Russian pundit: Hillary Makes Me Nervous
Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky, an “active opponent” of Vladimir Putin, says Russia’s in trouble no matter who wins Nov. 8. Donald Trump “has no answers.” But “I also have misgivings about Hillary Clinton.” The problem: “Clinton’s positions on Russia are based on simplistic ideological lines,” mistakenly tying Putin to anti-immigrant “extreme nationalism.” And “the mismatch between an ideological Clinton and an opportunist Putin is fraught.” That, he says, “will enable Putin to step up anti-Western hysteria in Russia — and almost force him to pick up the gauntlet as soon as possible, before Russia collapses economically.”
Libertarian: What Changed on College Campuses
It’s nothing “new for college students to indulge in self-righteous certainty, to be so intoxicated by a grand moral mission that they can’t see any value in hearing what the other side has to say,” says producer Rob Montz in USA Today. “What is new: administrators who bend to their will.” At his own alma mater, Brown, “students have sabotaged a lecture from [former] NYC police chief Ray Kelly . . . and set up a puppy-equipped safe space to escape a debate about rape culture.” But officials “refuse to see this censoring species of activism . . . as a threat at all.” Which is why students and alumni “are desperate for the university to stand up firmly for open inquiry, to stand up firmly for itself.”
Centrist: What Does Clinton Mean by ‘Open Borders’?
The recent Wikileaks disclosure of Hillary Clinton’s 2013 speech to Brazilian investors in which she cited “her dream of an America without borders” puzzles Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass: “If you don’t have borders, you don’t have a country. Americans are beginning to understand this. Europeans understand it now quite clearly.” She also wants “a hemispheric common market” — much like the European Union, which is “dissolving in chaos, fear and debt.” Warns Kass: “If that is indeed her dream,” it’s one “that would end America.” Why isn’t this a issue? “There is no video involving sex and Hollywood and Trump,” so “the Clinton campaign isn’t commenting. And reporters aren’t really pressing.”
Business prof: China Wins Big When Oil Prices Rise
Many OPEC nations “are now near political and economic collapse, or have drastically cut social programs while running giant deficits in order to hold the rock bottom prices” caused by their own production glut aimed at killing the US fracking industry, notes Kevin Cochrane in The Weekly Standard. But, he says, they won’t be the biggest winners now that the Saudis are cutting production. “It’s actually China . . . that stands to gain the most,” even though it “imports about half of all of its oil.” Why? “China built enormous storage capacity, which is now brimming with cheap Russian crude” and the Chinese “were also dramatically increasing their refining capacity.” Plus, “the Russians agreed in return to buy refined gasoline back from China at prices tied to the world price for oil.” So Beijing is now set to cash in.
Biz reporter: Obama Brought Capitalism to Space
President Obama has just re-upped his call for “sending humans to Mars by the 2030s.” But his real legacy, says The Washington Post’s Christian Davenport, is “the standing up of a commercial space industry that has ended the government’s monopoly on space.” When the shuttle program ended in 2011, “NASA looked to the commercial sector to fly its astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, fertilizing the industry with billions of dollars in contracts. And . . . the industry has begun to blossom.” But “there is still no self-sustaining economy to keep commercial space companies alive, many of which would wither without the support of NASA or the billionaires that are funding them with their own money.”
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann