“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Worthy of Our Contempt
Donald Trump said some more disgusting things over the weekend. If this surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. Also, don’t be surprised if a majority of Republicans approve of his attack on the parents of a dead war hero. After all, a YouGov survey found that 61 percent of Republicans support his call for Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton.
But this isn’t a column about Mr. Trump and the people who are O.K. with anything he says or does. It is, instead, about Republicans — probably a minority within the party, but a substantial one — who aren’t like that. These are people who aren’t racists, respect patriots even if they’re Muslim, believe that America should honor its international commitments, and in general sound like normal members of a normal political party.
Yet the great majority of these not-crazy Republicans are still supporting Mr. Trump for president. And we have a right to ask why.
Richard L. Hasen: Turning the Tide on Voting Rights
Has the tide against restrictive voting laws turned?
In the last few weeks, voting rights groups, in some instances working with the Department of Justice, have posted a series of victories that seemed unlikely when their cases against these laws were first brought. The rights of hundreds of thousands of voters are at stake.[..]
But this turning tide could easily turn back. A Donald Trump presidency could lead to the appointment of more justices in the model of Justice Scalia (as Mr. Trump has promised), reversing these gains.
States and localities will continue to look for ever new and creative ways to disenfranchise minorities. Voting rights groups will have to fight each change individually, without the benefits of a preclearance system that the Supreme Court wrongly eliminated in Shelby. This drive to limit the franchise and the findings of the Fourth Circuit in the North Carolina case show the fallacy of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s contention in Shelby that intentional racial discrimination in voting is a thing of the past.
The struggle is not over, but this wave of court decisions means that more eligible voters should get a chance to register to vote and cast a ballot in November. These votes will help elect a president whose choices for judges and justices will very likely seal the fate of voting rights (and much more) for a generation.
Jessica Valenti: Hey, misogynist killjoys: stop denying that Hillary has made history
Over the last month, Americans have seen history made over and over again: Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. We watched as a 102-year-old woman from Arizona – born before women had the right to vote – cast her state’s votes for Clinton. And we now live in a time when some young women have never voted in an election where both candidates were white men. All of these things are remarkable, and – regardless of your political leanings – cause for celebration
Why, then, does it feel like any time a woman points out the objectively important political and cultural moment at hand, someone else feels the need to jump in to tell her why she’s wrong? I’ve heard it from my female friends, seen it on social media and experienced it myself: if you dare to express overwhelm or joy at the prospect of a female president, or the strides women’s rights have made this year, you are promptly shot down by a special brand of misogynist killjoy. [..]
But here’s the thing: men, it’s not your moment, and the irony of lecturing over our happiness at this particular historical milestone is not lost on us. We have heard this kind of hectoring before; in fact, we’ve heard it most of our lives. (There is a reason the term “mansplaining” took off the way it did!)
Trevor Timm: The US is bombing Libya again. It’s a too-familiar vicious cycle
Just five years after bombing Libya to dispose of Muammar Gaddafi, the US is now officially bombing the country again, this time against alleged Isis terrorist strongholds that cropped up in the power vacuum created by the last bombing.
It’s yet another episode of the War on Terror Circle of Life, where the US bombs a country and then funnels weapons into the region, which leads to chaos and the opportunity for terrorist organizations, which then leads more US bombing. [..]
With Libya this time around, I guess we can be relieved that at least the US government isn’t outwardly lying about any time limits on this military incursion. As the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman reported, “the US officials say [this] will be a sustained offensive against the militant group,” and a Pentagon spokesman admitted “We don’t have an end point at this particular point of time.”
Whoever is in office after Obama leaves in January will have many decisions to make about wars across the Middle East. But one thing seems clear: the government’s established pattern of needing to address the problems its own past actions helped create will continue.
Richard Wolffe: Trump has gone totally off the rails. Will his base finally notice?
After the convention balloons have dropped, and before the all-important TV debates, there is a dangerous lull in presidential elections.
This is the period when John Kerry found himself swift-boated on his Vietnam war record in 2004, a duplicitous attack from fellow veterans that undercut his life story.
This is the same period four years later when Sarah Palin struggled in one TV interview to name a newspaper she read and insisted that she understood Russia because you could see it from Alaska.
The post-convention doldrums can define candidates in ways their handlers never expected when they were writing their prime-time speeches and plotting the final weeks of the general election.
Such is the fate of Donald Trump, who somehow managed to combine the worst week of the Kerry and Palin campaigns into just a single weekend.
Recent Comments