E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—The Republican establishment’s weak tea:
Yes, Trump is a demagogue. There is a reprehensible ugliness in the way he talks about immigrants. But Trump is an ideal vehicle for a significant swath of alienated voters who want to express their ire against liberals they see as disrespecting them as well as against conventional conservatives they don’t think represent their interests. They feel squeezed from above and below, and Trump seems to get that.
Clinton and Sanders—Sanders especially—are telling these voters that they, too, get this seething anger at the system. The two Democrats offer the traditionally liberal or social democratic answer: that the poor and the middle class do best when they ally in pursuit of economic fairness. It’s a decent sort of politics, but it has often been trumped by nationalism.
Jessica Valenti at
The Guardian writes—
We can't stop rape if we prize men's reputations over women's safety:
As the national conversation on campus rape grows—from White House task forces to magazine covers—there are words we hear again and again: hysteria, panic, wrongfully accused. The concern espoused by pundits and anti-feminists is that renewed actions to end sexual assault are an overreaction that, at best, will lead to confusion between the sexes and, at worst, will ruin men’s lives.
In the 1990s, when sexual harassment was similarly in the spotlight, we heard these same words and worries. They are just as wrong now as they were then.[...]
So the next time you read a blustery article about how the battles young people are fighting against rape culture are “hysterical”, or that campuses are politically correct nightmares, remember the 90s and the end of the world that never came. Because while the fear of a feminist future runs rampant, those who truly deserve our ire go free.
More pundit excerpts and links can be found below the fold.
Andrew J. Bacevich at the Los Angeles Times writes—Yes, the U.S. can leave Afghanistan:
So the decision to retain 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan beyond the Obama administration's previously announced deadline for withdrawal qualifies less as a noteworthy shift in policy than as an attempt to conceal the utter absence of any policy worthy of the name. Does anyone seriously think that what President Obama describes as a "modest but meaningful extension of our presence" will bring hostilities in Afghanistan to a favorable conclusion, when years of effort by a much larger contingent could not accomplish that goal?
What we have here is temporizing dressed up in policy drag. It is a gesture designed to convey an appearance of purposefulness to an enterprise whose actual purpose has long since vanished in the mists of time.
Ben Adler at
Grist writes—
3 reasons why Bernie Sanders is being overly pessimistic about climate action:
Sanders’ analysis is overly pessimistic for three reasons:
1. He is thinking like a legislator, not a president. There is a lot the president can do to reduce emissions substantially in the next decade or so under existing laws. As I explained on Thursday, Sanders and Hillary Clinton have not yet explained in detail how they would use the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions. Will they regulate carbon emissions from other sources besides power plants, and tighten methane leakage regulation on fracking wells, as Martin O’Malley proposes? Will they ban fossil fuel extraction on federal land? As president, they could do those things, and more, thereby reducing emissions enough to meet the near-term goals we’ll lay out in any global climate agreement reached in Paris this December. [...]
2. Republicans won’t always control Congress. [...]
3. Sanders is right that the current Republican Congress is not going to pass climate legislation, but he is partially wrong about the reason. His view that Republican opposition to climate action is determined solely by fossil fuel campaign contributions is overly simplistic.
Robert Naiman at
TruthOut writes—
Anderson Cooper: Opposing Illegal CIA Wars Is "Unelectable":
A key reason that the US has so many wars is that big US media have a strong pro-war, pro-empire bias. You rarely see big US media badgering a politician for supporting a war that turned out to be a catastrophe. But it's commonplace for big US media to badger politicians for opposing wars, even catastrophic ones.
CNN journalist Anderson Cooper is a perfect example of this phenomenon. [...]
Under the Reagan administration, the CIA organized a terrorist army (the "Contras") to attack the Nicaraguan government. Millions of Americans participated in a solidarity movement to oppose US military intervention in Nicaragua, including public radio host Ira Glass, actors Ed Asner, Mike Farrell and Diane Ladd, civil rights leader Julian Bond and engineer Ben Linder, who was killed in a terrorist attack by the CIA's army. The US-Nicaragua solidarity movement succeeded in passing the Boland Amendment in Congress, cutting off US funding to the CIA's terrorist army, which led the Reagan administration to try to fund the Contras illegally through arms sales to Iran. When these illegal activities were exposed, it became the Iran-Contra scandal.
During this period, Anderson Cooper was working for the CIA.
Opposing the CIA's illegal war in Nicaragua was a mainstream, popular position at the time, as shown by the passage of the Boland Amendment by Congress. It's only in the pro-war, pro-empire bubble of big US media that having opposed the illegal CIA war on Nicaragua could be portrayed as an electoral liability without any evidence.
Dean Baker at
Common Dreams writes—
George Will, Bernie Sanders, Freedom and Income Inequality:
George Will really takes it to Bernie Sanders in his column this morning.
"The fundamental producer of income inequality is freedom. Individuals have different aptitudes and attitudes. Not even universal free public education, even were it well done, could equalize the ability of individuals to add value to the economy."
Got that? Bill Gates is incredible rich because of his aptitude and attitude; the government's willingness to arrest anyone who infringes on the patent and copyright monopolies it gave him has nothing to do with his wealth. We're supposed to also ignore all the other millionaires and billionaires whose wealth depends on these government granted monopolies.
And we should ignore the Wall Street boys who depend on their banks' too big to fail insurance or on the fact that the financial sector largely escapes the sort of taxation applied to the rest of the economy.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times writes—
Something Not Rotten in Denmark:
No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to help working people. Hillary Clinton demurred slightly, declaring that “we are not Denmark,” but agreed that Denmark is an inspiring example.
Such an exchange would have been inconceivable among Republicans, who don’t seem able to talk about European welfare states without adding the word “collapsing.” Basically, on Planet G.O.P. all of Europe is just a bigger version of Greece. But how great are the Danes, really?
The answer is that the Danes get a lot of things right, and in so doing refute just about everything U.S. conservatives say about economics. And we can also learn a lot from the things Denmark has gotten wrong.
John Nichols at
The Naton writes—
After One Good Debate, Democrats Need to Schedule a Lot More of Them:
That was the point Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaiian Democrat who serves as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, made on the eve of Tuesday night’s debate. Gabbard, a genuine rising star within the party, went very public with her argument that the DNC needs to add debates to a schedule that is too limited, too restricted, too slow to get going. “More and more people on the ground from states all across the country are calling for more debates, are wanting to have this transparency and greater engagement in our democratic process at a critical time, as they make the decision of who should be the next person to lead our country,” said Gabbard, who with another DNC vice chair, former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybek, has taken up the call of O’Malley and Sanders for more debates. [...]
Bringing debates to battleground states is a smart strategy. So, too, is bringing debates to states where it is possible to focus on issues and constituencies that will be central to the 2016 race. An Arizona or New Mexico debate focusing on immigration would make great sense, as would a Michigan debate on the future of manufacturing and job creation. Why not go to Missouri or Maryland and get real about all the issues of policing and mass incarceration raised by the #BlackLivesMatter movement? Why not take a debate to the Bay Area and talk about the tech issues that are so vital and yet so frequently neglected? Why not go to North Carolina and debate about voter disenfranchisement and the future of democracy?
Connie Bryson at
The Guardian writes—
I had an illegal abortion in 1953. We need Roe v Wade to ensure no one else has to:
During the abortion, I was alone with the doctor, the sunlight coming through the blinds. The room smelled of fear once he began his examination, but not because I was aware the operation was illegal—that wasn’t a concern. But the doctor told me that, if I cried out, the police would raid the office.
Though he was a medical doctor, the surgery itself was sadistic and barbaric. He
scraped out the contents of my uterus with a curette, which is essentially a razor on a stick. He gave me no anesthesia of any kind: no shot, no pills, not even an aspirin. There was a reason why he didn’t give me painkillers: he wanted me to suffer, and he wanted to humiliate me. But I didn’t cry out. I didn’t make any noise at all. [...]
To remain silent about abortion perpetuates the feelings of guilt and shame many women feel, and it makes it harder for other women to speak out. Women will say they want abortion to be safe and legal, yet they will not admit to having one unless it was a medical necessity. It’s time for the one in three of us women who have made that decision for whatever reason to come out of the closet.