Daily Archives: July 20, 2017

Smash and grabs surge in SF’s Mission – Mission Local

Posted: July 20, 2017 at 3:41 am

On Wednesday morning six cars were found with their windows broken on 22nd Street and South Van Ness Avenue.

A street over, at 22nd and Shotwell, two more cars were discovered with smashed windows.

For Gary Siegel, owner of the San Francisco Auto Repair Shop Center at 3260 19th St. where one of the vandalized cars is currently being fixed, the alarming trend of busted car windows is nothing new.

Siegel said that it is not unusual for his business to get up to three cars with broken windows in a week. Hes not alone. In the first six months of the year, there have been a total of 1,162 reported thefts from locked vehicles in the Mission, according to the citys data site. Thats a 35 percent increase from the same period last year.

That segment of crime known as smash and grabs has been increasing steadily since 2009.

If there is any consolation, the Missions smash and grabs represents only nine percent of the 13,181 thefts from locked vehicles citywide.

Siegel blames Proposition 47 for the rising car burglaries in the Mission. Proposition 47 was approved by voters in 2014 and categorizes non-serious and nonviolent property and drug crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies with the intention of reducing inmate populations and increasing state savings.

There is no deterrent, said Siegel.

He argues that Proposition 47 prevents officers from being able to act against those committing misdemeanors.

However, the failure to prosecute smash and grabs predates the proposition.

It is hard to connect the suspects to all these different car break ins, said San Francisco Police Public Information Officer Robert Rueca. He said that often there is just not enough evidence to locate the suspects and make arrests. This is why it is crucial to get eyewitness accounts, vehicle and person descriptions whenever possible, he said.

Rueca said it is probably a small number of individuals involved. When they once arrested two people for the smash and grabs, there was an immediate dip.

In the meantime, Siegal warns. It is not a victimless crime, he said. People have to pay to have their windows fixed, which is not cheap. Fixing a window can cost up to $400.

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Ayn Rand or Jesus Christfor Health Care Reform? What would Ayn Rand Paul Ryan do? – The Good Men Project (blog)

Posted: at 3:41 am

What would Ayn Rand Paul Ryan do?

The Religious Right has driven the GOPs party platform since it hijacked the party in the 80s.

And now that the Republicans are dancing with the devil who brought them to the 2016 Election dance, regular Americans should wonderwhy are the loudest voices against affordable health care, Medicare, and Medicaid, also the ones who talk about their faith the loudest?

And how do theyfrom the libertarian wing of the GOP to the Tea Party faithful, from Rand Paul to Paul Ryan and a large swath of leading politiciansreconcile their love for Ayn Rands anti-collectivist, pro-capitalism, anti-altruistic, and anti-religion beliefs with the patriotic Christianity that they layer in every public policy iteration and rhetorical soundbite?

Seriously. How do they do it?

Either this is high-level genius thinking, contradiction beyond reproach, an understanding of the Christian Gospels that differs from generations of those who have interpreted religious text as altruistic and compassionate, or a new form of logic that is fit only for politicians.

Or something elselike malignant narcissism, magical thinking, confirmation bias, and/or the need for power.

The powerful have always done what they want because they can, whether its writing religion, grandstanding on religious principles, or lying to the public enough so that the faithful wont think twice.

But were all supposed to be smarter than that at this point, yes?

Lets talk about it.

Respond below!

Photo: Getty Images

Jeremy McKeen is a high school English teacher, coach, musician, and father of three. He has been featured on Salon, The Huffington Post, Yahoo! Parenting, Scary Mommy, YourTango, and Medium, among other magazines and blogs. In addition to his column on The Good Men Project, he is also a Lead Editor. You can find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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Jesus Shrugged – The American Conservative

Posted: at 3:41 am

Weve all heard of the idea of a general workers strike. In her tome Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand posed a provocative question. What if, in response to an increasingly overbearing regulatory state, the entrepreneurs of America decided to go on strike?

The resulting 1000 pages, if you can get through them, constitute one of the most creative, if overwrought, dystopias ever envisioned. Societys producers quietly disappear, enclosed in their own hidden capitalist utopia, while innovation grinds to a halt, intellectual property languishes, and overconfident, arrogant bureaucrats run world-class factories into the ground. When alls said and done, all that was required to liberate Americas unappreciated geniuses and creators was for them to walk away and leave society to pick up the pieces.

American Christians may find themselves in a position closer to John Galt than to Saint Benedict, with apologies to Rod Dreher.Many of the services Americans take for granted are provided by churches and Christian organizations. It is not hyperbolic to say that core areas of American life would languish or collapse without the contributions of Christian people and organizations. These enormous social contributions are frequently underappreciated, but would certainly be missed.

Perhaps the most important is health care. John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview, wrote in an article titled No Christianity, No Hospitals: Dont Take Christian Contributions for Granted:

One in six hospital beds in our country is located in a Catholic hospital. In at least thirty communities, the Catholic hospital is the only hospital in a 35-mile radius. This doesnt even take into account hospitals run by other Christian bodies such as Baptists, Methodists, and especially Seventh-Day Adventists.

Catholic hospitals are the largest single category within non-profit hospitals, which themselves account for about half of all hospitals.

Christians also run thousands of private schools that often meet or exceed the quality of public schools; a full 70 percent of all private schools are either Catholic or affiliated with another religion, generally some form of Protestantism (a much smaller percentage of these are Jewish or run by a non-Abrahamic religion).

In addition to health care and education, it is churches which minister to the neediest and most marginalized members of society. Matthew Robare reported in these pages:

According to the nonprofit Partners for Sacred Places, churches and religious buildings of all faiths continue to have an economic impact on their neighborhoods. Their research found that almost all have some sort of community-service programs, and most have at least four running concurrently. The same study estimated that in Philadelphia alone religious congregations contribute over $100 million to their community annuallyabout $144,000 per congregation. Most of that comes from measuring volunteer time as though it were paid labor, but they also provide space, staff, and direct financial support to neighborhood services. Sixty percent of churches surveyed had food pantries, and nearly as many hosted music performances and clothing donations. Over 40 percent had soup kitchens.

Churches also offer meals for the homebound, place children with foster parents, offer marriage counseling, run crisis pregnancy centers, and perform countless other ministries and social and cultural activities. And yet bureaucrats heap nothing but contempt or suspicion on orthodox Christians, and policymakers increasingly do nothing but circumscribe their rights in the public square. The reward for managing more healthcare than could ever be provided by the state? Catholic nuns compelled to provide artificial birth control. The reward for taking some weight off the broken foster care system? Being compelled to place children in same-sex households.

The utility and morality of orthodox Christian social beliefs can be debated. But according to Christian teaching, it is licit, perhaps even mandatory, to withdraw and walk awayshake the dust off your feetrather than violate ones conscience or become corrupted by the world.

At a lecture once in my college Catholic center, our priest said that if laws required Catholic agencies to place children in same-sex households, the church should suspend its adoption placements entirely. What about the children who wont get placed in homes, I asked? Can the church sacrifice real people for its own survival? Of course it can, he explained; it is more important to preserve the integrity of the church for the future, because it is the churchs moral and spiritual integrity which inspires it to do social good in the first place. That argument may not be watertight, but it is one Christians must grapple with.

Orthodox Christians in America have gotten into the habit of bemoaning their inexorably shrinking political power and the rising hostility to religious freedom. But they actually possess enormous political power: the ability to grind to a halt the health care, educational, and social services infrastructure of the United States. Will they use it?

Addison Del Mastro is Assistant Editor for The American Conservative.

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My father-in-law won’t become a coder, no matter what economists say – CNBC

Posted: at 3:41 am

Traditional economic theory says that the gains from technology will create as many or more jobs than the number destroyed, and statistically speaking, people like my father-in-law will be fine. The wonders of the free market and creative destruction will keep middle-aged dislocated salespeople from going hungry. That's what every economics textbook says.

But speaking statistically and speaking realistically are two different things.

Once his company transitions completely to online sales, what are the options for someone like my father-in-law?

Be a salesperson somewhere else? Every other company that could potentially hire my father-in-law is also trying to convert customers to online sales.

Get retrained for another job? Aid for retraining is restricted to employees who lose jobs because of trade, not technology. And, as research has shown, retraining is far from a foolproof solution.

Learn to be a coder? Though there isn't any data on this, the market for middle-aged, entry-level coders is probably weak.

In other words, the theory of creative destruction works when you're talking about specific companies or industries falling by the wayside because a better alternative has come along. The elimination of the typewriter wasn't an economic disaster, because typewriters gave way to a better alternative that created even more jobs. More people make their living from the production of computers than ever made their living from the production of typewriters.

However, the theory of creative destruction isn't as applicable when one of the things being destroyed is the very idea of human labor.

If economic theories like creative destruction do not provide an answer, maybe politics can.

I know I lost some of you right there.

"It's the free market," you say. "It will solve its own problems!" That's easy to say when the only way you've ever made a living hasn't disappeared. Just like there are no atheists in a foxhole, there are very few Ayn Rand followers in an unemployment line. And before you have any condescending ideas about the reading habits of people who end up in unemployment lines, it's worth remembering that bankers and CEOs also tend to misplace their copy of Atlas Shrugged whenever they need bailed out.

In fact, in the face of massive job loss, even the world's most powerful Ayn Rand fan, current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, can stop caring about what the free market wants.

But both the left and the right offer about as many helpful ideas of how to deal with the changing nature of human labor as an economics textbook does.

A tax cut from the right or an increase in the minimum wage from the left does nothing for a middle-aged, middle-class worker whose skill set (and human touch) has been permanently replaced by yet another interaction with a screen. That's one reason why politics has gotten so awful. Neither the left nor the right has any new ideas for new problems, so all they do is turn up the volume on old ideas.

So, what can be done for someone like my father-in-law and the millions of other people who will be permanently displaced by technology?

We need to begin by acknowledging the fact that we have to rethink the relationship between human beings, work, and the economy. That doesn't mean we need to adopt socialism or communism. What it means is that we need to accept the idea that we need to find a new "ism" that works in a world that none of the thinkers who came up with the old "isms" could have imagined.

Developing a new "ism" should also not be viewed as a criticism of capitalism. The parts of the world that operated under some variation of capitalism have fared better, even if the gains weren't evenly distributed. People lived longer, healthier, and more educated lives. A big reason why all of that happened is because capitalism allows people to pursue their full potential through work. If technology has evolved to the point where there aren't enough avenues for people to do that, the way we organize our society needs to evolve, too.

Letting all we've achieved wither away because we can't think of a new idea would be a tragedy. It would be a little like allowing a family to fall apart just because the kids grew up.

Except rather than a lifetime of figuring out where to spend Thanksgiving, you get to experience the real life Hunger Games (where no one looks like Katniss or Galeor even Peeta).

It is possible to create a society that can adapt to the changes ahead.

But first we need to recognize that our old ideas aren't a solution, and that a middle-class, middle-aged, technologically displaced worker won't be helped by a tax cut or a higher minimum wage.

Or a few coding lessons.

Commentary by Dustin McKissen, the founder and CEO of McKissen + Company, a strategy, marketing, and public relations firm based in St. Charles, Missouri. The firm does consulting work analyzing how politics effects the business climate for clients in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. McKissen was named one of LinkedIn's "Top Voices" in 2015 and 2016. He holds a Bachelors degree in Public Policy, and a Masters degree in Public Administration and is currently pursuing a PhD in Organizational and Industrial Psychology. Follow him on Twitter @DMcKissen.

For more insight from CNBC contributors, follow @CNBCOpinion on Twitter.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Being Libertarian ‘Going Dark’ in Light of Corporate Readjustment – Being Libertarian

Posted: at 3:40 am

With our second anniversary coming up later this year, the Board and senior management of Being Libertarian would like to extend a thank you to all our loyal followers who have helped make our once-humble platform a true hub for the international libertarian movement.

In light of our momentous growth and expansion, Being Libertarian will be ceasing most activity, including the posting of new images, articles, and videos across our platforms. This will, however, only be for a short period of time, as the senior management engages with one another on our path forward. The structures which were created almost two years ago are not keeping up with our growth and professionalization in all the respects they should be, so the Board is going to readjust and reconsider various elements of Being Libertarians constitution and operations.

While no new content will be created for the next while, followers of Being Libertarian on Facebook will be treated to some of our older articles and videos from our impressive archive of content. We encourage you to continue engaging, and thank you again for your continued support.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian.

This post was written by Martin van Staden.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Martin van Staden is the Editor in Chief of Being Libertarian, the Legal Researcher at the Free Market Foundation, a co-founder of the RationalStandard.com, and the Southern African Academic Programs Director at Students For Liberty. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not represent any of the aforementioned organizations.

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If Roy Cooper Wins an Elections Lawsuit, Wake Libertarians Could Come Out on Top – The Independent Weekly

Posted: at 3:40 am

On Thursday, Gerry Cohen, a former special counsel for the General Assembly,made an interesting observation on Facebook: both the Wake Democratic and Republican parties missed the deadline to nominate candidates for the county Board of Elections. And that, he wrote, means that if Governor Cooper is successful in his effort to overturn a law passed last year that reconfigured the structure of election boards, the Wake board will consist of "two Libertarians and an unaffiliated voter." (The courts have so far rejected Cooper's challenge, but he is appealing.)

Here's why: the old state law allows each party chair to nominate up to three registered voters for each county board. The state board, controlled by the governor's party, then selects the members of each county board from the nominees presented by the parties but cannot appoint more than two members of the same party to the three-person board. The law also sets a deadline; this year, June 12. The Wake GOP submitted its nominations on June 19; the Democrats on July 10.

This sluggishness would be unimportant if it weren't for two key factors: the ongoing legal battle between the governor and the legislature, and the fact that, for the first time in history, the Wake County Libertarian Party submitted nominations for the Wake County Board of Electionsand managed to do it a month early.

Cohen says he'd been following this closely because he was hoping to earn a spot on the board and was surprised that the Dems missed the deadline. And since the Libertarian nominees are the only candidates who fulfill all the requirements of the old law, they might be the only candidates available for consideration. The Libertarians, thinking ahead, also nominated an unaffiliated voter, Jon Byers, for the third spot.

If Governor Cooper's legal challenge fails, the county board would consist of two members of the political party with the most registered voters and two members of the party with the second-most registered votersi.e., Democrats and Republicans. This would render the candidates put forward by the Libertarian party ineligible.

Brian Irving, chairman of the state Libertarian Party, wrote in an email that the structure put forward by the legislature would really just shut out third parties and independents more than they already are. Byers, the Libertarians' unaffiliated candidate, says he feels the representation of independent voters, who make up a third of all registered voters in Wake County, is an important step toward a democracy that reaches beyond party politics.

The state and Wake County Democratic Party offices did not respond to requests for comment, nor did the governor's office. The Wake GOP referred theINDY's request for comment to the state party, which did not respond.

This article appeared in print with the headline "Lose by Winning"

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The Golden Rule Ought to Help Us Recognize the Dignity of Unborn Children – LifeNews.com

Posted: at 3:40 am

Why should we care about the fate of unborn children who are at risk of death through abortion? Why do they matter?

Many people dont care. After all, unborn children are small and largely hidden from view. They look (at their earliest stages) different from us. They dont have the sophisticated cognitive functions that we do. They cant speak for themselves.

Worse, many people feel like (or think they could feel like) they have a self-interest in the destruction of unborn children. Abortion, people think, makes life easier. Thats why it happens.

This isnt a problem unique to the unborn. Human societies often have trouble giving consideration to individuals or groups who seem very different from us, or whom we have a practical self-interest in exploiting or killing. And that moral blindness has led to great injustice.

The Golden Rule, I think, can help us see clearly. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Its a piece of moral wisdom expressed in numerous ethical and religious traditions stretching back to antiquity. What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others, said Confucius. Love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus taught.

The Golden Rule reorients our moral thinking by putting ourselves in someone elses shoes. It directs our concern to others who matter just as much as we do. It tests the consistency of our actions to ensure we do not mistreat other people.

Crucially, application of the Golden Rule requires that we imagine ourselves in the place of someone else. In the case of unborn children, however, we only need a basic understanding of human biological development. Thats because each of us was once, in fact, an unborn child.

The truth that you are the same individual living being as the fetus from which you developed is a matter of observation and scientific data, writes philosopher Christopher Kaczor. You now, you at ten years old, you at ten days following birth, you ten days after conception and you at all stages of your life in between stand in bodily continuity.

I was once an adolescent, and before that I was a child, and before that an infant, and a fetus, and an embryo. To have killed the embryo I once was, therefore, would have been to kill me.

Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter.

Heres how the Golden Rule applies to abortion:

Some people think that we didnt really count when we were unborn children. We didnt yet have the abilities or characteristics that make us valuable and confer on us a right to life.

But this is a false and dangerous understanding of human value. My value is not contingent on how old I am, or how smart I am, or how independent I am, or what I look like. I dont matter less when I become disabled and dependent on caregivers. Im not worth more when I learn calculus. I dont lose my right to live when I experience dementia and lack self-awareness and rationality.

I have my fundamental worth, rather, simply because I am what I am. Thats why I have that value at all times of my life. I had value as an unborn child because that unborn child was me.

The beauty of the Golden Rule is that it takes our own self-interest and extends it to everybody else. Just as I dont want to be valued for my size or appearance, I should not value others for those characteristics. Just as I dont want to be intentionally killed, so I should not intentionally kill anyone else. Just as I deserve the protection of society, so I should work to protect others.

Why, then, should we care about unborn children? Because we care about ourselves. Why do unborn children matter? They matter because we matter.

LifeNews.com Note: Paul Stark is a member of the staff of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a statewide pro-life group.

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OPINION | Liberal hysteria over Trump’s voter fraud panel proves why it’s needed – The Hill (blog)

Posted: at 3:39 am

The sky is falling! President Trumps Commission on Election Integrity is looking for ways to better protect the ballot box against voter fraud undermining the integrity of U.S. elections.

One would figure that the Democrats would welcome such a move. After all, CNN uses 93 percent of its airtime to talk about the Russia narrative. An impartial look at the circumstances around each part of the election is something both sides normally would agree upon.

However, the manic left threw that one out the window. Looking into registration forms and voter ID is the new dog whistle of racism.

Kobach: Americans have widespread "lingering doubts" about elections from voter fraud https://t.co/eqyvYfGiry pic.twitter.com/DqqlSA3LQ8

The commissions first action was toaskall 50 states to send in voter registration records including names, dates of birth, and voting history in order to study the extent of voter fraud. A number of states haverefusedto comply.

How could states hold onto such information? Well, they cant. The Trump administration only requested information that is publicly available under the laws of your state. In the case of the last four digits of social security numbers, the commission only requested that informationif it is public recordin any particular state. States can of course send in all the other informationto the commissionbut withhold partial social security numbers if they are not public record.

Thats not what the headlines say, though. There is full-on panic from the same people that say voter fraud never happens. To a CNN contributor, its a sham. To the New York Times editorial board, its fraudulent. Left-of-center voters were so offended by the commission, that they bombarded its office with porn. The open meetings are operating in the dark, says the ACLU. It will suppress the vote. Its Trumps biggest lie.

None of these points address the stated goal of the commission. The media derided President Trumps assertions that millions of illegals voted in the 2016 election. But his claims may be true. Millions of non-citizens voted in 2008 according to some studies and overwhelmingly for Democrats. This number likely handed over Minnesotas Senate seat to Al FrankenAl FrankenOPINION | Liberal hysteria over Trump's voter fraud panel proves why it's needed Three Dem senators call for 'immediate review' of Kushner's security clearance Live coverage: Trump's FBI nominee questioned by senators MORE and gave Democrats a 60 vote, filibuster-proof majority.

#BREAKING: Trump: It's the "sacred duty" of his voter fraud commission to find "full truth"https://t.co/GVgnzWTHuo pic.twitter.com/td2J58AK20

Will Trumps commission have a chilling effect on the number of votes cast? Likely not. If past history is any indication, there will be a combination of effects. First, the number of illegal immigrants casting ballots will fall substantially. Secondly, more voters will turn out for a system they feel isnt rigged against them; remember, candidate Trump turned outso-called low propensity voters just waiting for a person on the ballot that spoke to them, not over them.

As mentioned earlier, the information the administration wants is out there already. In fact, many campaigns and states regularly sell this same voter information to campaigns, candidates, and political strategists for a hefty profit. The information available to the highest bidder is almost word-for-word the same as that requested from the Commission Chair Kris Kobach. Personally-identifiable data was not requested and much of the information is held by local polling canvassers or county clerks offices.

So whats at stake here? 24 million, or about 13 percent of all voter registrations are incorrect nationwide. Nearly 3 million people are registered to vote in two states. Close to 2 million registered voters are deceased. A Virginia student recently registered 18 dead people and that follows a report that 5,500 non-citizens were discovered on the states voter rolls.

WATCH LIVE: Trump speaks at voter fraud commission's first official meeting https://t.co/cwHP5dEqqE pic.twitter.com/BmbA5yzGA3

Using publicly-available voter roll information, the commission could cross-check voter registration rolls with a list of known illegal immigrants and other non-citizens. Its a legal, transparent, and practical step yet the Obama administration infamously declined to support this. For all of the talk on the left about how voter fraud isnt real, perhaps it is because only one side actually enforces the law.

Research showed that about 18,000 noncitizens in Kansas Kobachs home state were either on voter rolls or attempted to register to voteandup to 2.6 percent of the states populationis undocumented. Illegal immigrants make up nearly 6 percent of Californias population. Some back of the envelope math means that there could be more than a million illegal voters in the state alone. Meanwhile, California somehow recorded a 75.2 percent turnout last year, way above the 58 percent national average.

State after state after state went well out of their way to deny their voter info to the feds. In the words of President Trump, What do they think the commission will find?

Why would anyone be against such measures? Many of the same politicians seem to think little of the integrity of the democratic process. It is not a cudgel or bully pulpit. The vote is the peoples will and most sacred right. Citizenship is a federal issue, not a caveat for states to politically posture.

But I guess its less fun that way.

Kristin Tateis a conservative columnist and author of the book Government Gone Wild: How D.C. Politicians Are Taking You For a Ride And What You Can Do About It. She was recently named one of NewsMaxs 30 Most Influential Republicans Under 30.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Full Frontal valiantly tries to cool down, redirect liberal Trump-impeachment fever – The Week Magazine

Posted: at 3:39 am

Russia is holding its own presidential election in nine months, and President Vladimir Putin suspects U.S. interference of the most devious kind, Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's Daily Show: fidget spinners. Because of Putin's fears that fidget spinners are a U.S. ploy to undermine him, "Russia is banning fidget spinners," Noah said. "And just like that, there goes Russia's reputation as a fun country." Putin was apparently tipped off to this nefarious plot when people passed out the faddish gizmos at an anti-Putin rally, he explained, Putin's opponents ran with it, and now, "according to Vladimir Putin, everyone in the world with a fidget spinner opposes him."

"This is genius," Noah said. "Every other resistance movement should do the same thing. You just tie yourself to a popular fad, and make it look like it's bigger than it is." As an example, he suggested that Nelson Mandela should have coopted Pokeman. "But it turns out, fidget spinners aren't the only thing Russia is toying with," Noah said, leading into President Trump's second, undisclosed meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit. He said he just didn't understand why Trump, under investigation for colluding with Russia, would have a private conversation with the president of Russia.

"Maybe this is our fault," Noah said. "Maybe we've been parenting Trump the wrong way. Because clearly, if we tell him to stay away from that bad boy Vlad, we're going to push him right into his arms." He elaborated, then pointed out the salient point that Putin himself mischievously hinted at: Trump is an open book, and Russia's good a reading. "Right now, the best we can hope for is that Trump is so full of B.S. that he's too unreliable to be spied on," he said. Watch below. Peter Weber

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CNN’s Jake Tapper Is Alt-Right Lackey, Liberal Activist Linda Sarsour Says – Newsweek

Posted: at 3:39 am

CNNs Jake Tapper is used to taking heat. President Obama mocked him at the 2016 White House CorrespondentsDinner (Tapper left journalism to join CNN), while one of the emails from Hillary Clintons campaign, published by WikiLeaks, had her campaign chairman, John Podesta, calling him a dick.

But the criticism leveled on Tuesday against Tapper by liberal activist and Womens March co-founder Linda Sarsourhas struck many as malicious, misguided and unjustified, though others defended her ferocity. More broadly, the spathas revived arguments on the political left about how much to emphasize identity politics and the kind of social-justice discourse that was central to the Black Lives Matter movement. While some believe that a measure of militant rhetoricis necessary, others worry that it will turn away centrists who are necessary to Democratselectoral chances in 2018 and beyond.

The origin of the Tapper-Sarsour brouhaha was a tweet from the Womens March account celebrating the birthday of Assata Shakur,a black militant who killed a New Jersey state trooper in a 1973 shootout. She was eventually caught and imprisoned but escaped in 1984 to Cuba, where she still lives today. A return to the United States is unlikely, since she is on the FBI's most wanted terroristslist.

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What, exactly, Shakur has to do with the resistance to the presidency of Donald J. Trump is difficult to say. On its Twitter account, the Womens March posted a multipartjustification of its celebratory tweet:

Tapper, though, was having none of it. On his show,The Lead, he frequently evinces visceral annoyance at shoddy thinking, hypocrisy and grandstanding. He is not a huge fan of blowhards, either. Victims of his criticismhave included close Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, whose evisceration by Tapper went viral.

This time, it was Sarsour and her fellow liberals, whom he chided in a tweet:

Sarsour chose to respond by branding Tapper a member of the alt-right, a loosely defined movement that includes nativists, nationalists, anti-Semites, Islamophobes and anti-establishment meme warriors. Under no definition of the term, however, would Tapper, who is Jewish and a long-standing member of the Beltway media-politicalnexus, belong in that category.

He answered, in turn, by pointing to Sarsours own history of inflammatory statements, which have often come in defense of her Muslim faith but which sometimes lack a measureof discretion.

The exchange continued, with Tapper pointing to a tweet, since deleted, in which Sarsour appeared to advocate for the genital mutilation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim who has become a vociferous critic of that faith, one embraced by many conservatives.

In an email on Wednesday morning, Sarsour explained her positionand maintained it. I never said he was a member of the alt-right,she told me. I said in a midst of a smear campaign against me from the alt-right he joined in. His tweet mentioning me to his million followers was random and unnecessary.

It is true that Sarsour has routinely been harassed by members of the far right, who seem to dislike her proud shows of Islamic faith nearly as much as her shows of political liberalism. This time, though, her critics came from all sides:

An especially withering and incisive assessmentcame from Emily Shire ofThe Daily Beast, who compared Sarsour to Trump in her baseless denunciation of unfavorable media coverage.

The concern Tapper raised about progressives standing with violent radicals speaks to a much larger problem regarding the intersectionalist approach to social justice movements. On the one hand the intersectional feminist movement has been making strange bedfellows; on the other, it has been increasingly hostile to those who question those additions.

When Sarsour was asked in an interview in The Nation about whether Zionist feminists were welcomed in the modern, intersectional feminist movement in March, she said they were not. I would say that anyone who wants to call themselves an activist cannot be selective, she replied.

That means no support of any kind for Israel. No criticism when theWomens March formally champions a convicted murderer like Shakur.

Sarsours attempt to slanderTapper, as Shire calls it, is only herlatest attempt to silence critics. This winter, she loudly denounced a Dartmouth student who confronted her at a talkthere, wondering why a young white manwas challenging her at an event organized by an Asian American.Hed wanted her to account for the infamous female genital mutilation tweet, which she dismissed as stupid shit.

Last week, The Forward reported that Sarsours project meant to restore Jewish cemeteries vandalized in a rash of attacks following Trumps election, had not distributed funds as expediently as some had hoped.

Sarsour responded with a Facebook post. I am exhausted,the post said in part. I am tired of the lies, liesand more lies.

This article has been updated to more accurately describe Sarsour's efforts to restore vandalized Jewish cemeteries.

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CNN's Jake Tapper Is Alt-Right Lackey, Liberal Activist Linda Sarsour Says - Newsweek

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