18 NEWS Talking points
Sc
reens
hot:^ E
llen,^ GettyQNineteen counties have
voted for the winning
presidential candidate in
each of the last 10 presi-
dential elections since
1980, backing Republicans
six times and Demo-
crats four. These swing
counties—four of which
are in Wisconsin—largely
have lower education
levels and less diversity
than the rest of the nation.
All but one have median
household incomes below
the national average.
The Wall Street Journal
QThe GOP has spent $6.
mil lion on impeachment-
themed advertising on
TV, Google, and Face-
book since Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) announced an
inquiry on Sept. 24. Demo-
crats, meanwhile, have
spent $2.4 million, and
progressive organizations
are trying to raise more.
Politico.comQFor the first time, a mar-
athoner has completed
a 26.2-mile run in under
two hours. Eight-time
marathon winner Eliud
Kipchoge of Kenya fin-
ished the course in 1 hour
59 minutes 40 seconds
in Vienna, but because
he ran alone on a course
designed for speed, with
an electric timing car and
human pacesetters, it will
not stand as a record.
The New York Times
QU.S. power plants are
expected to consume less
coal in 2020 than they
have in any year since- Despite President
Trump’s efforts to revive
the industry, coal demand
has declined 27 percent
since 2016.
CNN.com
DeGeneres : Being ‘kind’ to Bush
“Nobody should be friends
with George W. Bush,” not
even kindness guru Ellen
DeGeneres, said Sarah Jones
in NYMag.com. The les-
bian trailblazer was spotted
recently laughing it up with
Bush at a Dallas Cowboys
game, bringing a storm of
criticism from fellow gays
and liberals. On her talk
show, DeGeneres defended
her decision to hang out
with Dubya. “Be kind to everyone,” she said.
“Just because I don’t agree with someone on
everything doesn’t mean that I’m not going to
be friends with them.” Sorry, but that’s what we
tell kids who won’t “sit next to the class misfit
at lunch,” not how we should regard a presi-
dent who “twiddled his thumbs” as hundreds
drowned in New Orleans during Hurricane
Katrina, fought against “basic human rights” for
gay people, invaded Iraq on false pretenses, and
authorized torture. Bush should be treated like
a “pariah” not because he’s conservative, said
Mehdi Hasan in TheIntercept.com, but because
he’s a war criminal who caused hundreds of thou-
sands of deaths.Sorry, but “sitting next to a person with whom
you disagree” doesn’t make you a sellout, said
Dava Guerin in The Philadelphia Inquirer. In adeeply polarized country
where hatred is rampant,
it was heartwarming to see
Ellen and her wife Portia
Di Rossi “sharing a laugh”
with George and Laura
Bush. It’s just as touching
to witness George’s warm
friendship with Michelle
Obama. Yet liberals insist
Bush is “unfit for human
warmth,” said Phil Boas in
The Arizona Republic. But
if he’s a war criminal, then so is Barack Obama,
who authorized more than 500 drone strikes esti-
mated to have killed hundreds of civilians. Ellen
and Bush both deserve credit for signaling “an
easing of the culture wars.”It may be easy for Ellen to forgive Bush now that
she’s rich, famous, and married, said Laura Brad-
ley in VanityFair.com. But lots of LGBTQ people
do not enjoy that level of security and find it hard
to forget that Bush fiercely opposed gay rights
during the eight years of his presidency. He even
supported a constitutional “marriage amend-
ment” that would have forever banned same-sex
marriages. That’s no mere difference in “beliefs.”
When one person insists that another should not
have the same basic rights, and uses the vast pow-
ers of the presidency to limit those rights, their
differences can’t be laughed away.Noted
California has entered a “new dark age,” said
Marcos Bretón in The Sacramento Bee. Last
week, the state’s largest public utility, Pacific Gas
and Electric (PG&E), left millions of people in the
dark after shutting off power to 738,000 homes
and businesses in the northern part of the state.
Amid an ongoing drought, PG&E said the black-
out was necessary to avoid “power lines tumbling
in high winds and igniting cataclysmic wildfires.”
Schools and universities shuttered, traffic snarled,
and one man died after his oxygen machine
stopped working. In Los Angeles, a wildfire cov-
ering 8,000 acres did break out, forcing 100,
people to be evacuated. For California, this is all
part of “a new normal.” With severe, prolonged
droughts now common, wildfires have increased
fivefold since the early 1970s. “Climate change
isn’t tomorrow. Climate change is now.”Fires and blackouts need not be “the new nor-
mal,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial.
Californians are “living like it’s 1899” precisely
because their “overlords in Sacramento” over-
reacted to the threat of climate change. For years,
PG&E “skimped on safety upgrades and repairs
while pumping billions into green energy and
electric-car subsidies” to please Democrats in theStatehouse. The utility paid, by Credit Suisse’s
estimate, $2.2 billion more annually than it
should have for contracts with renewable energy
developers. Meanwhile, fierce environmental
opposition to logging and managed burns has
scattered 147 million dead trees across a land-
scape parched by a “seven-year drought.” It’s easy
to blame the blackout on climate change, but “a
perfect storm of bad policies” is the real culprit.There’s plenty of blame to go around, said the
Los Angeles Times. Yes, state authorities offi-
cially blamed PG&E for last year’s Camp Fire
that killed 85 people and destroyed the town of
Paradise. But the utility didn’t approve all the
housing development in high-risk, wooded areas
or mismanage the state forests, and it didn’t
cause climate change. “This bitter meal has been
years in the making by many cooks.” Scientists
have been sounding the alarm on climate change
for decades, said Justin Gillis in The New York
Times. But “we did not listen.” We continued to
elect climate-change deniers to high office. We
burned “cheap and convenient” fossil fuels for
our cars and for electricity. “Now we suffer the
consequences.” Expect the situation to keep get-
ting worse, unless our policies change.California: Darkness, fire, and climate change
Bush, DeGeneres: Pals