“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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Paul Krugman: A Party Agrift
It’s not about the fraudulent scheme that was Trump University. It’s not about his history of failing to pay contractors, leading to hundreds of legal actions. It’s not about how he personally profited while running his casinos into the ground. It’s not even concerned with persistent questions about whether he is nearly as rich as he claims to be, and whether he’s ever done more than live off capital gains on his inheritance.
No, my question, as Democrats gleefully tear into the Trump business record, is why rival Republicans never did the same. How did someone who looks so much like a cheap con man bulldoze right through the G.O.P. nomination process? [..]
So why didn’t any of Mr. Trump’s primary opponents manage to make an issue of his sleazy business career? Were they just incompetent, or is there something structural about the modern Republican Party that makes it unable to confront grifters?
The answer, I’d argue, is the latter.
Frank Bruni: The Scope of the Orlando Carnage
These locations are never random. These targets aren’t accidental. They’re the very vocabulary in which assailants like the Orlando gunman speak, and he chose a place where there’s drinking. And dancing. And where L.G.B.T. people congregate, feeling a sense of welcome, of belonging.
That last detail is already in the foreground of the deadliest mass shooting in American history — and rightly so.
But let’s be clear: This was no more an attack just on L.G.B.T. people than the bloodshed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris was an attack solely on satirists.
Both were attacks on freedom itself. Both took aim at societies that, at their best, integrate and celebrate diverse points of view, diverse systems of belief, diverse ways to love. And to speak of either massacre more narrowly than that is to miss the greater message, the more pervasive danger and the truest stakes.
Matt Taibbi: Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons From Brush With Bernie
Years ago, over many beers in a D.C. bar, a congressional aide colorfully described the House of Representatives, where he worked.
It’s “435 heads up 435 asses,” he said.
I thought of that person yesterday, while reading the analyses of Hillary Clinton’s victories Tuesday night. The arrival of the first female presidential nominee was undoubtedly a huge moment in American history and something even the supporters of Bernie Sanders should recognize as significant and to be celebrated. But the Washington media’s assessment of how we got there was convoluted and self-deceiving.
This was no ordinary primary race, not a contest between warring factions within the party establishment, á la Obama-Clinton in ’08 or even Gore-Bradley in ’00. This was a barely quelled revolt that ought to have sent shock waves up and down the party, especially since the Vote of No Confidence overwhelmingly came from the next generation of voters. Yet editorialists mostly drew the opposite conclusion.
David Ferguson: Here in the south, pro-gun hysteria is the norm. In Orlando, we see the results
The attack on Orlando LGBT club Pulse on Saturday night was carried out – like so many mass shootings before it – with an assault rifle, of the “AR-15 type”. These weapons have the ability to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, spraying waves of hot lead and fire, giving the shooter the power to mete out death on an industrial scale.
The NRA and its supporters have fanatically lobbied to keep these weapons cheap, legal and easy to obtain, in spite of the fact that there is no sporting use for them. You can’t hunt deer with an assault rifle. And small animals would be vaporized from a single AR round. [..]
There are many people who insist they “need” a gun – particularly an assault weapon – to feel safe. But unless you are a marine in Fallujah or a Chicago Swat cop, you don’t “need” anything of the sort. You want it, and not in any kind of reasonable way. It’s either because you’re a sociopath or you’re unreasonably afraid. Neither one of those states is a valid place from which to make the decision.
Perhaps this moment will be a kind of tipping point where the US comes to its senses and starts placing some reasonable restrictions on the owning and trafficking of firearms. My hopes, however, are not high.
Robert Creamer: In Response to the Tragedy in Orlando – America Should Launch a New War – Against Intolerance and Hate Speech
We will not know all of the facts surrounding the unfathomable tragedy in Orlando for some time – perhaps, many days.
But one thing is certain: intolerance and hatred inevitably lead to violence and death.
That is why our primary response to the horrific massacre at the Pulse nightclub must be to rededicate ourselves to creating a culturally diverse society that is based on tolerance and respect for other religions, sexual orientations, races and life styles.
In America the one thing we must never tolerate is intolerance itself.
All of us must extend our sympathy and support to those who are directly affected – and, frankly to the entire LGBT community that was, in fact, the intended victim of this horrible attack. This was an attack on an LGBT club during Pride Month.
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