Dems scapegoat Schumer, Oct. 7 broke civilization and other commentary

From the right: Dems Scapegoat Schumer

“Seemingly overnight, almost everybody in the Democratic Party is rhetorically whacking” Senate Dem leader Chuck Schumer,” writes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. But the fact is, he “got a weak hand” — not that “he played the hand he was dealt particularly badly.” Had Schumer “encouraged Democrats to filibuster the recent spending bill, he and his party would have effectively accepted responsibility for shutting down the government.” Democrats “probably would have been forced to accept the same deal” eventually anyway. “Schumer is a Senate minority leader with little leverage,” but “what really bedevils Democrats is that Republicans in the House of Representatives . . . have somehow figured out a way to pull together and pass legislation,” while their party is floundering.

Mideast beat: Oct. 7 Broke Civilization

“In 2023, a fascist army burnt Jews to death,” thunders Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill: Ram and Lili Itamari, burned beyond recognition. “This detail from the new UK parliamentary report” on the atrocities “leaves no doubt”: That day “was a savage rupturing of human civilisation itself”; “1,182 people were murdered and more than 4,000 were wounded. Of the dead, 863, or 73 per cent, were civilians.” “The methods of murder included shooting, burning, asphyxiation, grenade explosions and missile attacks.” Many victims were subjected to mutilation and sexual violence. “This was not the Wretched of the Earth ‘breaking out’ of their ‘prison camp’ to wreak desperate revenge.” It was “a highly disciplined act of fascist terror with the express purpose of killing as many Jews as possible.”

Campus watch: Elite Universities’ Ugly Cynicism

“Elite schools are under enormous fire from the Trump administration,” but, argues prof Jonathan Zimmerman at The Hill, their real problem “isn’t racism, or antisemitism or wokeism. It’s cynicism.” At his own University of Pennsylvania, for example, “50 percent of graduates enter one of two fields: consulting or finance.” So “despite what you hear on Fox News,” the academy is not producing many actual “Marxists” but rather “cynics capable of mouthing a few progressive pieties on their way to Wall Street.” Instead, universities should return to their roots. “Humanities courses ask students to think about what makes for a good life and for a good world.” “And does anyone think that sending more Penn students to consulting and finance will make a better world?”

Eye on Albany: Hit the Brakes on Medicaid

As Congress prepares “to reduce future federal Medicaid spending,” the Empire Center’s Bill Hammond warns, it “would be prudent” for Albany to “hit the brakes on spending now,” rather than “go forward with a budget that could balloon state Medicaid spending by 17 percent or more.” Gov. Hochul’s claim that the House Republicans’ budget plan would “rip” health care away from vulnerable populations are a “gross exaggeration” — as “more than half of the state’s enrollees have incomes above the federal poverty level.” But if lawmakers want “to protect vulnerable Medicaid recipients,” they could “focus their cost-cutting on the substantial share of spending that is not directly related to patient care.” Albany should cease “subsidizing money-losing providers,” “rewarding political allies” and “covering the well-to-do.”

Energy expert: The ‘Transition’ That Isn’t

Former Veep Al Gore, like numerous other climate warriors, claims the “energy transition is inevitable,” notes City Journal’s Mark P. Mills. Yet despite the $9 trillion spent on it globally over the last decade, the “renewable share of final energy consumption is slowly advancing at 0.3%-0.6% per year.” Some “ ‘unstoppable’ juggernaut”! In fact, virtually “no energy transition has ever occurred in history”: The “primary energy sources for millennia” have been around for ages, and though we’ve “seen reductions in the share of energy supplied by these sources,” the idea of an “energy transition” implies an end to their use. So Team Trump’s war on “the Green New Scam” shines “a welcome light” on massive wasteful spending in “pursuit of the unachievable.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board