Tag: Politics

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Gail Collins: The End-of-the-Year Quiz

Let’s see how well you followed the news in 2010. No cheating

I. Happy New Year! Besides the Times Square ball, the glorious American mosaic of things scheduled to be dropped around the nation on New Year’s Eve also included all but which one of the following:

A) The Brasstown, N.C., Possum Drop

B) Dillsburg, Pa.’s giant pickle

C) The Elmore, Ohio, Sausage Drop

D) Seaside Heights, N.J., first annual dropping of Nicole (Snooki) Polizz

Bob Herbert: For Two Sisters, the End of an Ordeal

I got a call on New Year’s Eve from Gladys Scott, which was a terrific way for 2010 to end.

As insane as it may seem, Gladys and her sister, Jamie, are each serving consecutive life sentences in a state prison in Mississippi for their alleged role in a robbery in 1993 in which no one was hurt and $11 supposedly was taken.

Gladys was on the phone, excited and relieved, because Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi had agreed to suspend the prison terms.

“I’ve waited so long for this day to come,” she said.

I was happy for the Scott sisters and deeply moved as Gladys spoke of how desperately she wanted to “just hold” her two children and her mother, who live in Florida. But I couldn’t help thinking that right up until the present moment she and Jamie have been treated coldly and disrespectfully by the governor and other state officials. It’s as if the authorities have found it impossible to hide their disdain, their contempt, for the two women.

The prison terms were suspended – not commuted – on the condition that Gladys donate a kidney to Jamie, who is seriously ill with diabetes and high blood pressure and receives dialysis at least three times a week. Gladys had long expressed a desire to donate a kidney to her sister, but to make that a condition of her release was unnecessary, mean-spirited, inhumane and potentially coercive. It was a low thing to do.

Your freedom for a kidney??

There are no words to express my contempt for this racist, heartless, inhumane excuse for a human being, Haley Barbour

Bob Burnett: 2010 “Person” of the Year: The US Supreme Court

It’s difficult to look beyond the tumult of current events and ask, “what happened this year that will be remembered ten, twenty, or fifty years from now?” However, there was one 2010 event that, in terms of its long-term impact, loomed above the others, the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court Decision.

Writing in the NEW YORK REVIEW, law professor Ronald Dworkin explained Citizens United v. FEC: “In the 2008 presidential primary season a small corporation, Citizens United, financed to a minor extent by corporate contributions, tried to broadcast a derogatory movie about Hillary Clinton. The FEC declared the broadcast illegal under the BCRA [Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act]. Citizens United then asked the Supreme Court to declare it exempt from that statute on the ground, among others, that it proposed to broadcast its movie only on a pay-per-view channel.” In an extraordinary example of judicial activism, the Supreme Court conservative majority, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, declared the entire BCRA act unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court hadn’t been the story of the year since the December 12, 2000, Bush v. Gore decision. This paved the way for Bush’s installation as President and his nomination of John Roberts as Chief Justice in September of 2005. Many Supreme Court observers regard Roberts as the judicial equivalent of the “Manchurian Candidate.” NEW YORKER legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted Roberts dogmatic conservatism: “In every major case since he became the nation’s seventeenth Chief Justice, Roberts [and his conservative allies] has sided with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislative, and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.”

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Robert Reich: New Year’s Prediction

What will happen to the US economy in 2011? If you’re referring to profits of big corporations and Wall Street, next year is likely to be a good one. But if you’re referring to average American workers, far from good.

The two American economies — the Big Money economy and the Average Working Family economy — will continue to diverge. Corporate profits will continue to rise, as will the stock market. But typical wages will go nowhere, joblessness will remain high, the ranks of the long-term unemployed will continue to rise, the housing recovery will remain stalled, and consumer confidence will sag.

The big disconnect between corporate profits and jobs is likely to continue because America’s big businesses are depending less and less on U.S. sales and U.S. workers. Their big profits are coming from two sources: (1) growing sales in China, India, and other fast-growing countries, and (2) slimmed-down US payrolls.

In a typical recovery, profits lead to more hiring. That’s because in a typical recovery, American consumers head back to the malls — and their buying justifies more hires. Not this time. All the hype about Christmas sales over the last few weeks masked the fact that American consumers demanded bargain-basement prices. And the price-cutting dramatically reduced sellers’ margins. In short, profits aren’t coming from American consumers — and profits won’t be coming from American consumers in 2011.

Most Americans don’t have the dough. They’re still deep in debt, can’t borrow against their homes, and have to start saving for retirement.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Which of These Banks Was 2010’s Most Shameless Corporate Outlaw?

Bankers. The red carpet’s still being rolled out for them in Washington, but if there’s a stain on it they’ll pout for days. Jason Linkins documents the latest set of cheap white whines from very wealthy white men. (Discrimination lawsuits are a routine part of their legal troubles, too.) This time they’re upset because nobody from the six largest banks in America was invited to the president’s CEO Roundtable.

They’re offended because they didn’t meet with the president? From the looks of things they’re lucky not to be meeting with the warden. Their collective rap sheet includes fraud, sex discrimination, collusion to bribe public officials… even laundering drug money for Mexican drug cartels. One of them is accused of ripping off some nuns! None of this criminal behavior has stopped them from sulking over a presidential slight. Let’s review the record for these corporate malefactors, and then decide:

Which of these six banks was “America’s Most Shameless Corporate Outlaw” in 2010? (I mean, really: Nuns?)

Paul Krugman: The New Voodoo

Hypocrisy never goes out of style, but, even so, 2010 was something special. For it was the year of budget doubletalk – the year of arsonists posing as firemen, of people railing against deficits while doing everything they could to make those deficits bigger.

And I don’t just mean politicians. Did you notice the U-turn many political commentators and other Serious People made when the Obama-McConnell tax-cut deal was announced? One day deficits were the great evil and we needed fiscal austerity now now now, never mind the state of the economy. The next day $800 billion in debt-financed tax cuts, with the prospect of more to come, was the greatest thing since sliced bread, a triumph of bipartisanship.

Still, it was the politicians – and, yes, that mainly meant Republicans – who took the lead on the hypocrisy front.

Big Tent Democrat commented earlier today at Talkleft in his post Policy And Politics: The Economy that:

Discussing E.J. Dionne’s column today, Booman makes some good points:

Considering that [the column] is supposed to be about [Dems] regaining the initiative, it’s pretty weak to lecture the White House about its tendency to defend itself and “the left” about never being satisfied. Those things aren’t going to change. We can be critical of that reality, but we ought not offer it up as something to fix so that we can get our mojo back.

In fact it is not something to fix. The White House should tout its accomplishments. They are in the politics business after all. And people dissatisfied with what the White House is doing should say so and work to make them do what they want. That’s how it works. But both Booman and Dionne miss the connection between the political problems Dems have and the economic policies of the Obama Administration.

[…]

And these failures explain almost all of the political trouble the Democrats are in. Booman writes:

There are two things that will help us get our mojo back: Speaker Boehner and Obama’s reelection campaign. That’s all we need. And improving economy would be nice, but realistically we are going to be fighting over who is to blame for high unemployment and who has a better plan to get something through Congress that will create jobs.

(Emphasis supplied.) If that is where the political battle is going to be fought, then the Dems’ political fortunes do not look bright.

“An improving economy would be nice but realistically we are going to be fighting over who is to blame for high unemployment”?

Booman of course and as usual has his finger on the pulse of reality, and like many strong Obama supporters knows deep in his heart that it’s far more important for them to “win” than it is to have the administration produce results, even if he has to lose to win.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Jessica B. Harris: Prosperity Starts With a Pea

AT year’s end, people around the world indulge in food rituals to ensure good luck in the days ahead. In Spain, grapes eaten as the clock turns midnight – one for each chime – foretell whether the year will be sweet or sour. In Austria, the New Year’s table is decorated with marzipan pigs to celebrate wealth, progress and prosperity. Germans savor carp and place a few fish scales in their wallets for luck. And for African-Americans and in the Southern United States, it’s all about black-eyed peas.

Not surprisingly, this American tradition originated elsewhere, in this case in the forests and savannahs of West Africa. After being domesticated there 5,000 years ago, black-eyed peas made their way into the diets of people in virtually all parts of that continent. They then traveled to the Americas in the holds of slave ships as food for the enslaved. “Everywhere African slaves arrived in substantial numbers, cowpeas followed,” wrote one historian, using one of several names the legume acquired. Today the peas are also eaten in Brazil, Central America and the Caribbean.

Elizabeth Warren: New Consumer Agency Is Frightfully Necessary — And Late

No one has missed the headlines: Haphazard and possibly illegal practices at mortgage-servicing companies have called into question home foreclosures across the nation.

The latest disclosures are deeply troubling, but they should not come as a big surprise. For years, both individual homeowners and consumer advocates sounded alarms that foreclosure processes were riddled with problems.

While federal and state investigators are still examining exactly what has gone wrong and why, two things are clear.

First, several financial services companies have already admitted that they used “robo-signers,” false declarations, and other workarounds to cut corners, creating a legal nightmare that will waste time and money that could have been better spent to help this economy recover. Mortgage lenders will spend millions of dollars retracing their steps, often with the same result that families who cannot pay will lose their homes.

Second, this mess might well have been avoided if the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had been in place just a few years ago.

Robert Scheer: In Money-Changers We Trust

Two years into the Obama presidency and the economic data is still looking grim. Don’t be fooled by the gyrations of the stock market, where optimism is mostly a reflection of the ability of financial corporations-thanks to massive government largesse-to survive the mess they created. The basics are dismal: Unemployment is unacceptably high, the December consumer confidence index is down and housing prices have fallen for four months in a row. The number of Americans living in poverty has never been higher, and a majority in a Washington Post poll said they were worried about making their next mortgage or rent payment.

In a parallel universe lives Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama’s former budget director and key adviser, who even faster than his mentor, Robert Rubin, has passed through that revolving platinum door linking the White House with Wall Street. The goal is to use your government position to advance the interests of your future employer, and Orszag and Rubin’s actions in the government and then at Citigroup provide stunning examples of the synergy between big government and high finance.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Mikhail Gorbachev: The Senate’s Next Task: Ratifying the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

JUST a few weeks ago, the fate of the New Start nuclear arms treaty seemed to hang by a thread. But since last week, when the United States Senate ratified the treaty, which reduces the size of the American and Russian nuclear stockpiles, we can speak of a serious step forward for both countries. I hope this will energize efforts to take the next step to a world free of nuclear weapons: a ban on all nuclear testing.

In the final stretch, President Obama put his credibility and political capital on the line to achieve ratification. That a sufficient number of Republican senators put the interests of their nation’s security, and the world’s, above party politics is encouraging.

The success was not without cost. In return for the treaty’s ratification, Mr. Obama promised to allocate tens of billions of dollars in the next few years for modernizing the American nuclear weapons arsenal, which is hardly compatible with a nuclear-free world.

William Hartung: New START, Next Steps

The Senate’s 71-26 vote to ratify the New START agreement was a victory for the Obama administration, key members of Congress, the arms control and disarmament movement, and ultimately, all of us, as it makes the world a safer place. . . . .

But that was then and this is now. The battle to define the meaning of New START’s ratification has already begun. For Robert Kagan, writing in the Washington Post, the treaty is “good news” and a pillar of a “sound American foreign and defense policy.” But his idea of a sound policy includes escalation in Afghanistan, a tougher line on China, and an “adequate” (which for him means larger) defense budget. This is what he wants the coalition that came together to ratify New START to work towards next. More directly, he wants more money for missile defense — he derides Republicans for using missile defense as a “talking point” and asks whether “the next, more Republican Congress will put its money where its mouth is” by pressing for more missile defense funding.

Charles Krauthammer is on the case as well. While acknowledging that New START — along with his tax deal and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — marks a political victory for President Obama, he’s still fixated on missile defense. He criticizes New START and the surrounding debate for its “gratuitous reestablishment of the link between offensive and defensive weaponry.”

Unni Karunakara: Haiti: where aid failed

Why have at least 2,500 people died of cholera when there are about 12,000 NGOs in the country?

Haiti should be an unlikely backdrop for the latest failure of the humanitarian relief system. The country is small and accessible and, following last January’s earthquake, it hosts one of the largest and best-funded international aid deployments in the world. An estimated 12,000 non-governmental organisations are there. Why then, have at least 2,500 people died of cholera, a disease that’s easily treated and controlled?

I recently went to Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and found my Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleagues overwhelmed, having already treated more than 75,000 cholera cases. We and a brigade of Cuban doctors were doing our best to treat hundreds of patients every day, but few other agencies seemed to be implementing critical cholera control measures, such as chlorinated water distribution and waste management. In the 11 months since the quake, little has been done to improve sanitation across the country, allowing cholera to spread at a dizzying pace.

Ten days after the outbreak hit Port-au-Prince, our teams realised the inhabitants of Cité Soleil still had no access to chlorinated drinking water, even though aid agencies under the UN water-and-sanitation cluster had accepted funds to ensure such access. We began chlorinating the water ourselves. There is still just one operational waste management site in Port-au-Prince, a city of three million people.

Unni Karunakara is the president of the International Council of Médecins Sans Frontières

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Bob Herbert The Data and the Reality

I keep hearing from the data zealots that holiday sales were impressive and the outlook for the economy in 2011 is not bad.

Maybe they’ve stumbled onto something in their windowless rooms. Maybe the economy really is gathering steam. But in the rough and tumble of the real world, where families have to feed themselves and pay their bills, there are an awful lot of Americans being left behind.

A continuing national survey of workers who lost their jobs during the Great Recession, conducted by two professors at Rutgers University, offers anything but a rosy view of the economic prospects for ordinary Americans. It paints, instead, a portrait filled with gloom.

Thom Hartman: Cool Our Fever

We live in a democracy and policies represent our collective will. We cannot blame others. If we allow the planet to pass tipping points…it will be hard to explain our role to our children. We cannot claim…that “we didn’t know.”

– Jim Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies1

But during the past decade, as the train rolls along eastward from Frankfurt, I’ve seen a dramatic change in the scenery and the landscape. First there were just a few: purplish-blue reflections, almost like deep, still water, covering large parts of the south-facing roofs as I looked north out the window of the train. Solar panels.

Then, over the next few years, the purplish-blue chunks began to spread all over, so now when I travel that route it seems like about a third-and in many towns even more-of all the roofs are covered with photovoltaic solar panels.

Eugene Robinson Danger ahead for the GOP

It’s been not quite two months since Republicans won a sweeping midterm victory, and already they seem divided, embattled and – not to mince words – freaked out. For good reason, I might add.

Sen. Lindsey Graham captured the mood with his mordant assessment of the lame-duck Congress: “Harry Reid has eaten our lunch.” Graham’s complaint was that the GOP acquiesced to a host of Democratic initiatives – giving President Obama a better-than-expected deal on taxes, eliminating “don’t ask, don’t tell,” ratifying the New START treaty – rather than wait for the new, more conservative Congress to arrive.

It was a “capitulation . . . of dramatic proportions,” Graham said in a radio interview last week. “I can understand the Democrats being afraid of the new Republicans. I can’t understand Republicans being afraid of the new Republicans.”

Oh, but there’s reason to be very afraid.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Paul Krugman: The Finite World

Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months.

So what’s the meaning of this surge?

Is it speculation run amok? Is it the result of excessive money creation, a harbinger of runaway inflation just around the corner? No and no.

What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices. And America is, for the most part, just a bystander in this story.

Robert Kuttner: No Connection: Obama’s Tax Deal and the Lame Duck Congress’s Victory Week

President Obama and the late Democratic Congress had a terrific valedictory week. Obama reminded us of the leader whom we elected. His December 22 press conference was one of his best performances as president.

Democratic senators rose to rare heights of leadership.

Obama seems to rally mainly when his back is against the wall, after much damage has already been done. But unlike his 2008 election victory, the prior damage cannot be undone this time by one heroic come-from-behind sprint. Next week, Republicans will formally take over the House thanks to the 2010 midterm election debacle, and they will make their 2009-2010 brand of obstruction seem tame.

What’s astonishing is that the several unlikely legislative wins were accomplished in the waning days of the lame-duck session, when Republicans had every possible motivation to obstruct. Yet somehow, more difficult legislating was done by the Senate in the final week of the session than was done in the whole prior year, when Democrats had a much more secure majority. How do we explain that?

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Don’t spin the Civil War

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart. . . . .

Why does getting the story right matter? As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s recent difficulty with the history of the civil rights years demonstrates, there is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been. We will dishonor the Civil War if we refuse to face up to the reason it was fought.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour:Ms Amanpour focuses on the problems and stresses of today’s war vets with a report from Bob Woodward on Iraqi vets returning to homelessness. She also interviews with Army Vice Chief of Staff, General Peter Chiarelli on stresses facing vets, and First Lady Michelle Obama and the Vice President’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden on what we can do to help.

New York Times war reporter David Rohde, held hostage by the Taliban in Afghanistan for seven months until his daring escape while his captors slept, and his wife, Kristen Mulvihill, discuss their new book, “Rope and a Prayer”.

ABC Nightline anchor Terry Moran profiles an Israeli and a Palestinian who through their deep loss are trying to bridge the gap that has defined the most intractable war.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Tis week Mr. Scheiffer will host a Roundtable with CBS News Washington Correspondents on The Year in Review and what’s ahead in 2011: Chip Reid, Chief W.H. Correspondent, Lara Logan, Chief Foreign Correspondent, David Martin, Nat’l Security Correspondent, Nancy Cordes, Congress Correspondent and Sharyl Attkisson, Investigative Reporter.

The Chris Matthews Show: Tweety will discuss the best and worst of 2010. The panel include Howard Fineman (Huffington Post), Katty Kay (BBC News), Joe Klein (Time) and Norah O’Donnell (NBC News).

Meet the Press with David Gregory:”Lurch” will have an exclusive interviews with Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s advisor, about what the White House will face in 2011.

Taking stock of 2010: the passage of health care reform, the oil disaster in the Gulf, the rise of the Tea Party, and the on-going economic crisis. How has it all impacted the country politically, and what does it mean for the future of bipartisanship in 2011? will be discussed by NBC News’ Tom Brokaw, Presidential Historian and Author, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Wall Street Journal Columnist Peggy Noonan, and Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: This Sunday, we hear from two major players in the Obama administration. First, we talk to White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about President Obama’s legislative victories: the tax cut deal, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and START. Then we talk to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in an exclusive interview about the reports of terrorist threats this holiday season and the uproar over the TSA. We end the hour with a look at the terrorist threat worldwide with Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden (Ret.) and Former Director of National Intelligence Vice Adm. Mike McConnell (Ret.).

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: This Sunday night on GPS: A special edition of Fareed Zakaria GPS: “How To Lead”.

This special features interviews on what makes a great leader with 5 leaders from diverse arenas (global politics, national politics, military, business and academia).

Sitting down with Fareed this week to share their vast experiences are: Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister on how he steered a nation; Lou Gerstner, who has taken some American corporate icons from the brink of bankruptcy to billions in profits, on leading through crisis; Former Governor of the NJ Christie Whitman on how a woman can lead in world that is often still male-dominated; Rick Levin, the President of Yale University, on leading by persuasion and Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on not just how to lead, but how to command.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Glenn Greenwald: What WikiLeaks revealed to the world in 2010

Throughout this year I’ve devoted substantial attention to WikiLeaks, particularly in the last four weeks as calls for its destruction intensified.  To understand why I’ve done so, and to see what motivates the increasing devotion of the U.S. Government and those influened by it to destroying that organization, it’s well worth reviewing exactly what WikiLeaks exposed to the world just in the last year:  the breadth of the corruption, deceit, brutality and criminality on the part of the world’s most powerful factions.

As revealing as the disclosures themselves are, the reactions to them have been equally revealing.  The vast bulk of the outrage has been devoted not to the crimes that have been exposed but rather to those who exposed them:  WikiLeaks and (allegedly) Bradley Manning.  A consensus quickly emerged in the political and media class that they are Evil Villains who must be severely punished, while those responsible for the acts they revealed are guilty of nothing.  That reaction has not been weakened at all even by the Pentagon’s own admission that, in stark contrast to its own actions, there is no evidence — zero — that any of WikiLeaks’ actions has caused even a single death.  Meanwhile, the American establishment media — even in the face of all these revelations — continues to insist on the contradictory, Orwellian platitudes that (a) there is Nothing NewTM in anything disclosed by WikiLeaks and (b) WikiLeaks has done Grave Harm to American National SecurityTM through its disclosures.

Gail Collins: The Tannenbaum Chronicles

This year, my favorite Christmas story involves Rachel Maddow’s mother. “A friend gave her a remote control for the Christmas tree,” said Maddow. It was the best present ever, liberation from a lifetime of crawling under the tree every morning and night to put in or pull out the plug.

And it turned Maddow’s mom into a combination Magi and missionary. She bought a slew of remotes and distributed them throughout the neighborhood like special-recipe cookies, along with instructions on exactly how to make them work.

The friend came to New York for the holidays with the Maddow family. For presents, she is giving everybody a Christmas tree in a box.

Another step forward for Christmas tree culture.

Charles M. Blow: Suffer the Little Children

As we celebrate this Christmas with the sound of tiny feet rushing toward a tree to rip open presents, let’s take a moment to consider the children less fortunate – the growing number who live in poverty in this country.

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty, 42 percent of American children live in low-income homes and about a fifth live in poverty. It gets worse. The number of children living in poverty has risen 33 percent since 2000. For perspective, the child population of the country over all increased by only about 3 percent over that time. And, according to a 2007 Unicef report on child poverty, the U.S. ranked last among 24 wealthy countries.

This is a national disgrace.

Yet the reaction to this issue in some quarters is still tangled in class and race: no more welfare to black and brown people who’ve made poor choices and haven’t got the gumption to work their way out of them. The truth is, neither the problem nor the solutions are that simple.

Yes, the percentage of blacks, Hispanics and American Indians living in low-income homes is about twice that of whites and Asians. This raises unpleasant cultural questions that must be addressed. But that’s not the whole story. Despite the imbalance, white children are still the largest group of low-income children.

Johann Hari: The under-appreciated heroes of 2010

Who did we under-appreciate in 2010? In the endless whirr of 24/7 corporate news, the people who actually make a difference are often trampled in the stampede to the next forgettable news-nugget like Lady Gaga’s meat-dress. So in the final moments of this year, let’s look at a few people who deserved more of our attention.

“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.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Pail Krugman: The Humbug Express

Hey, has anyone noticed that “A Christmas Carol” is a dangerous leftist tract?

I mean, consider the scene, early in the book, where Ebenezer Scrooge rightly refuses to contribute to a poverty relief fund. “I’m opposed to giving people money for doing nothing,” he declares. Oh, wait. That wasn’t Scrooge. That was Newt Gingrich – last week. What Scrooge actually says is, “Are there no prisons?” But it’s pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, instead of praising Scrooge for his principled stand against the welfare state, Charles Dickens makes him out to be some kind of bad guy. How leftist is that?

As you can see, the fundamental issues of public policy haven’t changed since Victorian times. Still, some things are different. In particular, the production of humbug – which was still a somewhat amateurish craft when Dickens wrote – has now become a systematic, even industrial, process.

Jim Hightower: Obama to the Corporate Powers: I Feel Your Pain

Guess who’s whining the loudest these days, wailing that they’re getting a raw deal from Barack Obama.

Good grief! Friendlier than Obama’s Wall Street reform that coddled the big banksters, or his health care reform that further entrenches profiteering insurance giants inside the system? Or the tax bill cave-in that needlessly awards billions of dollars in special breaks for corporations and rich CEOs?

Yes. So friendly that Obama is now holding an ongoing series of closed-door policy meetings with assorted CEOs. So friendly that he’s already delayed regulations to strengthen anti-pollution rules. So friendly that his deficit-reduction panel proposes cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 26 percent. So friendly that he’s planning to put a high-powered CEO right inside the White House with him, as demanded by the whining corporate powers who say they’re not getting enough love from the president.

Why do they get a special presidential slot? Why not one for labor, small farmers, consumers, the unemployed? Remind me again — is this guy a Democrat?

Bill Quigley and Vince Warren: Obama’s Liberty Problem: Why Indefinite Detention by Executive Order Should Scare the Hell Out of People

The right to liberty is one of the foundation rights of a free people.  The idea that any US President can bypass Congress and bypass the Courts by issuing an Executive Order setting up a new legal system for indefinite detention of people should rightfully scare the hell out of the American people.  

Advisors in the Obama administration have floated the idea of creating a special new legal system to indefinitely detain people by Executive Order.  Why?  To do something with the people wrongfully imprisoned in Guantanamo.  Why not follow the law and try them?  The government knows it will not be able to win prosecutions against them because they were tortured by the US.  

Guantanamo is coming up on its ninth anniversary – a horrifying stain on the character of the US commitment to justice.  President Obama knows well that Guantanamo is the most powerful recruitment tool for those challenging the US.  Unfortunately, this proposal for indefinite detention will prolong the corrosive effects of the illegal and immoral detentions at Guantanamo rightly condemned world-wide.

The practical, logical, constitutional and human rights problems with the proposal are uncountable.