“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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Trevor Timm: It hurts to say it, but sometimes Donald Trump speaks the truth
Donald Trump offends entire voting blocks at will, constantly gets his facts wrong, and most of his policy positions are either contradictory or insane. Yet, on some issues, he’s also right.
His deliberate forays into xenophobia and arrogance on immigration and foreign policy certainly remain awful and ugly, but there’s also another reason he continues to sit atop the Republican polls: he speaks a particular kind of truth about some issues the way only someone with no filter can. These days, his venom particularly stinging to other Republicans, whom he has no problem attacking with a delightful abandon that is usually considered sacrilegious in inter-party primaries. [..]
In the coming weeks, Trump will inevitably say something horribly offensive to a particular person or group – that’s what he always does. But when the conventional wisdom machine then proclaims his campaign can’t possibly survive, remember there is a reason they will once again likely be wrong.
David Cay Johnston: Currency wars and the threat of deflation
Downward pressure on prices signals dangers for the world economy
The price at which you can trade American dollars for foreign currencies may seem abstract, but events unfolding right now make it important to your future income, whether you have a job and the direction of the world economy in the next few years.
Around the globe, we are seeing strong downward pressure on prices, especially for commodities, prompting some governments to make their currency cheaper relative to the dollar. That suggests we may be entering a period of deflation, last experienced in a serious way in the U.S. in the Great Depression of the 1930s and the late 1800s. A deflationary spiral would represent a serious threat to the global economy. [..]
We need adapt our thinking to the emerging economic conditions of the 21st Century, in which flat prices or even a deflation threatens our prosperity. Without the incentive of rising prices brought by inflation, we risk falling into a vicious cycle of economic decline by deferring the purchases that drive the economy and the investments in education, infrastructure and basic research and undergird it. That would be a tragic mistake.
If you are running for office as a Republican today, you have to mention your reverence for the Constitution at least as much as you mention your love for Ronald Reagan.
The Second Amendment — every word should be taken literally because it was literally ordained by God! The First Amendment protects my right to discriminate against gay people! Neither the Constitution nor the Bible contains the word “Obamacare”!
But Republican politicians have a few glaring blind spots when it comes to the Constitution. One of those is the 14th Amendment, a pillar of our inclusive democracy, a key component of which Republican presidential candidates are now asking us to ignore or change.
E. J. Dionne: All Votes Matter: When Will Discrimination End at the Ballot Box?
Many find politics frustrating because problems that seemed to be solved in one generation crop up again years or decades later. The good thing about democracy is that there are no permanent defeats. The hard part is that some victories have to be won over and over.
And so it is with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a monument to what can be achieved when grass-roots activism is harnessed to presidential and legislative leadership. Ending discrimination at the ballot box was a way of underwriting the achievements of the Civil Rights Act passed a year earlier by granting African-Americans new and real power to which they had always been constitutionally entitled.
Thomas Frank: It’s not just Fox News: How liberal apologists torpedoed change, helped make the Democrats safe for Wall Street
Center-left pundits have carried water for the president for six years. Their predictable excuses all ring hollow
As the Obama administration enters its seventh year, let us examine one of the era’s greatest peculiarities: That one of the most cherished rallying points of the president’s supporters is the idea of the president’s powerlessness.
Today, of course, the Democrats have completely lost control of Congress and it’s easy to make the case for the weakness of the White House. For example, when Frank Bruni sighed last Wednesday that presidents are merely “buoys on the tides of history,” not “mighty frigates parting the waters,” he scarcely made a ripple. [..]
It is, in other words, a classic apologetic. The pundit, a clear-thinking, reality-based fellow (and yes, they are almost always fellows), knows that if you paid attention back in 2008 you understood that Obama wasn’t promising anything great. Plus, the president has delivered all kinds of subtle but awesome stuff that his soft-headed fans overlook. Besides, there are those awful racist Republicans. Good Christ! Would we rather have one of them in the Oval Office?
This theme has been so elaborately developed over the last few years that it would be possible to write a decent history of the Obama administration entirely in terms of the various apologetics deployed on its behalf, savoring all the different grades of literary style, noting all the catch phrases and in-jokes the pundits share with one another, enumerating all the clever put-downs they use to deride the unrealistic liberal masses.
As a preface to any such future history, let me outline here the main points of the genre.
Barack Obama is in the early stages of raising $1B for his planned library in Chicago. What a waste!
We spend a lot of time fretting about the power of money in elections. But what about the power of money after all the elections end? The lure of cashing in once leaving politics can have as much of an impact on policy as the continual lobbying and campaign contributions while a politician is in office. Yesterday the New York Times depicted this in rather unseemly fashion, showing how President Obama has vigorously plotted his post-presidency since a week after getting elected to a second and final term.
By “plotted” I mean “flattered potential donors at late-night White House dinners.” The scene-setter for the article featured Obama and his wife in a private upstairs dining room this February, hobnobbing until 2 a.m. with venture capitalists, billionaire CEOs, actresses and hedge fund manager Marc Lasry, last seen getting $450 million in public money from Wisconsin to build a sports arena for the Milwaukee Bucks, which he co-owns. The dinner was part of a series of all-night bull sessions with “extraordinarily rich groups of people.” [..]
Which all begs the question: If a private citizen seeks private donors for a building with his name on it, and an endowment for a foundation that could potentially do good work, why should we care?
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