“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.
In Afghanistan, momentum has become a substitute for logic. We’re not fighting because we have a clear set of achievable goals. We’re at war, apparently, because we’re at war.
No other conclusion can be drawn from the circular, contradictory, confusing statements that the war’s commanders and supporters keep making. President Obama, in an interview with CBS taped last Friday, said it is “important for our national security to finish the job in Afghanistan.” But as the war’s deadliest month for U.S. troops came to an end, Obama was far from definitive about just what this job might be.
It is very apparent, the US military is not leaving.
But the U.S. will be staying in Afghanistan. For a long time. With no end date in sight, and even the long-suspect timeline for the beginning of a withdrawal looking more and more like the beginning of nothing much at all.
“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.
Last spring, a class of fifth-grade students from Bancroft Elementary School in the District descended on the South Lawn of the White House to help us dig, mulch, water and plant our very first kitchen garden. In the months that followed, those same students came back to check on the garden’s progress and taste the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor. Together, they helped us spark a national conversation about the role that food plays in helping us all live healthy lives.
For the past few months, we have heard powerful, passionate arguments about the need to cut America’s massive budget deficit. Republican senators have claimed that we are in danger of permanently crippling the economy. Conservative economists and pundits warn of a Greece-like crisis in which America will be able to borrow only at exorbitant interest rates. So when an opportunity presents itself to cut those deficits by about a quarter — more than $300 billion! — permanently and relatively easily, you would think that these people would be leading the way. Far from it.
“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.
The Sunday Talking Heads:
This is Ms. Amanpour’s debut as the anchor person for a Sunday talk show.
This Week with Christiane Amanpour: Coming Up Exclusive interviews House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Round table with George Will, Donna Brazile, Paul Krugman and Ahmed Rashid.
Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs Of Staff; Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.; Richard Haass, President, Council On Foreign Relations; Thomas Saenz, President, Mexican American Legal Defense And Education Fund.
Chris Matthews: Kimberly Dozier, Associated Press; Dan Rather, HDNet, Global Correspondent; Rick Stengel, TIME’ Managing Editor; Helene Cooper, The New York Times, White House Correspondent.
CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. They’ll discuss the war in Afghanistan as the U.S. experiences its deadliest month in the country. Topics will also include the wiki leaks incident, immigration and the economy.
Later, discussion about the passing week’s main political issues with New York Times correspondent, Peter Baker, and Washington Post editor Dan Balz.
Fareed Zakaria – GPS: Senator John Kerry — the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — to talk about the Wikileaks and, more broadly, the war in Afghanistan; about Iran and whether we should be engaging that nation; and about U.S. politics.
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S. responds directly to the accusations in the war logs that his intelligence service has been colluding with the Taliban.
Finally a panel of experts featuring Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, Reuters’ global editor-at-large Chrystia Freeland, and Ross Douthat of the N.Y. Times on the Obama’s administration is handling the crises that seem to keep coming at them.
The disclosure of tens of thousands of classified reports on the Afghan war last week by WikiLeaks has been compared, rightly or wrongly, to the release in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of U.S. involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. “The parallels are very strong,” Pentagon Papers contributor and leaker Daniel Ellsberg told The Washington Post on Monday. “This is the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers.”
But perhaps not large enough? Outlook asked Ellsberg for his wish list of documents to be leaked, declassified or otherwise made public, documents that could fundamentally alter public understanding of key national security issues and foreign policy debates. Below, he outlines his selections and calls for congressional investigations
“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 yoHe was not the only lawmaker to solicit donations in this manner, his lawyers argue, saying that peers who did the same thing were not punished.
The treatment of workers by American corporations has been worse – far more treacherous – than most of the population realizes. There was no need for so many men and women to be forced out of their jobs in the downturn known as the great recession.
Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers. And that cruel, irresponsible, shortsighted policy has resulted in widespread human suffering and is doing great harm to the economy.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Andrew Sum, an economics professor and director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. “Not only did they throw all these people off the payrolls, they also cut back on the hours of the people who stayed on the job.”
snip
There can be no robust recovery as long as corporations are intent on keeping idle workers sidelined and squeezing the pay of those on the job.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Germany and Japan, because of a combination of government and corporate policies, suffered far less worker dislocation in the recession than the U.S. Until we begin to value our workers, and understand the critical importance of employment to a thriving economy, we will continue to see our standards of living decline.
“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.
Christmas came early for demagogues. The court decision putting a hold on the worst provisions of Arizona’s new anti-Latino immigration law is a gift-wrapped present to those who delight in turning truth, justice and the American way into political liabilities.
As surely everyone knows by now, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the state from enforcing parts of the law that look patently unconstitutional. The political fallout is pretty clear: In the short run, at least, Republicans win and Democrats lose.
Longer term, the impact of the immigration issue on the major parties’ prospects is the other way around. But the focus now is on winning in November, and the GOP is licking its chops.
Why does the Obama administration keep looking for love in all the wrong places? Why does it go out of its way to alienate its friends, while wooing people who will never waver in their hatred?
These questions were inspired by the ongoing suspense over whether President Obama will do the obviously right thing and nominate Elizabeth Warren to lead the new consumer financial protection agency. But the Warren affair is only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga.
Mr. Obama rode into office on a vast wave of progressive enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was bound to be followed by disappointment, and not just because the president was always more centrist and conventional than his fervent supporters imagined. Given the facts of politics, and above all the difficulty of getting anything done in the face of lock step Republican opposition, he wasn’t going to be the transformational figure some envisioned.
In case you thought that the “Journolist” controversy over a now defunct, left leaning e-mail list created by Ezra Klein when he was 22 and working for The American Prospect, which was the source of the leaked e-mails by Washington Post right wing blogger, David Weigel that got him fired, well, it still rages among journalists from the left and the right. As Joe Conason points out it isn’t the left that has the problem it is the right wing journalists who have their knickers in a knot.
They speak at GOP banquets. They meet to plot in Grover Norquist’s office. Yet the wingers find a listserv shocking
Nothing much can be learned from the manufactured media uproar over Journolist, except as a case study of how the right-wing propaganda machine still dominates America’s daily narrative — and how conservative journalists remain astonishingly exempt from the standards they are pretending to uphold.
Look no further than the outrage feigned by two of the nation’s most prominent right-wing journalists, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard (and Fox News) and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, both of whom could barely contain their indignation over the revelation that a few hundred progressive writers and academics engaged in political discussion via e-mail. Having read a single Journolist e-mail that suggested tarring him as a “racist,” Barnes suddenly detects a departure from “traditional standards” :
When I’m talking to people from outside Washington, one question inevitably comes up: Why is the media so liberal? The question often reflects a suspicion that members of the press get together and decide on a story line that favors liberals and Democrats and denigrates conservatives and Republicans.
My response has usually been to say, yes, there’s liberal bias in the media, but there’s no conspiracy. The liberal tilt is an accident of nature. The media disproportionately attracts people from a liberal arts background who tend, quite innocently, to be politically liberal … Now, after learning I’d been targeted for a smear attack by a member of an online clique of liberal journalists, I’m inclined to amend my response. Not to say there’s a media conspiracy, but at least to note that hundreds of journalists have gotten together, on an online listserv called JournoList, to promote liberalism and liberal politicians at the expense of traditional journalism.
My guess is that this and other revelations about JournoList will deepen the distrust of the national press.
“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.
Is this what the American people really voted for? More war?
What WikiLeaks did was brilliant journalism, and the bleating critics from the president on down are revealing just how low a regard they have for the truth. As with Richard Nixon’s rage against the publication of the Pentagon Papers, our leaders are troubled not by the prospect of these revelations endangering troops but rather endangering their own political careers. It is our president who unnecessarily sacrifices the lives of our soldiers and not those in the press who let the public in on the folly of the mission itself.
What the documents exposed is the depth of chicanery that surrounds the Afghanistan occupation at every turn because we have stumbled into a regional quagmire of such dark and immense proportions that any attempt to connect this failed misadventure with a recognizable U.S. national security interest is doomed. What is revealed on page after page is that none of the local actors, be they labeled friend or foe, give a whit about our president’s agenda. They are focused on prizes, passions and causes that are obsessively homegrown.
Daniel Ellsberg is asked to comment on a clip of press secretary Robert Gibbs complaining about the leaks:
KING: Daniel, do you understand why Mr. Gibbs, representing the president, is so upset?
ELLSBERG: Well, he’s very upset in part because he’s working for a president who has indicted more people now for leaks than all previous presidents put together. And two of those people — Thomas Drake and Shamai Leibowitz — have been indicted for acts that were undertaken under Bush, which [the] George W. Bush administration chose not to indict.
So this is an administration that’s more concerned about preventing transparency, I would say, than its predecessor which I’m very sorry to hear. As somebody who voted for Obama and expect to vote for him again, despite all this.
Yikes. That’s all – yikes. (Video of the Ellsberg intervew is available here.)
Has anyone wondered what happened to FISA reform that President Obama promised to do after he took office? Well if this is his idea of reform, he is no better than the gang that occupied the Executive for the last 8 years.
In today’s Washington Post, the White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity by adding four little words, “electronic communication transactional records“, the government will have access to the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user’s browser history. The government lawyers are claiming that it would not grant access to content. If you believe that I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you.
Make no mistake. This is one of the most important pieces of civil liberties news in a long time. The Obama Administration is asking Congress to sanction the collection of internet records without a warrant that has been going on-the kind of shit they used to do without a warrant, until people expressed their opposition.
But then Democrats took over and now they want legal sanction and now-Voila, a request that presumably provides cover.
As Glen Greenwald said, “One Point, contrary to blatant strawman incessantly raised by Obama loyalists that the criticisms are NOT grounded in the complaints that Obama has failed to act quickly enough to usher in progressive policies but instead are based on the horrendous policies which Obama himself has affirmatively and explicitly adopted as his own, many of which directly contradict what he vowed to do as President.”
Obama has gone further than Bush by ordering the assassination of an American citizen abroad without due process and now this. Kevin Drum at Mother Jones said it best last night
You know, if I’d wanted Dick Cheney as president I would have just voted for him.
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
On this day in 1858, the Harris Treaty was signed between the United States and Japan was signed at the Ryosen-ji in Shimoda. Also known as the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, it opened the ports of Edo and four other Japanese cities to American trade and granted extraterritoriality to foreigners, among other stipulations.
The treaty followed the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa, which granted coaling rights for U.S. ships and allowed for a U.S. Consul in Shimoda. Although Commodore Matthew Perry secured fuel for U.S. ships and protection, he left the important matter of trading rights to Townsend Harris, another U.S. envoy who negotiated with the Tokugawa Shogunate; the treaty is therefore often referred to as the Harris Treaty. It took two years to break down Japanese resistance, but with the threat of looming British demands for similar privileges, the Tokugawa government eventually capitulated.
Treaties of Amity and Commerce between Japan and Holland, England, France, Russia and the United States, 1858.
* ability of United States citizens to live and trade in those ports
* a system of phttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterritoriality extraterritoriality] that provided for the subjugation of foreign residents to the laws of their own consular courts instead of the Japanese law system
* fixed low import-export duties, subject to international control
The agreement served as a model for similar treaties signed by Japan with other foreign countries in the ensuing weeks. These Unequal Treaties curtailed Japanese sovereignty for the first time in its history; more importantly, it revealed Japan’s growing weakness, and was seen by the West as a pretext for possible colonisation of Japan. The recovery of national status and strength became an overarching priority for the Japanese, with the treaty’s domestic consequences being the end of Bakufu (Shogun) control and the establishment of a new imperial government.
On this day in 1858, the
Recent Comments