#but i have such a total lack of faith in elected democracy as it stands in practice in the united states right now | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

therealvinelle · 3 years ago

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I've always wondered this, but what do you think the Cullen's political viewpoints would be, given their individual backgrounds? if vampires don't change after they turn, then surely they would all be extremely racist (especially Jasper). would this not come up at some point? they aren't like the Volturi because the Volturi are too old to care, but the Cullens are young enough that they have been brought up with opinions on stuff like sexism, racism, homophobia and the like.

Oh fuck.

You get an early answer because otherwise I'll just chicken out and delete this one, pretend I never saw it.

UMMM.

Since I'm guessing you meant American political viewpoints, we need a disclaimer. I am not American, and not too knowledgeable about your politics. Not just in the sense that I don't follow the day-to-day drama, but as I am not an American citizen there are several things I don't know, can't know because I've never lived in your country and therefore can't know what the effects of living in a country ruled by American policies is like. What I do know is based off of the news in the foreign section, social media (by which I mean tumblr posts), and Trevor Noah's Daily Show.

I am an outsider looking in.

Which is really rather appropriate, since the Cullens are too.

The Cullens go to high school and college, Carlisle works, they pay taxes, they own real estate, and submerge themselves in American culture. Esme, Edward, Rosalie, Emmett, and Bella are young enough that this is in many ways their world, and apart from timeouts they've more or less spent their entire lives, human and vampire, integrated into American society.

Not fully integrated, mind you, they do what they need to to fit in and get to school or, in Carlisle’s case, to work. They go no further. No extra-curriculars for the kids, no book clubs for Esme, no game nights for Carlisle. They walk parallel to humans, not among us.

In addition to this they're obscenely rich, which puts them another thousand miles from the experiences of your average American. They won't deal with the health system, which means healthcare is a non-issue, they're not going to need welfare or other social programs, unemployment is another non-issue. Name your issue, and the Cullens don't have personal stake in it. Even the climate crisis won't be a problem for them the way it will for us.

What I'm trying to say is, American political issues are a concept to them, not a lived reality. Just like they are for me. So hey, you made a great choice of blog to ask.

I'll also add here that you say the Volturi are too old to care, and I agree- from an ancient's point of view, racism is a matter of "which ethnicity are we hating today?", and it all looks rather arbitrary after a while. Same with every other issue - after a while it all just blends together into "what are the humans fighting over today? Which Christian denomination is the correct one? Huh. Good for them, I guess."

I can't put it any better than this post did, really. The Volturi are real people, humans are nerds and tumblr having Loki discourse. Aro thinks it's delightful and knows entirely too much about Watergate (and let's be real, Loki discourse as well), but the point I wanted to get at is that politics really don't matter to vampires.

And I don't think they matter to the Cullens either.

So, moving on to the next point while regretting I didn't put headlines in this post, I'll just state that I don't think vampires' minds are frozen. Their brains are unable to develop further, and they can never forget anything, but... well, this isn't the post for that, but in order for this to be true of vampires they would barely be sentient. They would not be able to process new impressions, to learn new things, nor to have an independent thought process. Yes, we see vampires in-universe (namely, Edward, who romanticizes himself and vampires) believe they're frozen and can never change, but there is no indication that this is a widespread belief, or even true. Quite the contrary - Carlisle went from a preacher's son who wanted to burn all the demons to living in Demon Capital for decades and then becoming a doctor and making a whole family of demons. Clearly, the guy has had a change in attitude over the years. Jasper, in his years as a newborn army general, slowly grew disenchanted with his life and developed depression. James initially meant to kill Victoria and hunted her across the earth, then became fascinated and changed his mind about it.

Had these people been incapable of change, Carlisle would still be hating demons, Jasper would be in Maria's army, and James would still be hunting Victoria.

It goes to follow, then, that they are able to adapt to new things.

The question is, would they?

Here I finally answer your question.

So, we have these people who don't really have any kind of stake in politics, who keep up to date all the same (or are forcibly kept up to date because high school) and are generally opinionated people.

Where do they then fall, politically?

(And this is where you might want to stop reading, anon, because I'm about to eviscerate these people.)

Alice votes for whoever's gonna win. She also makes a fortune off of betting each election. Trump's 1 to 10 victory in 2016 was a great day to be Alice. MAGA!

The actual policies involved are completely irrelevant, she does this because it's fun. Election means she gets to throw parties. Color coded parties for the Republican and Democratic primaries, and US-themed parties for Election Night! (Foreigner moment right here: I at first wrote "Election wake" before realizing that's not what y'all murricans call it.)

Alice loves politics. Doesn't know the issues, but she sure loves politics.

Bella votes Democrat. She actually knows about the issues, and cares about them. This girl is a Democrat through and through.

Carlisle doesn't vote. I can't imagine it feels right. Outside of faked papers he's not a US citizen, this is meddling in human affairs that he knows don't concern him.

More, this guy has never lived in a democracy.

In life, Carlisle lived under an absolute monarchy that, upon civil war, became an absolute theocracy. From there he learned that vampires live under a total dictatorship.

For the first 150 years of his life, democracy was that funky thing the Athenians did in history books thousands of years ago, no more relevant to him than the Ancient Egyptian monarchy is to me. Then the Americans, and later other European countries started doing this.

Good for them.

There's this mistake often made by those who view history from a... for lack of a better term, a solipsistic standpoint. A belief that the present day is the culmination of all of history. “My society is the best society, the most reasonable society; all the others had it backwards. Thank god we’re living in this enlightened age!”

The faith in our current system of government is one such belief. We (pardon me if this doesn’t apply to everybody reading this post) have grown up in democracies, being told this is the ultimate form of rule, and perhaps that is true - but remember the kings who have told their subjects they had were divine and the best possible ruler based on that. Remember also that most modern democracies haven’t actually been democracies for very long at all, America is the longest standing at some 230 years (not long at all in the grand scope of things) and they have a fracturing two-party system to show for it.

Every society, ever, has been told they’re the greatest, and their system of government the most just. Democracy is only the latest hit.

This is relevant to Carlisle because he’s immortal and decidedly not modern. Democracy has not been installed in him the way it was the rest of the Cullens, Jasper included. To him- well, it’s just not his world. He has no stakes in our human politics, and as he is older than every current democracy and has seen quite a few of them fall, he’s not going to internalize the democratic form of rule the way a modern human has.

I think the concept of voting is foreign to him.

It requires a level of participation in human society that he’s simply not at. He does the bare minimum to appear human so he do the work he loves, but nothing more, and I find that telling.

As it is I think he'd be iffy about his family doing it. He won’t stop them, but in voting they’re... well it’s kind of cheating. They’re not really citizens, none of this will affect them, and by voting they’re drowning out the votes of real human voters. He does not approve.

Edward votes Democrat. He's... well he’s the kind of guy who will oil a girl’s bedroom window so he can more easily watch her sleep without being discovered, justifying it to himself as being okay because if she were to tell him to get lost he’d stop immediately. Same guy is so sure that he’d leave and never return again if she wanted him to, except this is the man who returned to Forks to hang around his singer, knowing there was a significant chance he might kill her. To say nothing of his Madonna/Whore complex, or of the fact that he tried to pimp out his wife twice, and was willing to forcibly abort her child.

This guy is very much in love with chivalry, with being an enlightened and feminist man who supports and respects women, while not understanding the entire point of feminism, which is female liberation.

He votes Democrat because he’s such an enlightened feminist who cares about women’s rights.

Emmett doesn’t care to vote, but if he has to he votes Republican. The guy is from the 1930′s, and has major would-be-the-uncle-who-cracks-racist-jokes-if-he-was-older vibes.

Esme doesn’t vote, that would require getting out of the house.

More, I just... can’t see it. I can’t see her being one to read up on politics and The Issues, period, but if she has to then I doubt she’d be able to decide.

Jasper doesn’t vote. Alice can have her fun, he does not care.

There’s also the whole can of worms regarding the last time he went to bat for American politics.

I imagine he stays out of this.

Renesmée doesn't vote. She has no stock in the human affairs. Who would she vote for, on what grounds? When Bella tries to pull her to the urns, she points out that she's three years old.

Rosalie, guys, I’m sorry, but that girl is definitely gonna vote Republican. Perhaps not right now as it’s become the Trump party of insanity, but the Mitt Romney type of Republicans? Oh yes.

And for the record, yes I imagine she does vote. To step back from politics would be another way she was relinquishing her humanity, and that’s not allowed to happen. So, yes, she goes to the urns, less for the sake of the politics involved and more because like this, she’s still a part of society in some way.

Now, onto why I think she’s Republican, I think it’s both fiscal and social.

This girl was the daughter of a banker who somehow profited off of the Depression, and who then became part of a family with no material needs that would soon become billionaires thanks to Alice. Poverty to Rosalie is a non-issue, as it is I imagine she views it as a much lesser issue than what she’s had to deal with. The humans can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, Rosalie’s infertility is forever.

Rosalie’s empathy is strongest when she’s able to project onto others, and she won’t be able to project onto the less fortunate at all.

Then there’s the fact that the Republican party is all about traditional family values, and pro-life.

Rosalie, a woman from the 1930′s who idolizes her human life and who‘d love nothing more than to get to live out this fantasy, is down for that. And as of Breaking Dawn she’s vocally pro-life, so there’s that.

This all being said I don’t think Rosalie cares to sit down and fully understand these politics she’s voting for, the possible impact they’ll have- that’s not important. What’s important is what voting does for her.

TL;DR: I bet anon regrets asking.

#long post #twilight #twilight vampires #twilight meta #twilight renaissance #politics #history #twilight history #carlisle cullen #alice cullen #bella swan #renesmée cullen #jasper hale #rosalie hale #emmett cullen

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failtoplan · 5 years ago

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Future Imperfect - On Capitalism, Technology and Ideology

Looking out from the 31st floor balcony, it doesn’t seem high until you look down. Shenzhen stretches 80 kilometres east to west, but is only 10 deep, North-South. The city snakes laterally, littorally, between the hills of the Hong Kong border, along Shenzhen Bay to the Pearl River delta, like a badly kept concrete lawn, with clumps of seventy and eighty story towers sprouting like steel weeds. The 115 story Ping An Tower, the worlds 4th largest, the town’s own tall poppy. When night falls, the entire town lights up like a circuit board, streaming with steel and light. The immaculately kept, perpetually swept, cycle path along the Dasha river is filled with office workers on dockless rental bikes, hired by the half hour, headed to one of the city’s many tech clusters, downstream, deeper into Nanshan district. They’ve phased out almost all the old taxis, replaced with a fully electric fleet. The same for the buses. Pretty much every transaction, from street-corner noodles to legal fees are carried out with QR codes and digital wallets. Cashless, silent, sleek.

This is not ‘The Future’, but it is ‘A Future’. Two days a week I commute from Shenzhen to Hong Kong. The journey takes around an hour and a half, but the time travelled is greater than the distance covered. After getting stamped out of Mainland China and into Hong Kong at the vast Shenzhen Bay checkpoint, coaches and cars spiral up onto the five-and-a-half-kilometre bay bridge to cross over to the New Territories. As we roll up the overpass onto the bridge, the plaiting of concrete weaves carriageways from right-to-left and left-to-right. The first sign that they do things differently here. At least for now.

Hong Kong, like Tokyo, represents a certain obsolete near-future in the collective imagination. Having had its image and form repeatedly appropriated by Hollywood as a stand-in for numerous dystopias, the familiarity can make it seem almost underwhelming. Hong Kong looks exactly like ‘Hong Kong’ - a trait it shares with New York. It also feels like yesterday’s vision of tomorrow. The stuttering neon signs and diesel-streaked streets, PoMo towers and marble-lined lobbies are a particularly sharp contrast with Shenzhen’s unironic modernity. From its peak in 1993, Hong Kong has declined from twenty-seven to less than three percent of China’s GDP. But beyond the numbers, it feels like a city in decline. Slowly, megaprojects such as the Hong Kong-Macao-Zhuhai bridge and the China High-speed Rail Link are stitching the territory together with the mainland, bringing Hong Kong’s greatest fear ever-closer, becoming just another mid-sized Chinese city. With the perceived erosion of its Rule of law, the Special Administrative Region has become a contested space. The acute confrontation over the ‘two systems’ principle, is also representative of a bigger conflict between two ideas. Two visions of what the future could be.

Words can be problematic; they are both the obstacle to articulating a thought and the best way to try. This clash of ideas, in which Hong Kong is just one front, isn’t easily reduced to opposing pairs as the Cold War once was. Capitalism’s ‘victory’ over Communism was always an artificial, lexigraphic binary that pitted an economic system against a total political, social and economic order. ‘Capitalism’ is synecdochic, an easy shorthand for ‘democratic capitalism’ and the free and limited, markets, open societies and shared small-L liberal consensus regarding the primacy of the individual. Democratic Capitalism is Limited Capitalism. And it was ‘Limited Capitalism’ that ‘won’. The front line crossed by the arcing span of the Shenzhen Bay Bridge is not the battle between capitalism and communism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics is Capitalism unencumbered by Democracy. It is the front line between Total and Limited Capitalism.

Limited Capitalism was never an outright winner, but in its rhetoric, it strived to achieve the illusion of permanence. The rights of the individual – the societal sidekick to the economic superhero - has never been inevitable and maybe not even natural. Increasingly this relic of our post-Enlightenment experiments feels like a humanistic blip. In the face of Brexit and Trump, Bolsanaro and Orban, I have found myself increasingly having to defend the ‘pragmatism of the primacy of the individual’ to friends not just in Singapore and Shanghai, but Boston and Berlin. Yes, it is the freedom to screw up, but it is also the freedom not to be screwed with.

When measured in terms of human development Limited Capitalism has been a great success. But ‘Capitalist Democracy’ is a productive tension, not a synonymic pair. Capitalism privileges results, Democracy, the process. One is fast, the other is slow. The market is majoritarian, while the democratic enshrines the individual, not merely responsible to a simple majority. This makes elections, perversely, the least important aspect of a democracy. Limited Capitalism is an uneasy hybrid. You are free to consume, you are free to participate, but the between the two there is no equivalence. The human flourishing this has propagated cannot be measured by statistics alone. It is this tension that universalised the franchise, enshrined judicial independent and – aspirationally -declared Universal Human Rights. Less tangibly and more significantly it gives each of us a hope of genuine human dignity and all of us some faith in a societal-level trust. Maybe it was easier to win hearts and minds in the late 20th century with Right to Buy than the Rights of Man, but failing to promote the civil alongside the economic conflates consumption with participation, creating the opportunity for Total Capitalism.

-- Shenzhen’s subway tunnels are lined with motion-synced LED screens that animate adverts outside the carriage windows selling pizza and pet food station to station. My connected TV won’t switch on without first showing me a short film promoting the latest toilet paper or plastic surgery procedure. Pop-up ads and promotions are a pervasive part of every single product or service, physical or virtual that I use. Upsell, cross-sell, resell. The imperative to consume is everywhere, the Chinese Dream constantly reinforced as the route to individualisation and self-actualisation. Judged by the old Communist clichés of a “decadent West,” focussed on temerarious consumption, contemporary China is the most “western” place I have ever lived or been. One where I am no more and no less than the sum of my purchases. I buy therefore I am.

At the same time deep integration of seamless technology has evolved a new species of human as consumer, Homo Emptus. The local branch of KFC lets me buy a Family Bucket with nothing more than my face, using cameras linked directly to my virtual wallet which holds my credit cards and fictive cash. Recently I was walking through the precinct by my block, when a young woman ran up to me, apologising. Her cleaner’s phone had stopped receiving transfers and she didn’t have the cash to pay. Did I have any? Pulling a handful of 100 yuan notes out of my pocket, she pulled out her phone, scanned my wallet and transferred me the 300 kuai which I had in cash. In less than a minute I had become a human ATM. It was demeaning and thrilling at the same time, I imagine not dissimilar to the excitement felt by the freshly humiliated submissive.

Sometimes living here can feel like magic. But if you only immerse in the wonder, you miss the cost. Recently, a group of cyclists in Shanghai rode past a police officer, stopped by the side of the road, deep in an animated discussion with the driver they had just pulled over. The group, aware the policeman was otherwise occupied, slowly rolled through the red signal ahead, traffic light on a quiet Saturday morning. Fifteen minutes later by the time they had reached their café stop and pulled out their phones to pay, they had all been fined. Facial recognition cameras mounted on top of the police car had ID-ed them and then allowed the officer digitally ensure justice was done. When we are defined only by our consumption, this make complete sense, our economic life is simply ‘life’, giving the state unprecedented control in return for our convenience. Seamlessness may be fast, but to protect Limited Capitalism, we need seams.

The reality is though that our willingness to conflate commercial choice with civil freedoms has makes it easy for us to walk backwards into Total Capitalism. Using ‘Capitalism’ as a shorthand for so long has meant a lack of focus on the social and political dimensions that has allowing the market to perform as a poor stand-in for the whole. This has led to declining trust in the very institutions that underpin both our societal freedom and our consumer choice. The recent World Values Survey shows a minority in both Europe and the US of people born after 1970 believe it is ‘essential to live in a democracy.’ If this is the case then we have collectively failed to remind ourselves what ‘democracy’ really entails. It has also led to the bizarre inversion for many on the neoliberal right who see any democratic limit placed on the market as ‘undemocratic’

The rising indifference to the democratic can be seen in part as a consequence of Limited Capitalism’s success. Just as a fish does not know that it is wet, we take for granted the protections afforded the individual. We have collectively and systemically failed to remind ourselves of the importance of the water we all swim in. Political leaders and populist demagogues who owe their very existence to the small L liberalism that underpins Limited Capitalism have failed to give credit, choosing instead to pee in the pond for short term gain. Taking our collective socio-political foundations for granted has led to their erosion. Ignoring them has also reduced the success of a state to its economy alone. Whilst freedom of speech won’t feed my children, GDP won’t make them happier or more morally rich. This tyranny of the economic means that states which favour the fast and the outcome will be judged the best performing, outshining those that optimise for the slow, the process, the individual. By judging a state by its economy rather than their humanity, we set up a framework in which the Total Capitalism is not only increasingly easy to admire, but objectively ‘better’, with no way to quantify its glaring qualitative flaws. The fallacy that our economic lives are an adequate stand-in for our civic ones provides the ideological misdirection to pull the trick off. Only what is counted is valued.

Total Capitalism, by succeeding on these terms, promotes a worrying model of growth and unfreedom, chipping away at the old liberal consensus. As pervasive technologies allow ever-greater accumulation of information, we are reaching an inflection point, two divergent versions of how this data is used and its implications for how we live. Progress marches an there is a decision to be made, inaction is not possible. A battle that is waged by only one side, even one of ideas, is not without bloodshed; it is a massacre.

Unencumbered by the limits that the state apparatus of Limited Capitalism places on it, technology can quickly become dystopian. The Limited Capitalist model is not just a check on economic entities – as the EU has proved with its fines on Google and Microsoft - but also on governments. And it adds an implicit societal dimension to the economic role. When Apple refused to provide a back door to iPhone for the FBI, it was asserting its social responsibility, not just its economic function. It helped that these two impulses were congruent here, but the difference between that and the case of the Shanghai cyclists is stark. Tencent, makers of the ubiquitous WeChat Wallet in question, were doing nothing wrong by allowing the state to pick pockets; they were fulfilling their duty, legally obliged to do so in the People’s Republic. The FBI’s response to Apple’s refusal was that American lives might be lost, but people died enshrining the rights Apple was upholding. Do we still believe the defence of the individual is worth dying for?

It would be worth asking that question to the millions of minority Muslims constantly surveilled, or interred in camps in Xinjiang. Advanced monitoring technologies, sharpened to scalpel-like precision, have created an unprecedented digital panopticon. The whole region is monitored at a level of detail that previously would have taken vast armies of watchers and handlers. Now instead, the state has the ability to micromanage human life at a macroscale; facial recognition, device tracking and digital monitoring turn an entire country-sized region into a prison colony. Xinjiang is not just a tragedy though; it is a testbed. China has rolled the same systems across the entirety of its domestic train network as well as at every airport, port and major public area. More disturbingly, it is a showroom for the implementation of its own particular strain of Total Capitalism. A sinister demonstration of how to unshackle the market from democracy, providing economic liberation whilst maintaining total control. For parts of the world that were previously faced with the choice between an all-inclusive version of modernity, open society and all, China offers an alluring alternative, a cake-and-eat-it model powered by pervasive technologies and financed by Belt and Road loans. And it is one that has succeeded by our own ‘Capitalist’ yardstick.

Total Capitalism is by no means inevitable, and its vision of the future not the only one. Technology is neutral and can be used co-opted for community as well as commerciality. The liberal limits within Liberal, Democratic, Limited Capitalism have allowed it to do both. But our willingness to collapse the social, political and economic into one big flat now have left us at a critical juncture. Hong Kong’s fight is an imperfect allegory for the decision that we need to make about what we should measure and what really matters, particularly in the developed world. We cannot take for granted what we already have. An era is only named after it has long passed. It is up to us to decide if we are to witness the end of this one.

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patriotsnet · 3 years ago

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What Republicans Think Of Trump Now

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-republicans-think-of-trump-now/

What Republicans Think Of Trump Now

What Is Happening To The Republicans

Republicans Face ‘Civil War’ Split Over Remaining GOP Loyalty to Trump

In becoming the party of Trump, the G.O.P. confronts the kind of existential crisis that has destroyed American parties in;the past.

Save this story for later.

Content

But, for all the anxiety among Republican leaders, Goldwater prevailed, securing the nomination at the Partys convention, in San Francisco. In his speech to the delegates, he made no pretense of his ideological intent. Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, he said. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. Goldwaters crusade failed in November of 1964, when the incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, who had become President a year earlier, after Kennedys assassination, won in a landslide: four hundred and eighty-six to fifty-two votes in the Electoral College. Nevertheless, Goldwaters ascent was a harbinger of the future shape of the Republican Party. He represented an emerging nexus between white conservatives in the West and in the South, where five states voted for him over Johnson.

Opinion: Why Donald Trump May Lose Influence In The Republican Party

Common wisdom holds that former president Donald Trump remains the dominant force within the Republican Party. The truth is that his personal influence and standing are not as powerful as many imagine, and his power is as likely to decline as it is to increase.

Theres no denying that many Republicans still revere Trump. He remains highly popular with GOP voters, and candidates for office still vie for his endorsement. Two recent Politico/Morning Consult polls show how strong he remains. A mid-May poll found that half of Republicans surveyed would vote for Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary matchup, and another poll released this week shows that 59 percent want Trump to play a major role in the party going forward. Trump is clearly the single most influential figure in the party today.

Other signs point to the gradual erosion of Trumps influence. Candidates may seek his support, but those who fail to get it dont drop out of the race. Trumps endorsement of Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks for his states open Senate seat did not dissuade Katie Britt, a former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard C. Shelby, from entering the race on Tuesday. Her three-minute announcement video barely mentions Trump and strikes traditional conservative themes of faith, family and hard work.

Democrats Return The Favor: Republicans Uninformed Or Self

The 429 Democratic voters in our sample returned the favor and raised many of the same themes. Democrats inferred that Republicans must be VERY ill-informed, or that Fox news told me to vote for Republicans.;;Or that Republicans are uneducated and misguided people guided by what the media is feeding them.

Many also attributed votes to individual self-interest whereas GOP voters feel Democrats want free stuff, many Democrats believe Republicans think that I got mine and dont want the libs to take it away, or that some day I will be rich and then I can get the benefits that rich people get now.

Many used the question to express their anger and outrage at the other side.;;Rather than really try to take the position of their opponents, they said things like, I like a dictatorial system of Government, Im a racist, I hate non-whites.;

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Republicans Cant Understand Democrats

Only one in four Republican voters felt that most or almost all Democratic voters sincerely believed they were;voting in the best interests of the country.;;Rather, many Republicans told us that Democratic voters were brainwashed by the propaganda of the mainstream media, or voting solely in their self-interest to preserve undeserved welfare and food stamp benefits.

We asked every Republican in the sample to do their best to imagine that they were a Democrat and sincerely believed that the Democratic Party was best for the country.;;We asked them to explain their support for the Democratic Party as an actual Democratic voter might.;;For example, a 64-year-old strong Republican man from Illinois surmised that Democrats want to help the poor, save Social Security, and tax the rich.;;;

But most had trouble looking at the world through Democratic eyes. Typical was a a 59-year-old Floridian who wrote I dont want to work and I want cradle to grave assistance. In other words, Mommy!;Indeed, roughly one in six Republican voters answered in the persona of a Democratic voter who is motivated free college, free health care, free welfare, and so on.;;They see Democrats as voting in order to get free stuff without having to work for it was extremely common roughly one in six Republican voters used the word free in the their answers, whereas no real Democratic voters in our sample answered this way.;

Also Check: What Major Cities Are Run By Republicans

Taking The Perspective Of Others Proved To Be Really Hard

The divide in the United States is wide, and one indication of that is how difficult our question proved for many thoughtful citizens. A 77-year-old Republican woman from Pennsylvania was typical of the voters who struggled with this question, telling us, This is really hard for me to even try to think like a devilcrat!, I am sorry but I in all honesty cannot answer this question. I cannot even wrap my mind around any reason they would be good for this country.

Similarly, a 53-year-old Republican from Virginia said, I honestly cannot even pretend to be a Democrat and try to come up with anything positive at all, but, I guess they would vote Democrat because they are illegal immigrants and they are promised many benefits to voting for that party. Also, just to follow what others are doing. And third would be just because they hate Trump so much. The picture she paints of the typical Democratic voter being an immigrant, who goes along with their party or simply hates Trump will seem like a strange caricature to most Democratic voters. But her answer seems to lack the animus of many.;;

Democrats struggled just as much as Republicans. A 33-year-old woman from California told said, i really am going to have a hard time doing this but then offered that Republicans are morally right as in values, going to protect us from terrorest and immigrants, going to create jobs.

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Emboldened ‘unchanged’ Trump Looks To Re

Across the party as a whole, an NBC News poll released late last month found, a majority of Republicans considered themselves supporters of the GOP, compared to just 44 percent who supported Trump above all, the first time that has been the case since July 2019.

But mild dissatisfaction with Trump isn’t the same as political courage. Most prominent Republicans have publicly aligned with Trump even as voter support erodes, and they’re buckled in for the long haul. That creates the opening for more traditional Republicans to toy with forming a new party but it’s a slim one.

America Should Deport Illegal Immigrants

Republicans believe that illegal immigrants, no matter the reason they are in this country, should be forcibly removed from the U.S. Although illegal immigrants are often motivated to come to the U.S. by companies who hire them, Republicans generally believe that the focus of the law should be on the illegal immigrants and not on the corporations that hire them.

Read Also: Who Is Winning Democrats Or Republicans

Republicans Think Democrats Always Cheat

The Republican strategy has several sources of motivation, but the most important is a widely shared belief that Democrats in large cities i.e., racial minorities engage in systematic vote fraud, election after election. We win because of our ideas, we lose elections because they cheat us, insisted Senator Lindsey Graham on Fox News last night. The Bush administration pursued phantasmal vote fraud allegations, firing prosecutors for failing to uncover evidence of the schemes Republicans insisted were happening under their noses. In 2008, even a Republican as civic-minded as John McCain accused ACORN, a voter-registration group, of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.

The persistent failure to produce evidence of mass-scale vote fraud has not discouraged Republicans from believing in its existence. The failure to expose it merely proves how well-hidden the conspiracy is. Republicans may despair of their chances of proving Trumps vote-fraud charges in open court, but many of them believe his wild lies reflect a deeper truth.

Despite The State Of Our Politics Hope For America Is Rising And So Is Youths Faith In Their Fellow Americans

What GOP Leaders Think of Trump, Then and Now

In the fall of 2017, only 31% of young Americans said they were hopeful about the future of America; 67% were fearful. Nearly four years later, we find that 56% have hope. While the hopefulness of young whites has increased 11 points, from 35% to 46% — the changes in attitudes among young people of color are striking. Whereas only 18% of young Blacks had hope in 2017, today 72% are hopeful . In 2017, 29% of Hispanics called themselves hopeful, today that number is 69% .

By a margin of nearly three-to-one, we found that youth agreed with the sentiment, Americans with different political views from me still want whats best for the country — in total, 50% agreed, 18% disagreed, and 31% were recorded as neutral. In a hopeful sign, no significant difference was recorded between Democrats and Republicans .

Don’t Miss: How Many Seats Do Republicans Hold In The House

What These Republicans Think About Donald Trump

Michele Gorman U.S.Donald Trump2016 Presidential Campaign2016 Presidential ElectionRepublicans

| We’ve been hearing it for months: Many established Republicans won’t support Donald Trump, who now is the party’s 2016 presidential nominee.

Since May 3, when Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus urged the party to unite behind the real estate tycoon, several prominent Republicans have publicly said they won’t back the New York billionaire in the general election. And some have said they will skip the Republican National Convention, scheduled for July 18 through 21 in Cleveland.

Trump’s inflammatory remarks toward immigrants and women have given pause to some members of the party, while others differ on his policy stances on issues including the economy, foreign affairs and international trade, to name just a few. Meanwhile, a small number of established members of the party have publicly supported the presumptive nominee.

Below is a look at who has said what…so far.

With Trump Off The Ballot Republicans Look To Regain Votes In The Suburbs

Trump’s influence in Ohio even after defeat so far has showed no signs of decline.

In the Ohio legislature, where the GOP controls the agenda with a super-majority, Republicans are looking to enact new restrictions on voting, following Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 elections. There have even been proposals to rename a state park after Trump and to honor him with a state holiday. U.S. Senate hopefuls are jockeying to be the most pro-Trump Republican candidate. And the fact that a Cleveland area GOP congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, voted to impeach Trump in January has made him a handy target for Republicans looking to catch Trump’s eye, and maybe an endorsement.

But even at the Licking County GOP gathering, there were a number of opinions about the former president and the role he should play going forward in Republican politics.

The guest speaker at the event was GOP consultant Matt Dole, whose remarks offered a bit of consolation to audience members who may have loved Trump but were far less fond of his Twitter habit.

“We had to defend whatever Donald Trump did on a day in and day out basis,” Dole told his audience of about 50 Republican Party members. He added that they were all for Trump’s policies, “but sometimes his tweets got in the way.”

Republicans wish Trump were still in office, but according to Dole, they are now free to go on offense and focus on attacking the policies of Biden and the Democrats.

Recommended Reading: How Many Black Republicans Are In The House Of Representatives

Forty Percent Of Young Americans Expect Their Lives To Be Better As A Result Of The Biden Administration; Many More Feel A Part Of Bidens America Than Trumps

By a margin of 2:1, young Americans expect their lives to become better under the Biden administration, rather than worse ; 25% tell us that they dont expect much of a difference. We found significant differences based on race and ethnicity.

Whites: 30% better, 28% worse

Blacks: 54% better, 4% worse

Hispanics: 51% better, 10% worse

Forty-six percent of young Americans agreed that they feel included in Bidens America, 24% disagreed . With the exception of young people living in rural America, at least a plurality indicated they felt included. This stands in contrast to Trumps America. Forty-eight percent reported that they did not feel included in Trumps America, while 27% indicated that they felt included . The only major subgroup where a plurality or more felt included in Trumps America were rural Americans.;

39% of Whites feel included in Bidens America, 32% do not ; 35% of Whites feel included in Trumps America, 41% do not .

61% of Blacks feel included in Bidens America, 13% do not ; 16% of Blacks feel included in Trumps America, 60% do not .

51% of Hispanics feel included in Bidens America, 12% do not ; 17% of Hispanics feel included in Trumps America, 55% do not .

Have Expressed Reluctance Or Misgivings But Havent Openly Dropped Their Backing

Paul Ryan and John Boehner, the former speakers of the House: Both have expressed their dislike of the president, but have not said whom they will support in November.

John Kelly, a former chief of staff to the president: Mr. Kelly has not said whom he plans to vote for, but did say he wished we had some additional choices.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: She has said that shes grappling with whether to support Mr. Trump in November. She told reporters on Capitol Hill in June: I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time.

She said: I think right now, as we are all struggling to find ways to express the words that need to be expressed appropriately, questions about who Im going to vote for or not going to vote for, I think, are distracting at the moment. I know people might think thats a dodge, but I think there are important conversations that we need to have as an American people among ourselves about where we are right now.

Mr. Sanford briefly challenged the president in this cycles Republican primary, and said last year that he would support Mr. Trump if the president won the nomination .

That has since changed.

Hes treading on very thin ice, Mr. Sanford said in June, worrying that the president is threatening the stability of the country.

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.

Don’t Miss: Can Republicans Vote In Iowa Caucus

Will Not Support Trumps Re

Former President George W. Bush: Although he has not spoken about whom he will vote for in November, people familiar with Mr. Bushs thinking have said it wont be Mr. Trump. Mr. Bush did not endorse him in 2016.

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah: Mr. Romney has long been critical of Mr. Trump, and was the only Republican senator to vote to convict him during his impeachment trial. Mr. Romney is still mulling over whom he will vote for in November he opted for his wife, Ann, four years ago but he is said to be sure it wont be the president.

John Bolton, the former national security adviser: As he rolled out his recently published book, The Room Where It Happened, Mr. Bolton said in multiple interviews that he would not vote for Mr. Trump in November. He added that he would write in the name of a conservative Republican, but that he was not sure which one.

Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont: Mr. Scott has said multiple times this summer that he will not be voting for the president, a position that he also took in 2016. He says he has not yet decided whether or not he will vote for Mr. Biden.

William H. McRaven, a retired four-star Navy admiral: Several Republican admirals and generals have publicly announced they will not support the president. In an interview with The New York Times, Admiral McRaven, who directed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, said, This fall, its time for new leadership in this country Republican, Democrat or independent.

Most Republicans Still Believe 2020 Election Was Stolen From Trump Poll

May opinion poll finds that 53% of Republicans believe Trump is the true president compared with 3% of Democrats

A majority of Republicans still believe Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election and blame his loss to Joe Biden on baseless claims of illegal voting, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The 17-19 May national poll found that 53% of Republicans believe Trump, their partys nominee, is the true president now, compared with 3% of Democrats and 25% of all Americans.

About one-quarter of adults falsely believe the 3 November election was tainted by illegal voting, including 56% of Republicans, according to the poll. The figures were roughly the same in a poll that ran from 13-17 November which found that 28% of all Americans and 59% of Republicans felt that way.

Biden, a Democrat, won by more than 7m votes. Dozens of courts rejected Trumps challenges to the results, but Trump and his supporters have persisted in pushing baseless conspiracy theories on conservative news outlets.

US federal and state officials have said repeatedly they have no evidence that votes were compromised or altered during the presidential election, rejecting the unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud advanced by Trump and many of his supporters. Voter fraud is extremely rare in the US.

Still, 67% of overall respondents say they trust election officials in their town to do their job honestly, including 58% of Republicans, according to the poll.

Also Check: How Many Republicans Are Currently In The Senate

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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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Analysis: How Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork for 2024

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-how-donald-trump-is-already-laying-the-groundwork-for-2024/

Analysis: How Donald Trump is already laying the groundwork for 2024

The argument is two-fold: 1) The election is being taken from him and 2) Only Trump among prominent elected Republicans is willing to stand up and fight this tremendous injustice.

“The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing,” tweeted Donald Trump Jr., the President’s eldest son, on Thursday. “They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead. Don’t worry @realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual!”

“If you want to win in 2024 as a Republican, I would probably start saying something,” tweeted former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale on Thursday night. “Just saying.”

This post-election period, then, is being cast as a loyalty test by Trumpworld. Either you speak up and say that Democrats are stealing this election or you don’t deserve to lead the party in four years’ time.

The problem with that logic is, of course, it’s totally illogical. What Trump and his allies are asking Republican elected officials to do is to say that the election is being stolen from the President despite a total of zero evidence that that is, well, actually happening.

What Trump and his friends in the conservative media are doing is alleging that any continued counting of votes amounts to something untoward — when in fact it is evidence that things are working as they should. The votes being counted now, in virtually every state that remains uncalled, came in BEFORE Election Day. The reason they are being delayed in counting is because many of these states had rules that didn’t allow election officials to begin counting the massive influx of early votes until this week.

To side with Trump on this is to oppose the process that sits at the heart of our democracy. If votes cast legally aren’t allowed to be counted because, uh, the President says they shouldn’t be, then what, exactly are we left with?

That basic fact is why the vast majority of Republicans have avoided endorsing the Trump view fully. Some, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, have gotten as close to in line as possible — promising to donate to Trump’s legal fund and insisting that only legal votes should be counted. (Which, duh.) Others, like Pennsylvania Pat Toomey (R), who, it’s worth noting, is retiring in 2022, have been less willing to kind of, sort of play along with Trump’s charade.

“I saw the President’s speech last night, and it was very hard to watch,” Toomey said of Trump’s stunningly dishonest address at the White House on Thursday night. “The President’s allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated. I’m not aware of any significant wrongdoing here.”

Concerns about preserving faith in our democratic process is, of course, not at the forefront of Trump’s thinking right now. Instead, he is considering the best way to somehow declare victory (he and his campaign have already said they won several states, like Pennsylvania, that they look unlikely to win) while also positioning himself as the aggrieved victim of a biased media and unfaithful Republicans. That he has no plans to concede, as Appradab’s Kaitlan Collins reported Friday morning, is perfectly consistent with the “I was robbed” message coming out of Trumpworld

That sort of stance — I won, and even if I didn’t it’s because Republicans didn’t stand up and fight! — is without question an effort to position Trump as the default nominee against Biden in 2024. He’s the only one willing to fight for us, his supporters will be convinced to believe. Everyone else looked away at this election was stolen. Only Trump stood up!

That all of that is disproven by a little something called objective facts won’t matter to those most loyal of Trumpists. They have already thrown their lot in with Trump no matter what — so what’s swallowing one more gigantic falsehood if it allows them to continue to believe that their views represent the majority of Americans?

Don’t believe me about what Trump is doing here? Maybe you’ll believe his former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. “I would absolutely expect the President to stay involved in politics and would absolutely put him on the shortlist of people who are likely to run in 2024,” Mulvaney said Thursday.

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kyprelaw · 5 years ago

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Social Media and Political Ads In The 2020 Election

By Brett Goble, Centre College Class of 2022

May 27, 2020

The 2016 election brought social media into a new and forever more important light through its role in being a distributor and host of political ads both true and false. In the election, Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump spent a total of $81 million on social media ads (1), plus, the widespread phenomenon of misinformation on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram as agents of the Russian government attempted to dispense overall chaos. With the 2020 election marching ever closer, it is important to review how exactly social media platforms are expected by law to behave regarding political ads. Even though the US government and various social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter all underestimated how important social media would be in conveying information and misinformation in the 2016 election, they are determined not to get caught with their heads in the sand again.

As Mark Zuckerberg elaborated when he testified in front of congress in 2018 and 2019, Facebook is taking steps to police itself and the content that it hosts on its site. Such as displaying who paid for an ad when a user sees said ad on Facebook and keeping a massive library of where ad payments come from that anyone can access online (2). Though companies like Facebook and Google are telling federal and state lawmakers they are going to police themselves, the reasoning behind such statements and actions may be more self-interested than it would first appear.

As it stands, there are no federal laws that dictate what companies must allow or not allow regarding political ads on their social media platforms and only a handful of states have passed any bills whatsoever regarding political ads on social media. However, many of these laws do not have much bite as most of them resemble a New York States bill that simply requires anyone who buys a social media political ad that is shown in that state have that information sent to the state to be documented (3). This bill has no restriction on the truth of ads or any extensive verification to ensure they come from political parties and not outside actors like Russia.

The main reason is that these companies do not want the US government challenging their domains and do not want to give more ground than they need to when companies like Google and Facebook have had monopoly accusations from congress such as Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (4). The logic here reasons that if companies like Facebook cannot regulate themselves, then the government needs to step in with harsher laws demanding they change their platforms’ approaches to ads, or break these big companies up to allow for a clearer division in the responsibility of monitoring ads.

For companies like Google to put as much good faith and distance between themselves and the word ‘monopoly’ is a massive incentive for them to try and clean up their platforms of hateful and false rhetoric. Although these companies all have different approaches to monitoring political ads post- 2016, the lack of cemented federal oversight is either a blessing to voters or will leave them woefully misled and confused as the increased importance of social media and no federal oversight may be too much for these companies to handle on their own.

There is still the controversial question of if the government should censor speech on the internet any more than they already do. As Zuckerberg said, regarding the fact that Facebook will allow political ads with incorrect information when he was testifying before congress in 2019, "In a democracy, I don't think it's right for private companies to censor politicians or the news (5). As the election draws closer, we will see if dealing with ads on social media that may contain false information causes more problems than it's worth and if stricter government oversight relating to political speech may be inevitable.

________________________________________________________________

Brett Goble is a Junior at Centre College in Danville, KY studying Politics and Environmental Studies and will be attending Law School after graduation.

________________________________________________________________

1. Halpern, Sue, et al. “The Problem of Political Advertising on Social Media.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 24 Oct. 2019, www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-problem-of-political-advertising-on-social- media.

2. Craig Timberg, Tony Romm. “Lawmakers Agree Social Media Needs Regulation, but Say Prompt Federal Action Is Unlikely.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 11 Apr. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/lawmakers-agree-social-media-needs-regulation-but-say- prompt-federal-action-is-unlikely/2018/04/11/d3ce71b0-3daf-11e8-8d53-eba0ed2371cc_story.html.

3. Fuld, Joe. “What Do New State Laws on Political Digital Ads Mean for You?” New State Laws on Political Digital Ads, 1 Nov. 2018, www.thecampaignworkshop.com/political-digital-ads-laws.

4. New Yorker article above.

5. O'Sullivan, Donie, and Brian Fung. “Twitter Will Ban Political Ads, Jack Dorsey Announces.” CNN, CableNews Network, 31 Oct. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/tech/twitter-political-ads-2020-election/index.html.

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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Mueller disappoints Trump critics, again

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/mueller-disappoints-trump-critics-again/

Mueller disappoints Trump critics, again

Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller deflected questions and reiterated past points during his long-anticipated testimony Wednesday. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Robert Mueller failed to deliver what critics of President Donald Trump wanted Wednesday, but they must be getting used to that by now.

For nearly two years, many Democrats have regarded Mueller as a Messiah figure who will deliver them from the plague of the Trump presidency through something akin to divine intervention.

From the time the special counsel began rolling out indictments in 2017, liberals became convinced with each arrival and departure of prosecutors from the D.C. federal courthouse that a massive, unifying indictment was looming that would chargeTrump campaign operatives with conspiring with Russia and WikiLeaks to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Perhaps it was already under seal? Some expected a case sweeping in individuals who were charged, like campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Trump confidant Roger Stone, with others close to the president who’d not been charged, like Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner. There was even talk Mueller might buck Justice Department policy and charge the president himself.

When that round of speculation fizzled amid signs that Mueller was preparing to wind down his probe, attention shifted to the special counsel’s report. Perhaps the veteran prosecutor and former FBI director hadn’t charged Trump, but he would deliver a report that accused Trump of various crimes — akin to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s impeachment referral for President Bill Clinton in 1998.

That, too, proved illusory. Mueller’s 448-page report contained a raft of damaging allegations against the president and outlined at least 10 episodes of potential obstruction of justice, as well as a slew of apparent lies. But the special counsel never directly accused the president of a crime, as many of his opponents had hoped.

After the lengthy report (and its initial framing by Attorney General Bill Barr) failed to interest or resonate with most Americans not already turned off by Trump’s conduct, Democrats experienced a third bout of Mueller-mania, convincing themselves that in-person testimony by the special counsel would be riveting, producing a national teaching moment that would bring his report to life.

Mueller did his best to dissuade them, declaring in a May 29 statement to the media that he would add no new substance if called before Congress.

“Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony,” the special counsel said, exuding a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

Despite Mueller’s plain reluctance, Democrats pressed on, ultimately subpoenaing him for the hearings Wednesday. The advance billing was so outsized that the reality seemed certain to underwhelm, but it turned out to be even less whelming than that.

Through the first three-hour hearing, before the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller — who also announced May 29 that he was leaving the Justice Department and returning to private life — often seemed ill at ease and had difficulty identifying which lawmaker was questioning him. He repeatedly asked members of both parties to repeat their questions, fouling up the rhythm the questioners were trying to establish.

Answers, when offered, were often curt or monosyllabic, like “Correct,” “Yes” or “No.” But more often, he brushed the question aside, referring to the text of the report, calling the matter outside his “purview” or simply saying, “I’m not going to get into that.”

At times on Wednesday, Mueller just seemed out of it. Under questioning by Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the former special counsel appeared to deny that his office looked into whether the Trump campaign worked with WikiLeaks or others to steal Hillary Clinton campaign emails.

“That matter does not fall within our investigation,” Mueller said, puzzlingly, given that this was a central focus of his probe.

At another point, Mueller claimed not to know anything about Fusion GPS, the private investigation firm commissioned by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to prepare a dossier of opposition research that appeared to fuel the early FBI investigation into ties between Trump, his advisers and Russia.

Democrats had justified the hearings by saying that, despite Mueller’s caveats, they would at a minimum be able to get him to be able to read parts of his report aloud. But he refused even to do that. The standout moment of the first hearing for Democrats was an exchange with the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).

“Did you actually totally exonerate the president?” Nadler asked. “No,” Mueller replied.

If TV ads were the goal, an actual sentence from the witness might’ve been nice. When it came a short time later, Mueller used legal jargon that again denied Democrats their soundbite.

“The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” the ex-prosecutor said.

Democrats seemed to score another small win when Mueller appeared to agree with Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) that the reason Trump wasn’t indicted was because of a longstanding Justice Department policy against charging sitting presidents.

However, at the outset of a second appearance Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee, Mueller snatched that meager victory away, indicating that he misunderstood and actually disagreed with Lieu’s language. “That is not the correct way to say it,” Mueller declared.

During the later hearing, Mueller seemed more at ease and responsive. On a couple of occasions, he offered what amounted to direct rebuttals of Trump talking points.

“When Donald Trump called your investigation a witch hunt, that is also false, is it not?” asked Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the Intelligence chairman.

“I like to think so, yes,” Mueller replied, adding later: “It is not a witch hunt.”

However, his most quotable comments beyond that were warnings about the dangers of continued Russian interference in U.S. elections, not condemnations of Trump that would provide fodder for impeachment.

It emerged during the hearings that Democrats had been signaled in advance of his unwillingness to narrate his own report. That, like Mueller’s request to the Justice Department for guidelines that he adopted to limit his testimony, should have been a warning that Democrats were facing a rough ride Wednesday. But canceling the hearing once the subpoenas were issued was a nonstarter.

Many impeachment backers seemed to detect that the hearings were not providing the momentum proponents of that approach had hoped for.

“A frail old man, unable to remember things, stumbling, refusing to answer basic questions,” filmmaker Michael Moorewroteon Twitter. “I said it in 2017 and Mueller confirmed it today — All you pundits and moderates and lame Dems who told the public to put their faith in the esteemed Robert Mueller — just STFU from now on.”

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribetweeted: “Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.”

Tribe was more upbeat about the afternoon session, praising Schiff’s questioning.

After Mueller’s five-plus hours on the Hill, Democratic leaders did their best to paint the hearings as a successful showcase of the president’s misdeeds.

“It is the crossing of a threshold in terms of a public awareness of what happens and how it conformed to the law or not,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters. “We think today was really a milestone.”

But the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), sounded more resigned to the possibility that Democrats who want to impeach Trump may have to find the courage of their convictions because many Americans may never engage, and public opinion in favor of removing Trump may never swing Democrats’ way.

“We’re accumulating information and doing the best we can,” Cummings said just after he launched into another urgent appeal to voters. “What the American people do with it, that’s another thing, but we will not stand by and fail to give them the total picture.”

“I’m begging — I’m begging the American people to pay attention to what’s going on, because if you want to have a democracy intact for your children and your children’s children, and generations yet unborn, you’ve got to guard this moment,” Cummings added. “This is our watch.”

#critics #Foreign #Politics #Trump

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zarafoodrecipe · 6 years ago

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Relocating jobs is only way to cut commute

The surging demand for Sydney trains simply reflects their massively subsidised low fares. With all NSW taxpayers footing an annual subsidy nearing $2 billion, fares only recoup a small proportion of operating costs. And this is before completion of new lines costing more than $30 billion. Retention of the current fare levels would then hike the annual subsidy to astronomical levels at which time our state government would likely privatise Sydney Trains and allow the new operator the monopoly to price gouge, as happens at Sydney Airport. Returning fares to break-even levels over time would pressure commuters to live closer to their work or schools, bring usage levels into line with competing options such as tollways, and provide Sydney Trains with the income required to properly maintain its impressive network.- Michael Britt, MacMasters Beach I'm guessing the people who are canvassing these price hikes haven't seen the inside of public transport for many years. Here's an idea to reduce passenger crowding at peak hours: provide more trains. Introducing a price hike in Australia's most expensive city will simply drive more people from our overcrowded trains to our overcrowded roads. - Penny Auburn, Newport There are at least two ways to reduce the peak-hour crush on trains. The first is for offices and businesses to change their working hours, either permanently or in rotation where some start work later than others. The second is to run trains more frequently. Statistics must exist that indicate the number of passengers exiting which trains from which lines at which time of the day. This would give an indication as to which businesses should be targeted for changing staff working times. - Anne Roberts, Leichhardt Folau has a right to air views I hope the Israel Folau saga does not herald the beginning of the end of democracy in this country ("I couldn't care less what Folau says, but the impact it can have is undeniable", May 3). Gay marriage is legal in this country with the protection of the law, but the right to disagree is absolutely necessary. A few years ago, gay marriage was legalised with 60 per cent of the population voting for it - meaning 40 per cent did not, for whatever reason. Should that 40 per cent be silenced? Personal liberty is the glue that holds a robust democracy together, not repression of points of view. - Roger Cedergreen, South Hurstville The LGBTQI community are not alone in feeling isolated, ridiculed, excluded and friendships curtailed because they are considered "different". Ask many committed Christians how they feel when they've worked in an office and witnessed the behaviour of their fellow colleagues towards them when they refused to condone extra-marital relationships, greed, fornication, dishonesty. Or what about the person converted to Christianity from another faith who has been disinherited and disowned? Christians are quite familiar with suffering for the sake of their beliefs. The treatment of Folau is just another example of what has been happening to Christians for 2000 years. - Nan Howard, Camden To see the Bible as historical evidence puts a different meaning onto "historical" and "evidence" than is customary (Letters, May 3). Your correspondent may be skilled in beliefs, faith, values and Biblical content, but his knowledge of contract law, which is the issue at hand, may be lacking. - Ian Muldoon, Coffs Harbour The reverend references my favourite oxymoron: biblical evidence. - Peter Moran, Oak Flats Electorate exile I first read Brian Pearn's article with smugness I am, after all, living east of the shire's great dividing line ("A dire Shire: seat of PM's power goes a bridge too far", May 3). But then I realised that Yowie Bay is right next to Gymea Bay, which makes me a western citizen of Cook: maybe we will be exiled in the next redistribution? But don't despair, Brian. Our PM travels west over that cruel border to the shire's real heart of Sutherland to participate in his church service every Sunday. You haven't been totally exiled from cultural wholeness. - Leanne Jarvis, Yowie Bay Brian Pearns is not the only one with reason to gripe over electoral boundaries. The seat of Warringah, heart of the insular peninsular, has spread its tentacles across the Spit Bridge and now has a stranglehold on Mosman. Not only does the area have to endure the hordes of Warringahite motorists clogging its roads, but it has to suffer the indignity of being identified as the same as its lead-footed invaders. - Graham Short, Cremorne I'm a voter in Scott Morrison's seat of Cook. He will more than likely be returned on May 18. My concern is how long will it be before we face a byelection, if the ALP wins government? I can't see Morrison enjoying the next few years on the opposition benches. What's his plan B? - Barry Ffrench, Cronulla Social media outs the bad apples How fascinating that election candidates are dropping like flies after evidence of their racist, sexist and homophobic views are found on social media ("Labor set to disendorse controversial candidate over offensive remarks", smh.com.au, May 3). This is a warning to people that what they post on social media will be there to haunt them for years to come. We always thought it may affect future job prospects and now we see it in action. - Pauline Paton, Centennial Park If any young person has aspirations to serve Australia as a parliamentary representative in future years they probably should have nothing to do with social media. - Patrick St George, Goulburn In the many years that I have been a voter, I have never seen a greater mess than that which has appeared in the current election. The main problem is the number of candidates who have been disendorsed or who are "under suspicion" by their party. The simplest solution is to permit polling booth officials to rule a line through the name of such candidates. This avoids creating wasted votes, that is votes for these people, and will also prevent the significant number of byelections that will almost certainly occur in the next 12 months. It may teach committees who pre-select these candidates to do their research more thoroughly. Many is the time when I have been a polling booth officer who wished that I had had something positive to do in the "quiet times" during voting. - Geoff Lewis, Raglan On another planet "A new nastiness", Tony Abbott (" 'A new nastiness': Police target offensive posters", May 3)? You cheerfully helped to lower the standards of campaigning when Julia Gillard was prime minister. Reap what you sow. - Sandra Willis, Beecroft And on the third week of the election campaign, Abbott uttered his 11th commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbour more than thy planet ("Captain calls on powers of persuasion", May 3). That would be the very same planet that supplies the air we breathe and sustains all living things. - Renata Bali, Thurgoona Saving the planet or saving Warringah: it sounds like the arguments 200 years ago by those who opposed abolishing slavery. It would cost jobs on the docks and in the cotton mills economic madness. Morality eventually prevailed that time. - Susan Braham, Greenwich Abbott is quoted as saying "we subcontract too much out to experts already. Do we want experts to tell us what kind of cars to drive how big our cattle herds should be?". Clearly Abbott is not relying on any experts for his views on climate change. So what are his views based on? His gut feeling? - Anthony Drysdale, Bowral Win-win for childcare Quite apart from the fact that long-time-coming pay increases for childcare workers are well deserved they are also pivotal in obtaining the best for our children ("Childcare wages pledge would cost budget $1.6b", May 2). The best childcare workers use early educational practices and early intervention strategies which help reduce longer-term problems. A win on all counts. - Janice Creenaune, Austinmer Putting aid first Michael Fullilove points to stark differences in Labor and the Coalition's policy on aid ("A world of difference goes unnoticed", May 3) . Since coming to government, the Coalition's cumulative cuts to aid after inflation currently stand at 27 per cent with more cuts to come should they be returned to government. This is despite the "debt and deficit'' rationale for the cuts now being replaced by a promised budget surplus. It's worth noting that this year's budget also included cuts to some of the best performing DFAT programs in countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Cambodia. Whilst a dollar increase has not been explicit, the 2018 ALP National Conference committed to increasing Australia's official development assistance as a percentage of Gross National Income every year that they are in office starting with their first budget, with stronger investment in their key priority areas of health, education, climate change, gender and infrastructure. Aid may not be a vote winner in this election, but given Australia is currently swimming against a tide of most donor countries increasing their generosity, the potential long-term reputational and practical impacts of continued cuts to aid should not be ignored. - Maree Nutt, Newport Reasoned thinking The statement "this is a free country" is frequently quoted by all and sundry, so why should voters not be free to prepoll vote when it suits them (Letters, May 3)? Standing in a long queue on polling day, especially if very hot or pouring with rain does not appeal to everyone. Votes cast prepoll may also be more reasoned and less influenced by the wild promises handed out in the final days of a campaign. - Stephanie Edwards, Roseville I imagine the Electoral Commission isn't much interested in being "more stringent" about verifying people's claims to be entitled to vote early. And rightly so. Provided people do it on or before polling day, does it really matter when and why? - Adrian Connelly, Springwood Unsung heroes of healthcare We're always hearing that cuts in hospital funding undermine patient care, as in the battle between public hospitals and private health insurers over who should pay for their treatment. But I was fortunate enough to experience the finest of care at Royal North Shore public hospital in Sydney recently when no mention was made of hospital funding issues. The 40 medical staff's job prescription could have read "need to be superheroes and be on alert to save lives every second". These unsung heroes, including the nurse practitioners, pharmacists, specialists and transplant coordinator, looked after me unbelievably well and I will be grateful to them forever more. - Louise Darmody, Waverton Send Archibald packing David Wenham, a supporter of the Wayside Chapel and all-round decent bloke, is shown in a thoughtful pose in Tessa Mackay's portrait ("More wrinkles please: actor's feedback packs winning punch", May 3). Is he perhaps wondering if the upcoming election will deliver a kinder, gentler society? Probably as slim a chance as a Packing Room Prize winner winning the Archibald. - Joan Brown, Orange No Packing Room Prize winner has gone on to win the Archibald Prize. Is the reason snobbery? The panel of judges would baulk at voting for an entry that has won the Packing Room Prize. - Kim Woo, Mascot Sanger slang Snags? Sangers? I went to the butchers the other day and asked for half-a-dozen snarlers (Letters, May 3). To no avail: I had to translate. That's what we called sausages in New Zealand - well, back in the day at least. - Paul Hewson, Clontarf Initial misgivings For a change, I felt I had a chance of completing Friday's cryptic crossword when the letters DP appeared in the top right hand corner. Usually, the only clue I can solve is DA - Don't Attempt (Puzzles, May 3). - William Galton, Hurstville Grove Postscript There's sticking your head in a bear's jaw, and then there's accusing the ABC of bias. Peter Smith's complaint of a "relentless anti-Coalition campaign" by the national broadcaster attracted much furious disagreement, some like-minded assertions, and questions for us here holding the ring. "Why would you publish a letter with such a totally unsubstantiated assertion?" challenged Jeff Siegel, of Armidale. To which we say: since we are canvassing a topic so firmly in the eye of the beholder, we require no more examples from Peter than we would seek from, say, someone attributing bias to an arm of the press owned by a certain US citizen. Not until we get more column space, anyway. Some balance is available to Malcolm Freak's "Coalition bingo" from Rosemary O'Brien: "In four minutes flat, Labor luminaries will mention: climate change, Turnbull's sacking, the big end of town, non-taxpaying multinationals, penalty rates, indulged retirees, Dutton and Abbott, water neglect, hospitals and health, and a huge grant to something worthwhile. They'll religiously steer clear of Adani and Bill's lack of popularity." Stopwatches have now been put away. A loss in the Letters family: "My father James Prior of Sylvania Waters passed away on Tuesday," advised Michael Prior. "He had over 100 articles published in the Herald and The Australian beginning in the 1950s. His articles were generally about forgotten Australian women. He achieved the trifecta with a letter in Good Weekend, the Herald and The Sun-Herald in one weekend. He earned a PhD at 85 and was given the added bonus of an Honorary Column 8 PhD. Many readers will remember his letters as witty and often controversial. I'm sure he will be missed by many." Our condolences, with gratitude. Mark Sawyer, Letters co-editor To submit a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, email [email protected]. Click here for tips on how to submit letters. Most Viewed in National Loading https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/relocating-jobs-is-only-way-to-cut-commute-20190503-p51jvc.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years ago

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Democrats sideline superdelegates in effort to heal wounds of 2016 primaries

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=8659

Democrats sideline superdelegates in effort to heal wounds of 2016 primaries

WASHINGTON (Circa) —

The Democratic Party’s move to weaken the sway of so-called superdelegates over the presidential nominating process has been welcomed by progressive activists, but others are skeptical the change will have much impact on the outcome of the 2020 primaries.

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago Saturday, Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez united most party members present behind reforms aimed at healing the scars of the 2016 primary battle between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Among other things, new rules approved for 2020 place the first round of presidential nominee voting at the convention entirely in the hands of regular pledged delegates.

“I think this is a move in the right direction. It’s a positive change that’s a clear shift of power to everyday people, which is ultimately where we want our democracy to be stemming from,” said Alexandra Rojas, executive director of Justice Democrats, a political action committee that supports progressive policies and candidates.

Superdelegates are a creation of the early 1980s, an effort to avoid replicating the bruising 1980 nomination fight between Jimmy Carter in Ted Kennedy. The group includes members of Congress, Democratic governors, elected members of the DNC, and various other party leaders. Unlike pledged delegates, they were free to support whichever candidate they wanted on the first ballot.

Some had sought to greatly reduce or eliminate superdelegates altogether. Although Perez did not go that far, the deal he endorsed effectively neutered them unless the 2020 convention plays out drastically differently than they have for decades.

“This is progress. It definitely reflects the growing power of grassroots movements within the Democratic Party,” said Hamza Khan, a Democratic strategist and founder of the Pluralism Project.

Under the new rules, superdelegates can only vote on the first ballot if one candidate has already won enough pledged delegates to represent a majority of total delegates, making the superdelegates’ votes irrelevant to the nomination. If no candidate wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, superdelegates get to vote beginning with the second ballot when pledged delegates are released from their commitments.

A Democratic convention has not gone past the first ballot since 1952. However, with dozens of names floating around as potential 2020 candidates, there is concern a crowded field will split the primaries and leave the nomination undecided.

“Unless there is a very strong, very well-funded early frontrunner, you could well have a contested race that will go beyond the first ballot and then make it possible for the superdelegates to weigh in,” said Glenn Altschuler, a professor of American studies at Cornell University.

According to Democratic strategist Scott Ferson, Clinton won the nomination in 2016 because of her strength with African-American voters, not the 600 superdelegates whose votes she hardly needed in the end. He doubts anyone will be changing their strategy to adjust to the new superdelegate status quo.

“Superdelegates get to come in if regular people can’t make up their minds,” he said of the new paradigm. “Personally, I prefer the smoke-filled room. It doesn’t change the dynamic of what you need to do. It’s very much an outside game in terms of raising money, coming up with a message.”

Sen. Sanders and grassroots activists applauded Perez for spearheading the change.

“Today’s decision by the DNC is an important step forward in making the Democratic Party more open, democratic and responsive to the input of ordinary Americans,” said Sanders in a statement.

“The Democratic Party took a big step to respect the will of primary and caucus voters during the presidential nomination process. This is a victory for progressive organizers who’ve been working tirelessly to open up the Democratic Party to more people, and it sets off the 2020 primary season to a great start,” said Marissa Barrow, spokesperson for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Many actual superdelegates were not thrilled, fighting back fiercely right up to the final vote Saturday, but they mostly relented in a show of unity. They had argued it unfairly marginalizes their candidate preference.

In a letter to Perez earlier this month, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., predicted the reforms would leave elected officials competing against constituents to secure pledged delegate slots in local elections just to have a say in the nomination.

“Authors of the reforms have stated they seek to ensure that delegates elected by voters in primaries and caucuses have the primary role in selecting the Party’s nominees,” Richmond wrote. “This aim ignores the fact that voters elect Members of Congress every two and six years. There is no reason to honor one election and not the other.”

Others complained Perez is making sweeping changes to accommodate a progressive flank with tenuous loyalty to the Democratic Party.

“Are you telling me that I’m going to go to a convention, after my 30 years of blood, sweat, and tears for this party, that you’re going to take away my right to appease a group of people?” DNC Vice Chair Karen Carter Peterson said at the convention, according to NBC News.

Several other changes were made to the party’s rules for the 2020 nomination process, all aimed at enabling more voters to participate in the process. The party will officially encourage states to use primaries rather than caucuses and it will seek more accessibility for those who cannot make it to caucuses in person.

The party will now require candidates to declare themselves Democrats in writing, a move seemingly aimed at Sanders, who officially remains an independent. The new rules also require much more transparency from the DNC regarding operations, finances, and dealings with all presidential candidates, addressing complaints from Sanders supporters about lack of openness in 2016.

“The more open we make our democratic process, the better it is for everybody and ultimately American democracy,” Rojas said, adding that Justice Democrats also want to see the party take a stand against accepting money from corporate super PACs and lobbyists.

Accessibility and scheduling issues aside, Ferson defended the caucus as a uniquely democratic experience.

“I’m a big fan of the Iowa caucus,” he said. “There’s real power in coming up to a high school in Des Moines at a certain point in time and seeing people just swarm into a building…that show of democracy,” he said.

The superdelegates were more of a perceived problem for Sanders than a real one in 2016. Clinton secured a commanding majority of pledged delegates and total votes before the convention, but the hundreds of superdelegates supporting her from the start cast a shadow over the race for many progressives.

“They played a role, but only in the sense that they seemed to Sanders supporters to give Hillary Clinton an unearned advantage during the primary season and therefore seemed to create an uphill battle for Sen. Sanders,” Altschuler said.

As an actual obstacle to a Sanders nomination, superdelegates were ultimately insignificant. As a symbol, they represented the massive institutional edge Clinton had within the party, for better or worse.

“I started off discounting superdelegates complaints as sour grapes but the reality is Hillary Clinton was a weaker candidate than we anticipated at the time,” Ferson said. “It was clear there was a lot of built-up institutional support.”

While the smaller role for superdelegates in the future is welcome, Khan stressed that the changes made over the weekend do not remedy the underlying problems that afflict both major parties.

“Whether or not the Democratic Party is limiting the influence of superdelegates should be less concerning than the fact more and more Americans do not trust or rely on either party,” he said. “If we’re merely playing the game of changing how we tabulate who is the eventual nominee, that’s less important than looking at the overall picture for Democrats.”

Polls show policies advanced by Democrats are popular with millennials and generation Z voters, but they do not have faith in establishment politics and politicians to enact those policies.

“What good is a party if you have progressive values or you tout progressive values, if progressives don’t want to be part of the party?” Khan asked.

Trust is one issue the party hopes to address by removing any doubt that the 2020 nominee is the choice of the grassroots voters, and the DNC is promising its “most transparent” nomination process ever.

“These reforms will grow the Democratic Party, rebuild trust, and put our next Democratic presidential nominee in the strongest position possible to win,” a DNC spokesperson said in a video announcing the changes.

In theory, the new process will produce a nominee who has a more unified Democratic Party behind them than Clinton did heading into the 2016 general election with many Sanders backers still holding a grudge against her and the party establishment. Altschuler expects opposition to Trump will bind the party together in 2020 regardless of how the nominee is chosen.

“It’s parties that are in power that tend to fracture and splinter. It’s parties that are out of power that tend to have some real incentive to unify to get back into power,” he said.

In their effort to avoid the mistakes they made in 2016, Democrats may run the risk of repeating the ones the Republican establishment made instead. A recent analysis by James King of the University of Wyoming detailed how different party rules worked for President Trump and against Sen. Sanders.

President Trump is overwhelmingly popular among Republicans now, but three years ago, he was seen by many party insiders as an electoral train wreck waiting to happen. Despite deep concerns about his electability, a splintered field of candidates and an arduous primary season allowed him to collect an insurmountable lead in the delegate count, leaving his critics to scramble unsuccessfully for arcane methods to head him off at the convention.

How that worked out for the GOP depends who you ask. Trump obviously won the election, but he has since remade the party in his image, alienating many Americans in the process and driving some longtime Republicans out into the wilderness.

“People always say, ‘At some point, somebody must step in,’ and it just never, ever happens,” Ferson said.

Altschuler cautioned that primaries naturally drag parties to their extremes, and Democrats may eventually regret giving up their last-ditch opportunity to challenge a candidate they consider unelectable.

“It renders the party establishment much less influential and relatively impotent in determining the outcome of the nominating process,” he said. “Some people think that’s good and is more democratic. My concern is that the low turnout rate in primaries do not make it more democratic. It increases the political polarization that we now see.”

Read full story here

#Democrats

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visionmpbpl-blog · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on http://www.visionmp.com/yashwant-sinha-writes-scathing-letter-against-modi/

Yashwant Sinha writes scathing letter against Modi govt, asks BJP MPs to speak up

New Delhi, April 17: Veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha has once again criticised the Narendra Modi government with full force. In an open letter, published by The Indian Express on Tuesday, Sinha made a no-holds-barred attack against the ruling BJP over its various failures. Right from attacking the Modi regime over the slow growth rate in the economy, lack of job opportunities to rise in crimes against women and girls, Sinha in a way expressed the anguish of common man in his letter.

Sinha wrote the open letter to basically ask his BJP colleagues to speak up to the top bosses of the party about the issues they are facing. Since long, Sinha has been criticising the Modi government over various issues beginning from demonetisation. Those who disagree with Sinha said that he is attacking the BJP government as the veteran leader did not get any ministerial berth. Regarding the accusation, Sinha said that he aspires to hold no office as he has already stopped contesting elections.

We all worked very hard for the victory of the party in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Some of us had been struggling against the rule of the UPA government, in Parliament and outside, ever since it assumed office in 2004 while some others were enjoying the fruits of office in their respective states. We were delighted with the results of the 2014 elections and expected that the unprecedented victory would mark the beginning of a new and glorious chapter in our country’s history. We backed the prime minister and his team to the hilt, and in full faith. The government has now completed nearly four years in office, presented five budgets and used up all the opportunity available to it to show results. At the end of it, however, we seem to have lost our way and the confidence of the voters.

The economic situation is grim, despite tall claims to the contrary by the government that we are the world’s fastest growing economy. A fast growing economy does not accumulate the kind of non-performing assets in its banks, as we have done over the last four years. In a fast growing economy the farmers are not in distress, the youth are not without jobs, small businesses do not stand destroyed and savings and investment do not fall as drastically as they have done over the last four years. What is worse, corruption has raised its ugly head again and banking scams are tumbling out of the closet one after another. The scamsters also manage to run away from the country somehow, as the government watches helplessly. Women are more unsafe today than ever before. Rapes have become the order of the day and instead of acting strictly against the rapists we have become their apologists. In many cases, our own people are involved in these heinous crimes. The minorities are alienated. The worst is that the Scheduled Castes and Tribes, the weaker sections of our society, have been exposed to atrocities and inequities as never before and the guarantees given to them in the Constitution stand threatened. The sum total of our foreign policy seems to consist of frequent foreign visits by the prime minister and his hugging foreign dignitaries, whether they like it or not. It is completely devoid of substance and has failed miserably even in our immediate neighbourhood, where China is trampling all over our interests. The smartly executed surgical strike by our brave jawans against Pakistan has been wasted and Pakistan continues to export terror to India unabated as we watch helplessly. Jammu and Kashmir continues to burn, Left wing extremism refuses to be tamed, and the common man is suffering as never before. Internal democracy in the party stands completely destroyed. Friends tell me that even in parliamentary party meetings, MPs do not get an opportunity, as in the past, to air their views. In the other party meetings, also, the communication is always one-way. They speak and you listen. The prime minister has no time for you. The party headquarter has become a corporate office where it is impossible to meet the CEO. The most important threat that has emerged over the last four years, however, is to our democracy. Institutions of democracy have been demeaned and denigrated. Parliament has been reduced to the level of a joke. The prime minister did not even once sit down with senior leaders of the Opposition parties in Parliament when the just-concluded Budget Session was being disrupted in order to find a way out. Then he fasted to shift the blame to others. The first part of the most important Budget Session was the shortest ever. I compare this to the days of Atal Bihari Vajpayee when all of us were under strict instructions to accommodate the Opposition and ensure that Parliament functioned. So we had adjournment motions, no-confidence motions and other discussions under any rule the Opposition wanted. The press conference by four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court was unprecedented in the annals of our democratic history. It brought out clearly the rot that has been allowed to afflict the highest judicial institution of our country. The judges have repeatedly pointed out that democracy in our country is under threat. Today, it appears as if winning elections by controlling the means of communication, specially the media and social media, is the sole purpose of our party and even that is threatened seriously now. I do not know how many of you will get the ticket for the next Lok Sabha elections but if previous experience is any guide, half of you at least will not. The chances of your winning the election, even if you get the ticket are fairly remote. In the last Lok Sabha election the BJP had secured only 31 per cent votes; 69 per cent was polled against it. So, if the opposition unites, you will be nowhere. The situation demands that you speak up in the national interest. I am glad to note that at least five Scheduled Caste MPs of the party have expressed their disenchantment with the government for not delivering on the promises made to the community. I am urging you to also express your opinion frankly before the bosses on all issues confronting us. If you remain silent now you will do a great disservice to the country. Future generations are unlikely to forgive you. It is your right to demand accountability from those who are in government today and are letting down the country. The interest of the country supersedes that of the party, just as the interest of the party supersedes the interest of an individual. I am appealing specially to Advaniji and Joshiji to take a stand in the national interest and ensure that the values they have made such unparalleled sacrifices to uphold are protected and preserved for future generations and corrective steps are taken in time. There have been some minor successes no doubt, but the big failures overshadow them completely. I hope you will give serious consideration to the issues I have raised in this letter. Please pick up courage, and speak up and save democracy and the country.

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clusterassets · 7 years ago

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New world news from Time: ‘I Feel Trapped.’ Rohingya Muslims Describe a Life of Fear in Myanmar’s Biggest City Yangon

(YANGON, Myanmar) — For four straight days last month, Rahim Muddinn watched, amazed, as Myanmar’s state-run newspapers published special supplements showing Rohingya Muslims accused of being terrorists — nearly 250 photos each day.

For the 41-year-old Rohingya man, it was a surreal moment. He was born and raised in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city and far from the western state of Rakhine, where bloody military operations that followed Rohingya militant attacks in August have driven nearly 700,000 Rohingya into refugee camps in Bangladesh.

“When we first saw those pictures, we started laughing. We wondered: When will it be our turn to have our pictures in the paper?” Muddinn, a teacher, said in an interview in his Yangon home.

Behind the laughter, though, there is genuine fear.

The pictures are the latest in a series of chilling realizations for the Rohingya minority here. Though Yangon’s tree-lined boulevards and weathered colonial architecture seem a world away from the rice paddies and isolated villages of Rakhine — let alone the tarp-walled huts of the teeming refugee camps — the government is increasingly linking Rohingya across the country with what it calls a terrorist threat, Muddinn and others say.

Rohingya in Yangon describe a sense of rising persecution and hatred, of vanishing freedoms and opportunities, of Buddhist neighbors and friends suddenly more willing to publicly express sympathies with the military’s destruction of Rohingya villages in Rakhine.

“One day it really could be my picture in the paper,” said Muddinn. Like most of the other Rohingya who spoke with The Associated Press, he used his Rohingya name because of safety worries. “I do have anxiety. The government can detain anyone it says is a supporter of terrorism or anyone viewed as a threat to the state.”

Though Rohingya have always been persecuted in the country, it got much worse after 2012, when violence in Rakhine killed hundreds and drove about 140,000 people, most of them Rohingya, from their homes to camps. Violence flared again in 2016 and, most dramatically, following the August attacks, when refugees report widespread killing and rape by Myanmar forces. The AP last month confirmed, through extensive interviews with survivors and time-stamped video, a massacre and at least five mass graves, all previously unreported, in the Rakhine village of Gu Dar Pyin.

Many Rohingya have been in Myanmar for generations, but, increasingly, the government and media have played up their claim that they’re not citizens but “illegal Bengali interlopers” who entered Myanmar from Bangladesh with the help of corrupt immigration officers.

There are non-Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, and they often report rising discrimination, especially those in Rakhine. But generally their situation is less precarious than the Rohingya.

Myanmar’s government denies discriminating against Rohingya and other Muslims.

“It’s totally not true that Muslims in the cities like Yangon have no freedom of movement or lack the same rights as other populations,” said Aung San Win, director general of Myanmar’s Ministry of Religion. “Everyone is granted rights to freedom by the constitution, including Muslims. There is no discrimination in the country.”

In Yangon, however, hate speech against Rohingya has risen, and Buddhists who were once friends and colleagues now shun Muddinn’s family. Muddinn believes the government is now trying to portray all Rohingya as terrorists.

When he hears a motorcycle rev its engines near his home after midnight, he wonders if a policeman is coming to detain him. His wife, Amina, hasn’t left their home by herself since 2012 because of shame and fear after a Buddhist spit on her.

Why did it happen? Because she was wearing a burqa.

Not far away, Kyaw Min, a well-known Rohingya activist and president of the Democracy and Human Rights Party, brandishes the newspaper photos of alleged terrorists.

The government, he said in his party headquarters, is trying to make it so that nearly every Rohingya family in Rakhine state will be associated with an accused terrorist if the refugees in Bangladesh ever return to Myanmar.

Safety is a worry even in Yangon. He said he no longer leaves his home at night or travels alone around the city. Some party members have been attacked, and he has suffered intense abuse on social media, with people calling him “rubbish” and an “interloper from Bangladesh.”

Early last year, a gunman killed Ko Ni, a prominent member of Myanmar’s Muslim minority and a legal adviser for the ruling National League for Democracy party. He was shot in the head at the Yangon airport.

Ko Ni, who wasn’t Rohingya, had criticized the NLD in 2015 for not putting up Muslim candidates in the general election.

Since August, abuse has intensified, and Rohingya leaders risk their safety if they speak out publicly. “We feel this everywhere,” said Kyaw Min, who spent years in prison on what he calls politically motivated charges.

Though most Rohingya worry less about their political future and more about putting food on their plates, the sense of discrimination and persecution is a heavy burden. All of them, says Kyaw Min, “will have some sort of scar in their hearts.”

“The word ‘Rohingya’ is a dangerous thing to be called in this country,” said Ajas, 26, a college student in Yangon, who, like some other Rohingya, uses only a single name. “The government has brainwashed the whole country into thinking that we are illegal immigrants.”

Few local NGOs or Buddhist activists will stand up for the Rohingya, but Ajas said he and others are trying to talk with liberal Buddhists and other “moderate minds.”

Still, he is the only Rohingya in his class and sometimes has problems with Buddhists when he describes himself as Rohingya. “They don’t accept that word because they say there is no such thing as that concept in this country.”

Like many Rohingya in Yangon, Mohammad Warris, another college student, usually keeps his national ID card in a safe at home. The cards, which are used to apply for school, to set up bank accounts and to get passports, are irreplaceable without a huge bribe, he said, because Myanmar has long tried to take them from Rohingya as a way to more easily strip them of citizenship.

“If I didn’t have this, I wouldn’t be able to survive. I could be caught by the police and jailed as a ‘Bengali terrorist,’” Warris, 24, said.

“They are hated by the mass of Burmese because they simply exist,” a 20-year-old student at the University of Yangon says of the Rohingya during an interview in an empty classroom, ceiling fans whirring overhead.

Though the student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety worries, is a rare example of a Buddhist at the school willing to regularly defend the Rohingya, he won’t do it on the streets.

“It’s too precarious,” he said. “If I say ‘genocide’ in public, the government would put me in jail for years.”

Buddhists at the university have accused the student, whose parents are Buddhists from Rakhine, of having Rohingya blood and of taking money from foreign governments and NGOs. A nationalist friend told him he had informed on him to police for insulting Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and said he would be sued. “He said, ‘You’re destroying your own country by sympathizing with terrorists.’”

He still speaks up in class to defend the Rohingya, but he doesn’t describe himself as an activist anymore and has focused lately on his studies. “I can do better work (for the Rohingya) as a researcher than if I was in jail.”

One day last year, Muddinn sat with some friends sipping tea at a cafe in his neighborhood when the Buddhist driver of a bicycle rickshaw smashed purposely into the side of a car driven by a Muslim man. It was not the first time the neighbors had seen this Buddhist slam into Muslim cars.

The Buddhist got off his bicycle, screaming insults at the Muslim and trying to punch him.

“I was really furious,” Muddinn said. But he did nothing, even though he describes himself as short-tempered. “Even if we’re the victims,” he said, “the police will see us as the perpetrators because we’re Muslim.”

“I feel trapped,” Muddinn said. “There is no guarantee for our future. I want to stay in this country forever, but now my faith is shaken and I wonder if I will have to move away.”

February 13, 2018 at 09:16AM ClusterAssets Inc., https://ClusterAssets.wordpress.com

#Time #world #news #ClusterAssets #ClusterAsset #Cluster Asset Inc.#ClusterAssets Inc.

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spynotebook · 8 years ago

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If the election of an American president abetted by Russian interference seems stranger than fiction, you're almost right. Exactly 30 years ago, in the midst of the Cold War, ABC aired a seven-night, 14-and-a-half-hour miniseries depicting life 10 years after the Soviet Union manipulates the presidential election as meek and deflated Americans shrug. “Amerika,” was heavily criticized at the time for peddling the histrionic premise of a bloodless coup. And while much of the production remains implausible, its core message is more relevant today than ever: They did it because we let them.

In the alternate universe of “Amerika,” (available only in VHS, though it can be found on YouTube) a puppet government was installed in 1988, after a sham election in which both major party candidates were Soviet stooges. By 1997, the 50 states had been replaced by 12 “administrative areas.” Communication systems had been taken out – no Internet or cell phones in this version of 1997 – cutting Americans off from each other. The mighty U.S. military is no more; the areas are patrolled by Soviet-controlled “United Nations Special Service Units.” Dissidents, if not simply exiled to desolate parts of the country, are brainwashed at the “People’s Acceptance Hospital.” Older Americans grumble about food shortages and a lost way of life, but are resigned to their fate. Kids are taught their “ancestors” were “bullies” who only killed Indians, exploited workers and dumped those who couldn’t work into “slums” to die. (Lincoln is still revered, but his image now gets paired with Lenin.)

Hope for a restoration of democracy is personified in Devin Milford, played by Kris Kristofferson. Milford, clearly styled on then-first term Senator John Kerry, is a Vietnam vet-turned antiwar activist-turned Massachusetts congressman. He was the last gasp for freedom, running as an independent in the 1988 presidential election before being sent to an American gulag. “Amerika” begins with his release after a six-year imprisonment. He’s not free. He’s confined to 25-mile area in his hometown of what was called Nebraska, but is now part of the “Central Administrative Area.” The Russians try to pressure him to help stifle nascent protests, but he is too stubborn and becomes the symbol of the resistance.

Milford’s refusal to bend is contrasted by his childhood friend Peter Bradford (Robert Urich). Bradford begins as a county administrator disgusted by his Russian overlords. But as he tries to do as much good as he can within the system, he gradually becomes closer to the regime. He eventually agrees to help formally dissolve the United States by turning the administrative areas into rump countries – the final phase of the Soviet’s grand plan, expedited by a false-flag massacre of the entire U.S. Congress, blamed on American terrorists. Bradford is tapped to become president of the new country, “Heartland.”

Hovering over them is the Andrei Denisov (Sam Neill), a KGB agent effectively running the Central Administrative Area (not to be confused with the real-life Andrey Denisov, who is Russia’s current ambassador to China). Cynical manipulation comes as easy to Denisov as breathing – he casually takes credit for a “controlled provocation,” stirring up “young people” to “resist in ways that make them feel good, not those that actually accomplish anything.” But he holds a soft spot for America. At key moments, he lectures Milford and Bradford – with a trace of sadness – on why their fellow Americans surrendered the Cold War.

How was it that the Soviets were able to waltz into America? The specifics of the coup are never spelled out, but various explanations are given as to why Americans were too demoralized to resist. Milford, in archival footage from his doomed presidential campaign, blames the scars from Vietnam, which “struck the core of our perception of ourselves as a people.”

Some point to economics. One man cites the decline of American manufacturing: “They wanted a country which didn’t have a productive capacity. I guess we were [already] well on our way to giving it up.” Marion Andrews (Wendy Hughes), Milford’s conniving ex-wife who betrayed him in 1988, rationalizes that Americans chose to welcome the communists because they were tired of chronic inequities: “Many of us took the opportunity to create an America we believe in. There were millions of people who never participated in the so-called ‘American Dream.’”

Milford has a different explanation. In a separate scene, he tells his sister soon after his return home that Americans were too scared and selfish to support his campaign and stand up for democracy: “I lost faith in everybody. Nobody wanted to risk anything for anybody else. Everybody afraid they were going to lose what they had. They knew it was bad. They were just afraid it’d get worse.”

Bradford, angrily defending his decision to be the face of secession from America to his horrified wife, echoes Milford: “For most people, being an American never meant that much anyway … Damn, I am so tired of this ‘I’m an American’ bull! Where was all that patriotism when it counted? Where was that willingness to sacrifice? Nobody wanted to join the damn Army to defend the country unless they got paid well. Nobody wanted to give any time to public service unless they could make a career out of it.”

But Denisov sums it up most succinctly, “You lost your country before we even got here.”

The mini-series is all but totally forgotten today, largely because it was an overhyped ratings bust. In the run up to its premiere, it had attracted massive controversy, especially among the left, which presumed it was going to be seven nights of right-wing war-mongering propaganda. (Mother Jones magazine published a six-article attack spread ahead of its airing.) Not only did the Soviet Union complain, but so did the United Nations, which threatened legal action over the use of its name and logo. (In fact, “Amerika” treats the U.N. like an essential institution; Milford laments America “abandon[ed] the principle of a United Nations,” letting Russia, “usurp its name and debase its function.” Denisov further explains that America’s disinterest in the U.N. and international affairs was what turned the world against it.)

Mother Jones’ Todd Gitlin hoped that “CBS and NBC will rise to the occasion with some ingenious counterprogramming.” NBC came through. While “Amerika” won the ratings battle on its opening night, attracting 22 million households, “The Facts Of Life Down Under” was close behind with 19 million. Lacking a gangbusters premiere installment, ratings for “Amerika” steadily declined over the week.

Beyond artistic merits, “Amerika” suffered from poor timing. Production began a few years earlier, when President Ronald Reagan declared the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and joked on a hot mic that he signed legislation to “outlaw Russia” so “we begin bombing in five minutes.” (Many presumed ABC greenlighted “Amerika” to pacify conservatives livid over “The Day After,” its 1983 depiction of nuclear holocaust, though the network denied it.) But by February 1987, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had acknowledged the USSR’s economic troubles, begun his glasnost reforms and reached out to Reagan. “’Amerika’ became an anachronism before it ever saw the light of day,” crowed The Nation’s Andrew Kopkind in his critical review.

Watching “Amerika” through the lens of 2016 is a wholly different experience.

It’s still a slog. This is not a pulpy “Red Dawn” or a grippingly tense “Manchurian Candidate.” The pace is slow, the lectures often leaden and the editing nonexistent. Seven hours could have easily been lopped off, if not for the desire to have a momentous, week-long television event. The New York Times TV critic warned, “getting through the enormous glut of stereotypes and preachifying dialogue … will tax even the most willing suspenders of disbelief.” The Washington Post was more charitable, deeming it “worth enduring” because of its “daring grimness.”

And there are plenty of outdated references. The 20th century Cold War with the Russians was an existential battle against communism. The question posed by “Amerika” was whether Americans were capable of giving up on democracy, but also on capitalism. In turn, “Amerika” is at its most incredulous when depicting Americans accepting the thin gruel of communism. An early scene shows Bradford at the local diner, wistfully ordering “Aunt Jemima pancakes, real maple syrup and tiny pork link sausages.” The owner, in no mood for jokes, shoots back, “I’ve got soybean cakes and I’ve got molasses and that’s better for you anyway.” This is nonsense. If there’s one thing Americans would get up off the mat for, it’s pork.

But the New York Times TV critic’s conclusion in 1987, “that the United States would simply crumble from within because of a national moral flabbiness -- is monumentally implausible,” doesn’t seem so implausible today.

With the economic argument over communism resolved, the remaining divide with Russia is political: democracy vs. dictatorship, humanitarian internationalism vs. cold nationalism. Access to sausage is not in danger, giving Russia a fresh opening.

American conservatives with a nationalist, and even authoritarian, bent like Donald Trump are not unnerved by the prospect of Russian influence over the U.S. government. Some see common cause with President Vladimir Putin in the war against Islamic militants, shelving concerns about Russia’s imperial ambitions and comfort with genocidal tactics. Much like how the Russians in “Amerika” want the United States of America to dissolve, both Putin and Trump have rhetorically undermined the European Union, and Trump has questioned America’s commitment to Putin’s bête noire, NATO. Weaker global and regional institutions make it easer for individual nations to act with impunity.

Russia isn’t popular with most Americans, but Trump supporters did not flinch when he deflected allegations that Putin’s government murdered journalists by defending him and smearing America: “at least he’s a leader … I think our country does plenty of killing also.” And those in the “alt-right” movement see Putin as a symbol of white nationalist values. News of how Russia used hacking to manipulate voting behavior has only increased Republican approval of Putin in polls. His net favorable rating among Republicans has jumped from minus-66 to minus-10 in little more than two years, while Barack Obama’s festers at minus-64.

What’s even more disturbing is Trump’s dismissal of the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia not only meddled in the election, but actively sought his victory—and then celebrated it. Trump’s reaction has been to mock and misrepresent their findings, while blaming the victims for being hacked. His aides scoff at the implication that he’s too pro-Putin: “He is going to modernize our nuclear capability, he’s going to call for an increase in defense budget, he’s going to have oil and gas exploration—all which goes against Russia’s economic and military interests,” Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway recently noted. But these moves are not all that provocative if Trump and Putin have overlapping foreign policy goals. Moreover, Trump himself has had every opportunity to clear up any misconceptions, and he hasn’t done it. American presidents have had warm relationships with Russian leaders in the past—Reagan and Gorby, Clinton and Yeltsin—but this feels different.

***

Before America in “Amerika” is fully occupied, we see Milford in 1988 make a final desperate pitch to the country: “No, we’re not all in prison camps. We’re not all beaten down by an occupying army with tanks on every corner. But we don’t need troops to tell us we’ve lost our vision. We don’t need Soviet advisors to prove that we’ve lost our national purpose. Americans have allowed themselves to become immobilized by their own selfish concerns. Immobilized by a lack of understanding of the freedoms secured by our forefathers into which most of us were born, and now have lost.” Today we see immobilization as well, from those plaintively wailing on Facebook that Russia has executed something akin to a coup, but feeling powerless as to what to do about it.

“Amerika” did not foresee that Russia’s entry into America politics would be greased by a bombastic right-wing populist billionaire. The fictional president is a mild-mannered, self-described “figurehead.” But he is not without insight, telling Bradford, “Totalitarianism doesn’t need armies. It only needs to control a couple of things: the media, and the ability to dispense privilege to some, and withhold it from others. And of course, a weak and divided people helps.”

The seeds of that dark future are already in the soil. Russia executed a subtle control of the media—weaponizing mainstream institutions through releases of stolen emails and flooding social media with fake news. Fox News is airing uncritical interviews with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, an organization U.S. officials have linked to Russian intelligence. And the American people are not only deeply divided along geographic and cultural lines, but new research shows them to be increasingly dubious about the importance of democracy.

“If the dream of democracy cannot survive in America, it cannot survive the 20th century,” Milford declared in his announcement address. Denisov, studying videotape of the speech, notices his normally apolitical American girlfriend transfixed. “He’s touched you,” he purrs to her, his expression both intrigued and disturbed. Part of Putin’s agenda is to convince Americans not to be touched, but instead, to believe that our democratic institutions can no longer be trusted. Our challenge, in the face of Russian interference, is to remind ourselves that despite the deep ideological and cultural differences that are testing American unity, the unifying principle of America remains.

Thirty years ago, a bloated, overwrought TV miniseries tried to make that point and missed the mark. We didn’t need to fear the gulag then, and we don’t now. Hysterical prophesizing of totalitarianism can also be counterproductive, making it easier to shrug off quieter erosions of democracy. But no matter how imperfect, “Amerika” was more prescient than its creators ever could have expected, reminding us that we can only can lose what makes America great if we surrender it ourselves.

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