From the left: How Journos Help Hamas
“As I observe the cluelessness of Hamas apologists worldwide, I realize a mea culpa may be due” from the media, confesses former Associated Press chief editor Dan Perry at Newsweek, of the “basic failure to communicate” about “a jihadi outfit.”
“Hamas and its accomplices share none of the values that drive the modern world, from respect for human rights to freedom of speech to the rule of law.”
“Are so many Westerners, especially Gen Zers, too feeble-minded to get this?”
A “major factor is that they are not being informed.” The media’s “normalization of a monstrosity like Hamas” is “malpractice.”
“Have I been guilty of it myself? All I can say is, like” Oskar “Schindler in the film, I feel I did not do enough.”
Conservative: Homeownership Out of Reach
“Why don’t Americans feel better about the economy and give Joe Biden more credit?” muses National Review’s Jim Geraghty.
Well: “Homeownership affordability fell to its lowest level since the 1980s last year as mortgage rates reached a 23-year high.”
Home prices are “soaring” and related ones also “keep rising and show little sign of abating.”
And “property taxes increased by 4.1 percent nationwide from 2022 to 2023, but some cities had enormous jumps” with Indianapolis going up 19% and Charlotte, NC, 31.5%.
One study concludes “that home prices in 99 percent” of 575 surveyed US counties were “beyond the reach of the average income earner.”
Yet Democrats are stumped why Americans aren’t “appreciating Joe Biden and his miraculous works.”
Elex watch: A Racial Realignment?
“American politics may be on the verge of a racial realignment,” cheers Patrick Ruffini at The Wall Street Journal: Polls show Donald Trump nearing “a majority among Hispanic voters and as much as 20% of the black vote.”
While support among white voters has changed little since 2020, “shifts among nonwhite voters could decide the election.” A “modest realignment” would hand Trump a win.
Republicans need “aggressive investments to register and mobilize new voters.”
Move beyond supporting “voting by mail” and “legal ballot harvesting” to engaging “younger nonwhite voters, men especially, driving home their shift to the right.”
A “nonwhite realignment” favoring the GOP “would break a Democratic coalition that relies on the support of culturally conservative nonwhites.”
With “the data showing this core pillar of the Democratic coalition teetering, the time for a firm push is now.”
Gaza war: Biden’s ‘Cease-Fire’ Cheap Shot
“It was the offhand nature” of President Biden’s “Just call for a cease-fire” instruction to Israel that “felt most jarring,” fumes Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill.
“Imagine the quantity of brass neck it requires for the leader of a nation that has waged bloody war” for the past 20 years “to lecture Israel about its fight against an enemy that poses a very real existential threat.”
Indeed, “Hamas has promised more pogroms”; is Israel to “let this murderous movement regroup and rearm?”
The answer “will likely impact Israel’s very existence. ‘Just call for a cease-fire’ is the cheap, shallow rambling of an out-of-touch old president who’s luckily never known the threat of a neo-fascist army on his doorstep.”
Libertarian: Americans’ Poor Tax Deal
“Why do Americans resent the tax burden?” asks Reason’s J.D. Tuccille.
Well, “taxes are compulsory,” and “adding insult to injury is that many people are not happy about what they get in return for those forced expenditures.”
Per an AP-NORC survey, “About a third of adults say they are receiving poor value from the taxes they pay, while less than a quarter believe they receive good value from paying these taxes.”
Tuccille’s gloss: “When people say they get ‘poor value’ for their taxes, they may mean not just inefficiency and bureaucracy, but things they consider wrong.“
Plus, “so much federal spending is financed by deficits and debt — borrowing — that will have to be paid at some point in the future by taxpayers.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board