From the left: The Dems Have Become Socialists
Bernie Sanders may have lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton, but he’s “winning the war over the direction of the Democratic agenda,” asserts Dana Milbank at The Washington Post. Indeed, the question he was often asked last year — whether a socialist could become a Democrat — is now moot, because “the Democrats have become socialists.” That “became official” when the Democrats’ “rising stars and potential presidential candidates” signed on to Sanders’ “socialized health-care plan.” When he introduced a similar bill in 2013, “he didn’t have a single co-sponsor.” The dilemma for Republicans is that, having demonized ObamaCare as “socialized medicine, they have nothing worse to direct at Democrats for embracing the real thing.”
From the right: Susan Rice Lied About Unmasking
Last March, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) received “widespread criticism from every corner of Washington” when he charged “the Obama administration had conducted incidental surveillance collection and unmasking of Trump administration officials.” But David Harsanyi at The Federalist says a new report suggests that everything Nunes said “was basically true.” CNN reported Wednesday that former National Security Adviser Susan Rice — who denied knowing anything about Nunes’ claim — has admitted to “House investigators that she had unmasked those senior Trump officials.” The ostensible concern was a US visit by the United Arab Emirate’s crown prince that “circumvented some diplomatic courtesy.” Apparently, that “was enough justification to spy on American citizens,” which “some of us troglodytes might view . . . as an abuse of power.”
Health writer: The Baffling Rise of Gwyneth’s Goop
Goop, the self-proclaimed health site started by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, has frequently been cited for promoting “unsubstantiated products or claims” and its medical advice “called into question.” Yet it remains “a very successful media company,” says Olga Khazan at The Atlantic, largely because “it exemplifies — and has capitalized on — several recent trends in health media,” including how “dubious health claims . . . ricochet around the Internet.” And how the rich, “already more likely than the poor to be healthy . . . shell out for alternative treatments and supplements in hopes of achieving even greater vitality.” One prominent critic calls Goop “a well-presented mix of a lot of harmless pseudoscience combined with a lot of high-profit-margin snake-oil promotion.”
Foreign desk: Germany’s Bizarre Anti-Semitism Law
American Jews are debating whether the greatest danger of anti-Semitism comes from the right or the left. But Evelyn Gordon at Commentary notes that Germany has come up with a novel solution: It has just redefined “Jew-hatred as a ‘politically motivated right-wing extremist crime’, ” thereby eliminating all other kinds. A “suspicious” report from the Interior Ministry claims that in 2017 thus far, “92 percent of anti-Semitic incidents were committed by right-wing extremists.” But “once Jew-hatred has been declared a right-wing crime by definition, most of its perpetrators will inevitably be classified as far-right extremists, even if they shouldn’t be,” like Islamic extremists. The German government “clearly cares more about fighting the far right than fighting anti-Semitism.”
Hurricane watch: Storms Grow But Death Toll Shrinks
The death toll from Hurricane Irma stood at 31 Thursday across three states with a combined population of nearly 36 million. Compare that, say Patrik Jonsson and Harry Brunius at the Christian Science Monitor, with Hurricane Katrina, in which 1,800 died in a smaller storm. This “relatively low loss of life” underscores “advances in prediction technology, citizen preparedness, and even the power of social media to create potentially life-saving communities.” At the same time, though, “property damage and economic disruption” have escalated. What now makes a disaster catastrophic “is the contact with the built environment,” which is “more sprawling and more interconnected than ever.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann