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: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Boom?

Rising prices here and there aren’t a sign of runaway inflation.

“If it rains, we might want to open our umbrellas,” said the Treasury secretary.

“Oh my God, she’s predicting a torrential downpour,” shouted panicked pundits.

OK, that’s not exactly what Janet Yellen said on Tuesday. Her actual words were, “It may be that interest rates will have to rise somewhat to make sure that our economy doesn’t overheat.” Her remark wasn’t a forecast, it certainly wasn’t an attempt to influence the Federal Reserve, and it was simple good sense. [..]

Luckily, the furor was short-lived, and as these things go, Yellen’s moment of honesty wasn’t a big deal. Market expectations of future monetary policy, as reflected in long-term interest rates, don’t seem to have moved at all in the past couple months.

But the hair-trigger media response was part of a broader phenomenon: Many commentators just don’t seem able to keep any perspective about the bumps and blips of a booming economy.

There definitely is a boom underway, even if a vast majority of Republicans claim to believe that the economy is getting worse. All indications are that we’re headed for the fastest year of growth since the “Morning in America” boom of 1983-1984. What’s not to like?

Charles M. Blow: Liz Cheney, We Have a Memory. You’re No Hero.

Doing the right thing now doesn’t erase your past.

Representative Liz Cheney may lose her leadership role among House Republicans because she hasn’t been slavishly loyal to Donald Trump and the lies he fed the Republican Party.

Not only did Cheney vote to impeach Trump in January, she also insists that Republicans — who continue to happily regurgitate his lies — tell the truth. (I’m fake-clutching my fake pearls.) [..]

In some way, we are watching a dynastic clash, duplicitous titans fighting to the death.

Liz Cheney and her father are positioning themselves as protectors of the old order, as paragons of truth and as defenders of our American norms. They want us — and history — to view them as the Republicans who got it right and did the right thing.
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As if we don’t know what they are, as if the horribleness of Trump redeems them for relative measure.

Nah. No amnesia for me, thank you.

With respect to Dick Cheney, I ask you to recall just one thing: the torture program under the Bush administration. He’s said that if he had it to do over, he would torture again.

The torture gene must run in the family, for Liz Cheney praised the Trump administration’s review of the treatment of terrorism suspects.

Amanda Marcotte: The insurrectionist caucus turns to schoolyard bully tactics to take over the GOP — and it’s working

Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are conquering the insipid Kevin McCarthy with middle school taunts

That Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is a wimp is not news.

After Donald Trump incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, McCarthy reportedly phoned Trump and begged him to call off his QAnon-drunk dogs, only to get the reply, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” McCarthy had done everything in his power to show fealty to Trump — and to Trump’s attempted coup —by publicly supporting Trump’s “right” to overturn the election and voting against certifying the electoral win of Joe Biden. But that wasn’t good enough for Trump, who continues to clearly believe there was One Simple Trick© Republicans could have pulled out of a bag to overrule the legal election results. Rather than tell that bitter old wannabe dictator where to shove it, McCarthy has instead spent the past few months publicly licking Trump’s boots. He even, at the end of April, pretended that his call with Trump had been about Trump wanting to end the Capitol riot when it was quite clearly the opposite.

And yet, McCarthy theatrically submitting to Trump has not been enough to placate the insurrectionist wing of the GOP, who continue to be suspicious that McCarthy harbors doubts in his heart about the wisdom of having a President-for-Life Trump. The new demand is that McCarthy defenestrates Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., for the sin of continuing to insist that the insurrection really happened.

The main tactic to bring McCarthy into line? Schoolyard taunts that are, frankly, beneath the average middle schooler.

And the admittedly darkly funny part of this is that it’s working. McCarthy, like a substitute teacher who has lost control of a 7th-grade classroom, is caving to some truly childish bullying from the likes of Tucker “Dan White Society” Carlson.

George T. Conway III: What Trump has to fear from Rudy Giuliani

The raid of Giuliani’s apartment is bad news for the once esteemed lawyer — and for his former client, Donald Trump.

To borrow the infamous line of his ex-presidential ex-client, it looks like Rudolph W. Giuliani is “going to go through some things.” Like possibly being charged with a crime. Worse, some people who might have tried to save him from that fate might have actually guaranteed it. [,,]

If Giuliani has anything to offer prosecutors to save himself, it would have to be Trump, the only bigger fish left. And it was arguably criminal for the then-president to have used his official powers to try to coerce foreign officials into aiding his reelection campaign. In fact, Giuliani’s admission that he wasn’t conducting foreign policy, but merely helping Trump personally, is exactly what would make the scheme prosecutable. The former guy just might want to rethink stiffing Giuliani on those bills.

That’s not the ultimate irony of Giuliani’s predicament. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan tried to get permission last fall for a Giuliani raid but were rebuffed by senior officials serving under Trump. And last June, for reasons still opaque, then-Attorney General William P. Barr ousted the U.S. attorney there and tried to handpick a successor.

If any of that was intended to protect Giuliani — or Trump himself — it might end up backfiring spectacularly. If a warrant had been executed before Jan. 20, it’s hard to imagine that Trump wouldn’t have pardoned Giuliani, out of spite, self-interest or both.

Now it’s too late. As Giuliani cautioned on the newly disclosed transcript, “be careful of the people around you, because they can very easily, they can very easily get you into trouble.” That might be the only advice he gave that turned out to be right.

Jennifer Rubin: Rep. Zoe Lofgren embarrassed Republicans with their own words. Now they seek to silence her.

They can’t seem to stand truth-telling women.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) earned kudos from truth-tellers in March when she released a report simply documenting the social media posts of Republicans “who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” She compiled their words, revealing a hodgepodge of conspiracy-mongering and lying about the 2020 election. This was too much for the snowflake Republicans.

They have now filed a complaint, a copy of which I have obtained, with the Communication Standards Commission, an obscure body in the House formerly known as the Mailing Standards Commission, as it historically dealt primarily with franking issues. [..]

Republicans’ political stupidity is hard to fathom. They chose to attack a strong, informed woman (arguably the most knowledgeable on the subject of impeachment and a master of House rules) for airing their own rhetoric. Did they really think they were going to silence Zoe Lofgren, of all people?

It’s hard to think of a better way for Republicans to remind Americans of their own wholly irresponsible conduct. (The complaint will go nowhere since the commission is split 3-to-3.) What’s more, the timing is priceless. This comes the same week the GOP is attempting to banish Cheney from leadership for the “crime” of honesty, for refusing to sweep Jan. 6 under the rug and for refusal to kneel (as they have) before the MAGA cult leader. They simply cannot abide truth-telling women.

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

Kara Swisher: Good Riddance, Donald Trump?

A Facebook-appointed panel avoided a clear decision about Trump’s heinous online behavior. It’s kind of perfect, actually.

It never occurred to me that a Facebook-appointed panel could avoid a clear decision about Donald Trump’s heinous online behavior. But that is what it’s done.

Over the next days, we will hear a lot of huffing and puffing about the Oversight Board’s decision to uphold a ban on former President Donald Trump from Facebook.

That is appropriate since the question of how to treat speech on social media platforms is a major and perhaps impossible one to wrangle with — especially when it comes to important political figures who relish in being divisive. Which is why the external board decided to punt the fetid Trump situation back to the Facebook leadership.

It’s kind of perfect, actually, since it forces everyone’s hand — from the Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to our limp legislators in Congress.

Thomas L. Friedman: Trump’s Big Lie Devoured the G.O.P. and Now Eyes Our Democracy

Respect for election integrity is now a disqualifier for membership in the Republican Party.

President Biden’s early success in getting Americans vaccinated, pushing out stimulus checks and generally calming the surface of American life has been a blessing for the country. But it’s also lulled many into thinking that Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen, which propelled the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, would surely fade away and everything would return to normal. It hasn’t.

We are not OK. America’s democracy is still in real danger. In fact, we are closer to a political civil war — more than at any other time in our modern history. Today’s seeming political calm is actually resting on a false bottom that we’re at risk of crashing through at any moment.

Because, instead of Trump’s Big Lie fading away, just the opposite is happening — first slowly and now quickly.

Under Trump’s command and control from Mar-a-Largo, and with the complicity of most of his party’s leaders, that Big Lie — that the greatest election in our history, when more Republicans and Democrats voted than ever before, in the midst of a pandemic, must have been rigged because Trump lost — has metastasized. It’s being embraced by a solid majority of elected Republicans and ordinary party members — local, state and national.

Paul Krugman: Biden and the Future of the Family

There’s a good case for doing more to improve physical assets. There’s an overwhelming case for doing more to help families with children.

Like many progressives, I like the Biden administration’s plan to invest in infrastructure, but really love its plans to invest more in people. There’s a good case for doing more to improve physical assets like roads, water supplies and broadband networks. There’s an overwhelming case for doing more to help families with children.

To Republican politicians, however, the opposite is true. G.O.P. opposition to President Biden’s infrastructure plans has felt low-energy, mainly involving word games about the meaning of “infrastructure” and tired repetition of old slogans about big government and job-killing tax hikes. Attacks on the family plan have, though, been truly venomous; Republicans seem really upset about proposals to spend more on child care and education.

Which is not to say that the arguments they’ve been making are honest.

How do we know that we should be spending more on families? There is, it turns out, a lot of evidence that there are big returns to helping children and their parents — stronger evidence, if truth be told, than there is for high returns to improved physical infrastructure.

Michelle Cottle: Who Cares About Hypocrisy?

Most politicians are hypocrites. Voters tend not to care.

President Biden is a tough man to vilify. Maybe it’s the grandfatherly vibe or the down-to-earth speaking style or all that talk of compassion and healing. Whatever the reason, Republicans have had little success thus far convincing Americans — beyond the alternative-reality MAGAverse, of course — that good old Uncle Joe is radical, corrupt or even a little bit scary. [..]

Having failed to paint Mr. Biden as a possibly senile monster, Republicans are now aiming to smear him as a holier-than-thou hypocrite.

To which the White House’s response should be: Bring it.

If Mr. Biden wants to pursue bipartisan deals because he believes they make for better, more durable policy, then more power to him. And his efforts to lower the temperature of political discourse — by, for instance, not doling out insulting nicknames, peddling racist tropes, attacking members of his own government or pitching Twitter hissy fits — are a welcome step toward soothing America’s Trump-tortured soul.

But when it comes to accusations of hypocrisy regarding matters of cross-aisle comity, Mr. Biden should waste exactly as much time fretting as the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell did vetting Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court in 2016. Which is to say, not one hot second.

Amanda Marcotte: Facebook’s Trump ban stays: Social media giant’s decision shows free speech concerns were overblown

Trump doesn’t get to vomit lies on Facebook, but the existence of his blog shows his freedom of speech is intact

After Donald Trump incited an insurrection on Jan. 6 that led to the trashing of the U.S. Capitol, the deaths of multiple people, and the delay — though not the cancellation he sought — of the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president, Facebook and Twitter finally banned Trump from their websites. Trump’s vitriolic and hateful posts, which often hinted at violence, had long been in violation of the terms of service for both websites, but his status as the president, and frankly the amount of traffic he generated for both sites, was enough to shield him from being banned for years. An attempted overthrow of the government finally crossed the line. Although a cynic would also note that because Trump failed, there was good reason to think his value as a revenue-generating troll was declining anyway, making it a much easier financial decision for both organizations.

On Wednesday morning, the Facebook oversight board issued its long-awaited decision on whether or not to let Trump — who again, attempted to overthrow the U.S. government and have himself installed illegally as president — back onto the platform. In what is a sad statement on our society, there was a real question about whether or not the oversight board would give in to pressure from the Trump camp and recommend reinstating his account. But in a victory for common sense, the oversight board decided to uphold the decision to strip Trump of his ability to inject lies and incitement directly into the social media streams of the kinds of addle-brained idiots who stormed the Capitol.

Not that this was a clean win for democracy, of course. Perish the thought!

Unfortunately, the board did demand that “Facebook review this matter to determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform,” giving the company 6 months to comply. Their reasoning is that, while Trump clearly violated Facebook’s rules “prohibiting praise or support of people engaged in violence,” the company has no policy on what constitutes a violation that results in indefinite suspension and that needs more clarity.

Jennifer Rubin: Fix the filibuster, save democracy

We are heading for a filibuster face-off.

Republicans have become heavily invested in curtailing voting rights. On the precipice of booting Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from her leadership post for debunking the Big Lie — which serves as their justification for voter-suppression legislation — the notion that 10 Republican senators might buck their MAGA overlords to pass voting rights protections should be dismissed out of hand.

Whether it is the comprehensive set of reforms set forth in H.R. 1, a subset of those measures (such as guaranteed no-excuse voting by mail, in-person early voting or paper records/audits) or stand-alone reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 preclearance provisions, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a handful of Senate Republicans who would sacrifice their own careers for the sake of democracy — much less 10. And make no mistake: A vote in favor of voting rights would be far more offensive to the MAGA authoritarians than simply refusing to accept the Big Lie.

In other words, we are heading for a confrontation between GOP efforts to suppress voting by means of the anti-majoritarian filibuster on one hand, and the integrity of democratic elections on the other. Democrats should be as intolerant of its members refusing to support the latter as Republicans are of Cheney.

Even putting aside the strongest argument for filibuster reform — defense of fundamental voting rights — the case for reforming the filibuster for all ordinary legislation is overwhelming