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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Michael Paarlberg: Who will stop Stephen Miller, the man behind America’s anti-refugee policy?

President Trump isn’t one to let a little cognitive dissonance get in the way of a nice dinner. So he didn’t miss Thursday’s gala fundraiser at the Kuwaiti embassy for the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), held at a time when his administration is barring a record number of refugees from entering the US.

Since 1980, presidents have set a ceiling on how many refugees the US may admit each year. That cap ranged from over 100,000 under Bush Sr and Clinton to around 80,000 for most of Bush Jr and Obama’s administrations. Trump recently lowered the ceiling to 45,000, the lowest it’s ever been, over the objections of the Pentagon, joint chiefs of staff, state department, and Vice-President Pence, all of whom wanted it higher. Trump is also seeking to enact new rules designed to block refugees from reuniting with family members and grind the resettlement process to a halt.

Why is the US turning its back on refugees who are fleeing humanitarian disaster and a group we consider a mortal enemy? As a recent New Yorker report details, this is largely the doing of Stephen Miller, Trump’s hardline anti-immigration immigration adviser.

David Leonhardt: Jeff Flake Out, Roy Moore In

This morning’s headlines are about Jeff Flake, but I find myself thinking about Roy Moore. Right now, it seems that the Republican Party has room for Moore but not Flake.

Flake, of course, is the Republican senator and Trump critic who announced yesterday that he wouldn’t run for re-election, because he thought that winning would require giving in to Trumpism. “It is time for our complicity and our accommodation of the unacceptable to end,” he said on the Senate floor.

Moore is the former judge who recently won the Republican nomination for a Senate seat in Alabama. He is also a demagogue who has called homosexuality “evil” and “so heinous” and who engaged in a discussion, on video, about whether it should be “punished by death.”

After Flake’s speech, his Senate colleagues applauded and honored him. But applause is easy. The more important question is: What are those same senators doing about Moore — a man who, unlike President Trump, can still be prevented from taking high office?

Jill Abramson: Bill O’Reilly is just one of the countless terrible men in media

There has been much discussion of late about a secret list called Shitty Media Men that has been circulating in private emails and on the internet. But the shittiest men in media have revealed themselves. That list begins with Bill O’Reilly.

Everyone should listen to his outrageous claims of victimhood on the New York Times’ podcast, The Daily. It is truly remarkable and more than galling to hear the self-justifications of a man who, with his ex-employer Fox News, paid out a staggering $45m to settle sexual misconduct cases with co-workers, underlings and others. [..]

After the reporters turned off the microphone they used in the interview, held in a small conference room at the office of O’Reilly’s lawyer, they kept recording on their phones. It was then that O’Reilly really let loose. “This is bullshit. It’s on you. It’s all crap,” he thunders at Michael Schmidt and Emily Steele. “This is horrible what I went through. This is crap and you know it. It’s politically and financially motivated.”

How could the Times possibly be accused of having political motivations when the paper had just brought down ultra-liberal, Democratic producer Harvey Weinstein?

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Trump’s Muslim Ban Impoverishes Us All

Economically, culturally, strategically, and morally, Donald Trump’s repeated attempts to ban Muslim immigrants and refugees have impoverished us all. His latest attempt proves it.

Premeditated Hate

On Tuesday a federal judge in Hawaii partially blocked Trump’s third attempt at a Muslim ban, saying that it failed to provide “sufficient findings” that allowing immigration from six Muslim-majority nations would harm the United States. The judge, Derrick K. Watson, cited a Trump campaign document that said, “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

On Wednesday a judge in Maryland issued a similar ruling, calling the Administration’s actions “an inextricable re-animation of the twice-enjoined Muslim ban.”

Trump’s record is unambiguous. He has issued a long-running stream of ignorant and bigoted comments against Muslims, including:

“I think Islam hates us.” (It does not.)

“We have a problem in this country; it’s called Muslims. We know our current president (Obama) is one.” (He is not.)

“I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down.” (They did not.)

Candidate Trump said that he would not rule out creating a database of all Muslims in the country. He said he would expel all Syrian refugees, despite the fact that it was American military policy that made them refugees in the first place. He said, “They could be ISIS, I don’t know. This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. “Later he said, “This could make the Trojan horse look like peanuts.”

If you say you’re going to discriminate against all members of a certain religion, and then keep issuing travel bans that almost exclusively affect only members of that religion, it turns out that judges take you at your word and conclude that’s what you meant to do.

Roberrt Creamer: Estate Tax Repeal Is Really ‘The Donald Trump, Jr. Relief Act’

Donald Trump claims that his giant tax cut proposal would do nothing to benefit the very rich like himself and his family. In reality a major portion of that proposal – the repeal of the estate tax – could reasonably be named: “The Donald Trump, Jr. Relief Act.”

That’s because it would provide Trump’s namesake, Donald Trump, Jr. – and his four siblings – with a billion dollar windfall that would ultimately go right into their ever- so-deserving pockets.

To finance this Trump family windfall and other tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires and wealthy corporations, the GOP budget proposes to take away health care coverage from millions on Medicaid; cut spending on Medicare, Social Security and education; and leave our children with over one-and-a-half trillion dollars of new debt.

Of course the lucky Trump family would not be the only beneficiaries of Trump’s proposal to eliminate the estate tax. According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, sons and daughters of millionaires would collectively receive an estimated $174 billion of new tax cuts over the next 10 years and $324.5 billion over the next two decades.

Currently, the estate tax only affects estates of over $5.5 million for single individuals and $11 million for couples, so we know for certain that every penny of this tax cut will go to the sons and daughters of multi-millionaires.

As a result, according to a study by the Center of Budget Priorities, only .002 percent of all estates pay any estate tax – 2 in every 1,000. There is no estate tax (or so called “death tax”) on money left by 98.8 percent of Americans – only those of multi-millionaires.