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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Laurence H. Tribe: Brett Kavanaugh’s Hearing Is An Unprecedented Drama For Both Court And Country
As the battle over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation reaches its climax, the cascading emergence of seemingly credible charges of attempted rape, indecent exposure and other forms of sexual misconduct by the nominee has ignited a volatile mix of personal biography, judicial philosophy and national politics.
The nation has certainly witnessed dramatic confirmation controversies before, but none has so explosively churned the political and the personal precisely at the nexus of a burgeoning social and cultural movement.
In the last year, the #MeToo movement has brought to the foreground a wide range of issues on which Kavanaugh is likely, given the current composition of the Supreme Court and the nominee’s previously expressed views, to cast a decisive vote if confirmed as a justice. Those issues run the gamut from the bedroom to the boardroom ― from reproductive freedom for women to gender equality in education, in the workplace, in the corporate hierarchy and in public service. [..]
What makes the present moment particularly fraught is that those very issues now appear to be more brightly illuminated by episodes from the nominee’s personal life ― episodes that seem to reflect troubling attitudes toward women and even, if the allegations are true, a pattern of criminal sexual abuse that most would regard as disqualifying not only for a Supreme Court justice but for any judge.
Nicholas Kristof: Be Outraged by America’s Role in Yemen’s Misery
The news about Brett Kavanaugh and Rod Rosenstein is addictive, but spare just a moment for crimes against humanity that the United States is supporting in far-off Yemen.
President Trump didn’t mention it at the United Nations, but America is helping to kill, maim and starve Yemeni children. At least eight million Yemenis are at risk of starvation from an approaching famine caused not by crop failures but by our actions and those of our allies. The United Nations has called it the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and we own it.
An American bomb made by Lockheed Martin struck a Yemen school bus last month, killing 51 people. Earlier, American bombs killed 155 mourners at a funeral and 97 people at a market.
Starving Yemeni children are reduced to eating a sour paste made of leaves. Even those who survive will often be stunted for the rest of their lives, physically and mentally.
Many global security issues involve complex trade-offs, but this is different: Our behavior is just unconscionable.
Paul Krugman: Leadership, Laughter and Tariffs
There are so many issues breaking right now that it’s hard to keep track — and focusing on any one leads to feelings of guilt about neglecting the others. But it’s worth remembering that the Trump trade war still seems to be on track, and important to have a sense of its effects.
The view within the Trump administration is, of course, that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Where does this view come from? Actually, it involves two propositions.
First, it takes the mercantilist view under which trade as a zero-sum game in which whoever sells more wins. Because the U.S. runs a trade deficit, we’re losers, and anything that reduces that trade deficit is good.
Second, it takes for granted the proposition that precisely because the U.S. exports less to other countries than we buy in return, a trade war will hurt them more than it hurts us, reducing U.S. imports more than it reduces U.S. exports.
Now, anyone who looks at the actual effects of international trade knows that the first proposition is wrong: trade isn’t just about selling stuff, it’s about getting better, cheaper stuff both to consume and to use as inputs in production. But you might assume that at least the second proposition is true: a round of tariff retaliation should reduce foreign exports to the U.S. more than it reduces U.S. exports to the rest of the world, simply because those foreign exports are bigger to start with.
David Rothkopf: The Real Culprit for Trump and Kavanaugh: Asshole Culture
Asshole Culture has carved out a very clear, unsavory role in American film, literature and life. Entitled, wealthy bros who take what they want, treat everyone around them like shit and then rise to positions of power is a common trope in our mass culture. And, if you have been following the news recently, you know that it exists at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
In films and books, these jerks usually get their comeuppance. From the downfall of the indulgent rich of Fitzgerald to Philip Roth’s tweaking of the entitled, from the sleazy elites of Bonfire of the Vanities to the snotty villains of every private school movie ever made to greed-driven bros of The Wolf of Wall Street, wealth and privilege set them up and karma ultimately knocks them down.
In real life, not so much. They usually just keep working their way up the greasy pole, covering for and enabling one another and rising generations of assholes to come, their paths assured by aging assholes who came before them and now sit atop big institutions.
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