanistan, For the Long Haul?
Show of hands: Does anybody really understand the U.S. policy in Afghanistan? Can anyone figure out how we’re supposed to stay the course and bring home the troops at the same time?
I’m at a loss, even after President Obama’s surprise trip to the war zone. The president’s televised address from Bagram air base raised more questions than it answered. Let’s start with the big one: Why?
According to Obama, “the United States and our allies went to war to make sure that al-Qaeda could never use this country to launch attacks against us.” I would argue that U.S. and NATO forces have already done all that is humanly possible toward that end. [..]
When you hear the phrase “property rights,” you probably think of farmers fighting environmental regulators and homeowners arguing with oil drillers. But in the Information Age, you should also be thinking about your computer-and asking, how much of you is really yours? It’s not a navel-gazing rumination from a college Intro to Existentialism class-it’s an increasingly pressing question in the brave new world of social networking and cloud computing.
Last week’s big technology announcement spotlighted the thorny issue. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Google’s announcement of its “Google Drive” came with the promise that users will “retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content.” But when you save files to Google’s new hard-drive folder in the cloud, the terms of service you are required to agree to gives Google “a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute (your) content” as the company sees fit.
Kristen Breitweiser: Heights of Hypocrisy: The Universal Use of 9/11 in Politics
A year ago, I wrote a blog about the death of Osama bin Laden, “Today is Not a Day of Celebration for Me.”
I wrote the blog after witnessing so many Americans celebrating, fist-pumping, dancing, and reveling in the streets about the death of bin Laden.
Seeing so many Americans acting like that was too much of an uncomfortable reminder of those who celebrated in the streets during the attacks of 9/11 while men like my husband either burned alive, were crushed alive, or horrifically jumped to their deaths.
A year ago, what drove me to write was my sadness in bearing the sight of Americans celebrating the death of anyone — even the man largely responsible for the murder of my husband.
Now one year later, I am once again driven to write due to witnessing President Obama resort to the same campaign tactics as George W. Bush.
Frankly, for what it’s worth, it sickens me; and it saddens me.
New York Times Editorial: ‘Beyond Debate’
Jose Padilla, the American citizen detained as an enemy combatant after he was arrested by the Bush administration in May 2002, was denied contact with his lawyer, his family or anyone else outside the military brig for almost two years and kept in detention for almost four. His jailers made death threats, shackled him for hours, forced him into painful stress positions, subjected him to noxious fumes that hurt his eyes and nose and deafening noises at all hours, denied him care for serious illness and more.
This treatment was indisputably cruel, inhumane and shocking, in breach of the minimum standard required for anyone in American custody, especially a citizen. Some of it was torture, though Mr. Padilla should not have had to prove that to show his treatment was unconstitutional.
Robert Naiman: John Brennan Should Tell the Whole Truth About the Drone Strikes
On Monday, White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan publicly addressed the U.S. use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists in countries with which the United States is not at war, like Yemen and Pakistan. The fact that Brennan publicly addressed the drone strikes is a significant improvement, long overdue. We can’t say we have meaningful democratic oversight over government policy if government officials refuse to talk about government policy in public – enabling us to challenge what they say – and it’s preposterous to claim that the drone strikes are “secret” when they are openly reported in the media.
But John Brennan didn’t tell the whole truth about the drone strikes. Brennan claimed that “the United States government conducts targeted strikes against specific al-Qaeda terrorists,” but Brennan didn’t admit that the U.S. has launched drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen against people who are not known to be on any list of “suspected terrorists,” without knowing who would be killed.
2 comments
It’s funny, not really, but I’ve been thinking about her this past week with all that’s gone on. I thought of her the night the announcement was made that OBL was dead.
She’s one person that really stays in my mind regarding 9/11 and anything surrounding it. She’s really made an impact on me.
Author
In the face of her grief, she took up the fight for all of us, not just the victims and survivors.