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As Nebraska Goes In 2024, So Could Go Maine

As Nebraska Goes In 2024, So Could Go Maine

Every state is different. Nebraska is quite different. It is one of only two states that doesn't use the winner-take-all system in presidential elections. Along with Maine, it allocates its Electoral College votes to reflect the results in each of its congressional districts.

In 2020, Donald Trump lost the Omaha-based congressional district while winning Nebraska's other two. That cost him one electoral vote. In a very close election, that one vote could matter. Hence, Trump and his people have been pressuring Nebraska to adopt "winner-take-all," whereby whatever candidate received the most votes statewide would get all five of Nebraska's electoral votes.

This move is especially bold because in 2016, Trump did win Omaha's district. One supposes he could win it again the old-fashioned way, by getting more people to vote for him than for Joe Biden. As he's proved in terrifying ways, Trump is not a stickler for honoring the will of the people.

Don Bacon, the Republican representing the Omaha district, supports the Trump camp's efforts to change the state's method for assigning electoral votes. "I think it undermines the influence of Nebraska," he told CNN.

The opposite is more likely. Were Nebraska to embrace "winner-take-all," neither candidate would have great incentive to campaign there at all. As for the politics of it, one strains to understand how pushing to deprive his constituents the right to allocate their electoral vote is going to win Bacon love in his purple district.

So far these efforts have failed, even in the GOP-dominated state legislature. Good for them.

But pressure remains. Nebraska's current Republican governor, Jim Pillen, has offered to support a special legislative session to move the state to winner-take-all. "I will sign (winner-take-all) into law the moment the legislature gets it to my desk," he vowed.

However, Nebraska's unique political culture is deservedly a point of pride. There could be blowback on those who help outsiders try to change it.

For example, Nebraska is the only state with a one-chamber legislature. This dates back to 1934, when Nebraskans voted to replace a governing body with both a House and a Senate with a unicameral one. Party affiliations are not listed on the ballot.

This reform was pushed through by George W. Norris, a devout Republican. Norris argued that there was no logic in having a two-house legislature. On the contrary, it cost the taxpayers more money and made politicians less accountable to the people.

"The greatest evil of two-house legislature is its institution of the conference committee," Norris wrote in his autobiography. That's where power brokers could fiddle with passed bills.

"There the 'bosses' and the special interests and the monopolies get in their secret work behind the scenes," Norris wrote. "There the elimination of a sentence or paragraph, or even a word, may change the meaning of the entire law."

Meanwhile, were "reliably Democratic" Maine to adopt a winner-take-all system, that would cancel any Republican advantage in a Nebraska that did likewise. Maine's rural 2nd congressional district favored Trump both in 2016 and 2020.

Adding intrigue, Maine's House recently narrowly voted to have the state join an interstate compact that would assign its Electoral College votes to whatever presidential candidate won the national popular vote. So far 16 states have joined the compact, which would go into effect only if the members have enough electoral votes to determine the outcome.

In 2020, Biden won over seven million more popular votes than Trump did. And in 2016, Hillary Clinton comfortably beat Trump in the popular vote by three million.

It would not seem in Republicans' interests to encourage states to change how they count electoral votes. After all, as Nebraska goes, so could Maine.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Whose Votes Does Biden Need To Win -- Hard Left Or Haley Republicans?

Whose Votes Does Biden Need To Win -- Hard Left Or Haley Republicans?

Barack Obama got it right. He refused to be held captive to his party's left wing. He adopted a strenuous policy of border enforcement, even as some Latino activists threatened to withhold their support for him. He had tense relations with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, but when anti-Israel protesters interrupted a Biden fundraiser over the Gaza conflict, Obama reprimanded them: "Here's the thing, you can't just talk and not listen." And the hall broke into applause.

Should Biden worry about keeping members of the Democrats' perpetually unhappy left on his team come November? Not to the extent that it costs broader public support — or goes against U.S. interests. The far left's power comes not in its big numbers but in its members' ability to bully Democrats into taking positions that cost them elections.

It's happened time and again. During the 2000 presidential campaign, prominent leftists urged followers to vote for spoiler Ralph Nader instead of the moderate Democrat Al Gore. A handful of Nader votes in Florida delivered the presidency to George W. Bush. In 2016, Bernie Sanders and many followers slashed the tires under Hillary Clinton's campaign, thus helping elect Donald Trump, who had cleverly egged them on.

Many of the disrupters waving Palestinian flags feel genuine despair at the Gaza horror. They have much company in this. But a lot of what they're after is attention. Getting pats on the head on social media is more important than helping defeat Donald Trump.

Exactly what was the point of pro-Palestinian demonstrators' disrupting an Easter Vigil mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral other than to get on the news? They know where the cameras are.

Come November, the hard left may deprive Biden of some needed votes. How much wiser to concentrate on Nikki Haley Republicans in the battlegrounds where moderate Republicans reside. And the Biden campaign is reportedly doing that.

According to a February Quinnipiac poll, 37% of Republican-leaning voters who supported Haley said they'd vote for Biden. That doesn't include the percentage of Republicans who would simply sit out an election that has Trump on the ballot.

Biden can't emphasize enough his support for the border enforcement bill that Trump had killed precisely because it would have worked, thus depriving him of a potent campaign issue. Any notion that this stance would turn off Latino voters is belied by polls showing Trump actually gaining some support among them as well as Blacks. And that's despite Trump's talking about mass deportations.

Perhaps Blacks and Latinos want different things from their political leaders than having their identities massaged. Other polls show illegal immigration — as well as crime — rank high on the list of these voters' concerns.

No surprise there. Poorly controlled borders intensify competition for workers without college degrees. These jobs are in construction, manufacturing, restaurants and hotels, retail — positions that are heavily occupied by people of color.

Contained in Obama's message to the anti-Israel left was the reality that the conflict in Gaza is complicated. But when you get down to the Squad level on the left, the problem isn't so much what many believe as their lack of depth in understanding the issues.

Trump Republicans can't help but love them. Here are would-be Democrats helping a candidate who, as president, introduced a ban on Muslims even entering the country — and says he would restore it in a second term.

Haley voters could well be the key to a Biden victory, especially if the president doesn't torment them with woke nonsense. Biden needs to keep Democrats united as is politically doable while getting the never-Trump Republicans to actually cast a vote — if not whole-heartedly for him, at least for the democracy.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Nancy Mace

Are These 'Republican Vixens' Mocking Conservative Morality?

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace was in Washington telling a story about how her "fiance" wanted more action in bed earlier that day. "And I was like, 'No baby, we don't got time for that this morning.'" To which she added, "He can wait. I'll see him later tonight."

The occasion was a Christian prayer breakfast attended by evangelicals.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert famously vaped in a theater and grabbed her date's privates. When called out for her offensive conduct, she blamed a "difficult divorce." Meanwhile, self-described "Christian nationalist" Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene showers the House floor with profanities.

I honestly don't care who Nancy Mace shacks up with. But it is fascinating to hear her refer to the guy in her bed as a "fiance" as opposed to some random dude. Makes her adultery sound like almost-marriage.

What are these right-wing vixens up to? For starters, they're advertising their sexual availability. (Tinder never closes.) And as members of Congress, their forays into exhibitionism provide visibility and opportunities to raise money.

These ladies evidently think that they can get away with dishing this coarseness in public while posing as defenders of old-school morality. You sometimes wonder whether they are mocking social conservatives.

Some evangelicals are quite unhappy about this. They are joined by others who simply want more dignity in the political culture.

The road to right-wing vulgarity was paved with hypocrisy. Some of the credit goes to Bill Bennett, who long ago perfected the art of unprincipled rectitude. Former education secretary under Ronald Reagan, Bennett has long peddled a highly elastic moral code — depends on which party benefits — while maintaining a face frozen in pious judgment.

In his 1998 book, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals, Bennett piled moral censure on Clinton over his tryst with a White House intern. And he went after Democrats for not sharing his indignation.

The first chapter, simply titled "Sex," pounded the pulpit. "In extramarital affairs," Bennett wrote, "there are victims. In marriage, one person has been entrusted with the soul of another." If true, that's bad news for Melania.

Years later, a Fox News interviewer asked Bennett how a man claiming fixed moral views on adultery could support Donald Trump. As the world knows, the former president cheated on his pregnant wife with a porn star and bragged about grabbing women by their genitals.

"I understand how you feel about some of the things," Bennett responded, miraculously keeping a straight face. "But it may be better to lower your standards on things the guy says temporarily than to lose your country permanently."

Ah, so he's using the "fiance" gambit. Branding Trump's lewd talk as "temporary" make it an almost-character flaw. As for the "lose your country" part, that sounds a bit dated considering how close Trump got us to losing our democracy.

"Sexual indiscipline can be a threat to the stability of crucial human affairs," Bennett wrote in reference to Clinton. Would someone kindly translate?

Urging voters to look past Trump's licentious record, Bennett argued, "Think about the economy." Years earlier, he rapped the knuckles of Clinton defenders for allegedly contending that "what matters above all is a healthy economy." Actually, the economy was a lot better under Clinton, and the budget was balanced, too.

Look, Bennett has a First Amendment right to make money off hypocrisy. And let the record show, I too disapprove of adultery. But I also regarded Clinton's misconduct as a private matter to be worked out between a couple and the third party. And I extend that courtesy to Trump, Melania and Stormy Daniels.

Uncomfortable as it may sometimes be, consistency is a good thing.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

New York Suburbs May Return Democrats To Power In Congress

New York Suburbs May Return Democrats To Power In Congress

Those days are obviously gone. The recent election of Democrat Tom Suozzi to replace George Santos in Long Island's 3rd district suggests that Democrats and independents in these swing districts now recognize that they must choose sides. And that may end up reversing more of the Republicans' recent advances in these near-in suburbs.

Those gains reflected the social chaos unleashed by COVID and shrieking headlines about crime in the big city. As a result, Republicans in 2022 took five of the six congressional House districts on Long Island and in the lower Hudson Valley. Four had gone for Joe Biden two years earlier.

The New York suburbs, of all places, helped the GOP obtain its thin House majority.

The problem for these voters, however, is that the House is not run by their kind of nice-guy Republicans but the right-wing Speaker Mike Johnson, Donald Trump and a coterie of fringe extremists with near zero interest in these suburbanites' concerns. On the contrary, they're hostile to reproductive rights, national security and health care.

The Republicans' successful pitch to these suburbs centered on crime, immigration and taxes. Crime in New York, never as rampant as the scary reports suggested, is now down. New York was still one of the safest cities in America, but with COVID keeping a lot of suburbanites working at home, many had little in the way of a reality check. In any case, the city is back to gridlock.

On immigration, the Republican House just smothered a bipartisan Senate deal that would have actually curbed the chaos at the border. Trump ordered that the problem not be solved, so he could campaign on it.

As for tax relief, the impotence of the suburban Republicans recently went on full display in their failure to restore any of the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT). In 2017, then-President Trump and a Republican Congress slashed the deduction to $10,000.

One intention was to shake down taxpayers in blue states, where incomes, local levies and the cost of living are high. They were thus forced to pay taxes on taxes they'd already paid.

Limiting the deduction to $10,000 not only affected rich people. A cop married to a nurse on Long Island could easily have a combined income of $200,000 — and state, local and property tax bills well north of $30,000.

Mike Lawler, a Republican representing the lower Hudson Valley, had campaigned on the promise to address this thorn in his constituents' side. He called for doubling the cap on SALT deductions to $20,000 and only for married couples. But Republican House leaders swatted down even that modest proposal.

Other changes since 2022 may blow wind in Democrats' sails. Democrats are unlikely to again forget to campaign, which contributed to the loss of at least two seats. One of the overly confident Democrats neglected to do any background check on his opponent, the wildly fraudulent George Santos.

Come November, Trump is sure to be on the ballot, and you don't have to be a Democrat in these affluent suburbs to detest him. Recent redistricting in New York State also slightly enhances Democrats' prospects. Finally, with inflation down and stock prices up, moods are improving across middle class America. Then there's the abortion issue.

And so exactly what are Lawler and other suburban Republicans doing for their constituents other than helping keep in power the very people who hold their interests in contempt? Little that we can identify.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Alabama's Law Protecting IVF Embryos Is Wrong -- But Consistent

Alabama's Law Protecting IVF Embryos Is Wrong -- But Consistent

I'm not here to join the mockery of Alabama for declaring that embryos are children — and, therefore, in vitro fertilization clinics must protect them forever. On the contrary, I admire its honesty. Many states have effectively banned abortions, arguing that destroying an embryo amounts to baby killing. Yet they look the other way when fertility clinics discard hundreds of thousands of unused embryos, which they routinely do.

Let's be clear. I believe in the right to an abortion within a reasonable time limit and whenever the mother's life is in danger. Mothers-to-be often refer to the cluster of cells that constitute the embryo as a "baby," which is understandable. Science does not.

Nevertheless, an Alabama court ruled that frozen embryos resulting from IVF treatments are considered children under the law. Other states have hypocritically gone halfway in that direction. Some of their fetal personhood laws let women sue for back child support since conception.

Give Alabama credit for walking the walk.

Biologically speaking, there is virtually no difference between an embryo created through IVF and one conceived naturally. And that's what the Alabama court is saying.

Fearing the political repercussions, however, Republican lawmakers in Alabama are trying to weasel out of the consequences. They are working on proposals to redefine a frozen fertilized egg as "potential life," as opposed to the fully human one inside the uterus.

Baloney. Both kinds of fertilized eggs are potential life.

Some pro-life advocates hold that while most of the embryos created in IVF clinics will never be used, the clinics enable couples to create life that wouldn't have happened without them. That's a valid argument.

But for the true opponents of abortion, that argument is one of political convenience. Former President George W. Bush made a show of pushing for adoptions of frozen embryos by women who would have them implanted. He called the embryos "snowflakes."

But fertility centers continued to discard unused embryos. Bush never threatened to close them down or force the IVF clinics — and the egg and sperm donors — to preserve them in perpetuity.

Another dodge by alleged abortion foes is the exception for rape and incest. Many politicians throw that in their abortion bans because it sounds only fair to victimized women. But if a fertilized egg represents innocent life, then the circumstances of the conception should not matter.

The pro-choice movement often aids that phony argument by condemning abortion bans with the words, "They don't even allow an exception for rape and incest." Darn right there should be no exceptions.

Democrats like Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth have foolishly helped take states that ban abortion off the hook by offering legislation that would protect IVF services nationwide. No, their politicians should live with the fallout of declaring that an embryo is a baby.

The pro-choice stance should be that a woman has a right to end an unwanted pregnancy early on and for whatever the reason: rape, an unwise night of unprotected sex, failed birth control — no questions asked. Certainly no woman should have to present police evidence that she had been brutally violated.

In the wake of the Alabama ruling, there's been an explosion of memes about listing fertilized eggs as children on tax returns and using a box of chicken eggs to get access to high-occupancy vehicle lanes. They can be pretty funny.

But those who support a constitutional right to abortion should also praise Alabama for stripping away the veils that provide phony exceptions to the protection of embryos.

Alabama has bravely followed through on its position that a fertilized egg is a child. The position may be biologically false and politically dangerous, but give the state credit for honesty.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Persistent 'Both Sides' Mediocrity Of Jon Stewart

The Persistent 'Both Sides' Mediocrity Of Jon Stewart

Thank you, Mary Trump, for plumbing the shallow waters of Jon Stewart's wit. A psychologist and sharp critic of her uncle Donald, Mary Trump accused the Daily Show host of long suppressing the liberal vote by telling his fan base that the candidates stink equally. She cites political research showing that his what's-the-difference jabbering helped elect Donald Trump in 2016.

But Stewart's recent resurfacing with a nuance-free view of the current presidential choices was truly the last straw to drift off the bale. After reciting some antique jokes about AARP cards, Stewart shifted into his old brand of analysis, holding that Donald Trump and Joe Biden were basically the same.

"We're not suggesting neither man is vibrant, productive or even capable," Stewart said with his don't-you-love-me grin. "But they are both stretching the limits of being able to handle the toughest job in the world."

To which Mary Trump wrote in response: "In what universe is Donald vibrant, productive or capable?? And this statement wasn't even tongue-in-cheek. Stewart was making a straight-up comparison."

It would seem that a president who has successfully managed two global conflicts, resurrected U.S. manufacturing, slashed the price of insulin and overseen the strongest economy in decades would be called "capable." Biden did it, and he didn't grow younger in the process.

Stewart clearly wants everyone to love him, so he uses his both-sides arguments to ingratiate himself with the right, marketing it as truth-telling. Ten years ago, I was sucked into that vortex.

Back then, when bloggers at respectable publications could still get away with junior-high misogyny, a troll at The Wall Street Journal became obsessed with me. He kept calling me a "Baroness Catherine Ashton look-alike," a reference to a British parliamentarian whom he deemed ugly. About that, I could not care less.

Then he accused me of hypocritically trying to censure honest conservative speech, which this once-upon-a-time Republican doesn't do. (I sometimes even agree with it.) He had no idea of what my position was, but that didn't matter.

Anyhow, Jon Stewart swallowed his attacks whole.

The Daily Show treated the powerful New York media with fluffy gloves. But being identified as a lefty in the howling wilderness of Rhode Island, I was regarded as easy game for both-sideism.

And so John Oliver was shipped out to "interview" me. The segment that aired had Oliver repeatedly hollering a bleep-out F word, followed by a spliced-in photo of me allegedly looking shocked, followed by canned laughter. It was on that level.

Stewart's favorite theme was to broadly condemn the mainstream press as hopelessly lazy and incompetent. And then Stewart pinned on me beliefs I never had based on what some blogging bro said they were. He had done zero research.

Stewart opened by hissing "Journalists! Journalists!" After the segment aired, the blogging pest praised it as "comedy gold."

When Oliver had his own show years later, many of the greatest traditional news sources had fallen into deep trouble. The ever-earnest Oliver looked into the camera with doggy eyes and beseeched the audience to subscribe to their local newspapers.

Just a few weeks ago, lo and behold, Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn was recycling one of his raps on liberals when he took yours truly to task for those beliefs I never had. And what was his impeccable source? The Daily Show of 10 years ago. I mean, my real beliefs are all over Google.

As Mary Trump notes, the stakes are too high for guys like Jon Stewart to get away with neutralizing the toxicity of Donald Trump with comparisons totally lacking in substance. It's a creepy kind of brand-building. And it comes at the expense of our fragile democracy.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Parents Who Arm Troubled Kids Finally Face Justice

Parents Who Arm Troubled Kids Finally Face Justice

Her blank face in court spoke volumes. Jennifer Crumbley saw no problem handing her severely depressed 15-year-old a semiautomatic handgun as a Christmas present. Ethan soon after turned the gun on the student body of Oxford High, killing four.

What makes this case both chilling and sickening is that Ethan had telegraphed his rapid unravelling, and his mother ignored it. He told her there was a demon in the house. He sent her desperate text messages that she did not address: Jennifer was reportedly off tending to her horses and a secretive six-month affair.

The school called in both parents to discuss a violent drawing Ethan had made in math class. It showed a bleeding person and a gun and the words "blood everywhere" and "the thoughts won't stop" and "help me" on a math sheet.

The parents failed to tell the school he had a gun. And they refused to take him home. They had jobs, you know.

When the school told the parents that Ethan was found searching online for ammunition, Jennifer sent her boy a supportive text. It read: "LOL (laughing out loud), I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."

Jennifer failed to impress the jury with praise of her parenting skills and her sweet descriptions of family Thanksgiving dinners. She blamed Ethan's father for not properly storing the weapon, but that also didn't get her off the hook.

Jennifer was convicted on four counts of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to life in prison. Her husband will soon be tried.

What is going on? Americans have always owned guns for hunting, sport or self-defense. But today's politicized gun mania has turned deadly firearms into toys for children or fashion accessories.

There was that famous case of the 6-year-old who shot his elementary school teacher in Newport News, Virginia. His mother was sentenced to two years in prison for child neglect. How on earth did a first grader get access to a loaded gun? It was lying around the house.

The gun obsession played a part in the horrific 2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 27 innocents dead. The killer's divorced mother, Nancy Lanza, would go to bars at night bragging to the guys about her guns. Despite son Adam's history of serious mental illness, she left the firearms strewn around their house. Today a jury probably would have locked her up and thrown away the key — had Adam not murdered her first.

Other lonely women have been known to seek company by making common cause with the male-dominated gun fixation. In Oregon, Laurel Harper participated in gun forums, alternating her topics between descriptions of her son's mental illness and her gun collection.

She probably expected pats on the head when she told the fellas, "I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs and AKs (semiautomatics) all have loaded mags." Wildly clueless, she criticized "lame states" that put limits on loaded firearms in the home.

Her son Christopher Harper-Mercer had been involuntarily hospitalized for psychiatric treatment. He brought six guns to Umpqua Community College in Roseburg and slaughtered 10 people. After the massacre, Laurel told detectives that Christopher was "mad at the world."

Are parents who keep unsecured loaded weapons in homes shared with disturbed or very young children themselves mentally off? The argument can be made. But if police removed arms from adults without criminal records, the gun lobby would go crazy.

Legal experts see the Crumbley case as the first to directly hold parents culpable for giving a child who turns guns on others access to weapons. But where did these parents come from?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Border Wall

How Trump Turned Republicans Into The 'Open Borders' Party

Donald Trump has called on Republicans to kill a bipartisan deal that would give the president emergency powers to shut down the border when illegal crossings get out of hand. He's thus helped President Joe Biden turn one of his political liabilities into a strength.

"If given that authority," Biden said without hesitation, "I would use it the day I sign the bill into law."

The bill has teeth. The border could be closed if illegal entries exceed 5,000 over a five-day average. Over the last four months, that number has been breached on all but seven days.

There's a lot more in this serious plan for ending the chaos at the border. Trump wants that chaos to continue as a campaign issue.

And the emasculated Republican-run House seems poised to obey Trump's command that the broken border stay broken.

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah correctly labeled Trump's attempt to sabotage the bill as "appalling." Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, another Republican who supports the deal, would agree.

"This bill focuses on getting us to zero illegal crossings a day," Lankford said on Fox News. "There's no amnesty. It increases the number of Border Patrol agents, increases asylum officers. It increases detention beds so we can quickly detain and then deport individuals." The legislation also raises the number of deportation flights and makes asylum claims harder to get.

Republicans have for months refused to grant funding for Ukraine and Israel until security at the southern border was tightened. The negotiated package would include military aid for those two countries and Taiwan, plus humanitarian assistance for Palestinians.

Trump wants the border mess to continue so he can campaign on it. But while some brave Republicans are defying the ex-president for the good of the country, Trump continues to emasculate less courageous members of his party.

House Speaker Mike Johnson jumped at his orders, saying the proposal is "dead on arrival," though the bill was yet to be released. He also wrote in a letter to House Republicans that "public opinion polls show the country has overwhelmingly sided with us on this issue."

Well, that may have been true until last week, when Republicans seemed interested in restoring stability at the border. How things have changed.

If Republican lawmakers do kill the deal, the slim Republican House majority could soon turn into a Democratic majority. Trump has a proven record of helping Republicans lose elections.

No amount of demagoguery can cover what they're doing. The public is too highly engaged on this issue to not see the extraordinary game Trump is playing and the weakness of the Republican lawmakers. And, as it happens, Biden is better at politics than he is.

It looks as though Trump has three wishes come November. The first, already stated, is that the U.S. economy collapses. That's quite unlikely at this time of cooled inflation, full employment, and record stock prices.

The second wish, obviously, is for massive disorder at the border. That he would so openly call for developments that would hurt America is a wonder to behold. What Trump's third demonic wish will be remains to be revealed — perhaps the collapse of Ukraine as a carefully wrapped gift to Vladimir Putin.

As for immigration, America ultimately needs a fine-tuned program that recognizes the need for new workers — how many and with what skills — all the while protecting the pay and benefits of the native-born and immigrants here legally. But first the border must be secured.

Biden vows to do that if the political opposition doesn't stop him. The political opposition is throwing away one of its most potent issues. Republicans have turned themselves into the party of open borders.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Joe Biden

Biden Oversees Booming Growth In Oil Production (But Clean Energy Too)

Donald Trump recently warned that Joe Biden would lead us into World War II, a conflict that ended almost 80 years ago. Another world event he may not be current on is America's boom in oil production — never mind the green energy revolution.

"We are going to drill, baby, drill," Trump said on a recent Fox News town hall.

Actually, America is now pumping oil in record amounts. The U.S. now accounts for one in every eight barrels produced in the world. Prices are coming down, too.

As for Biden's clean energy program, it foresees a transition away from planet-heating fossil fuels. It also recognizes we're not there yet.

An essential piece in the move toward green energy is a switch-over to electric vehicles from the gasoline-powered kind. This is a worldwide phenomenon that the Biden administration has joined through a variety of subsidies.

In China, EVs are expected to reach 38 percent of total car sales this year, versus 13 percent of new purchases in the U.S. China is experimenting with vehicle-to-grid technology that would, amazingly, enable cars to feed electricity back into the system when demand surges. America should take notice.

In Trump's backward ideology, clean energy programs are a "new scam business." Trump is bashing the new technology at a time when U.S. automakers have planned $100 billion in electric car investments. Apparently ignorant of new developments, he keeps saying that EVs are "too expensive" and they "don't go far enough."

Dan Neil, car columnist at The Wall Street Journal, acknowledges some past glitches with EVs but then offers an update on Trump's claims. People who actually drive one of the new models, Neil writes, are finding it "quicker, quieter, more refined and responsive, more efficient, more connected and cheaper to operate than its gas-powered equivalent. ... After a few miles in an EV, going back to internal combustion feels like returning to whale-oil lamps."

Charging has already become easier as Biden's program to build half a million public fast chargers bears fruit. Other carmakers, meanwhile, have adopted Tesla's charging standard, enabling their EVs to use Tesla's supercharging network.

"Pretty soon range anxiety will be returned to neurotics," Neil adds.

As for the prices on EVs, they are expected to plummet in short order. Tesla is expected to soon introduce a Model 2 priced at only $25,000.

But in Trump world, everything has to be turned into a culture war. U.S. automakers consider these attacks worrisome, and so should their workers.

"I never thought I would see the day when our products were so heavily politicized, but they are," Ford Motor Co.'s executive chair Bill Ford said.

By the way, Americans remain free to buy gas-powered vehicles. But many are looking at plug-in hybrids as well.

The boost in U.S. oil production is coming largely from the usual parts of oil country: Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Oklahoma. It reflects improved technology rather than an expansion in the number of rigs. In other words, companies are now extracting more oil from the same location, which means they can obtain it more cheaply. Oil producers are not complaining.

"Companies are making money and investors are making money," Bloomberg's energy columnist, Javier Blas, said. "So everyone is loving it."

The people who are not loving it are the Saudis. U.S. shale oil is growing and making money at the same time, Blas adds, and "this is what really terrorized OPEC."

Is it possible that America is reducing reliance on foreign oil while also addressing the planetary need to move toward clean energy? It is possible, and it's also happening. Biden's America is enjoying a boom in both.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump and DeSantis

How Bad A Candidate Was DeSantis? He Flunked Charm School

What can you say about the guy? That Ron DeSantis was obnoxious? That he came off as weird? His failure to replace Donald Trump as the likely Republican nominee for president seemed preordained. His mistake was copying Trump's penchant for cruelty without absorbing any of the ex-president's talents as a performer.

When they were handing out the charm, DeSantis was off drowning kittens.

The apparent rationale for the Florida governor's campaign was that he would be right-wing like Trump without the baggage of having lost an election and supporting an insurrection. But then he broke into the Samsonite store and loaded up on a set of carry-ons, garment bags and a steamer trunk.

Leaders sometimes have to be tough. They have to put forth tough policies that some won't like because certain things have to be done. DeSantis made tough decisions simply because they looked tough. Worse, they were also stupid.

Exactly why he launched a holy war against Covid vaccines remains a mystery. He even mocked Trump for his program to fast-track development of the vaccine, one of the administration's few glories.

He said about Dr. Anthony Fauci, advocate of the shots and medical adviser to President Joe Biden, "Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac." He's quite the hombre.

DeSantis pushed through a law that forbids private companies from mandating that employees be vaccinated. In another intrusion into business decisions, he backed a measure to stop cruise lines from requiring that passengers be vaccinated. This is an industry that serves many older, medically vulnerable passengers and packs them in close quarters. And there was a pandemic going on.

The annals of American politics offer few equivalents of DeSantis' attack on The Walt Disney Co. Not only was the basis for it absurd; it wasn't even explainable. Disney's "sin" was publicly disagreeing with DeSantis on some piece of legislation regarding gay people. The governor couldn't let the company disagree.

He sent the lawyers after Disney, stripping it of an agreement that the state had made giving the entertainment company special status. The argument that it gave Disney unfair power could have been made, but this was a transparent act of revenge over nonsense. DeSantis imagined he had scored some ugly points by punishing the state's largest private employer, one that's associated with family fun.

He also seemed to think that the public enjoyed his threats against Miami hoteliers for letting drag queens perform on their private property.

In trying to squeeze to Trump's right, DeSantis leaves Florida with some of the debris. To win over a pro-life minority, he made abortion nearly illegal in that state. And that means the following: Middle-class Floridians wanting to end an unwanted pregnancy can obtain an abortion elsewhere. Poor or dysfunctional women, on the other hand, are being forced to have children that they don't want and can't afford.

Abortion bans have proven to be highly unpopular even in socially conservative states. Florida's cosmopolitan mix of opinions is undoubtedly even more supportive of reproductive rights.

DeSantis signed a law letting residents carry concealed loaded weapons without a permit. Just what Florida does not need, more lunatics walking around with hidden guns. DeSantis tried to gussy up the measure by calling it "Constitutional Carry."

You wonder whether DeSantis could even get reelected governor of Florida, especially if Democrats put up a breathing candidate next time.

Trump may be corrupt, treasonous, and losing his marbles, but he knows how to entertain his crowds, whereas DeSantis hasn't a clue. After pulling out of the race, DeSantis, of course, obediently endorsed Trump.

Perhaps he can use the freed up time to repeat some grades in charm school.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

In Sex Cases, An Accusation Is Not Proof Of Guilt

In Sex Cases, An Accusation Is Not Proof Of Guilt

The French actor Gerard Depardieu is world-known as a lusty, usually charming pursuer of the carnal. He's now being accused of crimes against women, some violent in nature. A star of French cinema, Depardieu is being defended by French President Emmanuel Macron. Other supporters are former French first lady Carla Bruni, actress Charlotte Rampling and Depardieu's former partner, actress Carole Bouquet.

An accusation is not a conviction. It is common in custody battles for one parent to falsely accuse the other of child abuse. Jilted lovers are known to smear their ex-partners for revenge. Grifters make false accusations to shake "deep pockets" down for money. And some accusers are mentally unstable.

Depardieu might be guilty of serious crimes, but isn't it early to talk about stripping away his Legion of Honor medal? Depardieu denies the charges of rape and assault and, as Macron says, he deserves a presumption of innocence until a court decides otherwise.

A group leading the war against Depardieu, called MeTooMedia, responded to Macron, "You invoked the presumption of innocence, as if innocence took precedence over presumption."

Well, doesn't it?

Look, serious allegations must be investigated. But until it's established that a crime has been committed, it's only someone's word.

Depardieu is a big fat target who makes gross sexist remarks on the record. A character of enormous appetites, Depardieu is no Cary Grant, nor ever was.

But while rape is a violent crime, publicly saying crude things about a girl on a horse is not. A company would be well in its rights to dismiss an employee who did this, but then the perp would be jobless not incarcerated.

It's not against the law to be a pig, which based on Depardieu's rap sheet of filthy remarks, he may well be. Anyone who wants to boycott his movies is free to do so. Barring him from appearing in movies, however, is another matter.

Hardly a day goes by without some news report that "So-and-so has been accused of sexual harassment." Therefore, he must step down or be blacklisted or hand someone a bag of money. And it's alarming how many allegedly smart people fail to ask whether the individual was guilty and, if so, whether the charge involved truly serious misconduct.

When Joe Biden was running for president in 2020, a random woman accused him of grabbing her privates. What followed were urgent calls for him to leave the race, not so much from Republicans but from Democrats backing one of Biden's competitors for the nomination.

"In an ideal world, the Democrats would not have nominated a candidate whose history included guerrilla-nuzzling women and a possible sexual assault," Jennifer Senior wrote in The New York Times back in 2020.

All this before taking a close look at Biden's accuser. Tara Reade had a history of knocking on the door of her landlord to ask for emotional support. She often didn't pay her rent. She also had a thing for Vladimir Putin and eventually defected to Russia. Yet on the basis of this troubled woman's unverified accusations, Biden's campaign could have fallen.

It's not just the veracity of the accusation that needs questioning; it is also the accusation itself. Biden did "nuzzle" the back of at least one woman's head. He shouldn't have not done that, but characterizing that dated fatherly gesture as a "guerrilla" attack was hysterical.

One of the biggest raps against Depardieu, according to Le Monde, is that, on a trip to North Korea, he was heard "making explicit sexual comments in the presence of a female interpreter." That was no reason for a wax museum in Paris to immediately remove his figure.

Accusations are not facts. How about waiting for facts?

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why Democracy May Depend On An Orderly Southern Border

Why Democracy May Depend On An Orderly Southern Border

Joe Biden surely knows that chaos at the border threatens his reelection. America's future as a democracy can't wait for the much-needed overhaul of the immigration system. November is approaching, and Biden must take radical steps to deal with the crisis.

Let's be clear. Donald Trump would destroy America as we know it. There is no way I would vote for someone who would turn our beautiful country into a tawdry dictatorship. But that's me. Scenes of disorder could peel away voters otherwise well-disposed to the president.

As it now stands, a flood of migrants cross the southern border illegally, intentionally get caught and claim persecution. They are then allowed to stay pending an asylum hearing, the date of which can be years away. The great majority are obviously coming for economic reasons, but rather than apply through the normal channels, they take advantage of our broken asylum process.

There are "advocates" who will threaten Biden if he curbs the asylum program. Their spokespeople seem to have office passes on CNN and permanent bunks on MSNBC.

But I am hard-pressed to find anyone who buys the advocates' arguments, and I'm surrounded by liberals. Their cities reel under the weight of new arrivals, many with families in tow, needing to be fed and housed.

The reality recently hit home when a Christian Brother, among the most humane men I know, said that he helps refugees but is frustrated by the masses coming over. Nor are open borders, or the perception of them, the key to Latino support that the advocates claim it is. If that were the case, then polls wouldn't be showing Trump gaining support among Hispanics and Biden losing it.

Biden is running a delightful economy; thank you, Joe, for the record stock prices. For Americans with few skills, however, waves of poor migrants threaten their jobs and suppress wages. Immigration is an economic issue.

One can argue that this country needs workers, and here they are. But Americans should be able to decide who and how many come in.

And it's no longer just impoverished central Americans or Venezuelans who are crossing illegally. It's middle-class Chinese. There's a recent surge Africans who fly to Central America and make their way to our southern border with plans to enter illegally.

One African told a reporter at a San Diego migrant center, "Getting into the United States is certain compared to European countries, and so I came." So much for the deterrence power of the U.S. immigration laws.

Upon arriving, the asylum claimants are not allowed to work, hence you have these encampments on the sidewalks. Destination cities like Denver, Chicago, and New York must deal with the expense of feeding and housing the arrivals, often with families in tow.

Denver Mayor Mike Johnston argues that his city has a labor shortage and granting these migrants work permits would fill that need while also letting them pay their own way. But here's the problem: Jobs are why most of them cross the border. Providing them with employment only makes the job magnet stronger.

For all his nasty talk about immigrants, Trump does not get off the hook on this matter. He was an enthusiastic employer of illegal labor, never built that wall with Mexico and refused to punish U.S. employers for hiring undocumented workers. Barack Obama deported more people than Trump did. The advocates went after Obama, too, and, if we remember, Obama won reelection.

Immigration is good for the country as long as it is orderly. And defeating Trumpism is essential for the country. Can we count on Biden's excellent political instincts to do what he must to win in November?

Froma Harrop is a longtime editor and columnist who formerly served on the Providence Journal editorial board. She has written for such diverse publications as The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar and Institutional Investor.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

New York City

What Do We Really Mean By 'Affordable Housing'?

It's being said by conservatives and liberals: America faces a crisis of affordable housing. And the way out of it is to build more houses.

Wouldn't it make more sense to first understand the extent of the problem? Real estate interests have sucked in advocates for the poor in their YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard) campaigns. Their mission is often to bulldoze through the zoning laws that ensure a neighborhood's quality of life.

Many residents in America's homeless encampments can't afford anything. New units might provide rent relief for some working-class tenants, down on their luck. Others have problems that go beyond matters of supply and demand.

YIMBY schemes can get pretty outrageous. A developer in New York City recently punched through local zoning laws to build an 80-story billionaire's skyscraper near Manhattan's staid Sutton Place. The area was already full of 20-story apartment buildings, but this guy got permission to break through the height limits in part by offering to create some "affordable" apartments — which happened to be miles away in Queens.

In the meantime, he displaced about 80 families, most of whom lived in the old walkups that actually did provide housing at working-class rents. Often gone too on such projects are the little street-level shops, the florists and the shoe repairs, which preserve a sense of place.

Conservatives frequently tout Houston as a model for affordable housing, crediting its lax zoning laws. The larger reason is that Houston is surrounded by Texas. It can spread into the prairies and gently rolling hills. San Francisco is surrounded on three sides by water.

What happens in this country when people feel priced out of neighborhoods is they create new neighborhoods. High rents in Manhattan sent younger workers into neglected parts of Brooklyn that have since been revived.

Gen Z, meanwhile, is reportedly looking at smaller cities, where they can find more space at less cost. The destinations include Oklahoma City; Birmingham, Alabama; Indianapolis; Cincinnati; and Louisville, Kentucky. That trend should take pressure off the very expensive big cities while breathing new life into some very pleasant metros with fine housing stock, places that earlier generations had bypassed.

In the suburbs, there has been such a thing as exclusionary zoning — single-family homes only on large lots — originally intended to keep out poorer people. And some zoning rules that forbid duplexes (two-family homes) make little sense. Converting a garage into a granny apartment shouldn't be a problem. There are also good arguments for filling in some low-density areas, especially near public transportation.

It does not follow, however, that suburbs must submit to any new tower that destroys the small-town feel of their downtowns. Building booms can destroy the historic structures that make a place special.

This is happening all over the world. In Cairo, for example, working-class neighborhoods are being bulldozed and replaced by concrete high-rises.

"If you were being invaded, all what you'd care about is your monuments, your trees, your history, your culture," Mamdouh Sakr, an Egyptian architect and urbanist, said. "And now, it's all being destroyed, without any reason, without any explanation."

Back in the U.S. housing market, rent increases have moderated of late — to the point where economists predict housing should soon bring the inflation numbers down. Falling interest rates are lowering the cost of buying a house. New construction and incentives for some owners to fix up old spaces are indeed adding to supply.

So let's not level neighborhoods in the interests of massive projects. Some ways to address the cost of housing will involve private decisions. Some may involve public subsidies. They certainly shouldn't require handing our Main Streets to the real estate barons.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why That Salacious GOP Scandal In Florida Surprises Exactly Nobody

Why That Salacious GOP Scandal In Florida Surprises Exactly Nobody

Forgive us for not displaying shock that a Moms for Liberty co-founder and her husband apparently engaged in group sex. Or that sex partner No. 3 had accused Bridget Ziegler's husband, Christian, of raping her. Or that Christian Ziegler headed the Florida Republican Party. Or that Bridget was also a member of the Sarasota County School Board and Gov. Ron DeSantis put her on an oversight board to harass Disney.

You could set your clock by it.

The bigger surprise is always how groups like Moms for Liberty get away so long with attacking teachers. Sure, some educators have gone overboard on woke pedantry, but they remain pillars of civilization. School districts are hard-pressed to keep the good ones.

Moms for Liberty was really a front for Donald Trump, so it all fits in. Members posing in photos with Proud Boys was something of a giveaway. The true mission of this "parental rights group" was to scoop up cheap votes from parents genuinely concerned about their children's moral upbringing.

The Zieglers must have gotten a chuckle toying with the chumps as they frolicked in orgiastic style. For the record, Christian says he didn't rape the woman, though that denial doesn't seem to have gone far. The unnamed third wheel said she was willing to have sex with both Zieglers but not Christian alone. Christian apparently didn't like being thus restricted, and so, the woman said, he came uninvited to her apartment and sexually assaulted her.

Florida's Republican Party has stripped Ziegler of his chairmanship, with the vice chairman telling him, "You cannot morally lead the Republican Party forward."

Which could fool the rest of us. If sexual propriety of the old-school variety were really the heartfelt concern that morality-minded conservatives say it is, then they would not be voting for a twice-divorced libertine who arranged sex with a porn star while his third wife was pregnant.

"I think apologizing makes you weak," Christian said, parroting the master.

Without a doubt, the Moms' aggressive behavior at school board meetings earned them outsized attention in the media. And that lured exhibitionists to the mikes where they could abuse school administrators, treat teachers with insolence and flash their ignorance with that what-you-gonna-do-about-it attitude.

Some right-wing school board members in Temecula, a city in California's Riverside County, got their mugs on "Fox and Friends" after passing a resolution condemning "critical race theory." The interesting part was that CRT wasn't being taught in the Temecula public schools.

This parental rights business is polling poorly among independents, and some self-respecting Republicans. "We don't want culture wars," a parent who worked for Orange County Republicans told Politico. "We don't want Fox News appearances. Our schools are not ideological battlegrounds."

In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor of mostly Democratic Virginia partly on a vow to ban the teaching of CRT. That virtually none of that was happening in Virginia public schools seemed to have escaped notice. The following year Democrats swept the state legislative elections. Abortion had overtaken CRT as a matter of voter concern.

At least one Moms for Liberty leader halfway defended Bridget by arguing that the Zieglers' romp was conducted in the privacy of the bedroom. She did have a point. Now extend that understanding to the LGBTQ groups the Moms made war on.

Must we feel sorry for the self-described cultural conservatives who got taken in by the Zieglers? No, their role in American politics is to play the dupe. Some other con artist is surely waiting in the wings to take over.

In July, Trump praised Moms for Liberty as a "grassroots juggernaut." We always knew they were his people, though never in ways we imagined.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Ceators.

Why Blaming Bad Policy On 'White Men' Is Wrong -- And Politically Stupid

Why Blaming Bad Policy On 'White Men' Is Wrong -- And Politically Stupid

An effective way of handing elections to right-wing Republicans is to label large blocs of voters as wrong by virtue of their gender, race, ethnicity, age. Those are physical characteristics, not walking opinions.

Yet this self-destructive habit is routinely practiced by some on the left, especially the feminist left. They casually cite "white men" as THE reason reproductive rights are under attack.

Example: Mika Brzezinski is on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" condemning Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton as an "aging, white man" over and over. The issue is his role in depriving Kate Cox an in-state abortion during a futile pregnancy. Her fetus has a fatal diagnosis; the pregnancy, if carried to term, could also hurt Cox's health and possibly her ability to have more children. She has been to the emergency room four times in the last month.

It shouldn't be hard to condemn the cruelty to which Paxton would subject this 31-year-old mother of two. And it's surely fair game to mention Paxton's long rap sheet of bribery, securities fraud, abuse of office, adultery and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Or to note that he was impeached this year with bipartisan support by the Republican-controlled Texas House. He's well on his way to checking all the boxes for the Seven Deadly Sins.

But being white, male and 60 years old are not sins. And they're definitely not arguments in this horror story. Texas Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar votes against abortion rights. Would Mika condemn him as a "brown man"? I don't think so.

Model and actress Emily Ratajkowski famously wrote on Instagram, "This week, 25 old white men voted to ban abortion in Alabama even in cases of incest and rape." People magazine's decision to carry this problematic quote was surely tied to the stir Ratajkowski made attaching a photo of her nearly naked self and come-hither look in her eyes.

This was at bottom a cheesy stab for attention. Fine, but couldn't Ratajkowski, in the interests of the cause, have spared us all the racist, sexist, ageist commentary?

Donald Trump is going to town with these irritating denunciations. Of course he is. These gratuitous attacks on white men are the tiny nail on which Trump and his flying monkey, Stephen Miller, are hanging bags of votes wrenched from workers whose interests are very much opposed to their program. Trump is once again vowing to kill the Affordable Care Act and his ultraright allies are setting their sights on Social Security.

What is the point of alienating any group that should be voting with you? It can be hard to sell the economic case to people who feel attacked for being who they are.

Let it be noted that the Supreme Court justices who made abortion a constitutional right in 1973 were, with the exception of Thurgood Marshall, all white. And they were all men. Their decision on Roe v. Wade was overturned last year with the help of a female justice, Amy Coney Barrett.

I'd like less counting of races, but a claim based on numbers can deserve a hearing. One can say with accuracy that the architectural profession is mostly white and male. But what you do with that fact has ramifications.

A lot more data must go into concluding that architects who are not male or white are being kept out of the profession. A lot of factors go into choice of career, and there hardly seems a job category these days in which people who are not white and/or not male are not taking part.

Arguing a position based on the holder's race, gender or age isn't just dumb politically. It's no argument at all.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

When Will Anti-Vaxxers Face The Consequences Of Their Lies?

When Will Anti-Vaxxers Face The Consequences Of Their Lies?

"Medical Freedom" crusaders are trying to end vaccination requirements for schoolchildren. Places where they succeed, epidemiologists warn, will, for starters, become overrun with measles, a disease that was virtually eliminated thanks to vaccines.

Measles used to kill up to 500 people a year, while polio left more than 15,000 paralyzed. Parts of America that stop requiring vaccinations will be turning their clocks back to an unhappy past. And as it happens, those parts tend to be right-wing Republican.

No major religion objects to vaccines, but anti-vax activists summon religious objections to them nonetheless. Or they jump on a useful anecdote here or there.

One letter writer to The Wall Street Journal complained that months after getting a Covid booster, "I contracted Covid."

You don't say. So did I. But neither of us ended up in a hospital or the morgue. The shots make the disease less deadly.

A study by top epidemiologists estimates that nearly a quarter-million Americans who died of Covid would have survived had they received the Covid vaccine.

The letter writer was giving a thumbs up to Journal columnist Allysia Finley, who has turned casting aspersions on the Covid vaccines into a second career.

One of her columns, titled "Why Vaccine Skepticism is Growing on the Right" blames the medical establishment for many conservatives' refusal to get shots.

Perhaps ignorance, stupidity and laziness are to blame. Just a suggestion.

Anyhow, Finley writes, "Authorities no doubt worry that alerting the public to potential safety risks could discourage vaccination, but their lack of transparency and dismissal of critics fuels the distrust in vaccines."

Oh, so it's the authorities' fault that they didn't alert the public to safety risks that political wingnuts make up or highly exaggerate.

You know what political ballpark you're playing in when a writer accuses "the self-professed expert class" of "sneering" at anti-vaxxers.

I don't know about you, but experts, self-professed or quietly acknowledged, are the ones I follow. That's not to say that horoscopes don't give you a good idea of the future.

Do the experts really "sneer" at the anti-vaxxers, as Finley charges? If so, let me join them.

In January, Finley's column asked "Are Vaccines Fueling New Covid Variants?" Note the weasel use of a question mark to cover the writer's rear end from a ridiculous contention.

And it is ridiculous. As Dr. David Wohl, an infectious disease specialist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine told CBS, "The virus is evolving because we keep transmitting it to each other."

In other words, "Vaccines don't fuel those variants; unvaccinated people do."

If right wingers choose to not protect their health or even their lives by refusing to get some simple shots, there will be fewer right wingers. A respected study found that early in the pandemic, deaths from Covid were about the same for Democrats and Republicans. Once the vaccine came out, though, excess deaths for Republicans were almost double those for Democrats. Perhaps it's in the right's interest to keep its voters alive.

Vaccine mandates are good in that they create a herd immunity that slows the spread of disease. Even though younger people infected with these viruses are at less risk of dying, they can pass them onto grandparents. That said, between 2021 and 2022, over 1,300 American children did die from Covid. And 20% of them had been healthy beforehand.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is now suing Pfizer over "misleading" claims about the efficacy of its Covid vaccine. He accused the drugmaker of intimidating critics by issuing social media posts that call out vaccine misinformation.

Imagine calling out vaccine misinformation. What terrible thing will those experts do next?

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why Americans Should Stop Idolizing The Ivy League

Why Americans Should Stop Idolizing The Ivy League

After Hamas massacred 1,200 Israelis, gang-raped teens and kidnapped hundreds of innocents, 30 student groups at Harvard issued a statement reading, "We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence."

The anger that followed went beyond this dismissal of Isis-type barbarity. It pursued Harvard president Claudine Gay after she issued a mealy-mouthed response.

There was bit of a turnaround when prestigious law firms and other employers started rescinding job offers to students involved in these groups. Some companies may have objected to what they saw as overt displays of antisemitism. They may have also been shocked by the TikTok-level display of ignorance of the conflict's complexities, which these alleged top students had put on full display.

The main subject here isn't the current Mideast tragedy, but let us note: Students have every right to say stupid things, and employers have every right not to hire students who say stupid things. As for college administrators frightened of the children, that's a problem for the colleges.

This is about the undeserved reverence shown to these colleges no better than others with lesser brand names. How many times have my new acquaintances used the H-word to elevate their ordinary views?

Without a doubt, brilliant minds have attended and taught at Harvard, Yale, and the rest. But so have many mediocrities whose rich parents hired consultants to turn their offspring into the perfect packages these institutions want. That meant tutors to ensure high scores alongside some angle, such as prowess in a sport or carefully selected do-gooding.

Many in the media play the Ivy worship game. Reporters commonly put "Harvard-educated" or "Yale-educated" in front of some expert's name. If the person being interviewed went to the University of Nebraska or, say, Colgate, the alma mater is left a mystery. Never mind if the interviewee's less-glamorous school exceled in the area of expertise they were writing about.

My late husband, a senior editor at Princeton Press, set me straight on the hot air that fills the balloons of Ivy puffery. (I went to New York University.) Himself a product of elite education from prep school on up, he talked of seeking out writers at small colleges in the Dakotas who were actually doing original things. He found the professors who had spent their entire lives climbing the grades, from kindergarten to Ph.D. with hardly a break, tended toward the immature.

The most interesting intellectuals had held regular, non-academic jobs at some point: They had worked on a road crew or run a shoe store or painted houses. He was grateful to have been shaken out of his assumptions by time spent in the Marines. (He laughed about having to hide his background as an "Ivy flower" while being schooled on Parris Island.)

If these latest displays of cowardice by administrators at Harvard, Columbia and Yale vacuum up some of the fairy dust the worshippers sprinkle around these schools, so much the better. And that goes double if they prompt some rich alumni to move their donations elsewhere. How about funding organizations that help kids from struggling backgrounds get a foothold in a secure life?

One of the reasons so many super rich graduates give multimillions to the richest colleges is the same reason so many parents want their children to get into them. It gives them an opportunity to hobnob with other rich people or those whom they consider socially desirable.

"Should Ivy League Schools Randomly Select Students?" was the subject of a recent essay about how the COVID shutdowns gave the well-to-do an extra leg-up in these admissions. The more interesting question would have been, "When Can Everyone Stop Worshipping the Ivy League?"

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.