“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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Paul Krugman: Where Government Excels
As Republican presidential hopefuls trot out their policy agendas – which always involve cutting taxes on the rich while slashing benefits for the poor and middle class – some real new thinking is happening on the other side of the aisle. Suddenly, it seems, many Democrats have decided to break with Beltway orthodoxy, which always calls for cuts in “entitlements.” Instead, they’re proposing that Social Security benefits actually be expanded.
This is a welcome development in two ways. First, the specific case for expanding Social Security is quite good. Second, and more fundamentally, Democrats finally seem to be standing up to antigovernment propaganda and recognizing the reality that there are some things the government does better than the private sector. [..]
And in the real world of retirement, Social Security is a shining example of a system that works. It’s simple and clean, with low operating costs and minimal bureaucracy. It provides older Americans who worked hard all their lives with a chance of living decently in retirement, without requiring that they show an inhuman ability to think decades ahead and be investment whizzes as well. The only problem is that the decline of private pensions, and their replacement with inadequate 401(k)-type plans, has left a gap that Social Security isn’t currently big enough to fill. So why not make it bigger?
Paul Rosenberg: Listen, it’s still their f**king fault: Bush, Cheney, neo-con drivel, and the truth about Iraq and ISIS
We can’t believe we have to explain 9/11, ISIS and Iraq again. But as the right’s lies add up, here goes
Foreign policy is already looming much larger in the 2016 election than it did in 2012. When Obama ran for re-election, the inescapable fact that Osama bin Laden had been killed on his watch (after Bush had admittedly lost interest in him) essentially foreclosed any serious foreign policy challenge from the Republicans. Hence the profound silliness of their Benghazi obsession, and Obama’s cool, detached debate invitation to “Please proceed…” [..]
At the moment, Obama’s historic nuclear deal with Iran is center stage, but the much more widespread geopolitical problem typified by (though not limited to) ISIS has a much more pervasive political influence. Case in point: the emergence of ISIS, with its provocative spectacles of violence have unexpectedly renewed American’s willingness to send troops to fight overseas, completely forgetting that this was precisely bin Laden’s reason for 9/11 in the first place: to lure the U.S. into a “holy war” with Islam. Election year dynamics being what they are, there’s no telling how badly this could turn out. So before we go off and blow several trillion dollars recruiting the next wave of terrorists, perhaps it would be a good idea to reconsider what we did the last time around.
Heather Digby Parton:
The NRA’s open-carry clustermuck: How its annual convention highlights the hypocrisy of the pro-gun movement
The gun lobby jumps through hoops each year to comply with the same regulations they would much rather dismantle
Reports of road rage incidents resulting in gun violence are on the rise. In fact, they are now so common that newspapers report them as if they are fender benders. [..]
New laws that allow the open carry of loaded guns in public places – and such laws are springing up all over the nation – have resulted in even more terrifying confrontations: For example, parents are forced to deal with gun activists brandishing their firearms in front of their kids in a public park, shouting: “Look at my gun! There’s nothing you can do about it!” Likewise, workers in businesses serving the public are forced to deal with customers blithely slinging loaded semi-automatic weapons over their shoulders, or casually leaning firearms up against tables. These owners have little recourse but to pray they don’t become the victim of one of the thousands of firearm-related accidents that occur all over the country every year.
But never let it be said that the gun rights zealots are totally rigid in their thinking and have no common sense at all. I have written in the past about the odd hypocrisy of gun proliferation advocates in Republican state houses who refuse to people the right to carry firearms in their work places, even as they pass laws making everyone else work in a world where an angry person with a gun might very well lose his or her temper and decide to make their point with a bullet.
Conor Lynch: Patriotic bullies of the war-hungry GOP: The truth about its obsession with American exceptionalism
Dick Cheney’s ridiculous claims about Barack Obama this week fit into a longstanding right-wing tradition
It is a well known fact that liberals hate America, or as the always rational Ann Coulter once said, “even fanatical Muslim terrorists don’t hate America like liberals do.” While I would estimate that Islamic terrorists probably hate America just a tad more than liberals, it is true that liberals tend to be less brazenly patriotic than god-fearing, flag-waving conservatives. According to Pew polls, 81 percent of “business conservatives” often feel U.S. pride, while only about 40 percent of “solid liberals” feel the same way. It seems like liberals are just not as infatuated with the idea of America as conservatives are. [..]
But here’s the thing: Criticizing the actions of America seems to be a whole lot more patriotic than sitting back and buying into false talk of American exceptionalism, when reality tells a different story. One does not have to constantly feel pride about one’s country to be a patriot, and carrying on that way can blind a person when their country is actually on the wrong side.
So, yes, conservatives do tend to feel more pride in America than liberals do. But what does this really tell us? Not that conservatives are any more or less patriotic than liberals, but that they are more likely to be fooled by nationalistic propaganda. A rational person looks at their own actions, or their country’s actions dispassionately, and is able to admit when they are wrong. Blind patriotism is never able to make such an admission, and will resort to fairy tales in order to defend indefensible actions.
There are a lot of fairy tales in the United States. But true patriots live in the real world; when they see a problem with their country, they seek to expose and to change it – not mask it with ardent deception.
Russel Simmons: Governor Cuomo, We’ve Had Enough!
We marched through the cold snow, the winter nights, the brutal winds, the shivering rain… for justice. For months, we have not let up. We refuse to let the death of Eric Garner be in vain, so we have made demands, organizations joined forces and thousands of young people took to the streets. I am beyond disbelief that even though there is a glaring problem with the policies of policing in New York City and in our country coupled with an inherently flawed justice system, not one new law has been passed since a father of four was choked out on a hot, summer day last July in Staten Island. Mr. Governor, not one. [..]
You have to restore faith within the criminal justice system here in New York State. Without action, everyday it is deteriorates more and more. The country is at a breaking point. With the death of Mr. Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina over the weekend, we are witnessing the end of the rope. You must lead. If you have any ambition for office beyond our home state, now is the time to show the nation that you can make a decision to protect the people and restore confidence in our criminal justice system. There is much you can do and need to do besides this, but this should have been done by now.
Robert Borosage: The Republican Congress Votes for Dynasty Over Democracy
Next week as Congress returns, House Republicans will address what they consider one of the nation’s most pressing problems: relieving the tax burdens on multimillionaires — not the 1 percent but the wealthiest 0.2 percent, two of 1000 — by eliminating the estate tax. Its repeal will cost $269 billion over 10 years, but Republicans find the cause so compelling that they would add that sum to our deficits rather than struggle with “paying” for it.
The bill, of course, has no chance of becoming law. If necessary, the president will veto it. It is a message bill. Conservatives love to rail against what they have been taught to call the death tax. Republicans want voters — or more importantly billionaire donors — to know that, even with inequality at record extremes, with the wealthiest 0.1 percent of families possessing as much wealth as 90 percent of American families, they are on the case, standing strong to defend the inheritances of the sons and daughters of the privileged few.
On this day in 1742, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah premieres in Dublin, Ireland.
On this day in 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut 
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