Pondering the Pundits

“Pondering 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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Trevor Timm: The TTIP and TPP trade deals: enough of the secrecy

It’s amazing how just a little transparency forced onto the free trade deals the Obama administration been negotiating in secret totally turns the public against them.

After the contents of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the US and the European Union was leaked and published by Greenpeace a few days ago, the negotiations – already in turmoil – have been thrown into further doubt now that the public has actually gotten to see what is being proposed by both sides.

As usual with US-negotiated trade deals, the contents were kept completely secret from both ordinary Europeans and Americans, yet was easily accessible if you’re a giant corporation. So naturally, the terms are heavily tilted toward big business at the expense of the environment, health and safety standards.

Eugene Robinson: The GOP now belongs to Trump. What are Republicans going to do about it?

The Republican Party this week is like 5th-century Rome must have been after the Visigoths stormed the city’s gates. Anarchy and confusion reign, there is the sound of anguished wailing, and political leaders are making an urgent calculation: Resistance or collaboration? [..]

I mention these issues of perception only because I’m now seeing a lot of analysis predicting how easy-peasy it will be for likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to wipe the floor with Trump in the fall. Anyone buying into this story line should first try to ascertain whether it’s based on reality or wishful thinking. As for me, I’ll continue not to take anything for granted.

Republican elected officials and party leaders do not have time for such retrospective contemplation. They have a decision to make. The party belongs to Trump now, just as Rome belonged to the barbarians, and GOP politicians have to decide whether to fall in line or take up arms against the new order.

Paul Krugman: Truth and Trumpism

How will the news media handle the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? I suspect I know the answer — and it’s going to be deeply frustrating. But maybe, just maybe, flagging some common journalistic sins in advance can limit the damage. So let’s talk about what can and probably will go wrong in coverage — but doesn’t have to.

First, and least harmful, will be the urge to make the election seem closer than it is, if only because a close race makes a better story. You can already see this tendency in suggestions that the startling outcome of the fight for the Republican nomination somehow means that polls and other conventional indicators of electoral strength are meaningless. [..]

Oh, and let’s not make too much of any one poll. When many polls are taken, there are bound to be a few outliers, both because of random sampling error and the biases that can creep into survey design. If the average of recent polls shows a strong lead for one candidate — as it does right now for Mrs. Clinton — any individual poll that disagrees with that average should be taken with large helpings of salt.

A more important vice in political coverage, which we’ve seen all too often in previous elections — but will be far more damaging if it happens this time — is false equivalence.

Thomas Frank: Why must the Trump alternative be self-satisfied, complacent Democrats?

The year of our discontent rolls on, and now it is Indiana that hands victory to the insurgent senator Bernie Sanders and the protectionist demagogue Donald Trump.

Seven years have passed now since the last recession officially ended, and yet the country’s fury has scarcely cooled. To this day we remain angry at Wall Street; we rage against career politicians; and we are incandescent that the economic system seems to have been permanently “rigged” against working people. Median household income has still not recovered the levels of 2007. Wages are going nowhere. Elite bankers are probably never going to be held accountable for what they did. America is burning.

Listening to the leading figures of the Democratic party establishment, however, you’d never know it. Cool contentment is the governing emotion in these circles. What they have in mind for 2016 is what we might call a campaign of militant complacency. They are dissociated from the mood of the nation, and they do not care.

David Ferguson: A monument for the Stonewall riots is nice, but the fight for LGBT rights goes on

Straight people, I want you to imagine something. I want you to close your eyes for a moment and imagine that the world is queer. Barely clad, lissome teen boys are used to sell everything from candy to beer to mutual funds. Beaming lesbian couples look down at you from every billboard and subway ad.

Every film and TV show is about the lives and struggles of same-sex couples. Sometimes a daring art house film will feature a story of the forbidden love between a man and a woman, but outside of the arts and the big cities, such relationships are considered dirty, licentious and widely known to be doomed. Heterosexual people are all perverts, you know. They’re dangerous and mentally ill. Don’t let them touch you. Ever.

This is what your America looks like to an LGBT person. There’s been some queering around the edges, but on the whole, we still live in a painfully, bombastically straight society. Same-sex marriage is legal and now there is a motion afoot to make New York City’s Stonewall Inn into the country’s first LGBT historical marker.