“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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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Trump’s falsehoods on election rigging are at odds with reality
Even before he walked onto the debate stage Monday night at Hofstra University, Donald Trump was complaining that his first head-to-head contest with Hillary Clinton was not fair. “The system is being rigged,” he charged last week. “They want the host to go after Trump.”
For the Republican nominee, the alleged unfairness of the debate was a new take on a familiar theme. Since the beginning of his campaign, Trump has said that our politics is rigged not only against ordinary Americans but also, somehow, against Trump himself. This summer, he went so far as to suggest that the outcome in November, should Clinton prevail, might not be legitimate. “If the election is rigged, I would not be surprised,” he said in an interview with The Post. “We may have people voting 10 times.”
In many ways, our political and economic system is indeed rigged. But it is progressive leaders such as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), not Trump, who are putting forward real solutions to the problem. More to the point, if the election is swayed, it will not be because of voter fraud, which is virtually nonexistent in the United States. It will be because of voter suppression efforts led by Republicans across the country.
Eugene Robinson: Clinton delivers a beat-down
Donald Trump just got roughed up, and badly, by a girl. On Monday night, at the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton made her opponent look ignorant, unprepared, egotistical, childish, petulant, impatient and at times totally incoherent.
How bad did it get? At one point, as Trump was groping blindly across the minefields of foreign policy, losing a foot here and a leg there, he announced, apropos of nothing, that “I think my strongest asset, maybe by far, is my temperament.” Clinton smiled sweetly and exclaimed, “Whew, okay!” The audience at Hofstra University, sternly instructed to remain silent throughout the debate, ignored the rules and burst into laughter.
They were laughing at you, Donald, not with you.
Clinton then patiently explained the importance of honoring international agreements, such as the NATO treaty, to a man who seemed not to grasp the concept of the nation’s word being its bond. One hopes her reassurances were enough to coax allies in Berlin, Tokyo, Seoul and other capitals down from the ceiling.
Robert Reich: Yelling does nothing. It’s time to do something to rein in CEOs
Last week, Congress engaged in a bipartisan barrage of CEO bashing.
The Senate Banking Committee assailed Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for pushing employees to create as many as two million bogus bank and credit card accounts without customer’s consent – making customers pay overdraft and late fees on accounts they never knew they had.
Louisiana Republican David Vitter pressed Stumpf on when he knew about the wrongdoing. “In 2011, about 1,000 employees were fired over this,” said Vitter, incredulously, “and you were never told about that?”
Meanwhile, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform criticized Mylan Pharmaceutical’s CEO Heather Bresch for raising the price of its Epipen, an emergency allergy treatment, by 500 percent – forcing customers to pay $608 for a two-pack that had cost $100 in 2009.
Noting that Mylan had sought legislation to increase the number of patients who receive prescriptions for EpiPens, Representative Mick Mulvaney, Republican of South Carolina, angrily told Bresch: “You get a level of scrutiny and a level of treatment that would ordinarily curl my hair, but you asked for it.”
Such shaming before congressional committees tends to reassure the public Congress is taking action. But – especially with Republicans in charge – Congress is doing nothing to prevent the wrongdoing from recurring.
Amanda Marcotte: Clinton’s Trump trap: Hillary laid a series of snares, and Donald charged right into them
Hillary Clinton had two tasks for that debate: looking presidential and making Trump look like a fool. Nailed it
There’s an iconic scene at the end of the dark 1980s comedy classic “Heathers” in which Veronica (Winona Ryder), watches J.D. (Christian Slater), an occasionally charming but mostly terrifying psychopath, blow himself up. J.D., who is forever ranting and raving about how the world doesn’t respect him enough, had intended to destroy their high school with his bomb. Veronica was able, through great effort, to stop him. Victorious, she puts her cigarette in her mouth, waits and watches as J.D.’s bomb destroys him while also lighting her cigarette.
That’s how the first general election presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump played out Monday night.
The high school that is our nation isn’t safe yet, but Clinton did exactly what she needed to do during this first debate: She established herself as smart, calm and presidential and then stood silently by while her opponent blew himself up.
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