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”.

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Paul Krugman: What Is It With Trump and Face Masks?

It’s not about freedom or culture. It’s cynical politics.

Believe it or not — and I know many people will refuse to believe it — right now New York City may be among the best places in America to avoid catching the coronavirus.

In New York State as a whole, the number of people dying daily from Covid-19 is only slightly higher than the number killed in traffic accidents. In New York City, only around 1 percent of tests for the coronavirus are coming up positive, compared with, for example, more than 12 percent in Florida.

How did New York get here from the nightmarish days of April? It’s no mystery: partial herd immunity might be a small factor, but mainly the state did simple, obvious things to limit virus transmission. Bars are closed; indoor dining is still banned. Above all, there’s a face-mask mandate that people generally obey. [..]

In other words, we know what works. Which makes it both bizarre and frightening that Donald Trump has apparently decided to spend the final weeks of his re-election campaign deriding and discouraging mask-wearing and other anti-pandemic precautions.

Trump’s behavior on this and other issues is sometimes described as a rejection of science, which is true as far as it goes.

Jamelle Bouie: Facebook Has Been a Disaster for the World

How much longer are we going to allow its platform to foment hatred and undermine democracy?

For years, Myanmar’s military used Facebook to incite hatred and genocidal violence against the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority group, leading to mass death and displacement. It took until 2018 for Facebook to admit to and apologize for its failure to act.

Two years later, the platform is, yet again, sowing the seeds for genocidal violence. This time it’s in Ethiopia, where the recent assassination of Hachalu Hundessa, a singer and political activist from the country’s Oromo ethnic group, led to violence in its capital city, Addis Ababa. This bloodshed was, according to Vice News, “supercharged by the almost-instant and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook, which whipped up people’s anger.” This follows a similar incident in 2019, where disinformation shared on Facebook helped catapult violence that claimed 86 lives in Ethiopia’s Oromia region.

Facebook has been incredibly lucrative for its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, who ranks among the wealthiest men in the world. But it’s been a disaster for the world itself, a powerful vector for paranoia, propaganda and conspiracy-theorizing as well as authoritarian crackdowns and vicious attacks on the free press. Wherever it goes, chaos and destabilization follow.

Amanda Marcotte: Trump treated the pandemic as “The Apprentice: COVID Edition”: It’s blowing up in his face

Trump distorts CDC info and spreads vaccine lies because he thinks faking it is always better than doing any work

It’s hardly new or revelatory to say this, but it’s critical to remember the role that “The Apprentice” played in turning Donald Trump, a notoriously bad businessman with a string of bankruptcies, into an American icon of capitalist success. Everything from careful editing to set designers giving the dreary Trump Organization offices a glow-up came together to create the illusion of success where only failure and mediocrity had been before.

It was an experience so profound for Trump that he did something highly unusual: He learned something. He absorbed the idea that a well-constructed illusion of competence gets you all the benefits of being accomplished, without having to do the hard work of actually achieving anything.

Unfortunately, it was a lesson we are all paying the price for now.

On Thursday evening, the New York Times published an exposé about how the Trump White House forced the CDC to publish dangerously misleading coronavirus testing recommendations on its website.

The new “guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus,” Apoorva Mandavilli writes, noting that actual public health experts at the agency strenuously objected because the virus is often spread by asymptomatic people and vigorous testing is crucial to preventing that.

It’s not hard to see that Trump’s reality TV instincts fueled this effort to discourage coronavirus testing. Trump has made clear from the beginning of this pandemic that he would prefer to leave as many coronavirus cases on the editing-room floor as possible, and he thinks the best way to do that is to keep people from getting tested. Trump truly believes that the best way to get coronavirus numbers down is not by preventing people from getting infected in the first place, but by hiding the true number of cases and juking the stats.

Catherine Rampell: Trump says his terrific health-care plan is finally here. That would be news to his health advisers.

The president’s brainchild is so sensitive, his own health advisers don’t know it exists.    

There’s secret, top-secret, code-word-secret — and then there’s whatever President Trump’s health-care plan is.

It’s apparently so deeply classified that the people overseeing the plan don’t even know they’re involved.  [..]

This plan was always “two weeks” away — coincidentally the timeline promised for most every Trump announcement, including those about wiretapping, infrastructure and Melania Trump’s immigration history.

As the fortnights passed, suspense grew. Finally, an announcement came this week: This Godot-like plan, this girlfriend-who-lives-in-Canada of public policies — it exists!

“I have it all ready,” Trump said at a town hall Tuesday, “and it’s a much better plan for you, and it’s a much better plan.”

Alas, Trump remains unable to share this “much better plan” with the public. Or, it seems, anyone within his administration.

Ruth Marcus: William Barr has gone too far before, but never this far

His recent comments are alarming.

Attorney General William P. Barr’s recent comments, in public and private, are so alarming, it’s hard to know where to begin. Barr has gone too far before, but never this far.

He compared pandemic restrictions to slavery. “You know, putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest,” Barr said during a speech Wednesday night at Hillsdale College. “Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

Barr was discussing limitations on religious services during the pandemic, and there are legitimate questions about whether some restrictions on worship have gone too far. But the slavery comparison is beyond offensive. Slavery was evil. Pandemic rules are grounded in concerns for public health.

And even if the two phenomena were somehow legitimately considered along the same continuum, there is no way that the covid-19 lockdown could be accurately labeled “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history.”

How about the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II? How could anyone, no less the attorney general, who oversees civil rights enforcement, analogize covid-19 restrictions to slavery? “A different kind of restraint”? How does that sound to anyone with an ounce of historical memory — or of decency?

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”.

Neal K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer: This Is How Bad It’s Gotten at the Justice Department
The authors are law professors at Georgetown.

When civil servants resign, skeptics often ask what difference one person really can make by leaving. The answer is: a lot.

In his time as the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr has alienated many federal prosecutors. The latest appears to be Nora Dannehy, a longtime prosecutor who has resigned from the department, where she was part of a team looking into the Russia investigation.

We don’t know for sure exactly what happened; she isn’t talking, nor is Mr. Barr. But The Hartford Courant, which broke the story, reported that Ms. Dannehy’s colleagues said that she departed because of Mr. Barr’s politicization — in particular, because Mr. Barr is evidently eager to break drastically with past practice and issue an incomplete report intended to help President Trump in his re-election efforts. [..]

When civil servants resign, skeptics often ask what difference one person really can make by leaving. The answer is simple: a lot. Ms. Dannehy’s departure isn’t just likely a major assertion of integrity by her; it’s also a big problem for Mr. Barr — and therefore for Mr. Trump.

Greg Sargent: Trump is losing control of his own propaganda

A fiendishly clever scheme to hoodwink the public goes awry.

President Trump is sometimes said to possess an almost mystical level of control over the news cycle and the public narrative, an otherworldly dominance that is usually depicted with well-worn phrases like “Trump is flooding the media zone” or “Trump thrives on chaos” or “Trump’s distractions are working for him.”

But if Trump ever did possess such paranormal powers, the real story of the moment is that he’s losing control of them, and they are now operating against him.

The battle over the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine perfectly captures this emerging dynamic. It’s now becoming a major issue in the presidential race, but not on the terms Trump originally intended. [..]

The obvious game plan here is to create the impression that a solution is right around the corner, due to Trump’s stupendous leadership, even if it ends up not materializing, and rely on credulous media to amplify the message in the run-up to the election.

But why would the public believe anything the White House says about this, let alone trust Trump to manage the fiendishly complex rollout process that will follow, after seeing him explicitly declare that he should be believed over his own scientists, and after we’ve seen so much other naked subversion of the public interest to Trump’s political needs?

Amanda Marcotte: Right-wing talk about “sedition” and the Insurrection Act has one purpose: Stealing the election

Barr and other Trump allies are lining up excuses to use force against pro-democracy protests after Election Day

There has been a ton of news about Bill Barr — official title, “Attorney General of the United States;” actual job, Donald Trump’s capo — crawling across cable news chyrons in recent days, so much so that it’s hard to keep track of it all. There’s that thing he said about quarantine restrictions being nearly as bad as slavery. And the thing where he whined about the Justice Department staffers that’s more interested in enforcing the law than protecting Trump’s political power. And where he compared such people to preschool children, for having the temerity to question his decisions.

All that is bad, but probably the worst news this week is a report from the New York Times that “Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition.”

He also asked federal prosecutors “to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer.”

This is especially alarming in light of Barr’s assertion, in the same speech where he made offensive comments about his own staff and about slavery, that he believes he has “virtually unchecked discretion” in determining what cases to prosecute.

Barr was talking about cases stemming from the protests in various cities over the summer. Although the vast majority of those protests were peaceful, there were a few incidents of violence and looting, though absolutely no evidence of plots to overthrow the U.S. government (which is what “sedition” means). Barr’s eagerness to overreact, however, is another alarming sign that he is exploring ways to assist Trump’s public and obvious plans to do whatever he can to steal the presidential election.

Dahlia Lithwick: Bill Barr Would Like to Undermine Your Faith in the Election

The attorney general cannot stop making evidence-free claims about threats to the election.

Bill Barr is on yet another one of his charm offenses. Well, you can’t really call it charming—but it is most certainly offensive. [..]

But even as his dedicated employees race for the exits, Bill Barr trundles on, offering up a coy new interview with the Washington Post this week that characterized him as “lumbering and generously jowled,” a sort of Yogi Bear for the unitary executive set. He also did a friendly sit-down with the Chicago Tribune on Friday, in which he chuckled with John Kass about steakhouses, Chicago crime bosses, and re-upped his entirely imaginary claims about the perils of mail-in voting. And then there was this barnstormer appearance on CNN, when he assured Americans that their votes would be stolen. America’s lawyer is hard at work at the critical task of freaking out the electorate.

In recent days, Barr appears to have inched away from his earlier claims that voting by mail was uniquely susceptible to foreign election tampering. Having pressed that particular hypothesis in early June in an interview with the New York Times, then in a July House Judiciary Committee hearing (a hearing in which he also testified he had no reason to believe the election would be rigged), he parroted the president’s unfounded talking points about foreign interference for just mail-in ballots. Barr was asked about it again this month by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who requested some basis for his now-frequent claims that “a foreign country could send thousands of fake ballots, thousands of fake ballots to people, and it might be impossible to detect.” Barr replied, “I’m basing that—as I’ve said repeatedly, I’m basing that on logic.” Barr continues to insist then that foreign counterfeiting of mail-in ballots is a legitimate threat for which he has no evidence or proof.

Carissa Byrne Hessick: Bill Barr’s Argument for a Political DOJ Is Very Convenient for Bill Barr

His comparison of career prosecutors to preschoolers was not only insulting—it’s also deeply self-serving.

In a speech at Hillsdale College Wednesday, Attorney General Bill Barr insulted career prosecutors at the Department of Justice while once again taking aim at the prosecutions arising out of the Russia investigation.

Barr drew an analogy between career prosecutors and preschoolers, saying, “Devolving all authority down to the most junior officials does not even make sense as a matter of basic management. … Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it’s no way to run a federal agency.” The insulting comparison attracted the most attention. But his open disdain for his employees is not simply bad management. The comments are part of his broader argument that the political appointees at the Department of Justice should be making all the important decisions, not the career prosecutors. According to Barr, because he is appointed by the president, he is democratically accountable and so his decisions are more legitimate than the decisions of career prosecutors.

This argument is very convenient for Barr personally. He has taken a lot of heat for interfering in the prosecutions of President Donald Trump’s allies Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, prompting career prosecutors to abruptly resign from the cases. Some have argued his involvement in those cases was highly inappropriate, if not corrupt. It appears that his actions are now the subject of an inspector general investigation. By crafting a vision of the DOJ in which only his decisions are legitimate, Barr can swat away questions about the career prosecutors who resigned in protest of his interference.