Is the Ukraine Scandal Just a Repeat of Russiagate?

Just as Democrats were beginning to give up on impeachment, President Trump’s Ukraine scandal came to light. But is there any reason to believe things will pan out more conclusively than they did with Russiagate?

Welcome to Russiagate Jr., the Ukraine Game. And this time there are receipts…  all Trump needs is some smoke to turn the 2020 election into a corruption fest. It would mean Ukraine isn’t so much the sequel to Russiagate, but Hillary’s emails all over again.

If you are seeing a pattern here, it might be because you, too, have guessed the previously anagogic secret that Democrats are not wild about this Trump guy and really love to talk about impeaching him. What was once a grave and rare undertaking — three times in two and a half centuries, all of them unsuccessful — is now a generic response to any action taken or not taken, alleged or proven or simply imagined, by the president of the United States.

The life of the Trump-Ukraine affair can be measured in days, and the most basic facts of the matter are still unknown. Yet many Democrats and their allies in the media are already renewing their calls for the impeachment of President Trump. By doing so, they are observing one of the lessons of the Trump-Russia investigation: Act before finding out what happened.

Are Arab-Israelis Ready to Play Politics?

The Joint List—an Israeli political coalition made up of several Arab and Arab-Jewish parties—has decided to officially recommend Benny Gantz for Prime Minister. It’s not typical for Arab parties to offer a recommendation for the position of Prime Minister. Does the move signal a new era of civic participation for Arab-Israelis?

By choosing to recommend Mr. Gantz, we have proven that cooperation between people, Arab and Jewish, is the only principled political strategy that will lead to a better future for us all.

Arabs are hungry for full integration regardless of what transpires in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is why they decided to make their voice heard at the polling booth.

The hosannas, however, are premature: The Joint List, sadly, remains a vehemently anti-Zionist party whose members have often expressed their support for convicted terrorists. All it takes is a brief look at the party and its principles to learn why Gantz—whose Blue and White party is currently Israel’s most popular, with 33 Knesset seats—should immediately and forcefully reject this endorsement.

Is Greta Thunberg Right About Us?

Sixteen-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg addressed the UN with a message of urgency. Stating that world leaders have failed to address the climate crisis, Thunberg went on to warn the world’s adults that if they don’t act now to save the planet, their children will never forgive them. Is she right?

You say you “hear” us and that you understand the urgency. But no matter how sad and angry I am, I don’t want to believe that. Because if you fully understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And I refuse to believe that.

We are at yet another moment in which the voice and efforts of the young are needed. The Baby Boomers and Gen Xers in power have proven unable to take action on a multitude of issues recently. But nowhere is their inaction more glaring than on the issues that threaten the safety of people everywhere and especially millennials and members of Generation Z: first guns and now climate change.

The youthful climate activists claim they’ve been sold out by their elders. Greta Thunberg put it with her usual accusatory starkness at the U.N.: “You are failing us, but young people are starting to understand your betrayal.” This is laughable. By no global measure of social and economic well-being have we failed kids.

Who Won the Democrats’ LGBTQ Forum?

It was a political first: a forum for Democratic candidates in which the exclusive focus of the night was LGBTQ issues. Who came out looking like the best ally?

The presidential forum was not the first time Harris was pushed to explain her record on LGBTQ rights, particularly her decision, as California state attorney general, to deny gender confirmation surgery to incarcerated trans people. When asked in January if she would support trans prisoners seeking gender confirmation surgery now, she did not give a direct answer.

But the most breathtaking moment, by my reckoning, belonged to Senator Elizabeth Warren, who said that she wasn’t just going to tell us what she’d do in her first 100 days. She would show us. And then she read aloud the names of the 18 transgender women of color who have been murdered this year, in a voice that quavered with emotion. “It is time,” she concluded, “for a president of the United States of America to say their names.”

When Gazette columnist and moderator Lyz Lenz confronted Biden over his past support for tough-on-crime laws that “disproportionately affected LGBTQ people of color” in her view, he came up with a rather… interesting answer.

Biden pivoted and rambled on in typical fashion, but he eventually said “In prison … the determination should be that your sexual identity is defined by what you say it is… not what the prison says it is.”

Should WeWork Ditch CEO Adam Neumann?

Ahead of a highly publicized IPO, investors suddenly have cold feet. WeWork’s Israeli CEO Adam Neumann is known for his charisma and daring personality—but investors worry about his ability to lead. Would pushing him out be good for the company?

Unfortunately for Neumann, the grown-ups showered his company with more than $10 billion—and now they’d like to secure their investment against the notably odd, famously self-enriching chief executive… Even among companies defined by their CEOs, Neumann’s stranglehold on his company and its culture comes off as extreme.

WeWork, at its core, is a real estate company… And yet, the business world has somehow painted WeWork as some Silicon Valley start-up tragedy, with CEO Adam Neumann starring as the villain. But for all of Neumann’s pot and hubris-fueled faults, he’s not at the core of WeWork’s impending doom. It’s the media myth itself that encouraged investors to overvalue, unwisely, a glorified office space sub-letter.

By itself, replacing Neumann as CEO wouldn’t stop WeWork from losing about $1 for every $1 it gets in revenue. Putting someone on the order of Jack Welch or Steve Jobs or even the real-estate titan Sam Zell at the helm at WeWork alone wouldn’t change the fact that the company is burning through cash like a wildfire going through a California forest after a seven-year drought and is on track to run out of money as soon as this spring.

Is Getting Cancelled Good for Your Career?

Shane Gillis was booted from SNL for racist comments and Dave Chappelle was called out for going too far in his recent comedy special. Some say that cancel culture is ruining comedy. But in the word of stand-up, where being outrageous is an asset, can being “cancelled” help your career?

…male comedians have worked out how to harness rage and resentment over the rising voices of the marginalised to create or prolong a career, mixing ‘silent majority’ conservatism with edge-lord humour. Worse than offensive (which isn’t necessarily a bad word for a comedian, or an artist) it’s simply bad comedy…

There’s a large audience for this kind of thing and comedy marketers are hip to it. A 2016 Joe Rogan special was titled, simply, Triggered. A new special from Bill Burr that offers subtle critiques of the turn against political correctness was nevertheless promoted by Netflix with a selection of clips from a rant in which Burr appears to mock the #MeToo movement, feminists, and the like.

Canceling can cost opportunities; that’s what it’s designed to do. Roseanne Barr lost her show over her racist tweets. Kevin Hart lost his lifelong dream job, hosting the Oscars, over old homophobic tweets (though, financially, he is doing more than fine). Louis C.K. lost his manager and got iced out of Hollywood after he admitted to sexual misconduct. (While he is still touring and performing, it is without the prestige and cultural cachet he once had.)

Today’s Hot Issues

Is the Ukraine Scandal Just a Repeat of Russiagate? Are Arab-Israelis Ready to Play Politics? Is Greta Thunberg Right About Us? Who Won the Democrats’ LGBTQ Forum? Should WeWork Ditch CEO Adam Neumann? Is Getting Cancelled Good for Your Career?