“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”.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.
Katrina vanden Huevel: The failure of austerity politics
“We are headed to a Greece-type collapse,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has warned repeatedly, while indicting President Obama’s stimulus plan. Romney promises to slash spending and balance the budget to unleash growth.
Only now his warning provides a starkly different caution. Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Britain – the countries that have responded to the economic crisis by focusing on slashing their deficits – are sinking. And the ruin inflicted on Greece threatens its democracy, as riots and resistance spread.
The advocates of austerity – here and in Europe – have argued that cutting spending and reducing deficits, even with interest rates already near zero, would revive the economy. The irresponsible – other than the banks – would be disciplined. This would reassure investors and “job creators,” and they would invest and start to hire again. With an added refrain about deregulation, this remains the mantra chanted ceaselessly by Republicans.
Rebecca Solnit: Mad, Passionate Love — and Violence: Occupy Heads into the Spring
When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them — or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.
Until they did.
Revolutions are always like this: at first all men are brothers and anything is possible, and then, if you’re lucky, the romance of that heady moment ripens into a relationship, instead of a breakup, an abusive marriage, or a murder-suicide. Occupy had its golden age, when those who never before imagined living side-by-side with homeless people found themselves in adjoining tents in public squares.
All sorts of other equalizing forces were present, not least the police brutality that battered the privileged the way that inner-city kids are used to being battered all the time. Part of what we had in common was what we were against: the current economy and the principle of insatiable greed that made it run, as well as the emotional and economic privatization that accompanied it.
Carole Joffe:
The Abortion Wars: The Real People Behind the Restrictions
The last ten days or so we have seen Republicans, and their religious allies, wage a war against contraception-and bungle it badly. With poll after poll showing that a majority of Americans support contraceptive coverage in health reform, and with the 98 percent figure (of American women who have ever used contraception in the context of heterosexual sex) endlessly repeated in the media, the Republicans nonetheless push ahead with this attack, providing a welcome gift to the Obama reelection campaign and much material to political artists and comics. I have lost count of the number of parodies that have been inspired by that now gone viral picture of five male clerics testifying at the Congressional hearing called by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). A picture that of course immediately brings to mind another image of a similar tone deaf moment on the part of social conservatives, the nine men surrounding President George W. Bush as he became the first president to sign a ban on a particular technique of performing abortion, in the case of so-called “partial birth abortion.” It’s no wonder that the term “patriarchy” has made a comeback in the blogs! [..]
But while the media is momentarily fixated on the second big story this month of a losing fight against family planning (remember the Susan G. Komen Fund fiasco?), less attention has been paid to a related war that is not going well at all. The assault on abortion that has resulted from the 2010 elections–the Republican takeover of Congress and many statehouses and governorships–has arguably produced the most serious threat to abortion access since the Roe decision in 1973. What we mainly have heard about this situation are the statistics, the unprecedented number of abortion restrictions introduced and eventually passed in state legislatures at a time when one might assume politicians’ focus would be on the economy.
Medea Benjamin: Police Chief Timoney, Meet Bahraini Mothers
John Timoney is the controversial former Miami police chief well known for orchestrating brutal crackdowns on protests in Miami and Philadelphia- instances with rampant police abuse, violence, and blatant disregard for freedom of expression. It should be of great concern that the Kingdom of Bahrain has brought Timoney and John Yates, former assistant commissioner of Britain’s Metropolitan Police, to “reform” Bahrain’s security forces.
Since assuming his new position, Timoney has claimed that Bahrain has been reforming it brutal police tactics in response to recommendations issued by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. He says that there is less tear gas being used and that while tear gas might be “distasteful,” it’s not really harmful.
I have no idea what country Chief Timoney is talking about, because it’s certainly not the Bahrain I saw this past week, a week that marked the one-year anniversary since the February 14, 2011 uprising.
Maureen Dowd: Rick’s Religious Fanaticism
Rick Santorum has been called a latter-day Savonarola.
That’s far too grand. He’s more like a small-town mullah.
“Satan has his sights on the United States of America,” the conservative presidential candidate warned in 2008. “Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”
When, in heaven’s name, did sensuality become a vice? Next he’ll be banning Barry White. [..]
He told The Washington Post on Friday that, while he doesn’t want to fund contraception through Planned Parenthood, he wouldn’t ban it: “The idea that I’m coming after your birth control is absurd. I was making a statement about my moral beliefs, but I won’t impose them on anyone else in this case.”
That doesn’t comfort me much. I’ve spent a career watching candidates deny they would do things that they went on to do as president, and watching presidents let their personal beliefs, desires and insecurities shape policy decisions.
Mullah Rick is casting doubt on issues of women’s health and safety that were settled a long time ago. We’re supposed to believe that if he got more power he’d drop his crusade?
Ellen Brown: How Greece Could Take Down Wall Street
In an article titled “Still No End to ‘Too Big to Fail,'” William Greider wrote in The Nation on February 15th:
Financial market cynics have assumed all along that Dodd-Frank did not end “too big to fail” but instead created a charmed circle of protected banks labeled “systemically important” that will not be allowed to fail, no matter how badly they behave.
That may be, but there is one bit of bad behavior that Uncle Sam himself does not have the funds to underwrite: the $32 trillion market in credit default swaps (CDS). Thirty-two trillion dollars is more than twice the U.S. GDP and more than twice the national debt. [..]
The Houses of Morgan, Goldman and the other Big Five are justifiably worried right now, because an “event of default” declared on European sovereign debt could jeopardize their $32 trillion derivatives scheme. According to Rudy Avizius in an article on The Market Oracle (UK) on February 15th, that explains what happened at MF Global, and why the 50% Greek bond write-down was not declared an event of default.
If you paid only 50% of your mortgage every month, these same banks would quickly declare you in default. But the rules are quite different when the banks are the insurers underwriting the deal.
Rachel Signer: Occupying the SEC for a Stronger Volcker Rule
On Monday evening, around one hundred people gathered in Liberty Square in downtown Manhattan, preparing to march to the Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission buildings nearby. Protesters carried signs reading, “We don’t make demands so this is a suggestion: Enforce the Volcker Rule.”
Occupy the SEC, a working group of Occupy Wall Street that includes former financial industry professionals, lawyers and concerned citizens, had been up until 5am the night before, editing and formatting a letter they had prepared as a public comment to the SEC. For months, OSEC met twice weekly to review the 298-page proposed Volcker Rule, conducting a diligent, line-by-line analysis of the document. Proposed as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, the Volcker Rule essentially aims to ban proprietary trading and ownership of hedge funds by banks. Between now and July, the regulating bodies involved-the SEC, the FDIC, the OCC, the CFTC and the Fed-are required to read public comment letters and issue final details on the Volcker Rule.
When members of OSEC viewed their letter on Monday on the SEC’s website, they were elated to see that at 325 pages, it was the longest letter by far. In comparison, the longest letter by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), a group that represents the interests of securities groups, banks and asset managers, was 173 pages-although SIFMA submitted five letters in total.
Sarah Stillman: Nancy Grace, Policymaker
When the not-guilty verdict came down in the Casey Anthony trial last summer, TV personality Nancy Grace exploded in a cable news paroxysm for the ages: “Somewhere out there, the devil is dancing tonight.” The polarizing former prosecutor had massively expanded her national following with her nightly crusades against the 25-year-old Anthony, an unemployed single mom charged with killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. When, soon thereafter, Grace announced she would be joining the cast of Dancing With the Stars, critics had a field day. But her leap into the world of bedazzled spandex was not half as alarming as a less widely discussed foray, into the arena of panic-driven policymaking. [..]
On its face, the law sounds well-reasoned. Don’t all parents have certain de facto obligations vis-à-vis their kids-particularly alerting authorities when young lives may be on the line? Michelle Crowder, the 30-year-old Oklahoma mother who authored the Change.org petition, certainly thinks so. “I just decided to jump on there and do it,” she told Grace in an interview tag-lined “Breaking News: Outrage.” But others are not convinced. There is a long history of passing tough-on-crime legislation in the wake of a brutal crime and the results have been mixed, at best. Caylee’s Law is far from unique in transforming the name of an innocent young female victim into a rallying cry for crime-fighting reforms with dubious results. And Grace is only the latest pundit to spin her entertainment empire into a legislative one.
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes. 
On this day in Japan, the Plum Blossom Festival is held. The Festival at the 
I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I need a break from reality, at least for a few hours. The chance to sit in front of the big tube with a drink and a bowl of popcorn or other finger food and watch the glitz and glamor as the stars walk down the red carpet and make fools of themselves bumbling the lines of acceptance speeches.
In perusing the internet for new treats that would be suitable for the event, I found a great piece in the New York Times that has the recipes for 
On this day in 
On this day in 1954, a group of 
By 1910, much of the world experienced a dramatic increase in polio cases and frequent epidemics became regular events, primarily in cities during the summer months. These epidemics-which left thousands of children and adults paralyzed-provided the impetus for a “Great Race” towards the development of a vaccine. Developed in the 1950s, polio vaccines are credited with reducing the global number of polio cases per year from many hundreds of thousands to around a thousand. Enhanced vaccination efforts led by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and Rotary International could result in global eradication of the disease.
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