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: The Paradox of Pandemic Partisanship

Many Republicans consider Biden illegitimate — and support his plans.

President Biden’s Covid-19 relief proposal remains incredibly popular; if anything, it’s getting more popular as it barrels through Congress. Multiple polls show that something like 70 percent of Americans approve of the $1.9 trillion plan. It’s almost twice as popular as the Republican tax cut of 2017; it’s more popular than the Obama stimulus of 2009; it’s hard to believe now, but the Biden plan is more popular than Medicare was in the months before it passed in 1965.

Big business has also come on board: More than 150 senior executives at major companies have written congressional leaders urging enactment of Biden’s plan.

It’s not too hard to see why Democrats and independents like the plan. What I’m trying to understand is something that seems like a political paradox. Namely, how is it possible that so many Republicans approve of the plan?

Why is Republican support for Biden’s economic plans a puzzle? Because most of the Republican rank and file believe (based on nothing but lies) that the election was stolen. So we’re in a peculiar position where a substantial number of voters don’t believe Biden has the right to be running the country, but effectively approve of the way he’s running it, at least in terms of economic policy.

Michelle Goldberg: The Campaign to Cancel Wokeness

How the right is trying to censor critical race theory.

It’s something of a truism, particularly on the right, that conservatives have claimed the mantle of free speech from an intolerant left that is afraid to engage with uncomfortable ideas. Every embarrassing example of woke overreach — each ill-considered school board decision or high-profile campus meltdown — fuels this perception.

Yet when it comes to outright government censorship, it is the right that’s on the offense. Critical race theory, the intellectual tradition undergirding concepts like white privilege and microaggressions, is often blamed for fomenting what critics call cancel culture. And so, around America and even overseas, people who don’t like cancel culture are on an ironic quest to cancel the promotion of critical race theory in public forums.

In September, Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget ordered federal agencies to “begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’” which it described as “un-American propaganda.”

Jamelle Bouie: The Deep South Has a Rich History of Resistance, as Amazon Is Learning

Alabama is more than its shading on the electoral map.

The Deep South is not generally known for its labor agitation, which is why it might come as a surprise for some to learn that it is in Alabama where workers have mounted one of the largest and most aggressive efforts to unionize Amazon in recent memory.

More than 2,000 workers at a fulfillment center in the city of Bessemer, just outside Birmingham, have indicated support for a union election. An estimated 85 percent of the work force is Black, and their union drive — which ties labor issues to Black Lives Matter and issues of racial equality — illustrates the extent to which racism and class exploitation are tied up with each other.

The size, scope and sophistication of the union drive in Bessemer should complicate commonly held ideas of Alabama and the Deep South as backward and relentlessly hostile to progress. It should be a reminder of the ways in which the fight for racial equality has historically been one for the dignity of labor as well. And it stands, as well, as an opportunity to explore a side of the state’s history that gets worse than short shrift in our collective memory.

Robert Reich: Republicans scramble to blame green energy as Texas freeze leaves their social Darwinist ideology in tatters

Texas has the third-highest number of billionaires in America, most of them oil tycoons. Its laissez-faire state energy market delivered a bonanza to oil and gas producers that managed to keep production going during the freeze. It was “like hitting the jackpot,” boasted president of Comstock Resources on an earnings call. Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, holds a majority of Comstock’s shares.

But most other Texans were marooned. Some did perish. [..]

Last Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott went on Fox News to proclaim, absurdly, that what happened to his state “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States.” Abbott blamed the power failure on the fact that “wind and solar got shut down.”

Rubbish. The loss of power from frozen coal-fired and natural gas plants was six times larger than the dent caused by frozen wind turbines. Texans froze because deregulation and a profit-driven free market created an electric grid utterly unprepared for climate change.

In Texas, tycoons are the only winners from climate change. Everyone else is losing badly. Adapting to extreme weather is necessary but it’s no substitute for cutting emissions, which Texas is loath to do. Not even the Lone Star State should protect the freedom to freeze.

Chauncey DeVega: Conservatives are the new “good Germans,” enabling and defending Trump’s crimes

Whatever “conservative” once meant in American politics, it’s now just a flimsy rhetorical shield for fascism

Donald Trump is a force of political, human, moral and economic destruction. He is the leader of an American neofascist and white supremacist movement. Today’s Republican Party has fully become an extension of his political cult and crime family. [..]

Ultimately, when today’s Republicans and their voters and other followers say that they want the party to become “more conservative,” what is really being communicated is a desire for “friendly fascism.” This is in no way a rejection of Trumpism — indeed, most Republican elected officials, as well as “traditional” Republican voters, supported (and continue to support) almost all of Trump’s policies. Rather, this desire to become “more conservative” represents a yearning for a more polite, less crude leader to complete Trump’s resurrection of a new American apartheid where “those people” know their proper place and stay in it.

Today’s Republicans love Donald Trump and his policies. Most of them, however, do not want the shame, stink, blood and filth of his neofascist project on their hands. Like the “good Germans” of the Nazi era, Republicans want to believe that they are good and decent people who can hide behind fictions of plausible deniability for the evils committed by their leader. Calling themselves “conservatives” is an effort to shield themselves from responsibility and complicity. Will this subterfuge succeed? The American people and the world will found out soon.

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

Charles M. Blow: Criminal Justice Is a State Issue

State power is the path to racial equality and liberation.

This week, Illinois became the first state to eliminate its cash bail system, and Virginia became the first Southern state to abolish the death penalty. These developments illustrate that many of the most impactful criminal justice reforms can and must be enacted by states, not by the federal government. [..]

The social justice position on criminal justice isn’t only that the system is constructed in destructively punitive ways, but also that there is inherent racial inequality in the way laws are applied.

The true frontier of criminal justice equality is on the state level. States have the power to write their own criminal codes. Those codes are riddled with racial biases, often intentional. But too many have done too little to change those laws and right the wrongs.

If the criminal justice system is to move toward racial equality and liberation, this change will have to start with the states.

Jennifer Rubin: Republicans don’t get to talk about bipartisanship

The height of hypocrisy for the partisan MAGA crowd.

If Republicans such as Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) — who complains that the administration has not entered into endless negotiations with a group of Republicans who have yet to recognize the magnitude of the crises facing the country — were truly interested in being bipartisan, they would be acting very differently than they have since President Biden won the election.

Republicans have had no shortage of opportunities for bipartisanship. They could have immediately recognized Biden as the winner — not let the Big Lie that the election was stolen fester. They could have declined to object to any electoral votes. They could have voted to impeach, convict and disqualify the disgraced insurrectionist in chief from holding future office. [..]

n every way imaginable, Republicans have declared themselves as not only unwilling to meet Biden on popular, urgent matters but also unwilling to put aside the lies and conspiracy theories. Instead, they genuflect to the disgraced former president. Imagine Southern lawmakers still honoring Jefferson Davis after the Confederacy’s defeat. They would be shunned and labeled traitors.

Republicans have zero — none, nada — ground to stand on in complaining about bipartisanship. They have shown scant sign they are interested in that sort of politics. Perhaps they should start with more fundamental values: Decency and honesty. Both are in short supply.

Alejandro Mayorkas: How my DHS will combat domestic extremism

Alejandro N. Mayorkas is secretary of homeland security.

Domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal and persistent terrorism-related threat to our country today. The Department of Homeland Security, working with its many partners at the local, state and federal levels, is taking immediate action to address it.

For several years, the United States has been suffering an upsurge in domestic violent extremism. The horror of seeing the U.S. Capitol, one of the pillars of our democracy, attacked on Jan. 6 was a brutal example of our suffering, and it compels us all to action. [..]

That is why I have designated domestic violent extremism as a National Priority Area for the first time, and will require state and local governments to spend 7.5 percent of their DHS grant awards combating this threat. In practice, this means state and local governments nationwide will spend at least $77 million to prevent, prepare for, protect against and respond to domestic violent extremism. Well-established grant guidance clarifies eligible expenses for building these important capabilities. It also ensures the funds are spent in ways that demonstrably contribute to identifiable security needs while upholding our nation’s values.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump’s failed coup continues: CPAC set to be a celebration of the Capitol insurrection

CPAC sets out to defend Trump’s coup, celebrate his election lies and paint him as the real victim

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicks off on Thursday, seven weeks and one day after Donald Trump sent a murderous mob to rampage through the Capitol in a final, violence-soaked bid to overturn the presidential election. The annual confab — which has become the central event of the year for Republican politics — not only has no distance from the events of Jan. 6, it is basically shaping up to be a celebration of both the man and the movement that inspired a fascist insurrection. [..]

CPAC will be awash in rhetorical games meant to put a palatable spin on this pro-insurrectionist sentiment. Fascists will be painted as victims of “cancel culture.” Efforts to throw out millions of legal votes will be framed as “concerns” about “fraud.” Trump will be given all the time he wants for a self-pitying stemwinder about how he’s the real victim here — not the Americans he attempted to disenfranchise, nor the Capitol police who died or were injured as a result of his lies, nor the congressional staff traumatized by his mob. And the Republican Party will continue its march away from democracy and towards blatant authoritarianism.

Greg Sargent: Stephen Miller’s shadow war against the Biden agenda, explained

Are we really seeing “kids in cages” redux? Nope. It’s a lie.

When the administration reopened a warehouse-like facility for migrant children in Texas this week, it caused a huge controversy on all sides. It inspired claims, mostly from the right, that President Biden is reverting to former president Donald Trump’s policies, proving Trump right all along.

But those claims are wrong. As such, this controversy reveals something else as well: the shadow war that former Trump adviser Stephen Miller is running against the new administration. [..]

Central to this will be the public battle over migrant children. When the new Texas facility opened, conservatives (Miller included) scoffed that Biden is being forced to resume Trump policies, because efforts to reverse them have collided with reality, vindicating Trump.

All this is nonsense. On migrant children, Biden has not restarted Trump’s policies. What Biden is doing has nothing in common with “kids in cages.” And none of this proves Trump was right in any way. Here’s a quick corrective.