“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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New York Times Editorial Board: Realities in Global Treatment of H.I.V.
The World Health Organization recently issued aggressive new guidelines for treating people infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. The guidelines are a welcome step forward but fall short of the treatment goals that could and should be set.
The missing ingredient is enough financing by international donors and many afflicted countries to make treatments widely available.
Currently, an estimated 34 million people around the world are infected with H.I.V., mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. About 9.7 million of them are being treated with antiviral drugs that can prolong their lives for decades. Some seven million more were eligible for the drugs under the previous guidelines but are not yet receiving them.
David Firestone: Boehner’s Hearing Problem
Does Speaker John Boehner speak the same language as the rest of Washington?
Last week, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, told Congress that it was the biggest threat to economic growth in this country. And he wasn’t the least bit ambiguous about why: unnecessary austerity and dangerous threats to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. [..]
But Mr. Boehner apparently heard a different speech. Or perhaps a different Fed chairman. Or maybe, like so many Republicans, he has his news pre-digested for him by media outlets so that it comes out more to his taste.
If Thomas Friedman didn’t exist, America’s high-tech entrepreneurs would have had to invent him. Come to think of it, maybe they did. The dark science-fiction vision he celebrates serves them well, at pretty much everyone else’s expense.
Friedman’s vision is worth studying, if only because it reflects the distorted perspective of some very wealthy and influential people. In their world the problems of the many are as easily fixed as a line of code, with no sacrifice required of them or their fellow billionaires.
Case in point: 15 or 20 million Americans seeking full-time employment? To Thomas Friedman, that’s a branding problem.
Mark Gongloff: The Many Reasons Larry Summers Would Be A Terrible Fed Chairman
It’s official: Pretty much everybody thinks Larry Summers would make a terrible Federal Reserve chairman.
Everybody, that is, except for the one guy whose vote matters*: President Obama, who has apparently decided that Summers is now the front-runner for the Fed job, according to the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein. MSNBC’s Christopher Hayes reported that the White House has “all but decided” to pick Summers. And CNBC’s John Harwood also reported on Monday that, when asked if Summers was the top candidate for the post, Obama said he “should be.”
No! No, President Obama, he should not be. Let us all hope that this is simply some kind of very frightening trial balloon and not reality. Because Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, Harvard president, Obama economic adviser, toxic-waste-dump-finder, woman-disser and Winklevoss dream-crusher, would be wrong for the job in so many ways. I could write you several hundred words about that, as I did last year when Summers’ name was on the list of potential presidents of the World Bank.
But I don’t have to do that, because the Internet did it for me yesterday, almost immediately after Klein’s story was published.
Philip Giraldi: Edward Snowden is no ‘traitor’
Far from aiding our enemies, the NSA whistleblower has exposed our own government’s subversion of Americans’ rights
There are a number of narratives being floated by the usual suspects to attempt to demonstrate that Edward Snowden is a traitor who has betrayed secrets vital to the security of the United States. All the arguments being made are essentially without merit. Snowden has undeniably violated his agreement to protect classified information, which is a crime. But in reality, he has revealed only one actual secret that matters, which is the United States government’s serial violation of the fourth amendment to the constitution through its collection of personal information on millions of innocent American citizens without any probable cause or search warrant.
That makes Snowden a whistleblower, as he is exposing illegal activity on the part of the federal government. The damage he has inflicted is not against US national security, but rather on the politicians and senior bureaucrats who ordered, managed, condoned, and concealed the illegal activity.
Robert Reich: Why Republicans Are Disciplined and Democrats Aren’t
Republican discipline and Democratic lack of discipline isn’t a new phenomenon. As Will Rogers once said, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.”
The difference has to do with the kind of personalities the two parties attract. People who respect authority, follow orders, want clear answers, obey commands, and prefer precise organization and control, tend to gravitate toward Republicans.
On the other hand, people who don’t much like authority, recoil from orders, don’t believe in clear answers, often disobey commands, and prefer things a bit undefined, tend to gravitate to the Democrats.
In short, the Republican Party is the party of the authoritarian personality; the Democratic Party is the party of the anti-authoritarian personality.
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