“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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Katrina vanden Heuvel: The Coming Debate and a Trump in the House of Cards
A debate that promises to defy the needs-and common sense-of most Americans.
This Thursday, Republicans will stage their first presidential debate, with Fox News picking the top 10 of the 17 announced candidates on the basis of their standing in the polls. By today’s count, Donald Trump, the current poll leader, will stand center stage, flanked by Jeb Bush and Scott Walker and then the other seven arrayed in order of their poll numbers. Donald Trump’s notoriety may just garner Fox News the biggest primary debate audience ever.
Nervous Republican officials can take some solace that the debate is moderated by three Fox News stalwarts. They are unlikely to dwell on the irresistible questions raised by the absurdities that Republican candidates have offered up in the last months. Fox News anchors will no doubt try to get candidates to vent their venom on Hillary Clinton and President Obama rather than on each other. Candidates will have one minute to answer questions, time only for expressing an attitude, not a policy. [..]
The pundits will watch the debate like fans at a NASCAR race, waiting for the smash-ups. But the real news for Republicans isn’t who survives the fray. The real news is how divorced their consensus is from the needs of the country and common sense of most Americans.
Nusrat Choudhury: The Government Is Watching #BlackLivesMatter, And It’s Not Okay
According to documents recently obtained by The Intercept in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the government is surveilling the #BlackLivesMatter movement. [..]
The problem with this is obvious. Modern protest movements speak, associate, and organize through social media. Their tweets, blogs, protests, marches, and die-ins are the trumpets by which they call for reform and social justice. Government monitoring of activists’ protests – simply because these activists dissent and without any evidence of wrongdoing – threatens to discourage them from speaking, associating, and expressing as is their right under the First Amendment. Surveillance of #BlackLivesMatter protests also opens the door to racial profiling because the movement is Black-led.
Throughout our country’s history, the federal government has used the fear of threats – real or perceived – to conduct surveillance on domestic groups and people who look or act different. Civil rights and anti-Vietnam War activists in the 1960’s and 1970’s, American Muslim civil rights leaders and academics post-9/11, and the FBI’s recent, expansive racial, religious, and ethnic mapping program are a handful of examples.
Some tips on how to respond to some of the most common arguments.
Last month, a group with the name Center for Medical Progress started releasing videos claiming that Planned Parenthood is illegally selling fetal tissue. Anti-choicers are always floating ridiculous conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, and unsurprisingly, these videos turned out to be a pile of lies. Despite this, Senate Republicans had a symbolic grandstanding “defund Planned Parenthood” bill and some are calling to shut the government down if Democrats don’t cave into demands to destroy the national chain of women’s health centers.
Because of this, many conservatives – some of them our own relatives – are now spouting a bunch of false talking points about the supposed evils of Planned Parenthood. Here are some tips on how to respond to some of the most common arguments that are floating around. [..]
These conservative talking points are easy to debunk, but it’s also important not to get so much in the weeds that you forget the larger point: The assault on Planned Parenthood is not about the videos at all, but a larger war on women being waged by conservatives. It’s all tied up in conservative efforts to push abstinence-only education, to fight Obamacare’s contraception coverage, to shut down abortion and family planning clinics, and even to halt IUD programs that are known to reduce teen pregnancy. The videos are just a pretense. The real goal is to make it harder for women-especially low-income women – to have happy, healthy sex lives.
Jaon Walsh: The GOP crack-up continues: The raging civil war over the disgusting “cuckservative” slur
Combining racism and misogyny, the insult lets Donald Trump backers claim other Republicans aren’t real men
“Cuckservative,” you see, is short for a cuckolded conservative. It’s not about a Republican whose wife is cheating on him, but one whose country is being taken away from him, and who’s too cowardly to do anything about it.
OK, that’s gross and sexist enough already, but there’s more. It apparently comes from a kind of pornography known as “cuck,” in which a white husband, either in shame or lust, watches his wife be taken by a black man. Lewis explains it this way: “A cuckservative is, therefore, a race traitor.”
This is not merely a new way to shout “RINO.” It’s a call to make the GOP an explicitly racist party, devoted to the defense of whites. It’s no accident it’s taken off in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launch/performance art, where he attacked illegal Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals.”
Rachel Rye Butler: Why the Voting Rights Act Matters for Environmentalists
Why environmental activists are joining the call to restore the Voting Rights Act and give equal voice to all in American democracy.
Many people who care about climate change understand the corrupting influence of big money in politics, and rightfully sound the alarm when elected officials who are supposed to represent their constituents instead protect corporate profits. This is especially true when it comes to big political spenders and climate polluters like the Koch Brothers and the fossil fuel companies like Shell.
However, voter suppression and disenfranchisement are not as commonly talked about in the environmental community. This despite the fact that denying the right to vote strips people of access to a cornerstone of our democracy and a way to have their interests represented in decisions that impact them-including issues of climate and environmental health.
It’s high time we make those connections.
Amy B. Dean: Washington has failed to enforce labor rights. Can cities step in?
With cities raising minimum wages and passing paid sick leave, communities must make sure employers comply with the law
In the past year Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland and Seattle have all scheduled minimum wage increases, to rates ranging from $12.25 to $15.00. At least 18 cities and four states now have passed paid sick leave laws. San Francisco also passed the Retail Workers’ Bill of Rights, which will guarantee employees fair notice of their schedules for shifts.
All these measures create important improvements for working families. But how can these newly won rights be protected?
The federal government is unlikely to help. The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has fewer than 1,500 investigators for America’s 135 million-person workforce – about one for every 96,000 workers. And state-level labor departments aren’t faring much better.
With this in mind, some local leaders have turned to a surprisingly simple solution: enlisting community members to help monitor and enforce new protections.
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