TNS Op-Ed Budget for Friday, Jan. 6, 2023

Updated at 4:30 a.m. ET (0930 UTC).

TNS FORUM

Commentary: Is there something about Americans that makes us football addicts?

FOOTBALL-VIOLENCE-COMMENTARY:LA — I teach a course on the intersection of sports and religion in North America, and I ask students whether there is something about American society that draws us to the violence of football. Why, for instance, despite the NFL’s best efforts, has American football not caught on elsewhere in the world, whereas by most metrics it is America’s most popular game?

Sure, violence erupts from time to time in other sports — the consequence of a beanball pitch or an inadvertent collision in the heat of competition. Hockey certainly has its share of violence, but unlike that sport, violence is scripted into the game of football itself, as we were reminded seeing Damar Hamlin collapse during Monday night’s game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals.

777 words by Randall Balmer, Los Angeles Times. MOVED

PHOTOS

Commentary: US COVID-19 deaths are still high, but let’s learn from forecasters’ mistakes

CORONAVIRUS-DEATHS-COMMENTARY:TB — In a recent NFL game, the Indianapolis Colts led the Minnesota Vikings 33-0 at halftime. At that point, Las Vegas was offering odds better than 100-1 the Colts would win, but the Vikings staged a furious second-half rally and won on a field goal in overtime. It was one of the biggest comebacks in NFL history and proved once again that it is not always possible to predict the outcome of an event before it ends.

The same is true of the COVID-19 pandemic as it enters its fourth year. In May 2020, Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget and journalist David Plotz wrote: “Back in January, the United States and South Korea each identified their first confirmed coronavirus case on the same day. South Korea responded immediately and competently, by testing, tracing, and isolating cases and getting ahead of the epidemic. The United States … never marshaled the strong federal response that could have slowed the outbreak before it really got rolling. Three months later … South Korea is close to exterminating the virus.”

909 words by Cory Franklin and Robert Weinstein, Chicago Tribune. MOVED

PHOTOS

Commentary: How to save all that water from the atmospheric river

CALIF-WATER-COMMENTARY:LA — California has seen so much rain in the last few weeks that farm fields are inundated and normally dry creeks and drainage ditches have become torrents of water racing toward the ocean. At the same time, most of the state is still in severe drought.

All that runoff raises the question — why can’t more rainwater be collected and stored for the long, dry spring and summer when it’s needed?

914 words by Andrew Fisher, Los Angeles Times. MOVED

PHOTOS

Commentary: 'Wokeness' at the Fed could easily create another banking crisis

FED-HERITAGE-COMMENTARY:MCT — You expect your money to be safe in a bank, but if the Federal Reserve gets its way, that may not be the case soon.

That’s because the Fed, which has a tremendous amount of regulatory power over the nation’s financial institutions, has begun using its authority to put politics before fiscal stability. If the Fed’s New Year’s resolution was to destabilize America’s financial system, it’s off to a great start.

747 words by E. J. Antoni, The Heritage Foundation. MOVED

PHOTOS

Commentary: Loyal opposition

SANTOS-DEMOCRATS-COMMENTARY:FUL — On Nov. 8, 2022, in a major Republican upset, a relative political newcomer with an almost Hollywoodesque life story won election to Congress in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. To the surprise and elation of his party’s leadership, he flipped a key seat that Democrats had held for two decades.

The winner, George Devolder Santos, only 34, was, according to his campaign bio, “a proud American Jew,” the son of Brazilian immigrants and descended from Ukrainian grandparents who had fled the Holocaust. Santos was openly gay and a self-made millionaire who, after graduating from Baruch University in 2010, worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs before striking out on his own and making big money in real estate. If he could be a fictional character, he wrote, he would choose Captain America.

1088 words by Lawrence Goldstone, The Fulcrum. MOVED

PHOTOS

COLUMNS

Will Bunch: On 2nd anniversary of Jan. 6, Trump’s disciples succeed in shutting down the Capitol

BUNCH-COLUMN:PH — At least on Jan. 6, 2021, the insurrectionists on Capitol Hill had to push aside some flimsy metal barricades before they could carry out their assault on the seat of U.S. governance. Nearly two years later, the 20 or so GOP heirs to the toxic legacy of their patron saint, Donald Trump, didn’t even have to pass through metal detectors to bring the U.S. House of Representatives to a longer and probably more damaging shutdown than Trump’s failed coup.

It’s way too fitting that — in a moment of a historic leadership vacuum — no one even knows exactly who ordered this week’s removal of the magnetometers meant to provide an added layer of security in the days after 2021′s violent assault, which left scores of wounded cops and resulted in at least five deaths. For now, the only harm is symbolic. Metal detectors, after all, might catch the flagpoles or fire extinguishers that disorganized yahoos used to shut down Congress for 10 hours in that first uprising. But we don’t yet have the technology to detect what has now paralyzed Washington for three days and counting in 2023: toxic narcissism.

1462 words by Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer. MOVED

PHOTOS

(Moved Thursday.)

Mark Z. Barabak: In the desert, history blooms as Arizona tops records with a fifth female governor

BARABAK-COLUMN:LA — Forget, for a happy moment, Arizona's ungodly heat and the abundance of wackadoodles who've made it a thriving center of election denialism and other political buffoonery.

The state, which has a proud history of going its own way, boasts another, more salutary distinction: When Democrat Katie Hobbs was inaugurated Thursday, it marked the formal installation of Arizona's fifth female governor, a number that easily surpasses that of any other state.

847 words by Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times. MOVED

PHOTOS

Robin Abcarian: Nepo babies beware. You didn't hit a triple if you were born on third base

ABCARIAN-COLUMN:LA — If you live on the Westside of Los Angeles and have a child in private school around here — PS 1 in Santa Monica, maybe, or Windward in Mar Vista — you have almost certainly had encounters with "nepo babies," kids of famous parents who have gone on or will go on to fame in the entertainment industry themselves.

Although the zippy term "nepo baby" only recently entered the lexicon, the idea that the sons and daughters of celebrities get a leg up in their parents' world is nothing new. It's as old as the silver screen itself.

1057 words by Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times. MOVED

PHOTOS

Faye Flam: No, vaccines aren’t making new COVID variants worse

FLAM-COLUMN:BLO — A new COVID-19 variant called XBB.1.5 is driving a new wave of infections. But susceptibility to it is not, as some contend, being fueled by vaccines. Still, the surges of ever more immune-evasive variants raise legitimate questions about whether vaccines and boosters are still protecting us from infection, or should only be recommended for their ability to prevent severe disease and death.

Jeremy Luban, a virologist at the University of Massachusetts, says XBB.1.5 has made a massive leap above existing variants. He compares the other currently circulating variants to athletes slowly shaving off a hundredth of a second on the 100-meter dash. But XBB.1.5 is like Usain Bolt, suddenly smashing the old record by a huge margin.

843 words by Faye Flam, Bloomberg Opinion. MOVED

PHOTOS

Martin Schram: A heavenly debate — JFK and Benedict XVI

SCHRAM-COLUMN:MCT — As Catholic scholars and prelates pay homage to the legacy of Benedict XVI after Thursday’s funeral outside St. Peter’s Basilica, we can fortunately reflect upon pope emeritus’s proudly conservative influence from a unique perspective. It is fictitious, yet verifiably authentic.

Today, we are envisioning a heavenly reprise of CNN’s old “Crossfire” show, as broadcast from a never-anticipated intersection of political ideology and doctrinal theology. Inside the pearly gates, two renowned authorities meet for the first time. They welcome the opportunity to finally and respectfully debate the historic question both had famously, but only separately, addressed.

865 words by Martin Schram, Tribune News Service. MOVED

PHOTOS

Dan Rodricks: Can you blame a shopping center for a shooting?

RODRICKS-COLUMN:BZ — The people who got on Baltimore City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett after the shooting in Edmondson Village Wednesday morning might not know this, but he has been pushing for investment in that old shopping center for several years. Before and after the Freddie Gray uprising and unrest of 2015, Burnett was a community organizer who tried to get the owner to clean the place up and make improvements.

Burnett has been on the City Council six years now, and Baltimore has recorded 300-plus homicides each of those years. So, when gunfire erupted among high school students outside a fast-food restaurant in Edmondson Village, some residents — including a guy who unsuccessfully ran for City Council in 2016 (earning just 661 votes) — dumped on Burnett about the lack of progress. And the councilman and the guy got into a shoving match that police broke up.

932 words by Dan Rodricks, Baltimore Sun. MOVED

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EDITORIALS

Editorial: A dangerous dip in confidence in vaccines puts kids at risk from preventable disease

CHILDREN-VACCINES-EDITORIAL:LA — We live in an age of advanced scientific knowledge that produces vaccines that can ward off diseases such as measles, rubella, mumps and polio. We also live in an age when an increasing number of parents want the option of not vaccinating their children against these highly contagious and potentially fatal diseases.

Only 71% of people recently polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation believe that parents should be required to vaccinate their children to attend public schools, compared with 82% in 2019, the same as in 2016. This is akin to thinking that driving through a red light won’t have any consequences.

718 words by Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times. MOVED

PHOTOS

Editorial: Want to end air travel chaos? Enforce passenger rights

PASSENGER-RIGHTS-EDITORIAL:PH — Chaos reigned at the nation’s airports over the holidays. Lost luggage piled up unclaimed. Police were called to help calm passengers who were demanding answers. The grandkids didn’t make it in time for Christmas dinner.

Brutal winter weather, old technology and Southwest Airlines’ idiosyncratic way of doing business fueled a meltdown that left 60% of the carrier’s flights nationwide canceled during a peak travel period filled with less experienced fliers.

752 words by The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board, The Philadelphia Inquirer. MOVED

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Editorial: A dysfunctional GOP can’t even pick a speaker. Bad for Republicans, worse for America

CONGRESS-GOP-LEADER-EDITORIAL:TB — It’s hard to find a better microcosm for today’s Republican Party than the self-inflicted debacle that America witnessed this week.

The GOP holds a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and yet the party has botched in the worst way the selection of a House speaker. Instead of unifying behind California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Republicans displayed on national television the toxic fractiousness that has become their party’s most glaring — and burdensome — trait.

795 words by The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune. MOVED

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(Moved Thursday.)

Editorial: Chaos in the House over whether McCarthy can succeed Pelosi underscores her skills as speaker

PELOSI-EDITORIAL:SD — In an age in which national parties have less clout than ever, being and becoming a congressional leader are both very difficult tasks. So the chaos on view this week among House Republicans — with as many as 21 of 222 GOP members blocking the selection of a new speaker and preventing the House from starting its new session — can be seen as a testament to the skills of the last speaker.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., faced some headaches, such as a 2018 takeover of her office by climate activists including then-Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But they never turned into the sort of migraines now afflicting California House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who seemingly can't get the 218 votes he needs to become speaker in his ninth term in Congress. After becoming the first and so far only female leader of the House in 2007, the daughter of a famous Baltimore mayor added to her history by doing a remarkable job of keeping House Democrats united and able to achieve legislative landmarks, such as the 2010 enactment of the Affordable Care Act and the passage in December of the Respect for Marriage Act, which preserved same-sex marriages after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas went public with his opposition.

363 words by The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board, The San Diego Union-Tribune. MOVED

PHOTOS

Editorial: The drought is over now, right? (Spoiler alert: No)

WEA-CALIF-RAIN-DROUGHT-EDITORIAL:LA — The storms keep coming, one after another after another, like a series of fire-hose blasts so relentless that meteorologists use terms like “atmospheric river,” “bomb cyclone” and “bombogenesis.” What happened to our formerly gentle old winter visitor, the “pineapple express”? Cities and highways have flooded in Northern California, and the Sierra Nevada snowpack measured at 174% of the historical average for this point in the year. And that was even before the current storm.

And still, the experts insist that we remain in the midst of a record-breaking four-year drought. Are they just mean?

747 words by Los Angeles Times Editorial Board, Los Angeles Times. MOVED

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Editorial: The myth of Florida as 'the freest state'

FLAGOV-FREEDOM-EDITORIAL:FL — Well, at least it was mercifully brief. Sixteen minutes, start to finish.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ second inaugural address Tuesday sounded word-for-word like a reelection campaign rally — only shorter. It was delivered from a familiar place, the steps of the historic Capitol in Tallahassee, but was aimed at a faraway national audience of Republican presidential primary voters.

743 words by Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, South Florida Sun Sentinel. MOVED

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