Monthly Archives: March 2017

Neil Gorsuch's nomination is a top concern for tens of millions of Americans, said Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which is leading the anti-Gorsuch coalition. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

As Neil Gorsuch faces a grilling in the Senate Judiciary Committee later Tuesday, liberal groups mobilizing against him are accelerating the pressure against Democratic senators with a new digital ad campaign urging them to filibuster the Supreme Court nominee.

The Peoples Defense, a coalition of more than a dozen progressive organizations, is launching the six-figure digital ad campaign on Tuesday. An example of one ad, aimed at Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), calls President Donald Trumps first Supreme Court nominee unfit for the vacancy and urges people to flood Caseys office with phone calls against Gorsuchs nomination.

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Neil Gorsuch's nomination is a top concern for tens of millions of Americans, said Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which is leading the anti-Gorsuch coalition. After the opening of the hearings today, Senate Democrats should be clear that those Americans are depending on them to not just oppose Neil Gorsuch and the danger he poses, but to filibuster his nomination.

Other progressive groups involved in the campaign include Indivisible, American Federation of Teachers, Center for American Progress Action Fund, CREDO Action, End Citizens United, EveryVoice, MoveOn.org Civic Action, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Service Employees International Union and Stand Up America. The umbrella group has been increasingly vocal about their frustration with Senate Democrats, who they say have not fought hard enough against Gorsuch's nomination.

The first of Gorsuch's two days of questioning in the Senate Judiciary Committee starts at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.

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Liberal groups increase pressure over Gorsuch nomination - Politico

Sean Hannity was trying to contain an increasingly screechy debate about the Trump family on a recent episode of his eponymous Fox News show. His two guests were discussing the protests at a New York preschool attended by PresidentTrumps grandson. If I went after the Obama kids, I would probably have groups of people wanting me fired, Hannity said. Wait a minute

But red hot conservative rabble-rouser Tomi Lahren from TheBlaze wouldnt let it rest. Sean, if you go after Beyonc, youll have groups of people wanting you fired, Lahren told Hannity. Lets be honest.

Jessica Tarlov, one of a rotating cast of liberals who regularly appears on Hannity, punched back harder: Whats your problem with Beyonc?

You might not recognize Tarlovs name, but if you watch enough Fox News, youve seen her. Shes the lefty liberal the networks fans love to hatein a fond way, she insiststen times a week: as a fixture on the networks Saturday lineupand the millennial brunette in the Hollywood Squares of Fox panel programming.

Which also means Tarlov isone of the few liberal voices reliably in the Presidents ear. Inthe same moment scandal has demanded a Fox leadership upheaval, Trumps Twitter-dialoguing with what he watches has caused even more viewers to tunein. Ratings are through the roof, like epic, Tarlov says.Fox News continues to bethe most-watched cable network in America, which means Tarlov is one of Americas most-watched villains.

When I meet her at the Hay-Adams Hotel, Tarlov iswearing the same dark denim dress and the same high Fox hair she was in 25 minutes ago when she was talking about the Republican healthcare proposal on air. (I would never go on a first date coming straight from Fox, because its never going to look like this again.) The camera, though, missed the little touches. Her earrings in the shape of small sunglasses, the candy-covered Swatch she wears, her Adidas hi-topsunder the table.

Tarlov, 33, has been popping up on Fox for about two years now, long enough to see the chyron below her name change from Democratic Strategist to Senior Director of Market Research for Bustle, a news and lifestylesite catering to women. It was her old boss from her consulting days, fellow Fox contributor and Bloomberg pollster Doug Schoen, who emailed buddies at Newsmax and CNBC about booking his minion on their shows. Tarlovs first at-bat was a 2013 segment withKristen Soltis Anderson.Eventually, Fox called and kept calling.

Much to the chagrin of the Fox viewer, she says. You again? Yeah. Me again.

Despite growing up in Tribecasurrounded by show businessfather Mark is a film producer, momJudy Robertsis a writerTarlov didnt grow up wanting to be on camera. My sister is the TV person in the family, she says of younger sisterMolly, an actress fromthe MTV series Awkward. Tarlov took theacademic path instead: undergrad at leafy Bryn Mawr College, followed-up by a public policy degree from the London School of Economics. It was through Schoen, who Tarlov had met through her grandparents years earlier, that she ended up running social media for Boris Johnsons re-election campaign for mayor of London.

He has an appeal to people like nothing youve ever seen, very similar to how cultish people got about Trump, Tarlov says of Johnson, who is now the UKs foreign secretary. It was weird. Hed do something really embarrassing andhed get a poll bump. He could survive an Access Hollywood tape, too.

Tarlov sees her role, and the role of other longtime liberals at Fox like Juan Williams and Julie Roginsky, as a negotiation. To make information that the audience and even your co-panelists dont want to hear palatable and maybe also see the rightness in it is the trick, she says. You cant take yourself so seriously that youre like a harpy, just like yelling all the time. You cant do any of that.

Her formula is simple: smile when the anchor says your name, giggle or laugh when you can, and data, data, data. I am acutely aware of the fact that Im a solo rider, she says. If Im not prepared, I will lose in spectacular fashion. There are also the choices most viewers will never know about, like the decision to forego the Doctor that befits the Ph.D. she received at LSE.

I thought it was a little Doogie Howser, she says. I didnt want to fiteven though I guess I dosome liberal, elitist, ivory tower persona thats been created.

But even under all that conservative camouflage, haters find a way. After a Tucker Carlson Tonight segment on fake news, radio host and conspiracy theoristAlex Jones called her the 8-foot arrogant Brunhilda. After asecond face-off with Lahren, again on Hannity, conservative web host Mark Dice called her a liberal lunatic with fewer Twitter followers than Glad (shes since overtaken the best-selling trash bags). Her Twitter feed is a sea of nastiness, she says, and shes right. Viewers seem to hate her vocal fry as much as they hate her politics.

But there are conservatives who have watched me go from you-are-super-scared-to-be-on-TV to as comfortable as I am now who will defend me if they see people going after me, she notices, online and in real life.

Shes a level-headed liberal and opposition voice, Lahren says on the afternoonafter their thirdshowdown in as many weeks. When Hannity watched the two women bonding in the green room back in February, says Lahren, The first thing he said to us was Remember, you guys have to fight in a minute.

Viewers are responding to the segments between her and Tarlov, Lahren thinks, because theyre playful, but not a catfight. Tarlov is adept at deflecting unanswerable questionswith humor (A lot of handbags, she responded when Tucker Carlson asked where democratic consultants were stashing money after the election)and smart enough to get in on the jokes people tell at her expense. She callsthe video Mark Dice made about herreally mean, but its really funny. To promote an upcoming podcast appearance, Tarlov quipped: If my voice annoys you, thisll be rough.

Trickier to throw off course, though, are her liberal detractors. While Tarlovcan be a relentless advocate for whatshe calls the liberal way of life (and once asked Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson to explain what she meant by family values 7 times in 60seconds), there are those who think thatDemocrats who go on Fox are sellouts or shills.Tarlov lands an answer that sounds somewhere between a reason and a rationalization.

They think if youre there, you must be like Joe Manchin, like a faux kind of Democrat, which the self-described Hillary-hawkis not. I think it is so much more valuable to be a strong voice for liberalism in that environment than to potentially risk having someone else come on, because that segment is going to get filmed.

Its an interesting time to be atFox. The networks political ascendancy has been marred by whats happened within the organization since last summer, when former hosts Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly, among many others, publicly accused the channels founder,Roger Ailes, of sexual harassment.

Tarlov, who learned about the allegations when everyone else did, says she heard no warning grumblings. And while she never had any issue herself,shes bullish about the new regime.I know how great Bill Shine and Suzanne Scott are now, who are at the helm of it, and [the owners] theMurdochs, as well, you know they run a ton of successful companies, she says. And the sons its widelyyou know, theyre more liberal than Rupert Murdoch or than the organization maybe was run before.

So what does it feels like to be a resident liberalon Fox right now, knowingthat Donald Trumpis watching each night, maybe in his bathrobe?He doesnt own a bathrobe, Tarlov deadpans, except all the bathrobes hes been photographed in.

But then she gets serious: It feels really special and such a unique opportunity. Because when President Obama was president, he wasnt ever watching Fox News.

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How to Survive Fox News as a Resident Liberal - Washingtonian.com

What the SNP has also succeeded in conveying, though, despite having been in power in Scotland for ten years, is a sense of being anti-establishment. As Alex Salmond, its former leader, told me, We challenged the establishment in Scotland, which was the Labour Party, and the establishment in Westminster, which was often the Tory Party, and that defined the SNPs role.

Most centre-right and centre-left parties have been the establishment, though, for so many decades that voters are increasingly bored and angry with them. Its partly a matter of style. People cant bear the buttoned-up, stick-to-the-message-at-all-costs method of talking that was invented by New Labour, tested to its limits by Labour leadership candidates Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, and finally drove people to distraction with Hillary Clinton. To mangle Yeats, it seems to voters that the centre lacks all conviction while the populists are full of passionate intensity.

As Osborne put it to me, When President Trump tweets, probably at two or three in the morning, you may look at the tweet and think thats a pretty odd thing for the President of the United States to say, but you dont doubt that hes done it, whereas when Hillary Clinton tweets, everyone goes, "Well, that probably went through seven committees and is signed off by someones that not even her.

So mainstream politicians need to capture the authenticity and candour beloved by populists of the right and left. But they also need somehow to reinvent themselves, ideally outside the traditional party system. Thats what Emmanuel Macron is doing so successfully in France. His policies are avowedly centrist, but he has created his own party, En Marche!, and may reach a run-off against Le Pen in which no candidate from a mainstream party is represented.

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Embracing patriotism and identity could reinvent the liberal centre - Telegraph.co.uk

Im a liberal-arts major, and it feels like theres no clear line of work for me to pursue. How can I use my degree to get a job when I graduate?

The older I get, the more fiercely I defend unduly maligned liberal arts majors. Im the proud recipient of an English degree. Some people thought that studying literature was an endearing quirk, not a career path, but it led me to a fulfilling career in journalism.

Now that Im out in the real world, Ive seen how desperate companies are for good writers, communicators and researchers. According to a National Association of Colleges and Employers spring 2016 survey, employers rated critical thinking, professionalism and teamwork as the most important career-readiness traits of college graduates all achievable through liberal arts studies.

Its true that PayScales list of bachelor degrees with high income potential is dominated by science and engineering. But a humanities background can give you the foundation to solve problems, lead and collaborate with others, which can help you rise through the ranks in any industry. You never know where your liberal arts background may take you. Late-night talk show host Conan OBrien majored in history and literature. Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive of Starbucks, majored in communications.

Follow these steps to gain confidence in your formidable knowledge, relay it to employers and land a job you love.

Liberal arts students often feel overwhelmed by all the career directions they can go, says Karyn McCoy, assistant vice president of DePaul Universitys Career Center in Chicago. If youre a political science major, for instance, you could pursue law, journalism, business, international relations, academia the list goes on.

Before you graduate, home in on what excites you by volunteering, working part time, joining extracurricular clubs and taking on internships. Youll build additional skills that can make you more marketable with employers. My experiences as an intern at nonprofit legal organizations helped me get my first job as a paralegal.

In many cases in job interviews, its those other applied experiences that students have had that help them stand out, says Paul Timmins, director of career services for the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Use tools such as the O*NET Interest Profiler, sponsored by the Labor Department, to explore potential occupations based on the types of tasks and job-related activities that most interest you. You also can ask your colleges alumni relations director to put you in touch with alumni with your degree. Set up a phone call or brief coffee meeting to discuss how they translated their liberal arts background into a successful career.

It takes practice to assess exactly how your major has prepared you for the workplace.

Students dont necessarily know how to identify the skills that theyre gaining or to talk about them in a way that sells them to an employer, McCoy says.

Brainstorm with your colleges career services department, a trusted professor or an internship supervisor about the transferable skills you can bring to the workplace. McCoy also recommends scrutinizing a few job descriptions that interest you, then writing down an experience showing how you meet each qualification.

If the employer wants someone who can take initiative, for instance, youd share in a cover letter or during an interview your experience at forming an anthropology study group. It would be even better if you could report a measurable positive result, such as a classwide increase in test scores. Is the company looking for a strong collaborator? Your work on a team that curated the new on-campus museum exhibit would be relevant.

Remember, too, that your first job is a single rung on your career ladder, McCoy says. You can prepare incessantly and still find youd rather work in a different company or industry that better fits your passions or lifestyle.

Each step is going to give you something, whether its a specific skill or an insight that says, OK, this definitely isnt it.

More from NerdWallet:

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What good is a liberal arts degree? - MarketWatch

CANADIAN NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW

Theres only one more sleep until the federal budget (can you tell were excited?) and sources tell The Globe that two controversial, much-talked-about measures will not appear in this weeks fiscal plan: a sell-off of Canadas airports and an increase in the capital-gains tax -- even if Charles Sousa wants it.

Who is the man behind the budget? Gregarious finance ministers like Paul Martin and Jim Flaherty have loomed over Parliament Hill in recent decades, but so far Bill Morneaus technocratic persona has been outshined by his bosss charisma.

Citing a Globe investigation, MPs on the Status of Women committee say Statistics Canada needs to resume tracking police dismissals of sexual-assault cases.

Senator Don Meredith is hiring a new lawyer.

The inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women says they have few cases on file because the information they were given by the government wasnt particularly helpful.

The government will stop producing cardboard cutouts of Justin Trudeau.

The Liberals are in no rush to fix Access to Information laws after all.

The Anglican Church of Canada has blasted Senator Lynn Beyak for talking about the good in residential schools.

And The Globe and Mail has received 19 nominations for National Newspaper Awards, including two of the three finalists in Politics: Steven Chase in Ottawa for his coverage of Canadas controversial arms sales to Saudi Arabia (which already received an award from Amnesty International) and a team of Globe reporters for their coverage of cash for access political fundraisers in Ottawa, British Columbia and Ontario.

This is the daily Politics Briefing newsletter. If you're reading this on the web or someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, you can sign up for Politics Briefing and all Globe newsletters here. Let us know what you think.

U.S. NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW

FBI Director James Comey confirmed that an investigation is looking into whether U.S. President Donald Trump and the Kremlin colluded during the election campaign and has been since July of 2016. Mr. Comey also mentioned that both parties were hacked during the campaign but that only information about Democrats was released because Russia wanted to hurt her, help him. NSA Director Mike Rogers noted that the level of hacking conducted by Russia was unprecedented.

The White House worked to contain the fallout from the explosive hearings. In the daily press briefing Press Secretary Sean Spicer said former campaign manager Paul Manafort was part of the Trump team for a very limited time in a very limited role. He also said that former national security adviser and adviser to the campaign Michael Flynn was a volunteer. Both had repeated contacts with the Russian government throughout the campaign.

Nomination hearings continue for Mr. Trumps Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch today in Washington. Democrats are facing grassroots pressure to oppose Mr. Gorsuch at all costs, much in the way that Republicans stonewalled Merrick Garland in a breach of longstanding precedent.

There are cabinet secretaries, and then there are the Trump-picked political aides inside their departments whose responsibility it is to monitor cabinet members loyalty to the White House.

And Ivanka Trump will be getting an office in the West Wing, security clearance and official communications devices. She will also continue to advise the president and broaden her portfolio. Despite this, the Trump team is insisting that shell play no official role and have no official title as anti-nepotism laws prevent the hiring of family members as White House employees.

LUNCHTIME LONG READ

More than 90 per cent of sexual assault victims never report the incident to police. Of those who do, many are not taken seriously. The Globe and Mail interviewed dozens of women who reported the crimes, and they explain some troubling experiences dealing with the justice system.

WHAT EVERYONES TALKING ABOUT

Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail): Mr. Morneaus task is to deliver a budget for economically uncertain times. His problem is that the Liberal government is facing a big lump of insecurity, too, and had promised not to borrow much more, so it doesnt have a ton of new money to throw at Canadians worries. But reassurance seems to be what Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government wants this budget to be about.

Munir Sheikh (The Globe and Mail): Suppose a budget told you that increased spending on a particular objective would raise GDP a lot more than any economic cost of deficit financing. Should you undertake that spending regardless of the debt-to-GDP ratio? I would assume the answer is yes (ignoring the rearranging of the budget items). Alternatively, assume that this spending was bad for the economy, but we have a low debt-to-GDP ratio. Should we proceed with it? I assume the answer is no. Then what is the value of a debt-to-GDP ratio?

Gordon Harris (Vancouver Sun): But selling ports and airports wouldnt recover value from facilities we no longer need. It would privatize assets that are still essential, and will remain so.

Stephen Gordon (National Post): If the pre-budget messaging is anything to go by, the focus of the 2017 budget will be innovation and economic growth, with a generous dollop of verbiage about the middle class. But, to the extent that these measures involve new spending, the middle class isnt likely to see much of it. The people who will benefit directly from new spending on innovation are likely to be well-educated and probably already making a decent living the sort of people who might have done pretty well from the tax cut on upper-middle-class incomes.

Andrew MacDougall (The Globe and Mail): The poor-but-not-decimating 2015 election result [for the Conservatives] gave way to a vibrant 2016 policy convention. Rona Ambrose has done an excellent job of holding Justin Trudeaus government to account in the House of Commons. This week the Liberals are widely expected to table a second budget full of monster deficits. It should be open season for Conservative leadership hopefuls, not open season on them.

Ezra Klein (Vox): Republican leaders have moved this bill as fast as possible, with as little information as possible, and with no evident plan for what will happen if the bill actually becomes law and wreaks havoc in peoples lives. This is not the health reform package Donald Trump promised his voters, its not the health reform package conservative policy experts recommended to House Republicans, and its not the health reform package that polling shows people want.

Written by Chris Hannay and Mayaz Alam.

Follow us on Twitter: @GlobePolitics

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Liberal budget unlikely to include airport sales or major tax hikes - The Globe and Mail

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Posted: Mar 21, 2017 12:01 AM

I was prepared to just keep walking, but my friend, a Catholic who took his religion seriously, stopped to give the guy some money -- a dollar or two as I recall.

You know there's a very good chance he's just going to spend it on booze or drugs, I told my friend. Yes, he told me, he knew, but he felt it was the right thing to do.

But you're not helping him, I said. And I added, politely, I think you gave him the money to feel better about yourself. He acknowledged that was part of it.

I thought about that encounter the other day when I heard what Pope Francis said about helping panhandlers.

Giving to the needy "is always right," he said, and he challenged those who make excuses for not giving money to people on the street.

Questioning my CBS News friend is one thing, but questioning the wisdom of the pope, especially when I'm not a member of his flock, is something else. But here goes anyway: Giving money to a wino is not always right. In fact, it may always be wrong.

My reaction wouldn't surprise Pope Francis. Because in his interview that was published in a Milan magazine, the pope acknowledged what I, and many of you, I suspect, are thinking: "I give money and then he spends it on drinking a glass of wine," the pope said. But if "a glass of wine is the only happiness he has in life, that's OK."

Really? How does that work? The guy on the street is an alcoholic, we give him money, he buys some garbage that will rot his insides, and "that's OK" because "a glass of wine is his only happiness in life"?

"Instead," the pope continued, "ask yourself what do you do on the sly? What 'happiness' do you seek in secret?" And we should realize that we "are luckier, with a house, a wife, children."

Well, one of the reasons we are "luckier" than the alcoholic or drug addict begging for money is precisely because we're (SET ITAL) not (END ITAL) alcoholics or drug addicts. I realize that it's not the thing to say in polite company but we made one set of choices and the addict made another.

That doesn't mean the panhandler doesn't deserve help or compassion. But is it really compassionate to help some poor soul continue down a path that leads to still more destruction?

Let's get the obvious out of the way: The pope is a good man. His heart is in the right place. He cares about the less fortunate among us. And so should we all.

But isn't this the same old paternalism liberals are famous for? Isn't this the same kind of thinking that created and perpetuated the welfare state here in America -- the same kind of compassion that in too many cases left generation after generation no better off than when the supposed compassion started?

Liberals may genuinely think they're helping, but they're not the ones paying the price for their compassion.

And it's no surprise that the pope got a big thumbs up from the bible of liberal American journalism, the editorial page of The New York Times.

"New Yorkers, if not city dwellers everywhere, might acknowledge a debt to Pope Francis this week. He has offered a concrete, permanently useful prescription for dealing with panhandlers.

"It's this: Give them the money, and don't worry about it."

How liberal of The New York Times to instruct us not to "worry about it." Why should we? Even if our generosity doesn't make the wino feel better -- we'll feel better about ourselves. And that's really important, too, isn't it?

The Times editorial also tells us that, "You don't know what that guy will do with your dollar. Maybe you'd disapprove of what he does. Maybe compassion is the right call."

Or maybe buying the poor guy a tuna fish sandwich and handing that to him instead of a dollar bill is the right call. Maybe buying a bunch of cheap blankets then handing them out to people on the street in the dead of winter would be the right call, and more compassionate that simply tossing him a few coins or a few dollars and continuing on our way.

In Proverbs 14:21 we're told that, "blessed is the one who is kind to the needy."

Yes, but it's not kind to contribute to the ruin of a human being already tottering on the edge -- even if our compassion makes us feel better about ourselves.

Watch LIVE: Senators Question Gorsuch at Confirmation Hearing

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The Pope, Panhandlers and Liberal Compassion - Townhall

Updated March 21, 2017 21:29:43

Former WA treasurer Mike Nahan says the Liberals have learned the lessons from their landslide election loss, after officially taking on the party leadership.

Dr Nahan was appointed Liberal leader unopposed this morning, with Liza Harvey maintaining the deputy role she also held before the election.

The former treasurer's appointment for the Liberals came after Colin Barnett's resignation as leader, which followed his party's heavy election loss 10 days ago.

In the aftermath of that defeat, Dr Nahan said he was the person to rebuild the Liberals and hold the new Labor Government to account.

"We are a small, but very experienced and unified team; you will see an aggressive, unified Liberal Party going forward," he said.

"We were sent a message by the public, a very big one, we have learned it."

The partyroom meeting marked Mr Barnett's first official address to MPs since the election and brought to an end his eight-and-a-half years as party leader.

The former premier left without speaking to waiting media but made brief comments on the way in.

"I will simply, as I have said, return quietly to the backbench as the Member for Cottesloe," Mr Barnett said.

Ahead of the meeting, Dr Nahan made clear his desire for Mr Barnett to resign from Parliament and spark a by-election in the near future.

But the new leader would not be drawn on Mr Barnett's future following the meeting.

"He is an elder statesman, I seek his advice and ideas and he will, no doubt, depart from Cottesloe on his own time," he said.

Labor holds a huge parliamentary majority after the election landslide, having possession of 41 of 59 Lower House seats, but Dr Nahan insisted he could lead the Liberals to victory in 2021.

"We were at the mountain, we are in a gully but the gully is not as deep as the mountain was high," Dr Nahan said.

"We can come back and that is my task I am not here for the short term."

He said the allocation of shadow portfolios would be completed in the coming days, saying every MP staying for the long-term would be given a role.

Dr Nahan was non-committal about whether a partial sale of Western Power would remain part of the Liberal platform, saying he would talk to his colleagues about policy matters.

Peter Collier was re-appointed the Upper House Liberal leader, despite a push by some within the party to replace him.

Topics: government-and-politics, liberals, wa

First posted March 21, 2017 13:56:56

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WA Liberal leadership: Mike Nahan says party learned lessons of election decimation - ABC Online