“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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Keith Olbermann: This is What Happens When You Criticize Donald Trump
After the 2012 election, while some Republicans were conducting an “autopsy” of their defeat at the national level, others were celebrating the party’s unheralded success down the ballot. For instance, the Republican State Leadership Committee boasted, “One needs to look no farther than four states that voted Democratic on a statewide level in 2012, yet elected a strong Republican delegation to represent them in Congress: Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.”
In hindsight, the Democratic Party should have taken those words as a dire warning. Today they serve as a much-needed reminder of the path out of the wilderness. As the party seeks to recover from a devastating loss, it’s not enough to focus on the top of the ticket. The rebuilding needs to happen from the bottom up, at the state and local level, not in Washington.
For years, many progressives — including me — have called for taking our movement to the states. Yet Democrats have prioritized maintaining control of the presidency while giving short shrift to state-level infrastructure. Meanwhile, Republicans have invested heavily in winning state legislative and gubernatorial races, which has allowed them to advance conservative policies across the country and seize control of congressional redistricting. Heading into 2017, there are 68 legislative chambers under Republican control, 34 Republican governors and a record 29 Republican state attorneys general. It’s painfully clear which party’s strategy has been more effective.
Nancy Altman: Medicare Will Be Gone By Next Thanksgiving If Republicans Have Their Way
This Thanksgiving, while I give thanks for my Medicare, Speaker Paul Ryan and his Republican Congress are actively plotting to dismantle it.
Medicare is government-provided health insurance for those aged 65 and over, as well as for those with disabilities so serious and permanent that they cannot earn enough to support themselves. Those two groups total more than 55 million of us. Poll after poll shows that those of us who are covered by Medicare love it.
Other industrialized countries have what amounts to Medicare-For-All. Residents of those countries enjoy health care as a matter of right, from cradle to grave. But not here. And those of us who do have Medicare may not have it for long if the Republicans just swept into power have their way. [..]
Ryan is using two lies to support his radical agenda. First, he claims that “because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke,” when in fact Obamacare strengthened Medicare’s financing. Second, as he does with Social Security, Ryan claims his motive is to save, not destroy, Medicare.
How ironic! After railing against Obamacare for years, Ryan and his fellow Republicans want to turn Medicare into Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act was better than nothing but far inferior to Medicare. Medicare-For-All is easy to explain, easy to understand, and far superior, in virtually every way, to Obamacare. Despite the fact that Medicare covers those with the greatest health needs — old people and people with disabilities — it has lower administrative costs, per capita, than private insurance. We could cover everyone and save money, as a society!
Eugene Robinson: Trump isn’t draining the swamp. He’s deepening it.
It is our duty to demand ethical integrity from our presidents, and Donald Trump cannot be allowed to make himself an exception.
He is already trying hard to do so. [..]
As president, Trump is exempt from conflict-of-interest statutes. He must file an annual disclosure document listing assets and income but is not compelled to release his tax returns, though recent presidents have done so. There is no law that would keep Trump from continuing to run the Trump Organization while in office. (Arguably, it might be better for him to spend time doing that than trying to deport 11 million undocumented migrants, take away health insurance from 20 million people, ban Muslims from entering the country and reinstitute torture for terrorism suspects.)
He does have to reckon with the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars public officials from receiving gifts from foreign governments without the consent of Congress. If stalled overseas projects suddenly get moving again after Trump is sworn in, that could be a problem.
Primarily, though, it is going to take public pressure to hold Trump accountable. Trump’s supporters should recall how he claimed the system was rigged and promised to “drain the swamp.” So far, he seems to intend to deepen the muck and make his fabulously wealthy family even wealthier.
How Trump handles his business interests must be seen as a simple test of his sincerity. So far he is failing miserably.
Lawrence B. Wilkerson: American Citizens Must Resist A Return To Torture By Trump Administration
As President-elect Trump rolls out key cabinet appointments, a worry for Americans and international allies alike is whether America plans to return to the failed policies of the past on interrogation and torture of suspected enemies.
Just yesterday, asked about resuming waterboarding, Vice President-elect Pence warned us that “we’re going to have a president again who will never say what we’ll never do.”
As a candidate, Trump promised to bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Now, three of his picks and this statement by Vice President-elect Pence line up alarmingly with this threat. Top posts that set policy on torture and interrogation have been nominated: Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KA) as CIA Director, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) as Attorney General, and Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor.
While some judgment must be reserved, and several other roles with influence over torture and interrogation policies remain open, there are worrisome indications in the public statements and records of these three individuals.
Jessica Valenti: Abortion rights are already under siege – and it’s only going to get worse
Imagine being so desperate to end a pregnancy that you sit in a bathtub, gird yourself, and stick a wire hanger up your vagina and into your uterus. You don’t have anesthesia, but you do it anyway. You start to bleed, badly. After you go to the hospital for help, you don’t get sympathy – you get arrested.
I don’t describe this horrific scenario to remind you of a time when abortion was illegal and how bad it was for women. Because this didn’t happen in the 1950s; it happened last year.
Just a few months before Donald Trump said women who have abortions should be “punished”, a woman in Tennessee was arrested for trying to end her pregnancy with a hanger. And on Tuesday, a week after Trump was elected to be the next president of the United States, this woman was charged by a grand jury with aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted procurement of a miscarriage, and attempted criminal abortion.
Jessica González-Rojas, executive director at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, said: “These new charges seek to punish her even more severely and are an affront to justice and basic human dignity.
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