“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.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Dean Baker: The Old Debt And Entitlement Charade
The establishment gang is trying to pull a big one over on the public yet again. One of the designated topics for the last presidential debate goes under the heading, “debt and entitlements.” This should have people upset for several reasons.
The first is simply the use of the term “entitlements.” While this has a clear meaning to policy wonks, it is likely that most viewers won’t immediately know that “entitlements” means the Social Security and Medicare their parents receive. It’s a lot easier for politicians to talk about cutting wasteful “entitlements” than taking away seniors’ Social Security and Medicare.
The ostensible purpose of the debate is to allow voters to be better informed about the candidates’ views. So if the purpose is conveying information, why not use terms that most voters will understand?
ut the semantics are the less important part of the problem. Why is it, that Social Security and Medicare are linked to debt? These are not the only programs that entail future commitments of resources.
Eugene Robinson: Can we please just skip to Election Day?
ake it stop. Won’t somebody, please, make it stop?
I realize my plea is in vain. We have three more weeks of this appalling spectacle in which a ridiculous comic-book villain — a cross between the Joker and the Penguin — is trying his best to destroy American democracy. Yes, Donald Trump, I’m talking about you.
Three weeks. That’s normally the blink of an eye, but the time between now and Election Day yawns like an eternity. How many new outrages will test our capacity to be outraged? How many more quisling Republicans will stand before microphones and pretend their party’s nominee for president is fit for the office? How many early-morning tweet storms will a certain set of unusually short fingers unleash upon a weary and anxious nation? [..]
Three more weeks. We have another debate to survive, though I can’t imagine at this point why either candidate would look forward to the experience. Trump lost the first two encounters, according to every scientific poll, which means he probably will lose the third as well. And Clinton could have a more meaningful policy discussion with an Irish setter.
We are a resilient nation. We have survived worse, though perhaps not weirder. Soon we get to tell an unfunny clown what we think of his act.
Katrina vanden heuvel: What if the next presidential debate actually covered critical issues?
As the grotesquerie masquerading as a presidential campaign slouches toward its end, a final spectacle — a “debate” — is slated for Wednesday. It is hard to imagine a worse circumstance. Trump, more at ease with insults than ideas, is in the midst of a mortifying public self-immolation. The Clinton campaign has heated itself into a faux Cold War lather over WikiLeaks’ release of hacked campaign emails. And as a final measure, the “moderator,” Chris Wallace, is supplied by Fox News, a virtual guarantee that the scandalous will supplant the substantial.
It is probably a fool’s errand to suggest that Wallace explore real issues rather than raking the muck over again. But opinions have already hardened on everything from Clinton’s “damned emails” to Trump’s predation. Rather than ask Trump about his libido or Clinton about the “deplorables,” why not pose fundamental questions that have received far too little attention in this campaign? [..]
We need a debate worthy of the challenges we face as a nation. Trump prefers tweeting on the weight of Miss Universe or the guilt or innocence of the Central Park Five. The Clinton campaign wants to turn the hacking of documents that ended up in the hands of WikiLeaks into the next Watergate.
But the next president will have to deal with real crises, not campaign detritus. After 14 years of war, the United States seems to be getting drawn in even deeper into endless conflicts. It may be impossible to have a policy discussion amid all the spitballs, but surely it is worth a try.
John Paul Brammer: Latino voters never seem to realize our power. This year could be different
Every election cycle, Latinos don’t quite match their voting potential. But every cycle, it should also be said, we come closer.
It’s been a long process to merge the gap between potential and reality because to be Latino in America is paradoxical. We are frequently told how powerful we are, how desperately politicians need us if they are to win, and how quickly our ranks are growing.
But our lived reality tells a different story. It remains politically expedient to scapegoat our communities. Hatred of immigrants from south of the border provided the bedrock for the Trump campaign, but long before him, there was Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Steve King, Lou Dobbs – the list goes on.
To be sure, there is a vigorous, politically engaged sector of our community. But there is also a pervasive sense of helplessness, of lethargy – there are so many of us, but so little is changing.
Nomi Prins: Ex-Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf deserves jail – not a plush retirement
For former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, this will be his first weekend as a wealthy retiree. So it goes in a world where big banks can screw over customers and the public, and the CEO who presided over these practices can slink off into the sunset unencumbered by the kind of real retribution that plagues small-time drug users and petty thieves. They go free. We pay the price.
Two days before the bank’s quarterly earnings announcement, Stumpf announced his immediate resignation. That decision came about a month after the firm was slapped with a $185m settlement for a fee-stealing scam that resulted in the axing of 5,300 low-level employees. He did not resign after settlements for any of the prior wrongdoing that took place under his purview for which the firm paid about $10bn in fines.
Make no mistake. Stumpf was the captain and commander of this $1.9tn empire. Its culture, as in all Wall Street culture, was defined from the top down, not the other way around. For his penance, all Stumpf had to do was forfeit $41m in restricted stock awards (stock he didn’t even fully own yet).
Recent Comments