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.

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

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Paul Krugman: Bull Market Blues

Like most economists, I don’t usually have much to say about stocks. Stocks are even more susceptible than other markets to popular delusions and the madness of crowds, and stock prices generally have a lot less to do with the state of the economy or its future prospects than many people believe. As the economist Paul Samuelson put it, “Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions.”

Still, we shouldn’t completely ignore stock prices. The fact that the major averages have lately been hitting new highs — the Dow has risen 177 percent from its low point in March 2009 — is newsworthy and noteworthy. What are those Wall Street indexes telling us?

The answer, I’d suggest, isn’t entirely positive. In fact, in some ways the stock market’s gains reflect economic weaknesses, not strengths. And understanding how that works may help us make sense of the troubling state our economy is in.

Trevor Timm: New York reformed its police and all hell didn’t break loose

Want more evidence that the “Ferguson effect” is a myth? Look no further than the nation’s largest city, where crime is at an all-time low despite the police force slowly being forced to accept more and more accountability.

The New York police department released its crime statistics on Monday, and they showed that over the last six-month period violent crimes and murders are at an all-time low, with shootings down 20% to the lowest total for a six-month period in the city’s history. (So were burglaries, robberies and auto theft for that matter.)

Remember the widespread panic in the Michael Bloomberg administration when they claimed even the mildest of police reform would cause an increase in crime? The new stats, touted by the De Blasio administration this week, come after the NYPD was forced to curtail its unconstitutional stop-and-frisk program that ensnared countless African American and Hispanic people, after it finally had to abandoned its mass surveillance program of the Muslim community, and after it finally named an inspector general for the police force, which the former mayor fought to the very end of his term.

This data also suggests that, at least in New York City, the “Ferguson effect” – the insulting idea put forth by FBI director Jim Comey and others that the transparency and accountability that comes with police being filmed by bystanders in public stops cops from doing their jobs – remains a complete myth.

Heather Digby Parton: An attack on all of us: The France horror has shaken the world — but terrorists will not destroy our humanity

It’s happened again — more death and carnage and horror in the streets of a major city. This time it happened in Nice, France a beautiful city on the French riviera where people from all over the area had come down to the famous Promenade des Anglais at the beach to watch the fireworks celebration for Bastille Day, the day the French people come together to celebrate their country. A madman drove a big truck over a mile through the crowd killing at least 80 people, including kids, and seriously injuring dozens more. As I write this, all we know of the motivation is that the president of France has declared that the attack was of a “terrorist nature” and told the country, “all of France is under the threat of Islamic terrorism.” Again. Still.

Whether it’s a lone wolf attack like the one the U.S. just experienced in Orlando Florida or a directly coordinated ISIS plot like the Paris attack a few months ago is unknown. We’ll undoubtedly find out soon enough. At this moment, for everyone but the authorities, it doesn’t matter. Lunacy has ripped apart our sense of security and that, of course, is the whole point. If one of the goals of terrorism is to scare the public into believing that taking part in any normal activity with fellow citizens is a risk, whether it be attending a concert or sitting in a cafe or attending a Christmas party at work, hanging out with friends at a dance club or a fireworks show, the latest iteration of Islamic extremist violence is getting the job done.

Richard Wolffe: On terrorism, Donald Trump makes George W Bush look like a colossus

I have some news for the news media: the 2016 election isn’t a joke. It’s not a football game, or a reality TV show. It’s long past time to stop treating it as such.

It’s long past time to stop the breathless anticipation of Donald Trump’s pick of a vice-president, and to start wondering if this presidential ticket is politically and mentally capable of dealing with the challenges we face at home and overseas.

It’s time to stop indulging in the pretense that there is anything like a coherent Trump worldview or policy agenda, at home and overseas.

After the horrific murders on Bastille Day in Nice, we need to acknowledge that these are serious times requiring serious leaders.

John Paul Brammer: The Republican platform is extremist – and so is anyone who supports it

“While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two,” Tony Perkins wrote on the Family Research Council website in 2010. “It is a homosexual problem.”

Such views are perhaps to be expected from the president of the FRC, a fiercely anti-LGBTQ organization that, using faith as a justification, has propagated the insidious view that gay people are sexual predators.

Mainstream Republicans might deem Perkins a fringe character. At the very least, they would probably want to distance themselves from a man who once purchased Klansman David Duke’s email list for use in a political campaign in Louisiana (Perkins now claims he wasn’t aware of the mailing list’s connection to Duke).