Liberal take: Media Learned Nothing from Russiagate
to see national news media voices “patting each other on the back” post-Mueller report for “a three-year faceplant they must know will haunt the whole business for a long time.” Fact is, “most of the Russiagate story . . . was fake news.” There was no Trump-Russia conspiracy, “that thing we just spent three years chasing. The Mueller report is crystal clear on this.” Not only was there no collusion, “the two camps didn’t even have each other’s phone numbers.” Reporters may insist that “all they did was accurately report the developments of a real investigation.” But the report makes clear those same reporters “were sold wolf whistles over and over, led by reams of unnamed official sources who urged them to see meaning in meaningless things and assume connections that weren’t there.”
From the left: A Wall Is Part of Immigration Solution
his recent visit to the US-Mexico border crossing in San Diego left him “more certain than ever that we have a real immigration crisis and that the solution is a high wall with a big gate — but a smart gate.” By which he means “a smart and compassionate one” that welcomes immigrants “at a rate at which they can be properly absorbed into our society and work force” — the “opposite of the unstrategic, far-too random, chaotic immigration ‘system’ we have now.” Still, he adds, “without a high wall, too many Americans will lack confidence that we can control our borders, and they therefore will oppose the steady immigration we need.” Yes, walls do work — “but only when paired with a strategy that says ‘we’re not only going to build walls.’ ”
Iconoclast: Will the Democratic Party Split?
Demonizing the Democrats is not the only way President Trump could be re-elected, . The other possibility: if the Democratic Party splits. And right now, the chance of “outright fracture” is the highest in half a century. Democrats may be united in their hatred of the president, but “that is where party unity ends.” Polls reveal a party driven by a deep divide “separating the ideological left in all of its squabbling factions from the ideological center.” If the latter prevails at the Milwaukee convention, look for committed leftists to “bolt the party in disgust, looking to throw their weight behind some other, purer alternative in the general election.” The future of the Democratic Party, beyond 2020, “may hang in the balance.”
Foreign desk: Sri Lankan Jolt to Our Terrorism Fatigue
Sunday’s bombings in Sri Lanka, in which 321 victims were slaughtered, came at a time when the US is suffering from what “terrorism fatigue.” Fact is, our wars against ISIS and al Qaeda “are part of a painful past that policymakers and the public want to escape.” Unfortunately, “the networks of violent extremists are still there, stretching to places most of us probably hadn’t even imagined, like Sri Lanka.” Moreover, “terrorism is metastasizing in other ways, as militant white nationalists join the melee.” Beyond military strikes, though, is “the slow and unglamorous work of preventing weak states from collapsing to the point that they’re terrorism havens.”
Climate watch: Stop Saying We Only Have 12 Years Left
Today’s teenagers are “absolutely right to be up in arms about climate change,” , and “they need powerful images to grab people’s attention.” Yet some of the slogans being bandied about “are frightening” — and misleading. His biggest concern: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s warning that “we have 12 years before triggering an irreversible slide into climate chaos.” As the study’s relevant lead author, he says it doesn’t mean that “something globally bad is going to happen in 2030.” If we don’t halve emissions by then, “will we have lost the battle and just have to hunker down and survive? Of course not.” Climate change “is not so much an emergency as a festering injustice.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann