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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New York Times Editorial Board: No Wonder the Republicans Hid the Health Bill

Republican House leaders have spent months dodging questions about how they would replace the Affordable Care Act with a better law, and went so far as to hide the draft of their plan from other lawmakers. No wonder. The bill they released on Monday would kick millions of people off the coverage they currently have. So much for President Trump’s big campaign promise: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody” — with coverage that would be “much less expensive and much better.”

More than 20 million Americans gained health care coverage under the A.C.A., or Obamacare. Health experts say most would lose that coverage under the proposal. [..]

House committees will start considering the bill on Wednesday. Even if it passes the House, some Republican senators object to the Medicaid cuts and the Tea Party wing hates the idea of retaining any subsidies.

Republicans have been vowing to repeal the Affordable Care Act even before it became law in 2010. But they still haven’t come up with a workable replacement. Instead, the G.O.P.’s various factions are now haggling over just how many millions of Americans they are willing to harm.

Trevor Timm: WikiLeaks says the CIA can use your TV to spy on you. But there’s good news

The latest release from WikiLeaks detailing how the CIA has allegedly stockpiled a plethora of tools to hack a variety of everyday devices – from phones, to televisions to cars – is a stark reminder about the fragile state of Internet security. The US government has amassed extraordinary hacking powers largely in secret – and this leak might just force us to grapple with whether we are comfortable with that.

The most widely reported aspect of the purported leak is the allegation that the CIA has myriad ways to hack popular smartphones like iPhone and Android devices – and that the agency could be allowing its hackers to take control of internet connected televisions and covertly listen in on conversations in people’s living rooms. This type of attack has been the worry of many privacy advocates for years, as more and more televisions and other household devices (collectively known as the “Internet of Things”) are increasingly connected to the Internet while always “listening”.

There was never a doubt that the US and other government around the world would quickly move to leverage the ability to exploit these features, as more and more consumer electronics companies have made them standard in all sorts of household items. The former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper even made clear in testimony to Congress last year. But just how often governments have exploited this type of technology is still largely unknown.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Get ready for Trump’s climate-denial offensive

Lost in the din of Donald Trump’s Twitter rampages was the report last week that the White House is “fiercely divided” over Trump’s campaign promise to “cancel” the Paris climate accord. The news came as the president is planning to launch his climate-denial offensive, including an executive order to begin repealing former President Barack Obama’s climate plan, gutting the budgets of various agencies engaged in climate work such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and potentially withdrawing from the Paris accord.

The White House divide is said to pit Trump’s Rasputin, chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, against his daughter Ivanka Trump and hapless Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Yes, in the carnival mirror that is the Trump White House, the climate’s best defender is the former chief executive of ExxonMobil, an anomaly akin to Hannibal Lecter espousing vegetarianism. [..]

A staple of Trump’s campaign stump speech was his complaint that “We don’t win anymore.” And his central promise, as he repeated to the Conservative Political Action Conference after his election, is that “We’re going to win big, folks. We’re going to start winning again, believe me.” If Trump continues his assault on common sense about climate change, the outcome is clear: The United States will export less, innovate less and lose out big-time on the fastest-growing markets and sources of jobs across the world. America is going to lose and lose big.

Sylvie Kauffmann France Braces for the Now-Possible Impossible

Now we know.

Now we know about election upsets, about wrong predictions and unreliable polls, about blind assumption by many of us in the media that voters tend to think as we do.

We know that a majority of British voters have decided that their country should leave the European Union, we know that Donald J. Trump has been elected president of the United States, we know that Geert Wilders, the populist candidate who likes to call himself “the Dutch Trump,” will most likely emerge as the winner of the Dutch parliamentary election next week. We know of the nationalist Polish government’s disregard for the rule of law.

So now we also know that the possibility of Marine Le Pen being elected president of the Republic of France on May 7 is no longer impossible.

Moustafa Bayoumi: Don’t be fooled. This travel ban is as bad as the last one – it must be fought

After Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress, many Americans swooned at the fact that our president could read words. For a moment, it really was shocking. Trump, who usually sounds like the Facebook account of your old high-school tormentor, barely mentioned himself in the speech. He seemed to look forward more than backward. And he was wearing a tailored suit. Who was this man?

But it didn’t take long for the shock and awe to wear off. A new president, alas, had not been born. Mere days and tweets later, Trump was again the same misdirecting, power-abusing, narcissistic chief of state that he is. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

There’s a lesson here for how we should view Trump’s re-released Muslim ban. The administration will tell you that this time the executive order is specifically tailored and carefully crafted to protect the nation and pass legal scrutiny. But we won’t be fooled. In substance, we’ve been given the same Muslim ban as the first time around. It’s just that, like Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress, it’s being delivered in complete sentences.

Yet make no mistake. This ban is just as prejudiced as its predecessor and demands as much – if not more – opposition.