Republican Strategist Ana Navarro: Trump Is Disgusting, Fixated With "Women" and "Blood"

Trump’s Love Of Alex Jones Should Horrify Conservatives - Progressive American

There was a time when conservatives talked about “integrity,” “honesty,” and “personal responsibility” and may have truly meant it. That ship has now sailed.

Alex Jones is in the midst of a divorce. His wife calls him “unstable” and “violent” based on what he has said on his radio program. How did his lawyers respond?

Randall Wilhite told state District Judge Orlinda Naranjo that using his client Alex Jones’ on-air Infowars persona to evaluate Alex Jones as a father would be like judging Jack Nicholson in a custody dispute based on his performance as the Joker in “Batman.”

“He’s playing a character,” Wilhite said of Jones. “He is a performance artist.”

In short he is LYING to his conservative followers.

Apart from the fact that he is lying to you, one reason this should bother both his followers and others is that his now admitted lies influence Donald Trump. Trump has praised Jones and has actively pushed conspiracy theories that Jones originated.

This should be horrifying to conservatives. There was a time when conservatives talked about “integrity,” “honesty,” and “personal responsibility” and may have truly meant it. I think that ship has now sailed and we have long-ago established that conservatives are cool with lying and liars when they are on their side and they promise them a chance for political power.

In the light of conservative's decades-long pontificating about morality this still stuns me.

The full article is available here

Warmest year on record a hoax because of margin of error? That’s wrong - PolitiFact

A Fox News show co-host said that claims about warmest year are misleading due to the margin of error. Scientists say evidence proves he is wrong. Pants on Fire!

The full article is available here

Why Russia Investigation Matters & You Should Care - NPR

The assessment of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies is that Russia not only tried to influence the election by hacking and releasing emails, but engaged in a full-fledged influence campaign through propaganda to get Donald Trump elected.  Elections are the foundation stone of this country. That's why this matters.

"Please tell my constituents, my neighbors, why they should care — and not just in Washington, D.C., but in Washington state and Texas and Connecticut and points in between — and why should they care, and why do you care, sir?" - Congressman Denny Heck.

Former CIA Director John Brennan's response:

"The fact that the Russians tried to influence resources and authority and power - and the fact that the Russians tried to influence that election so that the will of the American people was not going to be realized by that election - I find outrageous and something that we need to, with every last ounce of devotion to this country, resist and try to act to prevent further instances of that.

And so, therefore, I believe, this is something that's critically important to every American. Certainly, it's very important for me, for my children and grandchildren to make sure that never again will a foreign country try to influence and interfere in the foundation stone of this country, which is electing our democratic leaders."

Russia is accused of not only trying to influence the election by hacking and releasing emails, but engaging in a full-fledged influence campaign through propaganda to get Donald Trump elected. That's the assessment of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies.

Americans should let the conclusions be guided by the facts and allow a rigorous effort to attain them, because there's nothing more fundamental to a free and fair democracy.

That's why this matters.

The full article is available here

AP Fact Check: Trump Tweets Contain Attacks, Not Facts

President Donald Trump can’t be counted on to give accurate information to Americans when violent acts are unfolding abroad.

The full article is available here

Trump's Dump of Ethics Waivers Should End "Drain the Swamp Illusion" - Common Dreams

Former lobbyists from some of the most contentious industries under Trump are given the freedom to influence policy making in those very same arenas.

The full article is available here

Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned Dixie Republican - Forbes

It was religious leaders in the South who solved the puzzle on Republicans’ behalf, converting white angst over lost cultural supremacy into a fresh language of piety and “religious liberty.”

Southern conservatives discovered that they could preserve white nationalism through a proxy fight for Christian Nationalism. They came to recognize that a weak, largely empty Republican grassroots structure in the South was ripe for takeover and colonization.

The full article is available here

Trump Wants Families On Food Stamps To Get Jobs. The Majority Already Work - NPR

When it comes to families on SNAP with kids, a majority — 55 percent – were bringing home wages, according to USDA. The problem is, those wages aren't enough to actually live on.

The full article is available here

 Rev. William Barber Bringing MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign Back - The Nation

Rev. William Barber II announced last week that he will step down as president of the North Carolina NAACP and lead a new national initiative that aims to end poverty and begin what Barber calls 'a national moral revival.'

This new Poor People’s Campaign will pick up where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. left off 50 years ago when he turned his focus to uniting poor people across lines of race and geography and pushing their priorities onto the federal agenda.

The full article is available here

Fact Check: Tim Allen Show Not Cancelled For Political Reasons - Snopes

"ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said on a press call with reporters that she canceled Last Man Standing for the same 'business and scheduling reasons' that led to the cancellation of other shows; including The Real O'Neals, Dr. Ken, The Catch, and American Crime.

The network will soon have another Trump supporter on the air. The network is reviving Roseanne, which will star Roseanne Barr, who said she became a Republican because of Donald Trump."

The full article is available here

Former FBI Director Mueller Appointed As Special Counsel To Oversee Russia Probe - WBUR

"The Justice Department is appointing former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the growing probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible ties to associates of President Trump."

The full article is available here

Trump Reveals Highly Classified Info To Russians - Washington Post

"President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump’s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State."

The full article is available here

Trump: President Who Doesn't Know What It Is To Know - George Will

"It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about Donald Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability.

It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence."

The full article is available here

What Is In Trump Care Bill? - Washington Post

"The bill does not spell out either what sort of preexisting conditions insurers may take into account if states seek a waiver from the existing federal law.

But in the past, some insurers had identified domestic violence, sexual assault, Caesarean section and postpartum depression as grounds for either denying coverage or charging higher premiums."

The full article is available here

Trump: "I Thought Presidency Would Be Easier" - Politico

Gee, the most powerful position on earth; who would think that that wouldn't be a piece of cake? A big beautiful piece of cake!

The full article is available here

Donald Trump's File - Politifact Truth-O-Meter

Here's how Donald Trump fares on the Truth-O-Meter:

• Pants on Fire - 16% 
• False - 33% 
• Mostly False - 20% 
• Half True - 15% 
• Mostly True - 12% 
• True - 4%.

The full article is available here

Obama Criticized for $400K Speech To Wall Street - Common Dreams

"While Obama railed against 'fat cat bankers' on the campaign trail, during his tenure as president he oversaw the massive bailout for the firms responsible for the 2008 crisis, picked former Wall Street executives for his cabinet, and not a single banker went to jail."

The full article is available here

Trump's "Swamp Draining" Lags Behind Campaign Rhetoric - NPR

"If 'draining the swamp' means less lobbying, that isn't happening. Since Election Day, the number of new lobbyist registrations is up compared with a year ago."

The full article is available here

How Do Trump's First 100 Days Rate Historically - Politifact

Trump: "No administration has accomplished more in the first 90 days."

Facts: "Trump's accomplishments are much less numerous and far-reaching than those of Roosevelt, the standard against whom all presidents are measured. In more recent years, other presidents, including Obama, have accomplished more in their first 100 days than Trump has."
The full article is available here

Trump's First 100 Days: An Entry Level Presidency - NPR

"There have been legislative stops and starts; hectic management in the White House, including infighting between family and advisers and the shortest tenure of any national security adviser in history; and many, many key positions in his administration remain unfilled."

The full article is available here

Nature's Healing - Gerald May at Shalem Institute

No matter how kindly we feel, we will never be able to participate in healing the world around us as long as we keep seeing Nature as something different from ourselves.

We have been fractured. We have been broken off from the nature of the world, broken away from the nature of one another, broken apart from our own nature.

The pain of this breach is so constant that we have become accustomed to it; it feels normal.

The pain is with us every day, when we judge ourselves and others, when we struggle for control, when we draw circles around ourselves that shut others out, when we long for a connectedness we cannot find, when we try to help one another and it’s never enough, and, perhaps most of all, when we go outdoors and feel that Nature is something different from us.

Before we can effectively heal the wounds we have inflicted upon the rest of Nature, we must allow ourselves to be healed. And we must allow the rest of Nature to help us.

I do not know exactly how the healing happens; I only know a little bit of what has happened to me. I am sure you, also, have had some experience of it. It can happen in very ordinary situations, like feeling your hands in the dirt of a garden or lying on your back in a field.

In part, it happens just through the physical touch of earth and sky and growing things. This physical, healing touch has to go deep within us to where we are truly broken. For me, the deep touching happens when my mind stops and my senses open and I am given willingness.

The full article is available here

Return of Dangerous ‘Obama Did Nothing’ Syria Narrative - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

One could make a very good argument that even before Trump’s missile strike, the Syrian civil war was suffering from far too much foreign intervention, rather than not enough.

One of great ironies of our over-saturated media environment is that, often, the biggest falsehoods and most transparent acts of political theater enjoy the most widespread acceptance and demonstrate the most stubborn popularity.

For years, the press has convinced itself—and, by extension, much of the public—that President Barack Obama refused to intervene in Syria after a ghastly sarin nerve agent attack in 2013 violated his “red line” warning about chemical weapons use to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Previously, FAIR (9/5/15) documented how this narrative was mere “fantasy” and that, in fact, “the US has been ‘intervening’ in the Syrian civil war, in measurable and significant ways, since at least 2012—most notably by arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces.”

The Washington Post (6/12/15) reported that the CIA was spending $1 billion a year, or about 1/15th of the agency’s budget, on efforts to train Syrian rebels; the Pentagon had a separate program that spent another half billion dollars on an almost completely useless rebel-training effort that a Foreign Policy analysis (3/18/16) bluntly called money “wasted.”

Several countries—among them the US, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Russia—have already been intervening in Syria for years, with untold numbers of military staff and materiel to the tune of billions of dollars. In fact, one could make a very good argument that even before Trump’s missile strike, the Syrian civil war was suffering from far too much foreign intervention, rather than not enough.

The full article is available here

Failed Health Care Bill: Republicans Not Ready To Govern - Vox

Paul Ryan spent the latter 1/2 of Barack Obama’s presidency promising to repair the Republican Party’s relationship with the poor (remember Ryan’s “poverty tour”?). He’s spent every day since the passage of Obamacare saying the Republicans could do better.

This is what he came up with? The GOP put their greatest policy mind in charge of the House of Representatives and they got ... this?

The full article is available here

Republicans Kill Health Care Vote as GOP Members Defect - OPB FM

This is what happens when a major political party is gripped by governmentphobia for 37 years - not only does it have no desire to actually govern, it also has no ability to actually govern.

After 7 years of obstructionism and opposition, the GOP doesn't yet have a bill that it can get passed even though it controls both the House and Senate.

The full article is available here

Trump Manipulated Religious Right & Returned It To Racist Roots - The New Republic

By openly embracing the racism of the alt-right, Trump effectively played to the religious right’s own roots in white supremacy, despite that history being something that many current Christian Conservatives are probably not aware of. 

Conservative Christians voted for Donald Trump in record numbers. He won 81% of the white evangelical vote.

As a result, the religious right has effectively become a subsidiary of the alt-right, yoked to Trump’s white nationalist agenda.

The overwhelming support for Trump heralds the religious right - a movement founded to maintain the South’s segregationist “way of life" - coming full circle to embrace its roots in racism, a history that many current Christian Conservatives are probably not aware of.

The religious right was actually galvanized in the 1970s and early ’80s, when the IRS revoked the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University and other conservative Christian colleges that refused to admit bob-whites.

By openly embracing the racism of the alt-right, Trump effectively played to the religious right’s own roots in white supremacy.

The religious right, in its support for a thrice-married, self-confessed sexual predator, finally dispensed with the fiction that it was concerned about family values.

The full article is available here

Trump's Lack Of Credibility - The Wall Street Journal

President Trump’s falsehoods are eroding public trust, at home and abroad. However, the President clings to his false assertions like a drunk to an empty gin bottle.

2 months into his Presidency, Mr. Trump’s approval rating is 39%. No doubt Mr. Trump considers that fake news, but if he doesn’t show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he’s a fake President.

The full article is available here

Trump May Have Committed Impeachable Offense - Politics USA

FBI Director James Comey debunked President Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped him by saying that the FBI has no evidence that Obama wiretapped him, and that presidents can't order surveillance, which raises the question, was Trump's lie an impeachable offense?

The full article is available here

Trump = I Learned Obama Tapped My Phones From NY Times - Politifact

In an interview with Tucker Carlson, President Trump said learned that Obama tapped his phones from The New York Times. False.

The full article is available here

Trump 'Hard Power' Budget Boosts Military Spending - NPR

President Trump released his budget blueprint, which calls for a boost in military spending, a 28% cut to the State Department, and deep cuts in the Environmental Protection Agency and other programs.

The full article is available here

Hawaiin Judge Halts Trump's 2nd Attempt At Travel Ban - Politico

"U.S. District Court Judge Derrick K. Watson has issued a nationwide temporary restraining order, preventing President Trump's revised travel ban from taking effect at midnight Wednesday."

The full article is available here

Trump's 'Muslim Ban 2.0': Same Flawed, Un-American Mess - Common Dreams

Trump is not fighting terrorism with this ban. He is feeding it.

Trump and his Muslim ban still have a huge uphill battle waiting for him simply because truth, reality, facts, his own quotes, and a country who yearns to uphold American values, are not on his side.

First and foremost, and incredibly damning, are the reports that intelligence analysts from Trump’s own DHS agency dispute Trump’s notion that these countries that are part of the ban pose a major threat to our national security. They found scant evidence that citizens from these countries are a danger to us.

Second, the arbitrary nature of the list of countries in the ban is underscored by the removal of Iraq from the original list. I am glad they removed Iraq and Trump realized they are our allies, but it lays bare that the Trump administration is simply using the “Obama list” of countries that it designated as needing more vetting, as an excuse and not a real reason based on national security measures.

And last but not least, the new “and improved” Muslim ban, just like the first Muslim ban, will not increase our national security. It will do exactly the opposite.

It puts us more at risk and makes us less safe, by allowing radical terrorist groups like ISIS to point to the Muslim ban as a reason Islam should be at war with the west.

Trump’s insistence on the ban gives these groups a powerful recruiting tool that increases the chances of radicalization that can come from anywhere, including (and most likely) from inside the United States.

The full article is available here

Rise Of The European Far Right: Republican Steven King Is A Fan - Pressman

Many Americans may be unaware the the far-right movement has direct ties to the Russian government, which is openly supportive of far-right anti-EU political parties.

A rallying cry of white nationalists like the KKK and the global neo-Nazi movement is that immigration should be restricted because immigrants will change the demographics and the culture of the US or Western European countries -- and immigrants breed.

Republican Representative Steve King, who has been one of Iowa's congressmen since 2003, echoed one of these talking points in Tweets that praised two far-right, anti-immigrant European politicians who are running for office, Geert Wilders from the Netherlands and from Germany Frauke Petry.

While King has tried to downplay the racial undertones to his statements, David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKKK (Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), tweeted out his own endorsement of King's sentiments.

Interestingly, many Americans may be unaware the the far-right movement has direct ties to the Russian government. In fact, the Russian government is openly supportive of far-right anti-EU political parties.

In particular, one of the fathers of contemporary nationalism, Alexander Dugin, has strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian war in Eastern Ukraine, and the American racist who coined the term "alt right" -- Richard Spencer.

The full article is available here

Pence used personal email for state business — and was hacked - USA Today

Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.

The full article is available here

Shell Knew About Climate Change in 1990's, Did Nothing - Bill McKibben

The early shock about global warming soon gave way, at Shell and other powerful institutions, to a more urgent fear: the fear that something might endanger next quarter’s profits.

The full article is available here

Sessions met with Russian envoy twice last year, didn't disclose - Washington Post

Jeff Sessions in 1998: “I have no doubt that perjury qualifies under the Constitution as a high crime. It goes to the heart of the judicial system.”

The full article is available here

Media Fawn Over Trump’s Success at Saying Words in Semi-Coherent Fashion - FAIR.org

According to the media's analysis, so long as Trump wasn’t his petulant, incoherent, race-baiting self, it would be considered a victory for the 45th president.

"The consistent theme in all praise of Trump, it’s worth highlighting, is that it was entirely superficial. Vague notions of 'optimism,' 'kinder' tones and, above all, the DC fetish for being 'presidential' won the day. On substance - as many of the less credulous critics have pointed out - the Trump presidency remains unchanged."

The full article is available here

Betsy Devos Doesn't Seem To Understand Why Historically Black Colleges Exist

What DeVos got wrong about historically black colleges and universities is that they weren't established to give black students a wider range of educational choices — at the time, they were black student's only educational choice due to racism and segregation.

The full article is available here

Anne Frank Center: Trump 'Partly to Blame' for Wave of Antisemitism

"Whether or not your intention," the group said, "your Presidency has given the oxygen of incitement to some of the most viciously hateful elements of our society."

The full article is available here

Trump Cites Non-existent Swedish Terror Attack - The Guardian

At a Florida rally, President Trump referred to an attack in Sweden that did not happen, possibly confusing it with Sehwan in Pakistan.

The full article is available here

Fact-checking Trump's Florida Rally - PolitiFact

Defending his stalled immigration ban, Trump said "there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was nothing."

Trump has said this before. It’s not true.

A refugee vetting system does exist and has existed since 1980. It involves multiple federal intelligence and security agencies as well as the United Nations. Refugee vetting typically takes one to two years and includes numerous rounds of security checks.

Syrians undergo additional checks.

The full article is available here

Republican Judge Calls For Trump's Impeachment - Independent UK

Retired Republican judge Mark Painter: "We must admit we have elected a president who has immediately proved himself to be a grifter, a pathological liar, a mean-spirited bully and dangerous to American values. This not-ready-for-prime-time show is too dangerous to continue. America is at stake."

The full article is available here

Psychiatrists: Trump Too Unstable To Be President - Open Letter

Psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers have signed an open letter warning Donald Trump’s mental state “makes him incapable of serving safely as president”.

The full article is available here

Stephen Miller’s authoritarian declaration: Trump’s national security actions ‘will not be questioned’

"Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned." - Stephen Miller, Senior Trump White House Policy Advisor.

The full article is available here

Donald Trump and Right Wing Evangelical Masculinity - Religion & Politics

In the end, many right wing evangelicals did not vote for Trump despite their beliefs, but because of them.

Many right wing evangelicals long ago replaced the suffering servant of Christ with an image that more closely resembles Donald Trump than many would care to admit.

They’ve traded a faith that privileges humility and elevates the least of these for one that derides gentleness as the province of wusses.

Having replaced the Jesus of the gospels with an idol of machismo, it’s no wonder many right wing evangelicals speak of Trump himself in terms of  "saving" them or the country

In the end, many right wing evangelicals did not vote for Trump despite their beliefs, but because of them.

It is not difficult to imagine how evangelicals, steeped in literature claiming that men were created in the image of a warrior God, might be receptive to sentiments like those expressed by the late Jerry Falwell, in his 2004 sermon “God is Pro-War.”

In fact, surveys demonstrate that traditionalist evangelicals are more likely than other Americans to approve of U.S. engagement in a preemptive war, support military action against terrorism, and condone the use of torture.

This brand of militant masculinity also helps explain the lack of outrage on the part of many evangelicals when it comes to Trump’s character issues.  Trump’s testosterone-fueled masculinity, which aligns remarkably well with that long championed by evangelicals. What makes a strong leader? A virile (white) man. And what of his vulgarity? Infidelity? Bombast? Even sexual assault? Well, boys will be boys.

The full article is available here

Corporate Media Paved Way for Trump’s Muslim Ban - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

While it’s important to lay primary blame for the Muslim travel ban at the feet of Trump, years of Islamophobic coverage in corporate media—right-wing, centrist and “liberal”—laid the propaganda groundwork to get us here.

Attention has rightly been paid to the Islamophobia industry—a loose consortium of professional far-right trolls such as Pam Geller, Frank Gaffney, Steve Emerson, Breitbart, Infowars, etc. 

And while these forces certainly were major factor in creating the Trump-friendly Muslim-fearing climate, it’s important not to lose sight of at least three other media phenomena that also had a major role:

1) The presentation of “terrorism” as a unique, existential threat, arbitrarily defined as applying almost exclusively to Muslim violence:  As FAIR has shown time and again (5/1/11, 4/15/14, 6/22/15, 6/14/16) over the years, media unjustifiably reserve the word “terrorism”—and the corollary breathless coverage it entails—overwhelmingly for political violence leveled by Muslims.

2) New Atheist bigots:  New Atheists, such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, routinely provide faux-liberal cover to the most vulgar aspects of anti-Muslim sentiment. Dawkins tweets things like “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge,” and had a much-mocked weeks-long feud with a 14-year-old Muslim kid over a clock he built for school, often times devolving into embarrassing conspiracy-mongering.

Sam Harris has turned anti-Muslim sophistry into a high art, focusing heavily on the alleged "pernicious influence" of Muslim immigrants and the dangers they pose.

3) Disproportionate news coverage of the ISIS spectacle:  Americans’ perception of terrorism is, for the most part, not informed by actual terrorist activity, but rather what we call “meta-terror,” or the fear caused by the coverage of terrorism, unconnected from any actual threat.

The full article is available here

The "Liberal's Are Ruining Universities" Canard - Tucker Fitzgerald

Universities aren't bereft of anti-intellectual conservatives because of a vast liberal conspiracy. 

There's a strong strain of anti-intellectualism in American Evangelical Christianity.  Through their allegiance with pro-big business corporate interests, they've worked actively to undermine scientific thinking.

From those corners, an often-repeated talking point is, "liberals and political correctness are ruining universities" or that "conservative students and professors are persecuted at the university level."

But that canard doesn't take into account that being anti-evolution, anti-climate change, anti-intellectual, and anti-factual aren't values that line up with most universities.  Universities aren't bereft of anti-intellectual conservatives because of a vast liberal conspiracy.  Rather, it's that people committed to anti-intellectual views aren't a good fit in an environment dedicated to being open-minded, inquiring, and growing intellectually.

An inherently regressive worldview of anti-intellectualism is different than unpopular ideas getting a hearing, differing opinions being debated, and sincere disagreements between people of differing philosophies that can be a part of on-going dialogue and clarification - all things that the academic tradition have cherished and nurtured for millennia. In other words, the level of agreement that is sought isn't that of homogeneous opinions but rather of agreeing to be intellectually honest and rigorous.

I have no interest in universities being populated by people who think just like me.  No one is.  But I do have an interest in them being populated with people who are willing to think.

The full article is available here

Trump's Immigration Ban and A Constitution In Peril - John Tirman

The fact that the Customs and Border Protection agency is defying court orders not to enforce certain provisions of the ban means we have a constitutional fracture just 10 days into Trump's presidency.

The imbroglio caused by President Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees is, above all, a constitutional crisis. As was apparent in the first two days after the order was signed on Friday, the crisis pivots not only on the substantive merits of the White House action — whether or not certain classes of people can be banned from entering the United States — but the fact that the Customs and Border Protection agency is defying court orders not to enforce certain provisions of the ban. Thus, by the 10th day of the Trump presidency, a constitutional fracture was emerging.

The manner in which travelers have in fact been detained, questioned, prevented from entry or flights and denied access to legal counsel also prohibits the due process clause of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

This is, like the Custom and Border Protection’s violation of court orders, a crime of implementation rather than inherent in the executive order. But the order was inviting such insolence by its vague, broad and discriminatory language.

It is this implementation that sparks fresh worries about the Trump regime. The ban itself, for all its detestable qualities, was promised by Trump during the campaign, and will likely be overturned in court. But the process of realizing that promise has been fraught with incompetence and malevolence.

The full article is available here  

Trump’s Faulty Refugee Policy Comparison - Factcheck.org

Trump ordered a far wider ban — albeit also temporary — without identifying a specific threat.

President Donald Trump defended his sweeping immigration policy by calling it “similar to what President Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.” That’s a faulty comparison.

The fact is that the Obama administration was responding to a known and specific threat from one country and limited its response to refugees from that country, while Trump’s order temporarily bans refugees from all countries — indefinitely in the case of those from Syria — and temporarily bars all other visitors from seven predominately Muslim countries.

There was a delay in processing Iraqi refugees in 2011 after it was discovered that two Iraqi refugees living in Kentucky had been involved in roadside bombing attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. One of the refugee’s fingerprints were found on a detonation device in Iraq, prompting U.S. immigration, security and intelligence agencies to use federal databases to rescreen about 58,000 Iraqi refugees in the U.S. and more than 25,000 Iraqis who had been approved to enter the U.S., but had not yet been admitted, Department of Homeland Security officials testified at the time.

The Kentucky case not only caused a backlog in processing Iraqi refugees in 2011, but it also resulted in an overhaul of the refugee screening process.

The full article is available here

Confused Why Women Marched Against Trump? I'll Help You Out - Jeff Wiersma

If you're confused about the women's march on D.C., let me help you out.

At a recent panel discussion that I attended, Historian Heather Cox Richardson summed it succinctly:

I will expand upon that.

We elected a president who rates women by the size of their breasts, who called bragging about how he has grabbed women's private parts without asking permission - which is sexual assault - as just "locker room talk."

We elected a man who went on the Howard Stern show bragging about how he liked to barge into the ladies dressing room uninvited and see his pageant girls naked (bragging he got away with it because he was president of the show).

We elected a man who bragged about the size of his own daughter's breast and said that if she wasn't his daughter, he'd probably be dating her, and said that his daughter is hot enough to pose in Playboy.

We elected a man who said he'd love to have sex with Lindsey Lohan because "deeply troubled" girls are the best in bed, who called his own wife a "young, beautiful piece of ass", who mocked a woman saying she had "blood coming out of her wherever."

These are but a few of the countless misogynistic things Trump has said and done.

If you think that making someone like this the president of the USA doesn't shape the self-view of young girls, doesn't normalize sexism, and doesn't need women to stand up for their worth, then you're on the wrong side of history.

Not only that, but plenty of men attended these marches too; men who are fathers, brothers, husbands and friends of amazing women and who wanted to publicly demonstrate that they're in opposition to such dreadfully sexist misogyny.

Birtherism: The Big Lie Behind the Rise of Trump - Bill Moyers

Donald Trump rode to power on the wings of a dark lie — one of the most malignant and ugly lies in American history: the Birther lie. This should not be forgotten.

Bill Moyers and four historians dissect the big lie Trump rode to power: Nell Painter, historian and Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, at Princeton University; Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School; Christopher Lebron, assistant professor of African-American studies and philosophy at Yale University; and Philip Klinkner, James S. Sherman Professor of Government, Hamilton College discuss the fertile ground on which the birther lie was sown: our nation’s history of white supremacy.

CHRISTOPHER LEBRON: I remember when he was going to prove that President Obama was not American, that he was not able to offer that proof. And even more amazingly, Trump has been able to not only convince himself for the longest time but has been able to convince a not-insignificant portion of the American people that no matter what documentation President Obama provides, he’s not American, which is an amazing thing to have done. 

NELL PAINTER: The ground was very fertile for the birther lie, and in fact, if it hadn’t been, somebody could have said oh no, no, no, the president was not born in this country, he cannot be president — and it would have fallen to Earth. It never would have gone anywhere. 

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: More particularly it expresses the illegitimacy of a person of African descent as a true American, as someone truly endowed with the capacity to govern this great nation. And that lie is just the tip of the iceberg, though foundational for everything else that flows from Donald Trump’s lips. 

PAINTER: I have said, more than once, that we would not have Trump without Obama. And that is, we have this running current of white supremacy — the assumption that nonwhite people are sort of over there and they’re inferior, they don’t work hard. 

PHILIP KLINKNER: If you’re going to tell a lie about somebody, it works a lot better if you focus on somebody who is different from you. They have a different skin color, they attend a different church or house of worship. They come from a different country or speak a different language. It’s harder to sort of see them a common citizen. Easier to see them as somebody who’s different and therefore dangerous to you and to your country.

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