Monthly Archives: June 2017

Marc Thiessen, the George W. Bush speechwriter who now writes a column for the Washington Post op-ed page, is aghast at the Senate GOPs health care bill. Paying for a massive tax cut for the wealthy with cuts to health care for the most vulnerable Americans is morally reprehensible, he says.

If Republicans want to confirm every liberal caricature of conservatism in a single piece of legislation, they could do no better than vote on the GOP bill in its current form.

But at what point do we admit that this isnt the liberal caricature of conservatism? Its just ... conservatism.

Though Republicans had long promised the country a repeal-and-replace plan that offered better coverage at lower cost, the House GOPs health care bill cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for the rich and paid for it by gutting health care spending on the poor. It was widely criticized and polled terribly.

Senate Republicans responded by releasing a revised health care bill that also cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes for the rich and paid for it by gutting health care spending on the poor. It has also been widely criticized, and it also is polling terribly.

Donald Trump, who ran on a platform of covering everyone with better health insurance than they get now, has endorsed both bills.

Republicans, in other words, have repeatedly broken their promises and defied public opinion in order to release health care bills that cut spending on the poorest Americans to fund massive tax cuts for the richest Americans. (The Tax Policy Center estimates that 44.6 percent of the Senate bills tax cuts go to households making more than $875,000.)

If they would simply stop doing that, their health care problems would vanish: They could craft a bill that would rebuild the health care system around more conservative principles and do so without triggering massive coverage losses. But at some point, we need to take them at their word: This is what they believe, and they are willing to risk everything their reputations, their congressional majorities, and Donald Trumps presidency to get it done.

And its not just health policy. Though Trump said he would raise taxes on people like himself during the campaign, the tax reform plan he released amounted to a massive tax cut for the richest Americans. That cut will ultimately have to be paid for, and because Republicans refuse to increase taxes to close deficits, and because they support increasing spending on the military, the only plausible way to pay for their tax cuts will be by slashing programs that serve the poor and/or the elderly. (This isnt just hypothetical: Trumps budget relies on massive cuts to programs that serve the poor.)

Like Thiessen, I want to see a better, more decent conservatism drive the Republican Party. I dont want to believe that this is the bottom line of GOP policy thinking. But this is clearly the bottom line of GOP policy thinking.

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It turns out the liberal caricature of conservatism is correct - Vox

BERLIN -- The opening of a new mosque this month in Berlin further strained already-tense relations between Germany and Turkey, and has caused outrage in various corners of the Muslim world -- even prompting religious authorities in Egypt to issue a decree condemning the mosque as un-Islamic.

But despite recieving hundreds of death threats, the mosque's founder, Seyran Ate, says she'll continue to fight for her cause.

That cause, and the principle behind the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe mosque, is that Muslims from all of the religion's many sects are welcome to worship. Named after medieval Islamic scholar Ibn Rushd and German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the mosque holds prayers every Friday in space rented inside a Lutheran church.

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Most people have no idea what the actual differences are between the two main sects of Islam, the Sunnis and the Shiites. CBS News correspondent ...

Ate wanted to create a place where Sunni and Shiite, Alawite and Sufi Muslims, men and women -- and members of the LGBTQ community -- could pray side by side. The 54-year-old lawyer and women's rights activist of Turkish origin has a long history of challenging conservative interpretations of her religion, which she believes are no longer compatible with modern-day life.

The progressive house of prayer offers a platform for female imams like Ani Zonneveld, from the U.S., who gave the call to prayer for the mosque's inauguration. House rules state that female visitors not wear full-body garments like the burka or niqab, as it "would only send a political statement."

While liberal Muslims who feel restricted by mainstream Islam cherish Ate' project, conservative worshippers have expressed outrage, calling it "disgusting and sinful," as it "disrespects the key elements of Islamic faith." Egypt's Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, a state-run religious authority, issued a "fatwa" or official decree labelling the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe mosque an "attack on Islam."

The Egypt-based Al-Azhar, the most prestigious Sunni institution in the world, called the mosque, "religious innovation that is not approved by Islamic Sharia".

Muslims attend Friday prayers during the opening of the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque, June 16, 2017, in Berlin, Germany.

Getty

"I receive hundreds of death threats every day. I rely on personal protection, but I will continue to stand up for my organisation. Islam needs a change, and together with our supporters across the world we can make a difference," Ate told CBS News.

After Turkey's religious affairs agency Diyanet commented on the new mosque, the case became yet another point of contention between the German and Turkish governments.

The mosque's practices "do not align with Islam's fundamental resources, principles of worship, methodology or experience of more than 14 centuries, and are experiments aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion. We are convinced that all fellow believers will keep their distance from such provocations," said Diyanet in a statement.

German officials were "very surprised" by Diyanet's stance. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schfer defended one of Germany's fundamental rights; "I want to be very clear in rejecting all comments that clearly intend to deprive people in Germany of their right to freely exercise their religion and to limit the right to free expression of opinion."

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Turkish President Erdogan says the exiled cleric is responsible for this summer's coup. In 2012, 60 Minutes examined why Gulen is in the U.S.

Diyanet and a number of pro-government newspapers in Turkey went further, linking the Ibn-Rush-Goethe mosque to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen and his supporters, whom theTurkish government blames for a failed military coupin July 2016 and wants sent to Turkey to face prosection.

Ate told CBS News that she never expected to be accused of working alongside Gulen.

"It's getting more and more ridiculous. It's no longer a religious matter, it's about Erdogan and his aim to oppress progressive, liberal Turks," she said, referring to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Ate, who is training to become an imam, sought talks with the conservative Ditib organisation which manages a few hundred mosques throughout Germany.

Human-rights activist Seyran Ates, left, chats with colleagues prior to Friday prayers during the opening of the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe Mosque that she helped found on June 16, 2017 in Berlin, Germany.

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"Over the past few years I would approach conservative Islamic organisations with the aim to cooperate, but instead of a peaceful dialogue they accuse me of being a member of the Gulen movement," she told CBS News.

Germany, which has a Turkish population so large it represents Erdogan's 4th biggest constituency, was already on bad terms with the Turkish government over a number of diplomatic disputes, including the arrest of a German-Turkish journalist, Turkey's barring of German politicians from visiting an air force base hosting German planes, and Germany's refusal to allow Turkish election campaigning in German cities.

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"Death threats every day" for woman behind new liberal mosque - CBS News

In times of unexpected strife, the aggrieved seek comfort anywhere they can find it, like trees trying to grow on the side of cliffs. Since Donald Trumps election, dejected liberals have sought catharsis in tears, in marches, in late-night comedy, in essays about reasons that marches occurred. But none of those things have changed the fact that Trump is the president.

Were now entering a new phase in liberal self-soothing: the calming Nixon-expert-with-a-crystal-ball phase.

This weeks New York magazine cover story, written by Frank Rich, lays hard into the Trump-Nixon tie, offering history as balm. The resistance neednt worry just yet. Just wait, Rich urges. Watergate auto-da-f wasnt built in a day.

Rich isnt alone in his Trump-Watergate fantasy. Its hard to avoid drawing some parallels between Tricky Dick and Teflon Don.

Like Trump, Richard Nixons Congress was stocked with allies. Nixon taped people (Trump, thus far, only lies about it). Nixon had Deep Throat, an aggrieved FBI guy, and Trump has James Comey, an aggrieved FBI guy. Nixon, like Trump, hated the press and loved his daughters and had a strange relationship with his wife.

The next part of the story, the fantasy goes, ends happily for the opposition. In Nixons case, journalists grabbed a thread and kept pulling. And within two years of his election, a president who had logged a record popular vote was quite literally peacing out of the White House.

Rich argues that Trumps TBD-gate is unfolding at a comparable rate to Watergate. You will find reason to hope that the 45th presidents path through scandal may wind up at the same destination as the 37thsa premature exit from the White House in disgraceon a comparable timeline.

Is it possible that Trumps presidency will end in Nixonian disgrace? Sure. But theres a much greater likelihood that it wont, that Richs prediction will age about as well as Van Jones March 1 proclamation that Donald Trump became president last night, or Fareed Zakarias proclamation on April 7 that Donald Trump became president last night. If Trump somehow lurches through four or eight years, history will view the lefts starry-eyed Watergate dreams as in the same genre of smug as Clinton acolytes cockiness going into the final stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign. Litanies of Trump-Nixon comparisons amount to little more than fantasy, wastes of precious time that could have been better used on reality.

Donald Trump is not Richard Nixon, and 1973 is not 2017.

During Nixons time, Americans could only get their news from a few outlets; if they wanted anything less mainstream than the NBC Nightly News, they had to seek out the Whole Earth catalog or their local Ron Paul-esque kook and his facsimiled newsletter. The internet has democratized information, but it has also muddied the waters. In 2017, we are all denizens of a customizable media reality that has never felt more subjective. Pre-web, a person at odds with the mainstream opinion about what the truth is would be pushed to the margins. Now, the president himself has endorsed a fringe news outlet that denies that the murder of dozens of children in Sandy Hook ever happened. We no longer agree what the definition of is is. The margins have gone mainstream.

Watergate fantasy porn neglects to realistically establish that Watergate was a series of freakish lightning strikes. Its hard to imagine how they could replicate themselves in 2017. Even if the public trusted the press as they did in the early 1970s (they dont), or if Trump is actually guilty of prosecutable wrongdoing as recognized by those in a position to prosecute (we dont know, but are acting as though we do), or if Congress, given Trumps theoretical wrongdoing, would move to impeach (also unknown), theres the not-small problem of Trumps supporters. Theyre not going anywhere, and the reasons they were drawn to Trump arent going anywhere.

In the 2016 election, Polk County, Wisconsin, went about 2-1 for Donald Trump. The 956 square-mile grid of field and forest hugging the states western border is home to only 43,400 residents. I was born in the now-shuttered hospital in one of its towns, a village with a population that barely cracks four digits, and lived there until I was 18 years old.

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Alan Walker has been the head of Polk Countys Republican Party for over a decade. To hear him tell it, nothing has happened since the inauguration to make him second guess his vote.

The same goes for most of the people Alan Walker knows who are active in local politics. They arent ready to abandon President Trump. In Walkers view, Trump is following through on what he promised hed do. Investigations into Trump are nothing more than media agitating designed to derail a true conservative agenda.

Many here in Polk County think the liberal elite were looking down on them, Walker wrote in a post-election op-ed in a local newspaper. The people in Polk County are good, honest, down-to-earth people, good citizens. People here are not racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic people, but are labeled that way by the liberals. If people had been talking to the people of Polk County, the notion of a Trump victory wouldnt have seemed farfetched in October before the election.

In April, Trump supporters in the area held two Trump-less Trump rallies in the area, one in Turtle Lake, and one a short drive south in Hudson. Walker estimates that a few dozen gathered in Turtle Lake; about 120 in Hudson. Local politicians and activists spoke. At one gathering, Walker led a prayer.

I dont know if youre old enough to remember Reagan, Walker tells me, via phone. When Reagan was president, it was constantly people against him. Its much worse with Trump than it was with President Bush or Bush Jr.

People who want Donald Trump to be president for as little time as possible are in the market for good news right now, but theres not much good news to be had. Trump already has installed one Supreme Court justice and will probably get to nominate another, a feat that hasnt gone unnoticed by his supporters like Alan Walker. Trump has already pulled out of the Paris climate agreement, another victory for his base. Hes got part of his travel ban enacted, for the time being. His party has the House and the Senate, and most statehouses. Sure, hes faced setbacks due to his seeming lack of knowledge of how to navigate the Washington jungle gym, but the longer hes in charge, the more accidental wins hes likely to stumble into. The people who already liked Trump are always going to like him; the people who never liked him never will.

Hoping for the best is sustaining. But the other half of that adage is prepare for the worst. For too long, liberals have clung to the former and ignored the latter. In order to survive the Trump era intact, they must resist the urge to look for the future in the 1970s. They must stop wasting their time reading fan fiction and deal with the reality that we are probably stuck with Trump. And then what?

Originally posted here:

Liberal Impeachment Fantasies Have to Stop - The Daily Beast - Daily Beast

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In the debate swirling about how to handle North Korea, one important aspect maybe the most important aspect seems to always get lost: Anything the United States might want to do to rein in the so-called "hermit kingdom" needs to be agreed to by the nation that would be affected most: South Korea.

With President Trump meeting today with liberal South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the stage is set to build a relationship that must not only stand the test of time, but could very well be tested in the most strenuous of ways possible: war.

Consider where things stand with Pyongyang for a moment.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are running so high that one false move, like an errant North Korea missile landing in South Korea, for example, could start a crisis taking all three nations down a path to conflict that is clearly in no one's interests. And with North Korea in possession of nuclear weapons, millions of people could die once the bombs start falling.

To make matters even worse, Pyongyang also seems intent to make sure its military might only grows with each passing day. North Korea seems close to not only testing another nuclear weapon in the coming days, but it's also on the cusp of testing an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. In the months and years to come, Kim Jong Un will likely be able to pair these two technologies together to produce a weapon that can land an atomic payload on U.S. soil, something President Trump has committed to stopping.

From here things get even worse.

North Korea has already murdered an American student, Otto Wambier, and is holding captive several other Americans as pawns. With their fate uncertain, the stage is set for a potential showdown and where it could end up is anybody's guess.

Then there is poor South Korea. Not only does Seoul have to somehow deal with the North's constant threats of annihilation Kim Jong Un just threatened to assassinate South Korea's former president, for instance they must also deal with the constant pain of seeing their Korean brothers and sisters abused behind one of the last iron curtains on the planet.

The South also faces a reality that very few nations must deal with: thousands of pieces of artillery and missiles pointed at its capital city, ready to strike at any moment. Even though North Korea would be wiped out in any sort of military conflict with South Korea and America, it stands to reason that Seoul and large sections of the South would be turned to rubble.

Considering all of this, Trump and Moon must not only have a successful meeting, but also work to ensure they are on the same page and quickly develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with North Korea.

First and foremost, both sides need to establish a friendly, working relationship with each other. This sounds obvious, but due to domestic politics in both nations, it might actually be difficult. Trump was very harsh towards South Korea during his presidential run calling the U.S.-Korea free trade agreement a "job-killing deal" so he probably has some fence-mending to do. At the same time, the recently elected Moon is a dove on North Korea and had some tough words about America on the campaign trail, so he will also need to reassure his American counterparts. Indeed, today's meeting must move past the talk of both campaigns and reaffirm the alliance for the world to see especially North Korea.

Next, Trump needs to convince his South Korean colleagues to end any challenges to the deployment of the THAAD missile defense system. While there's been recent talk in South Korea of removing this vital system, which could help shield the South from the North's missiles, it seems such concerns have eased. Still, President Trump must make it clear that such a system is in both nations' interests (keep in mind, the U.S. has 28,000 troops in South Korea that also would benefit). He must also pledge not to charge them for the system either, as he suggested months back.

Finally, both nations need to agree to a common strategy and framework when it comes to dealing with Pyongyang one that goes beyond the obvious military questions of missiles and nuclear weapons. How would the alliance, for example, deal with a North Korean cyber attack on South Korea's nuclear reactors or electricity grid? Or, how would both nations jointly respond if Pyongyang was serious about talks to ease tensions? Clearly both sides need to know each other's redlines when it comes to the Kim regime, but also where they could work cooperatively to ease tensions.

To be fair, most first meetings of heads of state tend to feature both sides just feeling each other out, trying to get a sense of each other's motives and aspirations. But neither side has the luxury of time. One can only hope Trump and Moon can become the best of friends and fast.

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Can Trump make friends with South Korea's liberal president? Because he has to. - The Week Magazine

The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, told Katie Couric during the Aspen Ideas conference on Wednesday that he worries that President Donald Trump is turning the American public against liberal journalists to the point of violence.

He said that if violence against journalists were to occur, Trump would solely shoulder the blame.

After Couric asked Goldberg his thoughts on Trump continually blasting fake news outlets i.e., CNN, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, to name a few Goldberg claimed that his biggest concern for the media at large is a physical, violent attack on liberal journalists.

Couric said, When the president constantly tweets that different newspapers are examples of fake news and accuses reporters of being fake news at White House briefings or when he appears before reporters there, whats your reaction?

Goldberg responded, Part of my reaction is that were all engaged in a reality TV show, that this is a reality TV version of a war between a president and the press.

He continued, The problem is, and this is what I worry about more than anything else, is that there are people in the country who dont understand that [Trumps war on the media] is a cynical reality TV game and are going to hear over and over again from the president that reporters, journalists are enemies of the state.

He added, And someone, I mean God forbid, someone is going to do something violent against journalists in a large way, and then I know where the fault lies. And were heading in this direction, and its quite frightening.

See the segment in the video below.

Read more here:

Liberal magazine editor says Trump will incite conservative violence against liberal journalists - TheBlaze.com