“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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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Europe’s Ideologues of Austerity Stand in Way of Reforms
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”
– William Butler YeatsYeats’s poem “The Second Coming” captures reality in Europe these days, although surely not in the sense the poet intended. In Germany, the popular press is captivated by the face-off of the stern German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, clad in black suit and tie and white shirt, against the “charismatic,” “heartthrob,” new Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, bald head, dress shirt unbuttoned and untucked, scarf draped for effect. Only the appearances are deceiving. The buttoned-up Schäuble is the ideologue, with doctrine blinding him to reality. The rakish Varoufakis is the pragmatist, seeking a sensible way out of a catastrophe. [..]
This week, the showdown between Syriza and the Troika will play out in meetings of European finance ministers and of the European Central Bank’s governing board. Most assume that some kind of short-term agreement will be cobbled together to buy time.
The Troika apparently believes that Syriza will sober up as the pressure builds. But time is not on the Troika’s side. Across Europe, more and more people and parties are revolting against an establishment that seems intent on destroying Europe in order to save it. The ideologues of the center have the power to crater the Greek banks and force Greece out of the eurozone. But the beatings cannot continue for long. If the common sense of the so-called radicals fails to reverse the current policies, far more ominous, nationalist, racialist, right-wing forces are gathering in the wings.
Zoë Carpenter: A Texas Judge Just Put Millions of Immigrants in Limbo
For the immigrant rights movement, Wednesday was supposed to mark a victory: the first day that thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children could apply for work permits and a temporary reprieve from deportation under an executive order that President Obama issued last fall.
But late on Monday a federal judge in Texas blocked the implementation of those orders, taking the side of 26 states suing the Obama administration over the deferred action programs. Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday that the administration would appeal immediately to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but will suspend its plans to accept applications until that ruling.
The ruling casts a shadow of uncertainty on people who have waited months for the orders to take effect. A delay will immediately impact up to 290,000 immigrants who are newly eligible for the expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA), which was supposed to begin accepting applications on February 18. Another 3.7 million were expected to be able to start applying for work permits under Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program (DAPA) later this spring.
The global newswire Associated Press announced this January that it will no longer refer to the app-based cab-hail service Uber as “ride-sharing.”
The move follows criticism that services like Uber and Lyft are very far from sharing; to the contrary, they are taking more than they’re giving.
That’s certainly the view of Bhairavi Desai co-founder and director of the National Taxi Worker’s Alliance. Desai told GRITtv this week that while it characterizes itself as an innovative disruption, Uber’s more like Walmart on wheels. They’re not democratizing the workplace, she said, they’re de-regulating it or rather, re-regulating it, to the benefit of app-owning bosses and the detriment of drivers.
Jessica Valenti: Why is bearing children seen as more important than surviving pregnancy?
There is nothing selfish about wanting to live – it’s the most simple, instinctive, human desire there is. Still, most of us – men and women – feel we would lay down our lives for our children; there’s an instinct in that, too.
But there is something about the spectacle of anti-abortion advocates celebrating women who die trying to save their unborn babies that feels a bit too gleeful – they’re shockingly unabashed in their pushing the idea that the lives of adult women aren’t nearly as important as their ability to bring children into the world. [..]
Why must the best mothers be dead mothers?
I am scared for women who have been taught to believe that the most important, beautiful thing they can do is perish. There are already so many ways in which women jump through hoops in order not to exist: we silence ourselves, making sure we’re quiet and unobtrusive; some of us starve ourselves, getting smaller and smaller as to not take up too much space. And this noble disappearing act has become so commonplace that there mere act of being alive – making our voices heard, taking up space, choosing to live – is seen as a disruption of natural order.
Lindy West: Could we please not forgive Sarah Palin? She is an unrepentant nightmare
Conservative pundit Sarah Palin made a cute, sporting little cameo on Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary show this weekend – winking at her own disastrous 2008 vice-presidential run, which was memorably skewered at the time by SNL’s Tina Fey. In the bit on Sunday night, Palin piped up during a Q&A with Jerry Seinfeld to ask, “Just curious, Jerry, how much do you think [SNL producer] Lorne Michaels would pay me if I were to run in 2016 with Donald Trump as my running mate?”
“I don’t think there’s a number too big,” Seinfeld replied.
Har har. Cute! See, Fey’s Palin impression was a big hit for the show back in 2008, got marvellous ratings, and will long be remembered as a seminal SNL moment – but not, as one might think, because Sarah Palin was some wacky, harmless goofball destined to be a delightful footnote in the annals of election history. No. Nope.
No. People loved those Tina Fey/Sarah Palin sketches because Sarah Palin is a terrifying, anti-intellectual, anti-choice, gun-toting ideologue who came within a hair’s breadth of one of the most powerful political offices in the world, a dystopian potentiality that could have tangibly affected the lives of literally billions of people. Watching her being flawlessly lampooned – her hypocrisy and pomposity laid bare with a clarity that only comedy can achieve – felt like a gossamer lifeline of hope and sanity to which we could all cling.
In short: Fey’s Palin impression wasn’t important because Palin is trivial and amusing. It was important because Palin is anything but. And we need to remember that.
Jess Zimmerman: Everything you need to know about the social media you’re too old to use
I’m going to assume that you already know how to use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: I’m sure you laughed at the commercial with the old lady and her “Facebook wall”; television has made the existence of Twitter unavoidable; and Instagram’s no-nipple-or-pubes policy is designed to be friendly for the elderly, like us. But people my age (including me; what the hell’s Yik Yak?) have a habit of dealing with new social networking options by gleefully, defensively declaring our ignorance. We don’t need to do that. Keeping up isn’t that hard – for now.
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