“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from 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 Greenwald: Is Wyden on the Path to War?
Efraim Halevy, former director of the Mossad (Israel’s Central Intelligence Agency), recently spoke out about the deal with Iran: “What is the point of canceling an agreement that distances Iran from the bomb?” That is the exact question that many American’s are asking as Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) holds out on supporting the Iran deal until he talks to some of his friends. That’s right. Some of his friends. The 29 world renowned scientists, the diplomats, even the Israeli leaders were not enough to convince Wyden and others. At a recent engagement, he outwardly spoke out against it. Many of his statements can be seen in our new film, Is Wyden on the Path to War?.
Senator Wyden is not the first politician, or Democrat for that matter, to take issue with the Iran Deal. Like many dissenters, Wyden is scared that lifting sanctions on Iran would cause them to be a more economically viable power, that the deal is not invasive enough, and fears that Iran may “cheat”.
While all of these may seem like viable questions, no one has a BETTER strategy for securing a deal. And as international diplomats and former generals agree, some deal is better than no deal; an America with no deal is completely vulnerable. An America who launches into a military assault is at war. The country is absolutely safer with this deal. As with any negotiations, lifting sanctions is some of the “give” in a give and take. Though many neo-cons and opposition would like to portray strong negotiations as those that compromise nothing, the truth is that is not negotiation. Reagan lifted sanctions from Russia. Bush lifted sanctions from South Korea. There MUST be something that gives Iran incentive to join this deal.
Jessica Valenti: No, the anti-choice movement doesn’t care about sexism, racism or ableism
A strange thing has been happening to the anti-choice movement. Suddenly activists and legislators that oppose abortion care about sexism, racism and ableism. Well, not really – but they’re working really hard to convince us that they do.
A new bill in Ohio would make it illegal for a woman to end her pregnancy because a prenatal diagnosis indicates the fetus has Down syndrome. Republican Representative Sarah LaTourette – one of the bill’s sponsors – said: “this isn’t an issue about abortion – it’s an issue of discrimination.” President of Ohio Right to Life Mike Gonidakis told The New York Times: “Pretty soon, we’re going to find the gene for autism. Are we going to abort for that, too?”
This anti-discrimination rhetoric that’s become so common among anti-choice legislators and activists lately is just the most recent stop in the movement’s evolution towards a more mainstream-friendly image. Once known for calling women ‘murderers’, those who oppose abortion are now using feminist and anti-racist language, saying that women “deserve better” than abortion and trying to co-opt #BlackLivesMatter for their own purposes. (The anti-choice movement also has a history of erecting billboards claiming that abortion is racist, a tactic that women of color working for reproductive justice have widely criticized.)
Peter Georgescu has a message he wants America’s corporate and political elites to hear: “I’m scared,” he said in a recent New York Times opinion piece.
He adds that Paul Tudor Jones is scared, too, as is Ken Langone. And they are trying to get the Powers That Be to pay attention to their urgent concerns. But wait-these three are Powers That Be. Georgescu is former head of Young & Rubicam, one of the world’s largest PR and advertising firms; Jones is a quadruple-billionaire and hedge fund operator; and Langone is a founder of Home Depot.
What is scaring the pants off these powerful peers of the corporate plutocracy? Inequality. Yes, amazingly, these actual occupiers of Wall Street say they share Occupy Wall Street’s critical analysis of America’s widening chasm between the rich and the rest of us. “We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape,” Georgescu wrote, not only trapping the poor, but also “those on the higher end of the middle class.” He issued a clarion call for his corporate peers to reverse the dangerous and ever-widening gulf of income inequality in our country by increasing the paychecks of America’s workaday majority. “We business leaders know what to do. But do we have the will to do it? Are we willing to control the excessive greed so prevalent in our culture today and divert resources to better education and the creation of more opportunity?”
Iain Overton: Europe has questions to answer over America’s gun crime
And so it goes; another week of bloody headlines about American gun shootings.
It’s something we have long come to expect. According to FBI data , in 2013 8,454 people were shot and murdered in the United States – just under 70% of all homicides. The same year the CDC reported that 21,175 people shot and killed themselves.
These figures, though, seem to have lost their power to surprise. In a country where guns are ubiquitous, and the right to bear arms is firmly enshrined in its constitution – there are 310 million guns in circulation – American gun violence seems inevitable.
It is a situation that causes many to resign themselves to the thought that nothing meaningful can ever be done. And when any European dares to raise the idea of US gun control, they are told to go take a hike. [..]
The truth is that some of the biggest gun companies in Europe – Beretta, Heckler & Koch, FN Herstal – all rely heavily on the US as a core market. Austria’s leading handgun manufacturer, Glock, boasts that about 65% of America’s police departments put one of their pistols “between them and a problem”.
Knowing this, the question we should perhaps be asking ourselves is, should European gun companies be exporting to the US?
Caroline Conrad: Canada’s prime minister wants to make it harder for people to vote against him
Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood faced censorship in the national press late last week for her satirical take on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hair. It might have been a rather amusing episode if it wasn’t symptomatic of darker, Orwellian trends that have marked Harper’s nine years in office.
Stephen Marche’s article in the New York Times mid-month does an excellent job of summarizing how Harper has pulled tight the reins of power, stifled criticism and eroded the freedoms of Canadians. But it is in the prime minister’s assaults on the most fundamental of democratic acts, a citizen’s right to vote, that Harper’s lust for control finds its most disturbing outlet.
Not confident of winning re-election on merit in October, he’s pushed through a series of legal changes spearheaded by the perversely named Fair Elections Act. Harper’s front man for the task, the aptly titled democratic reform minister, Pierre Poilievre, brushed off critics, claiming the changes are “common sense“. But it’s more likely that, after winning by an uncomfortably small margin in the last election and, after nine years, having the distinct honor of the lowest job creation numbers since World War II and least economic growth since the 1960s, Harper is making sure potential naysayers have a harder time accessing the polls.
Lawrence Lessig: On ‘Dumbing Down’ the Democratic Debate
There are two stories about why Washington doesn’t work. One blames a corrupted process. The other blames Republicans.
Corrupted process sorts point to the grotesque inequality that has developed within our political system — an inequality that makes Congress ripe for capture by special interests, by giving the funders of campaigns unprecedented power. Four hundred families, the New York Times reports, have given half the money that has been raised in this election cycle so far. That extraordinary concentration makes it trivially easy to block reform of every sort, as candidates for every office bend over backwards to please their funders.
Anti-Republicans have a simpler story. The problem with our democracy, these sorts have it, is that we have badly behaving Republicans. Nothing can happen because Republicans block everything. Nothing can happen sensibly because Republicans have become so incredibly extreme. If only we could ban the party, or at least defeat enough of them, government just might work. But until we do — or until they grow up — nothing sane can happen.
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