The Patriot Post® · Tuesday Short Cuts

An unfortunate truth: “Foreign-policy blunders often take months or years to reveal their damaging consequences, but the harm from President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria is playing out almost in real time. Critics said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would invade northern Syria despite Mr. Trump’s public warnings, and the Turkish strongman did. Critics said our Kurdish allies would strike a deal with Syria’s Bashar Assad to defend themselves, and the Kurds have. Critics said Islamic State prisoners held by the Kurds would be released and scatter to wage jihad again, and they are.” —The Wall Street Journal

Media diagnosis: “All reporters sometimes bend a rule, or go out on a limb or get something wrong. But the important thing is that they usually do this in aid of getting truth to the public. What has defined the media breakdown that started in 2016 was the press’ abandonment of standards in aid of peddling a narrative — rather than reality.” —Kimberley Strassel

Exhibit A: “More than five years after going into business with Hunter Biden, his associates in China are still ‘working on an explanation’ of his role there? If this doesn’t arouse the curiosity of a neutral journalist, it’s hard to imagine what would. But the reaction of much of the American media perhaps tells us how rare such journalists have become.” —James Freeman

For the record I: “The Aztecs would literally rip the beating heart out of your chest, cut you into pieces, eat your limbs, then take your children as slaves. [Christopher] Columbus was playing patty cake compared to them. It was a brutal time. Nobody’s hands were clean.” —Matt Walsh

For the record II: “In fact, mass murder, genocide, slavery, war, conquest, child sacrifice WAS happening in America… before Columbus. At the hands of Native tribes. It could be argued because of the Christian influence Columbus brought to America that those atrocities ended.” —Liz Wheeler

The BIG Lie: “Columbus Day is when we honor a man who killed more innocent ppl in the name of religion than ISIS on their best day.” —actor John Fugelsang

Non compos mentis: “I’ve been a climate scientist for decades and decades.” —Jane Fonda

Village idiot: “Yes, we all do have freedom of speech, but at times there are ramifications for the negative that can happen when you’re not thinking about others and only thinking about yourself. I don’t want to get into a word or sentence feud with Daryl Morey [who defended Hong Kong demonstrators], but I believe he wasn’t educated on the situation at hand.” —NBA star LeBron James, who later audaciously fretted, “My team and this league just went through a difficult week.” (“Guys, in fairness, all of this China business has made it a little more difficult for LeBron to sell shoes. So I mean consider it from his perspective. He’s really the victim here, when you think about it.” —Matt Walsh)

And last… “If you don’t monitor what’s influencing your kids online, they could end up a part of some fascist organization like the neo-Nazis or the NBA.” —Frank J. Fleming