“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.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day
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Ana Marie Cox: Will the green goop in Toledo’s water be the end of GOP anti-environmentalism?
Maybe … but Republicans first have to acknowledge that there’s a problem to be solved
It’s easy to doubt the effects of climate change – especially if you’re a Republican or a dedicated Fox News watcher. It’s an abstract concept easily “disproven” by the first cold day, and Republican-driven policies (or the lack thereof) to address it reflect just that. But it’s more difficult to deny the causes of smelly green goop washing up on a lakeshore or sticking to your toes.
But the toxic algae bloom in Lake Erie that caused 400,000 Toledo residents to avoid municipal water for two days provides an opportunity for conservatives to illustrate the ease with which they could co-opt the environment movement to push for local control, market solutions and individual choice – and start dealing with the very real crises on their doorsteps.
Leslie Savan: What’s Behind the Media’s Ebola Sensationalism?
CNN, Fox News and MSNBC all treated the return of Kent Brantly, the American doctor who contracted Ebola in Liberia, as if he were riding to the hospital in a white Ford Bronco. Chopper cams and speculative commentary trailed his ambulance Saturday through the streets of Atlanta with the kind of excited intensity usually reserved for police car chases and killers on the lamb. [..]
But by sheer accident, the car-chase media did the public a service, demonstrating, as Brantly walked into the hospital, that the existential danger over Ebola is being oversold. MSNBC anchor Alex Witt asked on-air physicians, including NBC in-house doctor Nancy Snyderman, if they would be afraid to treat Brantly. No, said Snyderman. Any doctor would be “excited” by the opportunity to use the medical precautions and equipment available in America to find effective treatments for the disease without spreading it.
And maybe, once again, The Onion said it best: “Experts: Ebola Vaccine at Least 50 White People Away.”
Dropping “a bomb on our country’s disastrous war on marijuana with unprecedented force,” The New York Times launched last month High Time: An Editorial Series on Marijuana Legalization, a seven-parter that puts the paper squarely-I believe-on the right side of history on this issue. (Happily, with the exception of its title, “High Time” is refreshingly free of bad puns and Cheetos jokes.) Citing “vast social costs,” “racist results,” and “overwhelming evidence that addiction and dependence are relatively minor problems,” the Timeseditorial board advocated a repeal of the nation’s cannabis prohibition. [..]
The data-driven, nuts-and-bolts reasons for legalization are legion, and-to an unbiased eye-overwhelmingly convincing. But the bias behind prohibition, born out of 1920s- and ’30s-era xenophobia and racism, continues to impress itself on the minds of pundits and policymakers across the political spectrum. “The problem that prohibition advocates have,” writes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, “is that so much of their rhetoric hasn’t changed in decades, steeped in culture war resentments and reliant on fear-mongering.” A 2008 article on AlterNet illustrates that twentieth-century drug prohibition was born in places where white minorities ruled over non-white majorities-South Africa and Jamaica, for example-before becoming a xenophobic tool of law enforcement (against Latinos in California and Texas, Middle Eastern immigrants in New York, Asians on the Pacific Coast) in places with white majorities.
Rachel Cleetus: There is no magic bullet to slow climate change
The solutions are already available; we just need more political will to implement them
A recently released draft report (PDF) prepared for the United Nations makes an ambitious attempt at showing how 15 major carbon-emitting countries, including the United States and China, can make deep reductions in their emissions to help keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2°C above preindustrial levels – a goal at the heart of international climate negotiations. Prepared by a group of independent international experts, it confirms that a variety of low-carbon technology solutions are already available.
However, given the planet’s current high emission trajectory, sharply curbing carbon emissions in line with the 2°C goal may be just barely technologically feasible – with a lot of effort – and only provided countries quickly adopt a robust set of policies to drive that outcome.
Progress on this front, unfortunately, is checkered. Australia’s repeal of its carbon tax last month is a stark example of shorter-term, narrow political priorities taking precedence over global interests in the fight against climate change. China, on the other hand, is considering a mandatory cap on coal use, though the speed and scope of its implementation is still up in the air.
Dani McClain: Is the Attack on Abortion Rights Backfiring in the South?
Alabama just became the latest bright spot in efforts to defend abortion rights against consistent attacks at the state level. On Monday, federal judge declared unconstitutional a 2013 law requiring that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges at area hospitals.
Proponents of the law had argued that it was intended to keep women safe, and that without the requirement, providers can’t ensure that a patient will be moved quickly to the hospital when the need arises. But the judge disagreed, echoing the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ and the American Medical Association’s arguments against the alleged medical basis for such laws. Complications requiring hospitalization occur in just .05 to .3 percent of early-term abortions, the type performed at the Alabama clinics in question. With the safety argument exposed as empty, the judge found that the law serves no purpose other than to outlaw abortion in huge swaths of the state.
According to the decision: “If this requirement would not, in the face of all the evidence in the record, constitute an impermissible undue burden, then almost no regulation, short of those imposing an outright prohibition on abortion, would.” In other words: if this isn’t a sneaky way to ban the procedure, I don’t know what is.
Jessica Valenti: Let’s end pink-ification: must the ‘girls’ aisle be full of sexist toys and clothes?
We can promote fun to our children without sparkles, salaciousness or the neverending example of domesticity
When Lisa Ryder noticed that Land’s End only carried a science-based shirt for boys – the shirts for girls were all rhinestones and princesses, not stars and planets – she wrote a scathing letter to the clothing retailer on behalf of her daughter who “hopes to be an astronaut one day.”
My daughter is mighty and she loves science. And until you recognize that it’s not only boys that can fit that description, I’m afraid our family will no longer be shopping in your stores.
Hell hath no fury like a feminist mother scorned! Admirably, if a little late (but still in time for back-to-school shopping), Land’s End responded by launching new space-themed shirts for girls. This comes the same week that Lego released three new women scientist figurines (the 82-year-old toy company had its very first just last year).
This is a time with a global focus on getting more girls and women interested in the fields of science, technology, math and engineering. But the clothing and toy aisles are still filled with sexist crap. So moms like me hope that moves like those by Lego and Land’s End are the beginning of a much-needed change.
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