Political reporter: The Myth of Disillusioned Trump Voters
Reports that President Trump’s voters increasingly are second-guessing their backing of him are flat-out wrong — “not [even] close,” says Aaron Blake at The Washington Post. Indeed, a new Pew Research Center poll this week shows “very little buyer’s remorse among Trump voters”: Only 7 percent say he’s doing worse than they expected, while 38 percent say he’s doing better. And even a new Gallup poll showing a decline among Republicans who say Trump keeps his word reports fully 8 in 10 GOP voters still say he does. Yes, news articles are quoting some disillusioned Republicans — but for now, anyway, they’re “in very limited company.”
Israeli pol: NY Times Hid a Terrorist’s Crimes
The “most infuriating” part of a Sunday New York Times op-ed piece by Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti, charges Israeli Knesset member Yair Lapid, was his identification by the editors as “a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian.” This, Lapid writes for The Times of Israel, “isn’t an error” but “an intentional deception.” Barghouti, who decried alleged Israeli mistreatment of prisoners, “was convicted in a civilian (not military) court on five separate counts of murder of innocent civilians.” But the Times “didn’t even bother to explain” this to its readers. [The paper’s Web site has now added an editor’s note with the facts.] Barghouti is in prison “not for his views, not for his desire for a Palestinian state, not for his right to freedom of expression,” but because “he chose the path of terror, murder and violence.”
Policy wonk: How DC Ensures Continued Rail Nightmare
Commuters faced another crisis last Friday when a NJ Transit train lost power in the Hudson rail tunnel, causing massive delays. Critics like Sen. Chuck Schumer blame Congress for underfunding Amtrak. But Steven Malanga at City Journal suggests the real problem is that “the safety and convenience of passengers on the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor” — including those on local lines that use Amtrak infrastructure — “are being sacrificed for the quixotic notion of maintaining a long-distance national rail system.” Congress resists calls for cutbacks because “Amtrak is really a jobs program.” President Trump has proposed “reducing funding for Amtrak’s heavily subsidized long-distance lines” and allowing more money from the Northeast corridor to remain in the area. Says Malanga: “It’s the kind of idea that should cheer local train passengers.”
Mathematician: Blame Algorithms for United Fiasco
The recent outrage over United Airlines’ “brutal treatment” of a passenger “isn’t really about airline travel, overbooking policies or even consumer rights,” argues Cathy O’Neil at Bloomberg. “It’s about the nature of dignity itself, and it doesn’t reflect well on the society it has so preoccupied.” Passenger David Dao was removed based on an algorithm “trained to find the ‘lowest value customer’ to inconvenience — a coach passenger, naturally, not a business traveler, but also a passenger who had paid less than others and wasn’t a rewards member.” Because “in the age of big data, the customer has gone from an unknowable chap who might expect standard good treatment, to a sized-up marketing category that can easily become expendable.” And “until we demand good treatment of everyone . . . we will be contributing to a system that commodifies our dignity.”
From the right: How the Left Distorts Immigration Debate
The immigration debate is a perfect example of how “when political pendulums swing too much to one side, they swing back wildly and uncontrollably,” contends Saritha Prabhu at The Tennessean. President Trump’s immigration rhetoric may be harsh, but that’s partly because such rhetoric “became quite loose” under Barack Obama. Liberals managed to “blur the distinction between legal and undocumented immigrants” and to “confuse the issue on whether immigration is a right or a privilege.” Fact is, “the left has gone off the deep end on the immigration issue.” And if immigration laws had been strictly enforced, “Trump’s proposed wall would’ve been rendered unnecessary.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann