“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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Paul Krugman: Health Care in a Time of Sabotage
Is Trumpcare finally dead? Even now, it’s hard to be sure, especially given Republican moderates’ long track record of caving in to extremists at crucial moments. But it does look as if the frontal assault on the Affordable Care Act has failed.
And let’s be clear: The reason this assault failed wasn’t that Donald Trump did a poor selling job, or that Mitch McConnell mishandled the legislative strategy. Obamacare survived because it has worked — because it brought about a dramatic reduction in the number of Americans without health insurance, and voters didn’t and don’t want to lose those gains.
Unfortunately, some of those gains will probably be lost all the same: The number of uninsured Americans is likely to tick up over the next few years. So it’s important to say clearly, in advance, why this is about to happen. It won’t be because the Affordable Care Act is failing; it will be the result of Trump administration sabotage.
Eugene Robinson:Don’t get distracted: The GOP’s cruel health-care plan isn’t dead yet
Focus, America, focus. The most urgent task right now is to make sure a stake is driven through the heart of the Republican effort to gut Medicaid and balloon the ranks of the uninsured.
I know that the Russia investigations are charging ahead, with Capitol Hill appearances by members of President Trump’s inner circle scheduled for next week. I know that Trump gave an unhinged interview to the New York Times on Wednesday, bizarrely undermining his own attorney general. I know that one of the few remaining giants in Washington, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), has received a tough medical diagnosis.
There will be time to digest all of that. At present, however, health care is still the main event.
Catherine Rampell: Republicans are working to keep you from your day in court
Normally, Republicans are in favor of giving consumers more choices.
Normally, Republicans are all about law and order.
And normally, Republicans claim to be strong defenders of the Constitution.
For some reason, though, the idea of giving consumers the choice to participate in a court of law — a right enshrined in the Seventh Amendment — leaves some GOP legislators quaking in their loafers.
That’s the implication of a resolution introduced in both the Senate and House on Thursday. While you were busy pondering President Trump’s views of Napoleon, members of Congress were working to keep you from your day in court.
Here’s the context.
Richard Wolffe: Six months into America’s nightmare, how likely is Trump’s impeachment?
Donald Trump Jr is apparently feeling “miserable” and wants “these four years to be over”, according to People magazine. We feel your pain, Don, we really do. At the six month stage of your father’s presidency, we all want these four years to be over. At least that’s one way President Trump has brought us closer together.
Since we have to suffer through this purgatory together, we may as well tally up the toll of the last 180 days – and look forward to how the next 1260 days will end. Like the long term inmates of Alcatraz, we know that escape is a highly risky proposition that is the figment of our shared despair and the subject of some wonderful myth-making.
Lawrence Douglas: Trump’s favourite G20 dinner date? An authoritarian, of course
So, Donald Trump would rather spend an intimate hour chatting alone with Vladimir Putin than with Angela Merkel. Who wouldn’t? A shirtless Putin rides horseback through the Russian steppe; he dons scuba gear to pluck ancient treasures from the Black Sea; he guides, in a motorized hang-glider, endangered Siberian white cranes to their migration grounds and shrugs at the assassination of journalists and regime critics, those purveyors of fake news. What’s not to like?
Merkel drearily works to protect the environment, safeguard human rights and offer sanctuary to refugees from civil war. What has that achieved, besides lurching us to an apocalyptic clash of civilizations? And who wants to be lectured about the health of the planet by that German lady, anyway?
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