Would Pence be an upgrade?
President Mike Pence? The investigations and scandals surrounding President Trump have created a growing buzz in Washington about a potential Pence presidency--both from Republicans wistful for the days of a functional White House and from Democrats hoping for the lesser of two evils. Clearly, the vice president would be far more competent and would make the country safer. A former congressman and governor with 16 years in government, Pence is sane, thoughtful, and infinitely less likely to blunder into a nuclear war; unlike the president, he has also read the Constitution. Granted, he’d be the most conservative president of modern times, an evangelical Christian fiercely opposed to abortion, gay marriage and the expansion of LGBT rights. But given the risks of an unstable, authoritarian Trump, I’d opt for President Pence--the sooner the better.
--Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times
Is Mueller Trump's worst nightmare?
[Special Counsel] Robert Mueller’s bipartisan credibility is a double-edged sword. If he finds no evidence of collusion or crimes, the country is likely to accept that conclusion as "unbiased, fair, and factual." But if he does, it will be damn near impossible for this administration to pretend it was a partisan smear. That means Republicans--from Trump on down--will now live or die by what Mueller finds out. It’s always possible a panicked Trump could decide to fire Mueller just as he fired Comey, said The New York Times in an editorial. But the last president to fire a special prosecutor was Richard Nixon--and we know what happened to him.
--Chris Cillizza, CNN.com.
Manchester musings
--This was a gruesome reminder from ISIS that it remains a relevant force. The group has lost 66 percent of its territory in Iraq and half its land in Syria to U.S.-backed forces. But it still has the manpower to stage atrocities in the West: An estimated 5,000 European jihadists, including 800 Britons, have headed to Iraq and Syria in the past three years. Even if these extremists stay in the Middle East, they can still inspire attacks or ask friends back home to take part in operations.
--Robin Wright, NewYorker.com
--The West has become too comfortable with terror. We could reduce the danger by radically increasing our combat presence in failed states where the terrorists train--Libya, Syria, Yemen--and by reducing immigration from jihadist regions. But we’re not prepared to pay the necessary price in blood or political capital. So there will be more Manchesters, more Parises, more Nices, and more Orlandos, and every few months, we’ll put memorial ribbons up on Facebook and Twitter.
--David French, NationalReview.com.
--For now, there’s little that authorities can do to improve security at music venues and other crowded places. Many American and European stadiums and venues already use metal detectors, bomb-detection technology, and armies of security guards inside their facilities. But terrorists can render those safeguards moot by attacking crowds before they ever reach security--outside a concert or inside an airport arrivals hall. There is always somewhere to hit.
--Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times
Why everyone thinks they’re losing
One of the strangest aspects of the Trump era is that nearly everyone seems convinced their side is losing. Liberals, of course, are morose because a man they view as a racist, a sexist, a crook, and perhaps even a traitor occupies the White House, while his fellow Republicans control Congress and a majority of state legislatures. Traditional conservatives are unhappy that the GOP has become unmoored from their small-government, respectable ideology, that a charlatan" of incoherent views now rules the party. Even the right-wing populists feel like they’re losing, because a clique of elite Manhattan Democrats, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, have pushed aside fire-breathing nationalist Steve Bannon. Besides, Trump can’t get any legislation passed because of a hopelessly fractured congressional GOP.
The widespread sense of panic and loss is probably responsible for the fact that the militant left and Trumpists both now justify censoring opposing views. It’s a remarkable, and perhaps unprecedented, moment in our history. Everyone--regardless of ideology--has a sinking feeling that in the battle for the nation’s soul, we’ve already lost.
--Will Rahn, CBSNews.com
Net neutrality is already dead
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news: The internet is not a fair place. Net neutrality advocates were alarmed [recently] when the Federal Communications Commission began scrapping rules that required internet service providers like Comcast and AT&T to treat all web data equally. We’re likely to see years of fighting over this decision, though it won’t be of much use.
No matter what happens at the FCC, the ideals behind net neutrality are essentially dead already. The Obama-era regulations now being rolled back prevented internet providers from charging companies like Netflix and YouTube for special "fast lanes" into consumers’ phones and computers, and from slowing down competitors’ content.
In theory, these rules let the internet’s little guys compete on an equal footing with the titans. In practice, however, tech giants already have plenty of perfectly legal tools to steer customers toward their preferred content. Netflix and Facebook, for instance, pay internet firms to connect directly into the providers’ broadband plumbing, which speeds their path into consumers’ homes. That’s allowed even under the rules now being dismantled. Telecom companies can also give preferential treatment to their own services without slowing down rivals.
It just goes to show that stricter government regulations probably won’t change America’s broadband reality: The rich and powerful dictate the internet’s winners and losers.
--Shira Ovide, Bloomberg.com
Apple won’t stay on top forever
Apple just became the first U.S. company with an $800 billion market capitalization. Yet even from such a lofty position, the company looks vulnerable to being eclipsed in the years ahead. Apple’s business model is dependent upon the success of its hardware. That makes Apple more like the manufacturing giants of the 20th Century than like the software and digital players of the 21st, and plenty of those earlier giants have all but disappeared. Just 12 percent of the companies on the 1955 Fortune 500 list are still on the list today. . . .
Smartphones and other devices are getting cheaper and more interchangeable. Most apps and data now live in the cloud, so it’s easy to switch between device makers. One need only look at BlackBerry, which went from 20 percent global market share in 2009 to roughly zero percent today, to see how fast things can change. For the near future, Apple is likely to grow and stay dominant, but even a trillion-dollar vote of confidence now hardly portends business immortality.
--Zachary Karabell, Wired.com
