If not press freedom, then what principles is Mr. Erdogan defending? No doubt Mr. Erdogan is outraged that a foreign power committed such a brazen killing within Turkey’s borders — indeed, in Istanbul, the president’s hometown. Saudi Arabia flew in a 15-man hit squad to carry out the crime, and Mr. Khashoggi’s body is still missing.

Khashoggi’s murder happened as the United States was on the verge of constructing its entire Middle East policy around MBS. A disaster of epic proportions. Erdogan wants the United States to pivot to a more traditional engagement in the region, with a huge role for Turkey, of course. The problem is that Turkey can’t fully claim the moral high ground… to be an alternative to the Saudis, the “Turkish model” has to return to its roots.

Until a few years ago, Turkey was a moderate Muslim nation with a huge democratic promise. Today, it’s run by an authoritarian regime that imprisons journalists and critics and has curtailed liberal norms.

Erdogan is likely to continue to push the Saudi leadership in the spotlight as he appears to have a lot to gain from a fractured U.S.-Saudi alliance. U.S. President Donald Trump, with the help of his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, has made the Saudis a key part of any peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, a reality Erdogan is actively working to change.

For Trump’s opponents, the caravan represents a trap. Has Trump’s radical nativism so counter-radicalized them that they have internalized the caravan message against any border enforcement at all? If yes, they will not help immigrants. They will only marginalize themselves—and American politics will follow the European path in which anti-immigration parties of the extreme right cannibalize the political center. If liberals insist that only fascists will defend borders, then voters will hire fascists to do the job liberals will not do.

Trump himself believes the caravan images are so politically potent for Republicans and so damaging for Democrats, people who have spoken with him about the approach said that he’s vowed to bring up the caravan wherever and whenever he can, even when he isn’t being prompted by others. “There is now video on TV screens that matches the feeling on the ground that the president has felt for the past three years,” said a person familiar with the polling reviewed by Trump’s team.

For the most part, Democrats have tried to avoid the issue. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leaders in Congress, have essentially urged their colleagues to ignore it… The smarter approach for Democrats would be a few simple statements of the obvious, meant to display both realism and decency, along the lines of: This is a country of laws. We are not going to admit thousands of undocumented immigrants traveling in a caravan. We do not have open borders. But we are and have always been a country of compassion as well, and we are working with Mexican authorities to protect the safety of these men, women and children.

In assessing the effects of socialist policies, it is important to recognize that they provide little material incentive for production and innovation and, by distributing goods and services for “free,” prevent prices from revealing economically important information about costs and consumer needs and wants. To this end, as the then–prime minister of the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher (1976), once argued, “Socialist governments . . . always run out of other people’s money,” and thus the way to prosperity is for the state to give “the people more choice to spend their own money in their own way.”

The whole thing is first and foremost a nakedly political attempt to scare the Republican base and swing voters who remember the Cold War into voting, but it does show that the GOP views the growing socialist movement in the United States as a tangible threat to its power. With any luck it one day will be, but, uh, I don’t think we’re quite at the level where it warrants an official White House report.

Michael Cornfield, an associate professor of political management at George Washington University in Washington, said: “Actually, I found the release intellectually respectable. I could see the report it summarizes as a source of good questions to put to Sanders and [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez. Of course, I can also see a print-out of the report being waved like a red flag at Trump rallies. The word ‘socialism’ reliably sets off sirens in right-of-centre brains.”

He added: “What’s conveniently left out of this formulation is that the vast majority of Democratic candidates this year are not socialists.”

Some in the American Jewish community believe the current government of Israel prefers to seek support from the like-minded, conservative Evangelical Christian community, rather than nurturing connections with more liberal American Jews. No one conference can provide sufficient time, resources and opportunities to successfully bridge such differences—and any expectation that a conference whose theme is “We Need to Talk” can actually discuss and debate all of the dissimilarity into full understanding and agreement is overly optimistic. Nevertheless, the relationship between Israel and American Jews is too important to allow these problems to fester without being seriously addressed.

The JFNA wants to know why many North American Jews – especially younger Jews – are walking away from Israel. They’re right that we need to talk about that. But talking about talking isn’t enough. We need to talk about the occupation, about the Netanyahu government’s attacks on democracy, and about how North American Jews can partner with Israelis to bring about the change that Israel needs.

One can talk from today until next year about all the matters that American Jewish leaders want to talk about. One can look again for a solution for the Western Wall, one can improve Israel’s conversion format, one can offer more candy, more attention, more sympathy. It is impossible for Israel to accept American advice on major matters – security, occupation, immigration. Such “talk” will only make matters worse as it will alienate Israelis and make them turn a deaf ear. Either way, no “talk” can solve Israel’s problems. No “talk” can solve the problems of the American community.

A spoilsport might wonder aloud how many states now collect more revenue from lotteries than from corporate income tax. A skeptic might inquire how many schoolteachers, in states where lottery proceeds go toward education budgets, pay for their own supplies. Anyone might ask whether the extreme sizes of these prizes reflect, elsewhere in the economy, malignant growth. On the Mega Millions draw show, Crow motors past such objections with growling confidence. The warm roar of his sign-off—“Play on, America!”—assures disappointed bettors that they are worthy aspirants, not poor fools who have volunteered to pay a tax. The phrase is a call to action: keep playing the numbers and dreaming the gilded dream, because the show must go on.

Dozens of articles purport to have “tips” for beating the odds, while other websites offer “advice” for winners. Most of the advice is very bad, because, I’m sorry, you are absolutely not going to win. The odds of chancing upon the six-number combination to win the Mega Millions $1.6 billion jackpot is 1 in 302.6 million, while your chances of winning the $620 million Powerball are only marginally better, at 1 in 292 million. The chance of winning both is 1 in 88 quadrillion, which yes, is a real number.

About half of Americans play the lottery according to the most recent survey, compared to almost 70 percent in the 1980s. That means the lottery needs to extract more money from fewer people, specifically from the lowest-income households, which spend on average $412 on tickets per year – more than four times the amount spent by the highest-income households. In an effort to draw more people to the lottery, Mega Millions decided to decrease each person’s chance of winning in order to grow the jackpots. As the jackpot gets bigger, more people are willing to buy a ticket.

How far will artificial intelligence (AI) go in disrupting our creative spirits? Will AI ever be a source of innovation in itself? We know AI will supplant many manual tasks and routine decision-making, and there are plenty of demonstration projects in which AI systems write stories, make music and create artwork. However, AI is not likely to replace the human creative spirit anytime soon. If anything, it could make us more creative. At least that’s what people in the creative fields say, with the belief that AI will help alleviate them from repetitive, manual tasks, and will ultimately boost their innovation.

But is it art? Frédérique Baumgartner, an art historian at Columbia University, said the AI work raised questions about “intention and authorship,” but so, too, did artists from the past, including Marcel Duchamp (who famously made art out of a urinal). She went on to compare the portrait’s contrasting tones, coupled with the subject’s sober dress, with the old master of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt van Rijn — though she quickly added, “That’s if I look half-closing my eyes.”

Given this, it might seem unusual that the Belamy portrait was chosen by Christie’s at all. But part of the reason for the Obvious’ prominence has been their willingness to embrace a particular narrative about AI art, one in which they credit the algorithm for creating their work… For AI researchers and artists, this is misleading. It gives readers the false impression that machine learning systems are more complex and autonomous than they actually are.