Pondering the Pundits

“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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Pual Krugman: The Water Next Time

A disaster area is no place for political theater. The governor of flood-ravaged Louisiana asked President Obama to postpone a personal visit while relief efforts were still underway. (Meanwhile, by all accounts, the substantive federal response has been infinitely superior to the Bush administration’s response to Katrina.) He made the same request to Donald Trump, declaring, reasonably, that while aid would be welcome, a visit for the sake of a photo op would not.

Sure enough, the G.O.P. candidate flew in, shook some hands, signed some autographs, and was filmed taking boxes of Play-Doh out of a truck. If he wrote a check, neither his campaign nor anyone else has mentioned it. Heckuva job, Donnie!

But boorish, self-centered behavior is the least of it. By far the bigger issue is that even as Mr. Trump made a ham-handed (and cheapskate) effort to exploit Louisiana’s latest disaster for political gain, he continued to stake out a policy position that will make such disasters increasingly frequent.

New York Times Editorial Board: Dodging Accountability at the United Nations

It shouldn’t have taken five years and a scathing report by an internal human rights watchdog for the United Nations to acknowledge that it bears responsibility for the cholera epidemic in Haiti sparked by its peacekeepers deployed after the 2010 earthquake.

And yet, the yearslong effort to dodge accountability in an emblematic case of institutional failure was predictable. A string of recent scandals has shown that the United Nations has been unwilling to police itself, learn from its errors, correct course and make amends. When a new secretary general takes over next year, she or he should make it a priority to revamp the organization’s oversight entities and create a culture of accountability. [..]

In the meantime, when Mr. Ban unveils a new plan to curb the spread of cholera in Haiti, he should offer a formal apology, create a mechanism to compensate victims and provide a detailed explanation of why it has taken the United Nations so long to confront inconvenient truths.

Kevin Zeese: Third parties aren’t ‘spoilers’. They’re at the cutting edge of democracy

NBC News recently projected that Hillary Clinton has surpassed the 270 electoral college votes she needs to be elected president. Based on polls, which have been surprisingly accurate this year, Politico reports that if you include states where Clinton leads by 5%, she has 302 electoral college votes. There may be no swing states in 2016. Indeed, no one with her lead at this stage of the campaign has lost the popular vote in 16 elections, since modern polling began.

Thomas Frank wrote in the Guardian that with Clinton certain to win, she will ignore populist movements and govern to the right. Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report writes that Clinton is stuffing the entire US ruling class into her campaign: neocons and neoliberals, Wall Street and big business, military and intelligence – they are all there, with progressives, blacks and Latinos pushed to the side.

Though two establishment big business parties are the tradition in the United States, history shows people’s voices have still impacted the direction of the country. The formula has been: mass movement + independent electoral party = transformational change.

Steven Conn: The Grifter: Trump, The GOP, And The Cult Of Businessmen

The candidacy of Donald Trump, and the rise of Trumpismo more generally, have been seen as a kind of Rorschach Test for the condition of the Republican Party. Mostly this has amounted to variations on a “ye reap what ye sow” theme. Personally, I like to think of Trump’s operation being run by Nigel from the movie Spinal Tap: Trumpismo represents everything about the GOP turned up to 11.

Beyond the racism, the bigotry, the bullying, the nativism, the misogyny – I’ll stop there – Trump’s candidacy is of a piece in another way too. However much some prominent Republicans are outraged by Trump, he is the third GOP nominee of the last four to sell himself to the party and the nation as a businessman. In fact, the Republican Party’s disdain of government has been matched by its veneration of businessmen (yes, almost entirely men). So whatever kind of referendum Trumpismo offers on the Republican Party, it certainly reveals a lot about the world of business.

In 2012, Mitt Romney ran away from his career in public service, and especially his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, and flaunted his boda fides as a successful businessman. And without question he made a boatload of money in a private equity firm. He was turn-around guy, he claimed. He found distressed companies and brought them back. He promised to do the same for an American economy that had not fully recovered from the Crash of 2007.

Heather Digby Parton: Judicial Watch vs. Hillary: The conservative group has a long history of spreading Clinton lies

Back in the 1990s the political establishment made fun of Hillary Clinton for her comment that the press was missing the real story of “the vast right-wing conspiracy” that had been dogging her family throughout her husband’s presidency. Any mention of it provoked eye-rolls and knowing smirks among the cognoscenti who were all absolutely sure that it was just more evidence of Clinton’s guilty conscience over something.

But she was right. And there was some real reporting on it even at the time although as it was revealed, the Republicans would throw out another shiny object and the press pack would go running in the opposite direction like a herd of gazelles so it was very difficult to get a handle on the whole story. For instance, this 1999 article by Jill Abramson and Don Van Natta in the New York Times laid out the previously untold story story of the small group of conservative lawyers who concocted the Paul Jones lawsuit and were instrumental in pushing the Monica Lewinsky matter, among other things. As it happens one of those lawyers was a fellow by the name of George Conway, at the time the future husband of Kellyanne Fitzpatrick who is Donald Trump’s latest campaign manager. The Drudge Report drove much of the scandal and Conway was believed to have been Drudge’s main source, most memorably the story about President Clinton’s alleged “distinguishing characteristic” which pundits and commentators gleefully discussed on television for months. It’s a small right wing world after all. [..]

Considering the outcomes of the IRS and Benghazi “scandals” it would behoove the press to show a little skepticism. The history of this group is very clear. The first time it waged its campaign of character assassination against Bill and Hillary Clinton, perhaps it’s understandable that the press failed to recognize they were being manipulated by political operatives. The trumped up Obama scandals added up to nothing as well. There’s no excuse for the media to fall for it again.