“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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Paul Krugman: When China Stumbles
So, will China’s problems cause a global crisis? The good news is that the numbers, as I read them, don’t seem big enough. The bad news is that I could be wrong, because global contagion often seems to end up being worse than hard numbers say it should. And the worse news is that if China does deliver a bad shock to the rest of the world, we are remarkably unready to deal with the consequences.
For those just starting to pay attention: It has been obvious for a while that China’s economy is in big trouble. How big is hard to say, because nobody believes official Chinese statistics.
The basic problem is that China’s economic model, which involves very high saving and very low consumption, was only sustainable as long as the country could grow extremely fast, justifying high investment. This in turn was possible when China had vast reserves of underemployed rural labor. But that’s no longer true, and China now faces the tricky task of transitioning to much lower growth without stumbling into recession.
Trevor Timmm: Asking Silicon Valley to ‘disrupt’ terrorists is tech talk for ‘surveillance’
The White House and its national security team are set to meet Friday with the country’s largest tech companies, like Facebook and Google, to discuss how they can help “disrupt” Isis’s online activities (that cringe-worthy phrase is theirs, not mine). On the agenda: censorship and invasive anti-privacy and security measures that could affect not just Isis supporters, but everyone who uses the internet.
You can hate Isis while still being disturbed about the lengths the government is going to pressure these tech companies. There are so many shady things going on with this meeting it’s hard to know where to start.
Eugene Robinson: Trump Shifts Birther Gaze to Cruz
Who says Donald Trump lacks subtlety? The way he’s raising “birther” questions about his chief rival for the nomination is worthy of Machiavelli. [..]
Cruz flatly denied ever having a Canadian passport, telling CNN this is just one of those “silly sideshows” the media love to engage in. But there is no question that he was born in Calgary, Alberta, to an American mother and a Cuban father. And there is no question that he had Canadian citizenship—before renouncing it in preparation for his presidential run.
Ah, what goes around comes around. For years, the Republican Party had nothing but patronizing nods and winks for the unhinged birthers—Trump included—who claimed, despite definitive proof to the contrary, that President Obama was born in some other country. Now, as party leaders desperately look for a way to deny Trump the nomination, the candidate with the best chance of doing so happens to have been born, without any doubt, in some other country.
Jason Linkins: Anderson Cooper Isn’t Sure Gun Conspiracy Kooks Don’t Have A Point
The National Rifle Association declined an invitation to participate in Thursday’s CNN-hosted “town hall” on guns, which featured President Barack Obama answering questions about his recent executive actions on gun control. But thanks to CNN’s commitment to unashamedly driving right at the heart of America’s paranoid political style, the gun manufacturers’ lobby was there in spirit, courtesy of moderator Anderson Cooper — who seized on a moment of relative calm to get wacky and wild-eyed.
The action began when Mark Kelly, the husband of former Arizona congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabrielle Giffords, talked about the reaction to testimony he gave to Congress supporting the expansion of background checks. Kelly, himself a gun owner, said he was frustrated to find that many legislators were of the belief that this expansion was a ruse that would lead to a gun confiscation registry. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Kelly asked, “I’d like you to explain, with 350 million guns in 65 million places, households from Key West to Alaska … if the federal government wanted to confiscate those objects, how would they do that?”
Obama endeavored to explain how it came to pass that the lawmakers Kelly encountered had come to believe what they believed, when Cooper suddenly came to the aid of the conspiracy-mongers.
Sharda Sekaran: Maine Gov.’s Outrageous Remarks Harken Back to the Racist Origins of the Drug War
Maine’s Governor Paul LePage is no stranger to making crazy comments in public that are unbecoming to an elected official, but his latest racist rant about heroin use in his state is rightfully getting people up in arms.
During a town hall meeting on Wednesday night, LePage was asked about how he was tackling substance abuse in Maine. What was his response? Did he bring up practical health interventions based on science and addiction medicine? Did he talk about harm reduction services that are known to save lives like availability of clean syringes, widely distributing the lifesaving overdose reversal drug naloxone, increasing access to drug treatment services or allowing for safe facilities where drug users can consume under medical supervision as have been implemented in Europe and Canada with overwhelming positive results in reducing death and disease?
Nope, not by a long shot.
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