A president needs to play chess, not checkers
Health care, immigration, trade, diplomacy: These are complicated issues. Who knew? (Actually, many people know this; at least 3 million more than don’t). Think Will Farrell as George W. Bush: “This presidentin’ is hard!”
Dabbling in real estate with Daddy’s cash is like playing checkers compared with the multidimensional chess game of international relations and all the rest that a world leader must prepare to face each day (and by “prepare” I don’t mean watching cable television to see how your latest tweets are playing in the media).
President Donald Trump said he didn’t really need to prepare for the summit in Singapore because it’s all about attitude and relationships. This might work for selling a used car (and I’m not sure what kind of relationship we should cultivate with murderous dictators), but fluency with the complexity and history of an issue requires careful study and some kind of attention span.
Doesn’t the country need and deserve a chess player in chief? PHILIP PANDOLFI
Shaler Where is the outrage? Where are the mass demonstrations from all of us? Why are we not demanding more accountability from our government officials to come up with policies to keep our children safe? Why haven’t our government figures or our public health officials named it what it is: a growing epidemic? Or is it that mass shootings at schools are just part of the norm now? EDITH BIHLER
Marshall
By supporting the Trump administration’s proposal to prop up the coal and nuclear industries (June 10 editorial, “Energy Transition Plans”), the PG editorial board once again displays extraordinary climate denialism. How can any discussion of U.S. energy policy (or any national policy, for that matter) not include these two words: “climate change”?
Coal and nuclear are dying because they cost too much in terms of dollars, environmental degradation and damaged human health. The editorial board stills views fracked gas and the resulting petrochemical buildout that is soon to arrive in southwestern Pennsylvania (as if nature needs more plastic stuff polluting its air, oceans and lifeforms) as a “great boon.” But the truth is that fracked gas is not a “bridge fuel” to a clean renewable energy future we once hoped it would be. It is, instead, a highway to climate catastrophe, as practically every earth, space and climate scientist on the planet is telling us.
It is time for elected officials, corporate leaders and editorial boards of America’s major metropolitan newspapers to tell the truth about the foolishness of continued extraction and burning of all fossil fuels, including natural gas.
No one wants to hear this, but humanity faces an existential climate crisis. This isn’t a game. It is not about politics. “It’s (not) the economy, stupid.” It’s physics. EDWARD C. KETYER, M.D.
Peters