“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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Trevor Timm: Does the CIA want Republicans to win the midterms?
If it’s hard to imagine an intelligence committee chair less inclined to provide the spy agency with any oversight, just Google ‘Richard Burr’
Will we ever see the Senate’s 6,000 page report on CIA torture without someone leaking it? A leak always been the most likely resolution for the transparency-seeking public, but, in this case, it’s increasingly looking like the only one.
In a surprise to absolutely no one, the CIA has, for the fourth time, asked a federal court (pdf) for more time to make a decision about releasing the torture report. The ACLU and journalist Jason Leopold have separately sued for the report’s release, while the White House and Senate Intelligence Committee continue to haggle over what to redact and what to release since the committee voted it be declassified all the way back in April. While the Obama administration continues to say it wants the report released, their actions continue to show the opposite. [..]
Some people, including a former Senate staffer, think that this is actually what the Obama administration is hoping for. Since most of the Republicans on the Intelligence Committee dissented from even releasing the report, a Republican Senate majority could make sure that the report gets buried indefinitely.
Robert Kuttner: The Dems and the Avoidable Election Rout
The Dems and the Avoidable Election Rout Barring a miracle, Tuesday is likely to be an unhappy Election Day for the Democrats. They will need to win virtually every close race to hold the Senate, and that seems unlikely. They are on track to suffer losses in the House as well.
Could it have been different? I think so.
Working against the Democrats is the six-year jinx. Six years into an incumbent’s tenure, the president’s party almost always loses seats in Congress. The Republicans got clobbered in Eisenhower’s sixth year, 1958, and in Bush II’s sixth year, 2006. Even Franklin Roosevelt’s Democrats lost massively in his sixth year, 1938.
Can you guess the one recent exception? It was Bill Clinton in 1998 — right after the Lewinsky sex scandal and Clinton’s impeachment, no less. The Dems actually picked up five House seats.
Per capita income drop would be more than twice as bad but for New Deal programs under attack by conservatives
Americans made significantly less money in 2012 than in 2000. That decline, as disconcerting as it is, would have been more than twice as bad if it weren’t for three New Deal era safety net programs that largely offset falling wages and vanishing interest income.
Income per American, measured in 2012 dollars, fell more than $1,000 from 2000 to 2012. That decline would have been close to $2,200 per person but for increased payouts from Social Security, unemployment insurance and traditional pensions, my latest analysis of the official data shows.
Those increased benefit payments saved Americans from much more human suffering and stopped the worst recession in eight decades from descending into a vicious cycle of falling incomes that reduced sales of goods and services, which in turn would have savaged corporate profits, forcing even more layoffs and ultimately threatening social stability.
Glen Ford: For Moment, the World Embraces the Cuba Model – and Slaps the Empire
“For Cuba, service to oppressed and exploited peoples is a revolutionary act of the highest moral caliber.”
Revolutionary Cuba has always been a miracle and gift to all humankind. This week, the nations of the world – with two savage exceptions – instructed their emissaries at the UN General Assembly to tell the world’s self-designated “indispensable” country to end its 54-year-long trade embargo against Cuba. The virtually unanimous global rebuke to the American superpower, in combination with the extraordinary breadth and depth of acclamation accorded Havana, tells us that it is Cuba, not the U.S., that is the truly “exceptional” nation on the planet.
It was the 23rd time that the United Nations has rejected the embargo. The outcome was identical to last year’s tally, with only the United States and Israel voting against the non-binding resolution. Although the list of American allies on the Cuban embargo issue could not possibly get any smaller – Israel, after all, can only exist if joined at the U.S. hip – this year’s political environment was even less deferential to the reigning military colossus. In recognition of its singular commitment to the fight against Ebola in Africa, Cuba soared, once again – the hero nation.
Despite having suffered cumulative economic damages of more than $1 trillion at U.S. hands over the last half-century, the island nation of 11 million people has made itself a medical superpower that shares its life-saving resources with the world. No country or combination of nations and NGOs comes close to the speed, size and quality of Cuba’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. With 461 doctors, nurses and other health professionals either already on site or soon to be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Cuba sets the standard for international first-response. The Cuban contingent of medical professionals providing direct treatment to sick people outnumbers that of the African Union and all individual countries and private organizations, including the Red Cross.
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