Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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

Jennifer Rubin: Republicans’ most self-destructive political move yet

Opposing a popular measure that can’t fail is dumb politics.

The latest poll on the Biden administration’s pandemic rescue plan underscores the inanity of congressional Republicans’ unified opposition. The Associated Press/NORC poll finds that “at a moment of deep political polarization in America, support for [President] Biden’s pandemic response extends across party lines. Overall, 70% of Americans back the Democratic president’s handling of the virus response, including 44% of Republicans.” [..]

And with all of this, Republicans in the House and Senate nevertheless unanimously oppose the covid relief plan, a legislative proposal that has in fact unified the country. Moreover, it is bound to “work” insofar as the $1,400 checks will go out, increased food assistance will be offered and money will flow to state and local governments, as well as to small businesses. The economy will recover, and thanks to a massive spending bill, the administration and its Democratic allies will get the credit (whether deserved or not).

Republicans’ argument is that we are spending too much. The ordinary American who might return to work in the months to come or get the benefits of the bill will likely say “Who cares?” And the country will never know whether recovery would have been possible with a $1 trillion bill instead of a $1.9 trillion bill. Republicans’ opposition is politically obtuse, to put it mildly.

Paul Waldman: What Ron Johnson’s latest stunt tells us about the next four years

Republicans want to make Democratic governance look convoluted and ridiculous. Democrats shouldn’t let them.

Being a United States senator comes with all kinds of privileges not afforded to lowly House members. One is that in many instances you can force the entire chamber to submit to your idiotic whims.

So it was that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) used his power on Thursday to force Senate clerks to read every word of the 628-page covid relief bill out loud. As he said in a tweet, “If they’re going to add nearly $2T to the national debt at least we should know what’s in the bill.” [..]

Let me share a secret with you: Members of Congress don’t read the text of most of the bills they vote on. That’s true of both Republican bills and Democratic bills. But it’s not because they aren’t doing their jobs.

So why don’t they read most bills? The first reason is that there are just too many. In the last Congress, which ran from 2019 to 2021, there were over 20,000 bills introduced, and just under 1,900 that were considered on the floor. And that was not a particularly productive Congress.

So members have to rely on summaries prepared by staff and instructions from their party leadership on whether to vote yea or nay; otherwise the task is just too enormous.

Catherine Rampell: February’s jobs report doesn’t let Congress off the hook for more stimulus

Progress — but not enough to get complacent.

Yay for a strong jobs report, finally! And yet: No way, no how, should this news let Congress off the hook for more stimulus, whatever Republicans might say today.

Employers added 379,000 jobs in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That was the fastest pace of hirings since October, and more gains than had been expected. Most of the hiring came in the struggling leisure and hospitality sector (primarily at restaurants and bars). The unemployment rate also ticked down, to 6.2 percent from 6.3 percent in January. This decline happened for the “right” reasons: that is, because more people got jobs, not because more people gave up looking for work and stopped being counted as unemployed.

Falling covid infections, rising daily vaccinations and fewer business restrictions are all helping normal economic activity resume. This is worth celebrating! Still: The economic crisis and the suffering it has caused are nowhere close to over.

Ross Barkan: Andrew Cuomo was never a hero. Karma is coming for him, with a vengeance

The media puffed up Cuomo as a pandemic savior and anti-Trump. Now he’s accused of sexual harassment and concealing nursing home deaths

For so long, television was good to Andrew Cuomo.

The most famous governor in America charmed millions of viewers with his televised briefings in the earliest months of the coronavirus pandemic, reciting bare facts from his homely PowerPoints. Journalists, pundits and cable television hosts swooned – he was primetime material, the winner of an actual Emmy award, the Queens-bred foil to the frothing Queens native in the White House. [..]

Now Cuomo returns to the center of the media universe. This time, he has been accused of sexual harassment by three different women. This time, he is facing an FBI investigation into how he handled the state’s nursing homes, where the true coronavirus death toll was allegedly intentionally masked for months. This time, a state legislator who went public with unhinged threats Cuomo made against him can become famous himself.

Amanda Marcotte: March 4 was a dud — but QAnon will persist because it is fueled by white entitlement

QAnon is not going away any time soon. The people who believe it simply need it too much

There’s a reason why so few of them left after their failed January 6 coup and why few will leave now that it is clear March 4 was a dud. Much has been written about the phenomenon of people not leaving cults, even after the dates of splashy prophecies come and go without the predicted events happening. A lot of it comes down to rationalization and an unwillingness to admit that they spent so much time and energy on something that turned out to be fake. But a lot of it has to do with the reasons they joined the cult in the first place, whether it’s seeking meaning or community or excitement. Those desires don’t disappear just because the prophecies failed. And so the believers will continue to find excuses to stick by the cult and continue deriving what they see as a benefit of belonging.

What drives people to the QAnon cult — as well as the other groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, that contributed to the January 6 insurrection — is ultimately a grotesque mix of wish-fulfillment fantasies and an abiding sense of white entitlement. These are folks who are absolutely certain that they deserve to be in charge, no matter what, and that belief feeds their attachment to increasingly complex conspiracy theories that promise that there’s a “secret” rule or law that can be activated that will allow them to overcome a democratic election and install their preferred president in his place. They are in a search of a cheat code to defeat the big boss, if you will, and in this case, the big boss is democracy.

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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

Paul Krugman: Unmasked: When Identity Politics Turns Deadly

Will Republican politicians kill some Texans to own the libs?

Relieving yourself in public is illegal in every state. I assume that few readers are surprised to hear this; I also assume that many readers wonder why I feel the need to bring up this distasteful subject. But bear with me: There’s a moral here, and it’s one that has disturbing implications for our nation’s future. [..]

Which brings me to my actual subject: face mask requirements in a pandemic.

Wearing a mask in public, like holding it in for a few minutes, is slightly inconvenient, but hardly a major burden. And the case for imposing that mild burden in a pandemic is overwhelming. The coronavirus variants that cause Covid-19 are spread largely by airborne droplets, and wearing masks drastically reduces the variants’ spread.

So not wearing a mask is an act of reckless endangerment, not so much of yourself — although masks appear to provide some protection to the wearer — as of other people. Covering our faces while the pandemic lasts would appear to be simple good citizenship, not to mention an act of basic human decency.

So not wearing a mask is an act of reckless endangerment, not so much of yourself — although masks appear to provide some protection to the wearer — as of other people. Covering our faces while the pandemic lasts would appear to be simple good citizenship, not to mention an act of basic human decency.

Yet Texas and Mississippi have just ended their statewide mask requirements.Yet Texas and Mississippi have just ended their statewide mask requirements.

Eugene Robinson: We have a choice between two covid-19 futures. Let’s make the right one.

Giving up early is self-gratifying and self-defeating. This is the time to hang tight

We are at a turning point in the fight against covid-19, and President Biden is right: “Neanderthal thinking” that puts immediate gratification ahead of what’s best for public health and the economy only helps the virus and postpones the day when life returns to something like normal. [..]

And if our leaders fail, we all have to step up in their places. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll published last week, African Americans and Hispanics are more likely than Whites to say they want to “wait and see” before deciding whether to get vaccinated. And a deeply worrisome 38 percent of Republicans said they would “definitely not” be vaccinated or would do so “only if required.”

But if you wouldn’t get the vaccine simply in the name of public health, do it in self-interest. If you miss sending your kids off to school, eating at restaurants, traveling on airplanes and other pleasures of pre-covid life, then do yourself — and the rest of us — a favor: Get in line and get the shot.

Amanda Marcotte: Mr. Potato Head, Dr. Seuss and trans kids: How Democrats are already letting Republicans win in 2022

Republicans have quickly seized on wedge issues while Democrats stubbornly refuse to end the filibuster

It’s early, but Republicans have already seized on their strategy for winning the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Of course, it does not depend on mundane tactics like “running on their record” or “making robust arguments about how their policies are better than their opponents.” The GOP is instead returning to the well that has, time and again, paid off handsomely: feigning umbrage over culture war flashpoints, usually ones wholly invented by the right or propped up with lies, to distract from substantive policy debates that actually impact American lives.

And it will probably work — again— because Democrats, hamstrung by their own inability to end the Senate filibuster, will not be able to pass substantive legislation they can tout as accomplishments in future campaigns. And so the election will come down to the Great Potato Head and Dr. Seuss Wars of 2022. Even more unfortunate, truly vulnerable people — like those who are part of the trans community — are also in the crosshairs, as the favored target for the culture wars that Republicans want to wage ahead of the next election.

For those of you blissly unaware of what some 20th century children’s artifacts — Dr. Seuss and Potato Head — have to do with politics, well, let me briefly explain.

Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman: Newsflash: Biden actually is governing in a bipartisan way

It may not conform to an outdated fantasy, but it’s the best we can hope for in a polarized age.

In Thursday’s floor debate on the covid relief bill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — implacable enemy of partisanship that he is — took Democrats to task for failing to cooperate sufficiently with Republicans.

Democrats, said McConnell, are “ramming through their partisan spending spree. … And they’ve told Republicans: Take it or leave it. No openness to meaningful bipartisan input.”

The truth is precisely the opposite. In a way that has eluded many observers, the handling of the covid relief bill by President Biden and Democrats has actually shown genuine efforts at bipartisanship and cross-party cooperation.

Another way to put this: We’re seeing the kind of qualified effort at bipartisanship that we should want and expect in such a polarized, crisis-ridden age. [..]

Our point is not that seeking (or achieving) bipartisanship for its own sake is a good unto itself. It’s that, given the realities of today’s GOP and the scale of the challenges the country faces, the right way to strive for bipartisanship is to seek input from Republicans — in good faith — while not letting the quest for bipartisanship set the agenda.

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media 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

Jennifer Rubin: Why are we ‘bailing out’ Texas’s reckless decisions on covid-19?

Prioritize aid to states behaving responsibly.

Republicans have groused that proposed federal aid to states and localities would amount to a “bailout for blue states,” ignoring the widespread economic damage in their own red states and the status of many of those states as moochers (they receive more aid from the federal government than they contribute in revenue). But if we take their argument seriously, it raises another question: Why should a state whose government behaves in a wholly irresponsible manner and endangers its own people be treated the same as responsible states when it comes to direct covid-19 aid?

The question is hardly hypothetical. The Associated Press reports, “Texas is lifting its mask mandate, Gov. Greg Abbott said Tuesday, making it the largest state to no longer require one of the most effective ways to slow the spread of the coronavirus … where the virus killed more than 42,000 people.” Abbott also will open businesses “100 percent” — apparently abandoning any social distancing requirements. [..]

It is not hard to imagine that Abbott is using the latest gambit to deflect attention from his responsibility for the energy grid disaster. Unfortunately, the rollback in mask and social distancing requirements could increase Texas’s death toll from covid-19 (already the third-highest in the country).

Greg Sargent: The minimum-wage fiasco will hurt millions. But it will hit red states hardest.

A new analysis reveals the human toll of the failure to raise the minimum wage.

If there is one thing that the debate over the minimum wage has revealed, it’s how extraordinarily prevalent low-wage labor is in the United States today.

And this underscores what an epic policy failure it will be if the minimum-wage hike is not included in the Senate version of President Biden’s economic rescue bill, which now looks all but certain.

A new analysis from the Brookings Institution, done at my request, underscores this with depressing clarity: It finds that approximately 24 million people would see their wages rise if the federal minimum wage were lifted to $15 per hour by 2025, as the current proposal would do.

By extension, of course, that’s also roughly how many Americans stand to get left behind if and when it is not included in the Senate version.

The minimum-wage workforce is sometimes treated as a marginally sized one. But the truth is that the population that will remain in this precarious low-wage netherworld due to this failure is quite substantial.

Alyssa Rosenberg: The Great Dr. Seuss Hysteria of 2021 shows how silly and unimaginative adults can be

Some of Theodor Geisel’s books are definitely very racist. But treating him as either the worst or best children’s book author ever is a mistake.

Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and conservative pundit Ben Shapiro is stockpiling strategic reserves of “If I Ran the Zoo,” parents across the land face a desperate conundrum. What can they possibly read to their children?

If that paragraph makes no sense, good for you: The Great Seuss Hysteria of 2021 is a faux controversy if there ever were one, worth following only for what it reveals about children’s literature and the limits of adults’ imaginations.

The short, sensible summary is as follows. Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which controls Theodor Geisel’s copyrights, decided not to print more copies of six works that contain racist imagery. This ought to be relatively uncontroversial. The books won’t be pulled from public consumption, as Disney did with “Song of the South,” or edited to comport with different values. No one proposes treating Dr. Seuss like Woody Allen, a figure whose alleged transgressions render his work untouchable. Everyone seems comfortable with the other 90 percent of Dr. Seuss’s books. But because conservatives don’t do much except fight the culture wars these days, they inflated an act of corporate image-burnishing into a catastrophic book-burning, and the rest of the story is predictable.

Ruth Marcus: Nearly 30 years after Anita Hill, what have we learned?

The accusations against Andrew Cuomo are all too familiar, but the response is new.

“I have three daughters,” New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo observed in October 2017, in the midst of controversy over returning political donations from Harvey Weinstein after the producer faced accusations of sexual assault. “I want to make sure at the end of the day, this world is a safer, better world for my three daughters.”

In an odd way, perhaps he has.

Every high-profile sexual harassment case raises, and helps resolve, questions of crime and punishment: what behavior is acceptable, how workplaces should respond and what price must be paid.

At this late stage, in 2021, one could be forgiven for wondering, with no small degree of exasperation, whether the perpetrators will ever learn. So it is possible to examine the stream of allegations about Cuomo and ask: Really? Has nothing changed?

But there is another, more hopeful interpretation: What once was commonplace — bosses asking out subordinates, co-workers making crude sexual remarks — is now understood to be forbidden, a career-killer.

Consider the progression of scandal.

Amanda Marcotte: The Supreme Court may be set to gut voting rights — but Democrats can still stop them

The GOP-dominated SCOTUS longs to end the Voting Rights Act. Democrats can save it by nuking the filibuster

With the news cycle as nuts as it is — the constant pandemic news, the ongoing fallout from the Capitol insurrection, conservatives pretending to believe Dr. Seuss was “canceled” — it likely passed many people’s attention that the Supreme Court listened to arguments Tuesday that may signal the end of voting rights as we know them.

On the surface, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee and Arizona Republican Party v. Democratic National Committee may not seem like a big deal. The cases address partisan fights over rules in Arizona disallowing third party ballot collection and requiring ballots cast in the wrong precinct to be thrown out entirely, regulations that don’t seem, on their surface, like earth-shattering assaults on the ability of most voters to cast ballots. But voting rights experts fear that the particulars of the Arizona restrictions are not really what’s at stake in the case, which is likely to be ruled on this summer. [..]

The good news is that Democrats, at this moment, have the power to stop this from happening, by passing the For the People Act, otherwise known as H.R. 1.

But in order to do that, they need to — say it with me now! — nuke the filibuster, or Republicans in the Senate will be able to block the bill from ever even coming to a vote. Unfortunately, more conservative Democrats, especially Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have signaled that they intend to keep the filibuster in place, even as it’s being used to usher in what voting rights activists have deemed the “new Jim Crow.”