“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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Charles M. Blow: Violence Is Never the Answer
As I watched violence erupt on television among anti-Donald Trump protesters in Albuquerque, on Tuesday, my heart sank. This outbreak came on the heels of the chaotic scene at the state Democratic convention in Nevada and death threats against the state party chairwoman there.
I understand the frustration and the desire for change, but violence simply isn’t the way to create it. Once violence springs forth, moral authority dries up.
I understand the fear, anger and even rage that the systems that govern this country and the citizens who constitute it could allow — and even enthusiastically cheer — the ascendance of a demagogue like Trump. [..]
But here is a hard truth: There are no quick and easy fixes in this country. Everything you call broken was broken bit by bit over a long time and must be fixed the same way.
Democracy is an exercise in patience and persistence, not quick corrections.
The way we fix our systems and our politics is not only with vociferous displays in the moment, but also with vigilant crusades over a lifetime
Heather Digby Parton: Why Trump’s attack on Susana Martinez matters: He proves again that unity isn’t his goal — only dominance over everyone
After the 2012 GOP “autopsy” which strongly recommended that the Republican party take immediate action to try to mend its bad reputation with Latinos and women lest it be shut out of the White House for decades, one of the people mentioned most often by GOP strategists as a natural choice for the national ticket was New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez. She was considered a rising star in Republican circles, a Latina who had been able to win in a blue state that went for Barack Obama twice. She had given a barn-burner of a speech at the 2012 convention and was widely assumed to be one of the new faces of the Republican party in an era of changing demographics.
That was then. Today, the GOP is the party of Donald Trump and we know he doesn’t listen to political experts and believes that whatever thoughts pass through his head are nuggets of sheer genius not to be questioned by mere mortals. [..]
If we didn’t know him better we might have assumed that he would be looking at a Latina Republican governor like Martinez as someone who could help him unify the party. He might even have tried to seduce her into joining him on the ticket to help him with women and Hispanics, the two demographics who are most hostile to him. It would take quite a demonstration of that Trump charm people keep insisting he has underneath his otherwise loathsome personality because Martinez is a Trump skeptic. This is unsurprising since she represents a border state full of Latinos and has logically questioned his daft proposal for a wall. When he came to Albuquerque this week for one of his rallies she said she was too busy to attend.
The Donald was not amused.
Amanda Marcotte: Anti-choice tech stalking: Activists are using GPS to track women entering Planned Parenthood
Anti-choice activists, being panty-sniffing busybodies at heart, have long been extremely interested in gathering as much personal information as they can about women who are seeking abortion. (Or any other reproductive health services, for that matter.) Protesters linger outside of clinics, snapping pictures of women and sometimes even collecting information from license plates. Crisis pregnancy centers, pretending to be clinics, trick women into filling out intake forms, and often use that personal information to harass women at home and follow them around, even to the real doctor. In Missouri, anti-choice legislators even tried to use subpoena power in order to get a list of women in the state who had abortions.
But now anti-choicers are turning to 21st century technology in order to act out their desire to track and surveil women who might be looking to prevent or terminate pregnancy: The GPS on your smartphone.
A new investigative report from Sharona Coutts at Rewire exposes how anti-choice groups, including at least one adoption agency trawling for babies to put for adoption, are using a technology called “geofencing” to find and target women they believe are considering abortion, using the women’s phones.
Diane Francis: Hillary Clinton’s emails: broken rules, but nothing ‘crooked’
The much-awaited State Department report yesterday declared that Hillary Clinton broke some rules concerning her email management as secretary of state.
The verdict taints her but does not deliver a knockout punch. Clinton does not deserve the slammer or political burial.
However, Donald Trump has been ranting for months that “she should be going to prison for what she’s done with the emails”.
But facts do not support that statement. She was chastised for her use of private email but so was former Republican secretary of state Colin Powell. The department itself was criticized too for not modernizing communications over the years and for failing to impose proper supervision in an era of growing cybersecurity threats.
Donald’s parallel universe of character assassination aside, I believe Clinton is guilty of a misdemeanor – not a crime. A FBI investigation still lingers, looking into whether her handling of classified information was illegal. But reports suggest that officials have yet to find that she “maliciously flouted classification rules.”
Clearly, however, she’s been bruised, even if exonerated from criminality.
Matt Laslo: Why the Trump-Clinton matchup is a boon to libertarians
For all of you already sick of watching Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton exchange low blows, don’t give up hope. It seems you have another option.
Polls show voter dissatisfaction is soaring, evidenced by the whopping six in 10 voters who view Trump and Clinton negatively; a record low for the two major party’s standard bearers. But a chunk of voters report they refuse to just hold their nose and vote for “the lesser of two evils” in November.
Two recent national surveys of voters show Gary Johnson, a libertarian who is far from a household name, is carving out a sizeable chunk of support from both of the major party candidates who are hovering in a statistical tie in many recent polls.
Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, still needs to lock up the nomination at the Libertarian party’s convention in sunny Orlando this weekend, but two polls in as many weeks already show him sitting at 10% when pitted against Trump and Clinton.
Dana Milbank: Paul Ryan’s soap opera with Donald Trump
On Tuesday night, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump disparaged New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, probably the most prominent Hispanic Republican officeholder in America, saying at a rally in Albuquerque that she has a bad record and “she’s got to do a better job.”
At the same rally, where windows were smashed and Trump and his supporters clashed with demonstrators, the candidate also mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Native American roots by repeatedly calling her “Pocahontas.”
And House Speaker Paul Ryan, sitting down with reporters on Wednesday, wanted to talk about policy? It wasn’t going to happen. [..]
But Ryan can’t control Trump, nor win real concessions from him.
As the highest-ranking Republican in America, he has a stark and binary choice to make: tie his and his party’s future to Trump, or walk away.
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