“Punting 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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Eugene Robinson: The Great Fracturing of the Republican Party
It is no longer possible to think of “the Republican Party” as a coherent political force. It is nothing of the sort — and the Donald Trump insurgency should be seen as a symptom, not the cause, of the party’s disintegration.
I realize this may seem an odd assessment of a party that controls both houses of Congress, 32 governorships and two-thirds of state legislative chambers. The desire to win and hold power is one thing the party’s hopelessly disparate factions agree on; staunch and sometimes blind opposition to President Obama and the Democrats is another. After those, it’s hard to think of much else.
It makes no sense anymore to speak of “the GOP” without specifying which one. The party that celebrates immigration as central to the American experiment or the one that wants to round up 11 million people living here without papers and kick them out? The party that believes in U.S. military intervention and seeding the world with democratic values or the one that believes strife-torn nations should have to depose their own dictators and resolve their own civil wars? The party that represents the economic interests of business owners or the one that voices the anxieties of workers?
Trevor Timm: Republicans are so bullish on war that 30% would bomb a fictional country
A poll on Friday by Public Policy Polling perfectly encapsulates the Republican presidential race so far: “30% of Republican primary voters nationally say they support bombing Agrabah.” That would be the fictional country in Aladdin.
Republican voters, urged on by the Republican candidates, are now eager to bomb anywhere that has a Muslim-sounding name regardless of whether it comes from a cartoon. While the poll itself may be amusing, it’s not exactly surprising given the cartoonish levels of tough-guy militarism that spews from the mouth of every Republican candidate as they try to one-up each other on who would start more wars harder and quicker. [..]
Council on Foreign Relations’ Micah Zenko has a handy chart where he is tracking all the people and places each presidential candidate has said he or she wants to bomb. He reminds us that Ben Carson has not only promised all of the above, but to also unleash drone strikes in Mexico.
It’s worth noting that Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is just as militaristic, or more so, than most of the Republicans when it comes to Isis and Iran. She has at least refrained, however, from calling for a third world war with Russia or launching drone strikes in Mexico.
Steven W. Thrasher: The Force Awakens brought Star Wars into the 21st century – and fans back
This piece is spoiler free – please keep spoilers out of the comments
Seeing Star Wars Episode VII: the Force Awakens was like seeing an old friend for the first time many years after a big fight when, after your intimate history is belied in a hug (like Han Solo and Leia’s in this film), you realize how much you loved each other before whatever trash came between you.
The prequels were the trash that came between Star Wars and me. Perhaps the Force Awakens’s biggest triumph is that it lets us throw them into the trash compactor of history. [..]
This is not to say I haven’t had more cruel disappointments in my life than being subjected to Jar Jar Binks, horrid as he was, but I’ve never otherwise looked forward to one date for so many years only to be so let down. Jason and I returned to the very same theater in 2002 for Attack of the Clones and 2005 for Revenge of the Sith – both which torched us like Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru – before going to the very same theater on Friday.
From the opening crawl announcing Luke Skywalker’s disappearance to seeing a friend’s name in the closing credits, I loved Episode VII. It was everything I pined for over the years and more.
Bill Boyarsky: Media’s Near Blackout on Bernie Sanders Keeps Many Voters in the Dark
Bernie Sanders’ strong, progressive and inspirational message is just right for a nation afflicted by poverty and a shrinking middle class. Yet he is having trouble breaking through mass-media disinterest in his candidacy and its obsession with Donald Trump.
“We just came out of the worst economic downturn in the modern history of this country, since the Great Depression,” Sanders said at a forum Sunday in Iowa, a state where Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley are competing in a Feb. 1 caucus. According to RealClearPolitics.com, he went on to say at the Cedar Rapids event: “Millions of people lost their jobs, millions of people lost their homes, and millions of people lost their life savings. Today in America, you have a middle class which is disappearing. You have in some cases … life expectancy going down, massive despair. Is that reflected on television? Is the reality, the pain of America, reflected on television? The struggle people are making?
Paul Brown: Paris Climate Agreement Deals a Crushing Blow to Coal
After a decade of aggressive growth in demand, the market for coal has stalled and is unlikely to recover, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Its report on the medium-term coal market says that demand in China—which uses 50% of the world’s coal—has begun to fall. And while other growing economies such as India will use more, this will not make up the difference as worldwide demand will level off over the next five years.
But the outlook for coal could be even gloomier than the IEA suggests. Its report was written before the outcome of the Paris Agreement on climate change, which led to some of the largest coal users vowed to cut their carbon dioxide emissions much further than many had predicted.
Other commentators believe that not only has global demand for coal already peaked, it will begin a steep downward trend, leaving most of the world’s coal in the ground.
Recent Comments