“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: An ‘America last’ budget
President Trump’s “America First” budget is headlined by its big hike in military spending, which Trump touts as “one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.” The buildup is “paid for” by cuts in civilian programs, including savage cuts to the State Department, U.N. programs, foreign aid and the Environmental Protection Agency and anything related to climate change. In fulfilling his campaign pledge to throw money at the Pentagon, Trump is undermining his oft-promised America First foreign policy.
Trump’s budget document misleadingly claims that the “military’s depletion under President Obama is our foremost challenge.” In fact, the United States already spends nearly 40 percent of all the money spent globally on defense and more than the next 12 highest military spenders combined. (The hawkish GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona complained that Trump’s budget calls for only a 3 percent increase over Barack Obama’s last budget.) Yet on top of the billions already being poured into the military, Trump wants to add 60,000 active-duty soldiers to the Army, 78 ships and submarines to the Navy, 12,000 Marines, 1,200 active Air Force fighter planes, plus enhanced missile defense, cyber-capabilities and more.
The president mistakes the problem. The military is stressed not because we spend too little but because it is asked to do too much. Trump’s budget is paying for a military that is tasked with policing the world — with a bigger Navy, more expeditionary forces and more attack aircraft. This global reach is reflected in Trump’s early foreign policy moves — continuing the buildup in Eastern Europe, sustaining the longest war in Afghanistan, apparent mission creep in Yemen and Syria, threatening military action against North Korea and more.
Eugene Robinson: Does the FBI’s trail lead to Russia?
The FBI is investigating whether persons involved with President Trump’s campaign collaborated with Russian officials to help Trump win the election. Let that sink in for a moment. Then take a deep breath, exhale and try to imagine where this might lead.
FBI Director James B. Comey confirmed Monday what we suspected: an active probe of Russia’s election meddling, which includes “investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”
Hours earlier, Trump had fired up his Twitter account in a vain attempt to make the whole thing go away. He began his tweet by saying, “The Democrats made up and pushed the Russian story as an excuse for running a terrible campaign.”
That was a lie, perhaps designed to reassure the president’s loyal supporters, perhaps to salve his own bruised ego. “The Democrats” didn’t make up anything. The intelligence community has reached the conclusion that the Russian government actively tried to meddle in the election — initially, perhaps, to weaken confidence in our political process, but later to boost Trump’s chances of winning.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: 5 Reasons All Democrats Must Oppose Gorsuch
After a contentious start to Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination hearings, Senate Democrats are struggling with what the New York Times calls “two options: Get out of the way or get run over.”
But Democrats have a third option, one that should attract moderate or “centrist” Democrats as well as more liberal senators: Fight.
Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, received some criticism for introducing Gorsuch to the Senate at the start of today’s hearing. Bennet’s action was defensible: in normal times, it’s Senate protocol for senators to introduce nominees from their home state. Colorado’s other senator, Republican Cory Gardner, also introduced Gorsuch.
But these are not normal times, and Democrats need to recognize that. Donald Trump, and the Republican Party in general, have succeeded by ignoring “normal” behavior and the protocols of the past.
Nobody’s suggesting that Democrats should behave like Republicans, but it’s no longer “moderate” to pretend that the rules haven’t changed. In today’s world, a vote for Gorsuch is a vote for extremism over moderation.
Here are five reasons why all Democrats should vote against this nomination.
Dean Baker: The Fed’s Interest Rate Hike Will Prevent People From Getting Jobs
This month the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates for the third time in the last year and a half. This move did not get nearly as much attention as it deserves.
The decision to raise interest rates was a conscious decision to slow the rate of economic growth and job creation. It will raise interest rates that people pay on credit cards, car loans, home mortgages and other types of debt. It will also raise the cost of borrowing for businesses looking to invest and state and local governments borrowing for infrastructure.
As a result, we will see less spending and borrowing and therefore slower economic growth. The Fed is slowing the economy because it fears that too rapid growth will trigger inflation. I think this view is wrong, but before making the case it is worth making a couple of basic points about the logic of the Fed’s rate hike.
David Leonhardt: All the President’s Lies
The director, the very complicated James Comey, didn’t use the L-word in his congressional testimony Monday. Comey serves at the pleasure of the president, after all. But his meaning was clear as could be. Trump has repeatedly accused Barack Obama of wiretapping his phones, and Comey explained there is “no information that supports” the claim.
I’ve previously argued that not every untruth deserves to be branded with the L-word, because it implies intent and somebody can state an untruth without doing so knowingly. George W. Bush didn’t lie when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and Obama didn’t lie when he said people who liked their current health insurance could keep it. They made careless statements that proved false (and they deserved much of the criticism they got).
But the current president of the United States lies. He lies in ways that no American politician ever has before. He has lied about — among many other things — Obama’s birthplace, John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Sept. 11, the Iraq War, ISIS, NATO, military veterans, Mexican immigrants, Muslim immigrants, anti-Semitic attacks, the unemployment rate, the murder rate, the Electoral College, voter fraud and his groping of women.
He tells so many untruths that it’s time to leave behind the textual parsing over which are unwitting and which are deliberate — as well as the condescending notion that most of Trump’s supporters enjoy his lies.
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