Tag: Punting the Pundits

“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.

Glenn Greenwald: The Obama administration’s war on privacy

In early August, two dictatorial (and U.S.-allied) Gulf states — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — announced a ban on the use of Blackberries because, as the BBC put it, “(b)oth nations are unhappy that they are unable to monitor such communications via the handsets.”  Those two governments demand the power to intercept and monitor every single form of communication.  No human interaction may take place beyond their prying ears.  Since Blackberry communication data are sent directly to servers in Canada and the company which operates Blackberry — Research in Motion — refused to turn the data over to those governments, “authorities [] decided to ban Blackberry services rather than continue to allow an uncontrolled and unmonitored flow of electronic information within their borders.”  That’s the core mindset of the Omnipotent Surveillance State:  above all else, what is strictly prohibited is the ability of citizens to communicate in private; we can’t have any “uncontrolled and unmonitored flow of electronic information.” . . . .

Anyone who thinks that is hyperbole should simply read two articles today describing efforts of the Obama administration to obliterate remaining vestiges of privacy.  The first is this New York Times article by Charlie Savage, which describes how the Obama administration will propose new legislation to mandate that the U.S. Government have access to all forms of communications, “including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct ‘peer to peer’ messaging like Skype.”  In other words, the U.S. Government is taking exactly the position of the UAE and the Saudis:  no communications are permitted to be beyond the surveillance reach of U.S. authorities.

The new law would not expand the Government’s legal authority to eavesdrop — that’s unnecessary, since post-9/11 legislation has dramatically expanded those authorities — but would require all communications, including ones over the Internet, to be built so as to enable the U.S. Government to intercept and monitor them at any time when the law permits.  In other words, Internet services could legally exist only insofar as there would be no such thing as truly private communications; all must contain a “back door” to enable government officials to eavesdrop. . . . .

In other words, the Obama administration is demanding exactly that which the UAE demanded:  full, unfettered access to all communications.

(my emphasis)

Dean Baker: Are the Politicians Stealing Your Social Security?

That’s the question that people should be asking their current or would be representatives in Congress. With the huge baby boom cohort at the edge of retirement, there are few issues that will matter more directly to the people who will vote in the November elections. . . .

he threat to cut Social Security should be taken seriously right now since two of the would be cutters are former Sen. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission. Key figures in the Congressional leadership of both parties have also indicated an interest in cutting Social Security.

This is especially outrageous, since the fact that the baby boom cohort is ill prepared for retirement is a direct result of economic mismanagement by both the Clinton and Bush administrations. The economic leadership of the last two decades set the economy on a course of bubble-driven growth that was bound to end in a disaster like the one we are currently experiencing. Now, these very same people (all of whom still have their jobs) are targeting the one asset the baby boomers have left: the Social Security benefits that they paid for throughout their working career.

“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.

Peter Daou: Who said this: “Barack The Terrible is a tyrant and a threat to the American people”

The story of Barack Obama’s presidency is the story of how the left turned on him. And it eats him up. You know it from Robert Gibbs, you know it from Rahm Emanuel and you know it from Obama himself:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get – to see the glass as half empty.  (Laughter.)  If we get an historic health care bill passed – oh, well, the public option wasn’t there.  If you get the financial reform bill passed – then, well, I don’t know about this particularly derivatives rule, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied with that.  And gosh, we haven’t yet brought about world peace and – (laughter.)  I thought that was going to happen quicker.  (Laughter.)  You know who you are.  (Laughter.)

The constant refrain that liberals don’t appreciate the administration’s accomplishments betrays deep frustration. It was a given the right would try to destroy Obama’s presidency. It was a given Republicans would be obstructionists. It was a given the media would run with sensationalist stories. It was a given there would be a natural dip from the euphoric highs of the inauguration. Obama’s team was prepared to ride out the trough(s). But they were not prepared for a determined segment of the left to ignore party and focus on principle, to ignore happy talk and demand accountability.

As president, Obama has done much good and has achieved a number of impressive legislative victories. He is a smart, thoughtful and disciplined man. He has a wonderful family. His staff (many of whom I’ve worked with in past campaigns) are good and decent people trying to improve their country and working tirelessly under extreme stress. But that doesn’t mean progressives should set aside the things they’ve fought for their entire adult life. It doesn’t mean they should stay silent if they think the White House is undermining the progressive cause.

Case in point: the extraordinarily disturbing case of Anwar al-Aulaqi:

The Obama administration urged a federal judge early Saturday to dismiss a lawsuit over its targeting of a U.S. citizen for killing overseas, saying that the case would reveal state secrets. The U.S.-born citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, is a cleric now believed to be in Yemen. Federal authorities allege that he is leading a branch of al-Qaeda there. Government lawyers called the state-secrets argument a last resort to toss out the case, and it seems likely to revive a debate over the reach of a president’s powers in the global war against al-Qaeda.

digby: On Hippie Punching

I haven’t weighed in on this because Susie pretty much said it all. But this post in the NY Times  persuaded me to say something. It details the exchange with Axelrod, where she asks him if he knows what “hippie punching” is. Tobin’s summary:

“He was apparently at a loss. So, I assume, were plenty of other people. “Madrak was referencing a phrase thrown around by bloggers who think the Obama administration has treated its liberal base with disdain,” reported CBS News’s Stephanie Condon, which seems fairly obvious in context, but isn’t much help in terms of derivation or meaning. As for being “thrown around,” I can only remember seeing the phrase once before, and not on a liberal blog.”

He then links to Ann Althouse to explain it. (I assume he did that since she’s a female and so is Madrak? There’s absolutely no other reason to consult a right wing crank like her on the matter.)

“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.

New York Times Editorial: The G.O.P.’s ‘Pledge’

Extravagant promises and bluster are the stuff of campaign rhetoric, but the House Republicans’ “Pledge to America” goes far beyond the norm.

Its breathless mimicry of the Declaration of Independence – the “governed do not consent,” it declares, while vowing to rein in “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites” – would be ludicrous, if these were not destructively polarized times.

While it promises to create jobs, control deficit spending and restore Americans’ trust in government, it is devoid of tough policy choices. This new “governing agenda” does not say how the Republicans would replace revenue that would be lost from permanently extending all of the Bush tax cuts, or how they would manage Medicare and Social Security, or even which discretionary programs would go when they slash $100 billion in spending. Their record at all of these things is dismal.

The best way to understand the pledge is as a bid to co-opt the Tea Party by a Republican leadership that wants to sound insurrectionist but is the same old Washington elite. These are the folks who slashed taxes on the rich, turned a surplus into a crushing deficit, and helped unleash the financial crisis that has thrown millions of Americans out of their jobs and their homes.

Not only are the players the same, the policies are the same. Just more tax cuts for the rich and more deficit spending. We find it hard to believe that even the most disaffected voters will be taken in. But again, these are strange and worrying times.

Still, the pledge was worth a careful reading. It is a reminder that there is a choice to be made this fall.

Maureen Dowd: Slouching Toward Washington

Holy Roddy McDowall.

Christine O’Donnell doesn’t understand why monkeys can’t turn into people right before her eyes.

Bill Maher continued his video torment of O’Donnell by releasing another old clip of her on his HBO show on Friday night, this time showing one in which she argued that “Evolution is a myth.”

Maher shot back, “Have you ever looked at a monkey?” To which O’Donnell rebutted, “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

The comedian has a soft spot for the sweet-faced Republican Senate candidate from Delaware, but as he told me on Friday, it’s “powerful stupid to think primate evolution could happen fast enough to observe it. That’s bacteria.

“I find it so much more damaging than the witch stuff because she could be in a position to make decisions about scientific issues, like global warming and stem cells, and she thinks primate evolution can happen in a week and mice have human brains.”

“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.

Paul Krugman: Downhill With the G.O.P.

Once upon a time, a Latin American political party promised to help motorists save money on gasoline. How? By building highways that ran only downhill.

I’ve always liked that story, but the truth is that the party received hardly any votes. And that means that the joke is really on us. For these days one of America’s two great political parties routinely makes equally nonsensical promises. Never mind the war on terror, the party’s main concern seems to be the war on arithmetic. And this party has a better than even chance of retaking at least one house of Congress this November.

Banana republic, here we come.

On Thursday, House Republicans released their “Pledge to America,” supposedly outlining their policy agenda. In essence, what they say is, “Deficits are a terrible thing. Let’s make them much bigger.” The document repeatedly condemns federal debt – 16 times, by my count. But the main substantive policy proposal is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which independent estimates say would add about $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next decade – about $700 billion more than the Obama administration’s tax proposals.

New York Times Editorial: Tea Party’s Big Money

Tea Party supporters and their candidates like to imagine themselves as insurgents, crashing the barricades of Washington to establish a new order of clean and frugal government. In earthbound reality, many of the people pulling the Tea Party’s strings are establishment Republican operatives and lobbyists. Some have made money off the party for years.

One example is Sal Russo, a gun-for-hire who has worked for former President Ronald Reagan, former Gov. George Deukmejian of California, former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, former Gov. George Pataki of New York, and many other Republicans. As The Times reported on Sunday, Mr. Russo saw a sure thing last year, establishing a group called the Tea Party Express to support candidates in the midterm elections and raise cash at the same time.

“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.

Gail Collins: Don’t Ask, Don’t Debate

The legislative process is almost never uplifting. But if you watch the United States Senate in action these days, you come away convinced that the nation has jumped the shark.

On Tuesday, the Senate failed to override a Republican filibuster of a defense authorization bill. This is a new record for dysfunction. Until now, even when politics was at its worst, Congress did manage to vote to pay the Army.

The bill did contain a lot of controversial pieces. It eliminated the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule for gays serving openly in the military. And the majority leader, Harry Reid, tacked on a provision that would allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to win a path to citizenship if they serve in the military or go to college.

So the debate was about … parliamentary procedure.

Nicholas D. Kristof: Boast, Build and Sell

World leaders have flown in first class to the United Nations this week to discuss global poverty over cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria.

The U.N. set eight landmark antipoverty objectives in 2000, so this year’s General Assembly is reviewing how we’re doing after a decade. We’re off-track on most of these Millennium Development Goals, so let me offer three suggestions for how the humanitarian world might do better in framing the fight against poverty:

First, boast more.

Humanitarians have tended to guilt-trip people and governments into generosity by peddling emaciated children with flies on their eyes. But relentless negativity leaves the inaccurate impression that Africa is an abyss of failure and hopelessness. And who wants to invest in a failure?

In fact, here’s the record: antipoverty work saves around 32,000 children’s lives each day. That’s my calculation based on the number of children who died in 1960 (about 20 million) and the number dying now (about 8 million a year).

Twelve million lives saved annually – roughly one every three seconds – is a reminder that global poverty needn’t be a depressing topic but can be a hopeful one. Ancient scourges like Guinea worm, river blindness and polio are on their way out. Modern contraception is more common than a generation ago. The average Indian woman has 2.6 children now, compared with 5.5 in 1970.

“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.

This is a departure from the usual format because The New York Times is commemorating the 40th Anniversary of its Op-Ed with video interviews of some of the authors of its columns. Since this in UN Week and the Iraq War still continues, I find it profoundly appropriate that the NYT’s first video interview is with former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and the lies that led up to that war.

Joseph C. Wilson IV What I Didn’t Find in Africa

Published: July 6, 2003

WASHINGTON — Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as chargé d’affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush’s ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Príncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.

It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa’s suspected link to Iraq’s nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That’s me.

New York Times Editorial: The Wars’ Continuing Toll

The United States military has never been better at helping soldiers survive the battlefield with sophisticated advances in treatment and transportation. Service members who come home with psychic wounds and hidden traumas are still not getting enough support.

Please Help a Veteran, Spread the Word

The “Usual” and “Unusual Suspects” are below the fold

“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.

Roger Cohen:  Democracy Still Matters

LONDON – One mystery of the first decade of the 21st century is the decline of democracy. It’s not that nations with democratic systems have dwindled in number but that democracy has lost its luster. It’s an idea without a glow. And that’s worrying.

I said “mystery.” Those who saw something of the blood expended through the 20th century to secure liberal societies must inevitably find democracy’s diminished appeal puzzling. But there are reasons.

The lingering wars waged partly in democracy’s name in Iraq and Afghanistan hurt its reputation, however moving images of inky-fingered voters gripped by the revolutionary notion that they could decide who governs them. Given the bloody mayhem, it was easy to portray “democracy” as a fig leaf for the West’s bellicose designs and casual hypocrisies.

Dean Baker: The Terrible Tale of the TARP Two Years Later

Two years ago, the top honchos at the Fed, Treasury and the Wall Street banks were running around like Chicken Little warning that the world was about to end. This fear mongering, together with a big assist from the elite media (i.e. NPR, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, etc.), earned the banks their $700 billion TARP blank check bailout. This money, along with even more valuable loans and loan guarantees from the Fed and FDIC, enabled them to survive the crisis they had created. As a result, the big banks are bigger and more profitable than ever.

Now, the same crew that tapped our pockets two years ago is eagerly pitching the line that their bailout was good for us. It may be the case the history books are written by the winners, but that doesn’t prevent the rest of us from telling the truth.

Joe Conason: Coalition of fear: Tea Party, the religious right and Islamophobia

At Values Voters summit, anti-Muslim paranoia connects evangelical right with secular Tea Party movement

If the leaders of the religious right aspire to join forces with the Tea Party movement, their hopes were surely encouraged by the Values Voters Summit  in Washington — where such Tea Party celebrities Michele Bachmann and Jim DeMint shared the podium with Delaware sensation Christine O’Donnell — all of whom enthusiastically blessed the proposed marriage. Certainly they have much to share in their seething fury at the President and the congressional Democrats.

Bringing together the disparate elements of the right without a charismatic and credible leader like Ronald Reagan remains a challenge, however, since many Tea Party voters are libertarians and independents who have never felt called to the battlements of the culture war. What they seem to share, aside from the perennial aversion to taxes, is a powerful instinct to stigmatize Muslims and seek confrontation with Islam.

“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.

Robert Reich: The Defining Issue: Who Should Get the Tax Cut — The Rich or Everyone Else?

Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent — whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy — or the rest of us?

Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.

Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they’ll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.

But before this can be a defining election issue in the midterms, Democrats have to bring it to a vote. And they’ve got to do it in the next few weeks, not wait until a lame-duck session after Election Day.

Plus, they have to stick together (Ben Nelson, are you hearing me? House blue-dogs, do you read me? Peter Orszag, will you get some sense?)

Not only is this smart politics. It’s smart economics.

Eric Alterman: How Obama Screws His Base

The president’s party desperately needs to rev up liberals to stave off disaster this fall. So why does he keep punching them in the face?

In case you hadn’t heard, yes Barack Obama did go before a $30,000-per-person Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Greenwich, Connecticut-the hedge-fund capital of the world-and (at the home, I kid you not, of a guy named “Rich Richman” ) complain about how silly his base was being. . . .

Look, we understand that politics is a frustrating business and holding together the disparate coalition that is the Democratic Party these days is no simple matter. But facing an “enthusiasm gap” of epic proportions between a right-wing base that is “loaded for bear” and a Democratic one that is bordering on catatonic, what possible sense can it make to unload on the folks you should be trying hardest to motivate? Just who the hell do you expect to go out and vote Democratic this November? Somehow I don’t think the pundits at the Post and Politico who enjoy this kind of thing are going to be enough.

“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.

Robert Reich: The Crackpot Gap

After the victories of many of the insurgent primary candidates she’s sponsored, Sarah Palin is off to Iowa today (Friday) for a high-profile series of political events. Is it possible she’s looking to make a run in 2012? Do birds fly?

Republicans are being fueled by a so-called “enthusiasm gap” but their biggest worry leading up to the midterms should be the “crackpot gap.”

In Delaware, Palin-endorsed tea partier Christine O’Donnell is called “delusional” by Delaware’s GOP leader. In Kentucky, Palin-favored Rand Paul says the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shouldn’t apply to businesses. In Colorado, tea partier Ken Buck talks of getting rid of the 17th amendement, which provides for the direct election of senators. In Arizona, Palin-favored Sharon Angle has called for “2nd Amendment remedies” if Congress doesn’t change hands.

Many Americans these days don’t like Congress and are cynical about government. The lousy economy has made almost all incumbents targets of the public’s anger and anxiety.

But if there’s one thing Americans like even less it’s people pretending to be legitimate politicians whose views are so far removed from those of ordinary Americans that they pose a danger to our system of governance.

David Michael Green: Tea With Frankenstein: Please, No Masturbation

Not everybody quite gets how perilous is the moment, however. Democratic pundits who are rejoicing over the tea party primary victories, thinking that they are good for the Democratic Party, are stupid slugs who ought to have the living shit kicked out of them, just for brainlessly taking up space on the planet. First of all, who could possibly care in the slightest about the fate of the Democratic Party? Am I really supposed to be so filled with motivating joy about the prospects of electing slightly less regressive agents of the American oligarchy to Congress that I will run down to party headquarters and start phone banking for my local Democrat? Are we really supposed get electrified and rally around our president and the inspirational likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, simply because they are marginally less obnoxious than the alternative? Golly, I just don’t think so.

But more importantly, Democrats are the very reason for the tea party, this latest episode of American idiocy. Had the party done something with the grand historic opportunity handed to them two years ago, none of this would be happening. Had they not booted so badly a rare alignment of the stars that gave them crises allowing real, serious solutions, along with a despised opposition allowing the final crushing of the conservative disease for a generation or more, we wouldn’t be sitting here today laughing at serious candidates for the United States Senate who have staked out firm positions on the societal perils of onanism.

“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.

Eugene Robinson: Note to Democrats: Tea Party’s not over till it’s over

Not to spoil the fun, but Democrats shouldn’t take the Republican Party’s bitter internal warfare — and the inexperienced, flaky candidates who’ve emerged from the fray — as any kind of reassurance about November. Try as it might, the GOP probably can’t defeat itself. Not this year, anyway.

I don’t mean that the battle between the Republican establishment and the take-no-prisoners Tea Party insurgency is inconsequential. When Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party favorite, won the Senate primary in Delaware on Tuesday, my first reaction was that this one result almost guarantees that the Democratic Party’s majority in the Senate is safe.

On reflection, I think “almost guarantees” should be downgraded to something like “makes it likely.” And in moments of existential despair, I fear that she might actually win.