“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.
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Robert Reich: The Jobs Report and the Election
President Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention was long on uplifting rhetoric but short on specifics for what he’ll do if reelected to reignite the American economy.
Yet today’s jobs report provides a troubling reminder that the economy is still in bad shape. Employers added only 96,000 nonfarm jobs in August. True, the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from July’s 8.3 percent, but the size of the workforce continued to drop, according to a Labor Department report Friday. [..]
Undeniably, we have more jobs today than we did at the trough of the Great Recession in 2009. But the recovery has been anemic — and it appears to be slowing. We’re better off than we were then, but we’re not as well off as we need to be by a long shot.
John Nichols: Obama Manufactures an Argument for His Re-election
If the theme of last week’s Republican National Convention was the manipulative sloganeering of “We Build It,” then the theme of this week’s Democratic National Convention has been “We’re Manufacturing It”-and “We’re Going to Manufacture a Whole Lot More.”
That’s a distinct message, not just from Mitt Romney’s empty rhetoric but from the empty rhetoric of most economic appeals in most elections. [..]
Obama said in his speech that voters will this year have to “choose between two different paths for America.” He was right. The choice between an Obama-Biden future and a Romney-Ryan future is stark.
But Obama must also choose between a bipartisan consensus that works only for speculators and a new way that will work for workers. His speech was a start. How he finishes it will decide the 2012 campaign, and the future of all the Flints and Toledos and Janesvilles that are waiting for a president who really does worry more about Main Street than Wall Street.
Coming two months before Election Day, the employment report for August is a problem for President Obama. The economy added 96,000 jobs last month, a slow pace that lowered the monthly average this year to 139,000, versus 153,000 in 2011. Even the decline in the jobless rate, to 8.1 percent from 8.3 percent in July, was a disappointment, because it indicated a shrinking labor force as people gave up looking for work.
But properly understood, the report should not encourage voters to support Mitt Romney. That’s because boosting tepid job growth requires stimulative fiscal policy – including spending to rehire teachers and to rebuild schools, roads and other infrastructure, as well as loan modifications for underwater homeowners. Mr. Obama has proposed all of that, while Republicans have blocked such measures and the Republican agenda rejects them.
Glenn Greenwald: Democrats parade Osama bin Laden’s corpse as their proudest achievement
It’s one thing for Democrats to fete Obama’s tougher-than-thou national security credentials, but this ghoulish jingoism is warped
One of the formative events shaping my views of the last decade’s American political landscape was watching the 2004 Republican national convention. An expertly staged, supremely manipulative ritual of jingoism and leader-worship, I regarded it with an equal measure of awe and horror.
America’s militarism was continuously exploited by speaker after speaker to glorify the commander-in-chief, George W Bush, as a brave and noble warrior for American Greatness. Each mention of war and killing prompted his delirious followers to erupt in the same boisterous crowd-chant: “USA, USA.” Bush’s opponent (and his supporters), by contrast, were vilified as soft-on-the-terrorists, troop-hating, America-despising weaklings who lacked the stomach to Keep Us Safe.
[..]I thought, or at least hoped, that such vulgar crowd celebrations of leader-reverence, jingoism and militarism would not soon be replicated. But on Thursday night, the final night of the Democratic party convention, it was.
It is hard to count how many times a Democratic party speaker stood up proudly to proclaim:
“Osama. Bin. Laden. Is. Dead!”
Chris Woods: Who Is Held to Account for Civilian Deaths by Drone in Yemen?
There is a history of Yemeni officials lying to protect the US, and the Pentagon and CIA greeting queries with obfuscation
When news flashed of an air strike on a vehicle in the Yemeni city of Radaa on Sunday afternoon, early claims that al-Qaida militants had died soon gave way to a more grisly reality.
At least 10 civilians had been killed, among them women and children. It was the worst loss of civilian life in Yemen’s brutal internal war since May 2012. Somebody had messed up badly. But was the United States or Yemen responsible?
Local officials and eyewitnesses were clear enough. The Radaa attack was the work of a US drone – a common enough event. Since May 2011, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has recorded up to 116 US drone strikes in Yemen, part of a broader covert war aimed at crushing Islamist militants. But of those attacks, only 39 have been confirmed by officials as the work of the US.
The attribution of dozens of further possible drone attacks – and others reportedly involving US ships and conventional aircraft – remains unclear. Both the CIA and Pentagon are fighting dirty wars in Yemen, each with a separate arsenal and kill list. Little wonder that hundreds of deaths remain in a limbo of accountability.
David Sirota: Big Brother in Your Car
Your chipper TV friend Flo, otherwise known as Progressive Insurance’s ubiquitous shill, wants you to be excited-very excited. As you’ve probably learned from her effervescent commercials, she and her Big Brothers in the insurance biz want you to see their new tracking devices for your car not as a privacy-destroying step to justify raising your government-mandated car insurance premiums. Instead, they want you to see the gizmos, which record your vehicle’s every move, as a great innovation to get you premium discounts for safe driving.
Yet, despite the happy TV ads, questions are nonetheless swirling around this so-called “telematics-based insurance”-questions that Flo doesn’t want you to ask, because the tracking system is so frighteningly invasive and arbitrary.
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