Yemen reviews deadly U.S. raid on al-Qaeda, but stops short of issuing ban https://t.co/WaYK8ExxAC— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 8, 2017
If You’re Reading This Essay, You Should Probably Have (More) Childrenhttps://t.co/tQ1uGRS8D8
— Quillette Magazine (@QuilletteM) February 2, 2017
Kate Upton's 'extravagant demands may have cost her a Sports Illustrated cover this year' https://t.co/YIwsqKrZvI pic.twitter.com/z5x1HIfa8U
— Daily Mail Celebrity (@DailyMailCeleb) February 8, 2017
UC Berkeley’s descent from place of learning to victimology hothouse https://t.co/sWdeo1CVG3 pic.twitter.com/pPulRc1FtK
— L.A. Times Opinion (@latimesopinion) February 6, 2017
Even before its students rioted in the streets, distressed that right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos would dare to open his mouth in their presence, UC Berkeley presented a visual illustration of the academy’s decline from a place of learning to a victimology hothouse. Within walking distance on the Berkeley campus are emblems of both a vanished academic world and the diversity-industrial complex that ousted it.Still more.
Emblem 1: In Bauhaus-era typography, a quotation from Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo adorns the law school’s otherwise brutalist facade.
“You will study the wisdom of the past, for in a wilderness of conflicting counsels, a trail has there been blazed. You will study the life of mankind, for this is the life you must order, and, to order with wisdom, must know. You will study the precepts of justice, for these are the truths that through you shall come to their hour of triumph. Here is the high emprise, the fine endeavor, the splendid possibility of achievement, to which I summon you and bid you welcome.”
No law school today, if erecting itself from scratch, would think of parading such sentiments, first uttered in 1925, on its exterior. Cardozo’s invocation of “mankind” is alone cause for removal, but equally transgressive is his belief that there is wisdom in the past and not just discrimination. He presents learning as a heroic enterprise focused not on the self but on the vast world beyond, both past and present. Education is the search for objective knowledge that takes the learner into a grander universe of thought and achievement.
Stylistically, Cardozo’s elevated tone is as old-fashioned as his complicated syntactical cadences; his exhortation to intellectual mastery is too “masculinist” and triumphal for today’s identity-obsessed university.
His celebration of the law overlooks the teachings of critical race theory, which purports to expose the racial subtext of seemingly benign legal concepts. And he fatally omits any mention of “inclusion” and “diversity.”
There’s not a trace of the heroic on the Berkeley law school’s website today; the closest it comes to any ennobling inspiration is the statement: “We believe that a Berkeley Law degree is a tool for change, both locally and globally.”
But this bland expression of progressive ideology is positively Miltonic compared with the bromides on display just meters away from the law school .
Emblem 2: UC Berkeley’s Division of Equity and Inclusion has placed vertical banners across the main campus reminding students of the contemporary university’s paramount mission: assigning guilt and innocence within the ruthlessly competitive hierarchy of victimhood. Each banner shows a photo of a student or a member of the student-services bureaucracy, beside a purported quotation from that student or bureaucrat. No rolling cadences here, no exhortations to intellectual conquest. Instead, just whining or penitential snippets from the academic lexicon of identity politics.
“I will acknowledge how power and privilege intersect in our daily lives,” vows an Asian female member of the class of 2017. Just how crippling is that intersection? The answer comes in a banner showing a black female student in a backward baseball cap and a male Latino student, who together urge the Berkeley community to “create an environment where people other than yourself can exist.”
A naive observer of the Berkeley campus would think that lots of people “other than yourself” exist there, and would even think that Berkeley welcomes those “other” people with overflowing intellectual and material riches. Such a misperception, however, is precisely why Berkeley funds the Division of Equity and Inclusion with a cool $20 million annually and staffs it with 150 full-time functionaries: It takes that much money and personnel to drum into students’ heads how horribly Berkeley treats its “othered” students.
A member of the student-services bureaucracy reinforces the message of continual oppression on her banner. “I will be a brave and sympathetic ally,” announces Bene Gatzert of University Health Services. Cardozo saw grandeur in the mastery of the common law; today’s campus functionary sees herself in a heroic struggle against the ubiquitous forces of white-male heterosexual oppression...
Passionate protests against Donald Trump's presidency have swelled the ranks of Democratic activists, but their new enthusiasm faces a hard reality: Republicans remain well-positioned to retain their grip on power in the 2018 elections.More.
While Republicans hold only a slim majority in the U.S. Senate, Democrats occupy most of the seats up for election in two years. That means they must play defense against Republicans, especially in 10 states that Trump won.
In the U.S. House, Republicans will be aided by favorable district boundaries that were drawn to maintain GOP political dominance. In some cases, the congressional districts were gerrymandered to pack high numbers of Democratic voters into just a few districts as a way to create a greater number of Republican-leaning seats.
"Democrats are extremely fired up right now," said Sam Wang, a Princeton University neuroscientist and statistician who has developed a statistical model for analyzing partisan gerrymandering.
But for Democrats to win back Congress, Wang said it "would take an extreme event. The question is, are we seeing something that's headed towards that?"
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting 59 Republican-held House seats in 24 states as it builds toward the next election. Those include 23 districts where Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton defeated Trump and various others that Republicans took away from Democrats in recent years...
Anti-American leftist corporations troll #PresidentTrump with stupid pro-diversity commercials. #SuperBowl https://t.co/zzSs06F4K6— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 6, 2017
A #SuperBowl Awash in Politics, on Social Media and Off the Field. #SB51 #Patriots https://t.co/TesD1Qbtjj
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 6, 2017
First Trump.
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 6, 2017
Then the Senate and House.
Now the Patriots.
Democrats now be all like: pic.twitter.com/5Hu5RNmCMI
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) February 6, 2017
Find yourself someone who loves you like Giselle loves Tom pic.twitter.com/OrJGInqUIO
— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) February 6, 2017
See See Rider
The Animals
10:41 AM
Hallelujah
Jeff Buckley
10:35 AM
Me and You and a Dog Named Boo
Lobo
10:31 AM
Born To Be Wild
Steppenwolf
10:28 AM
Thank You for Being a Friend
Andrew Gold
10:23 AM
Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
Carole King
10:19 AM
Time Won't Let Me
The Outsiders
10:11 AM
Gemini Dream
The Moody Blues
10:07 AM
You've Made Me So Very Happy
Blood, Sweat & Tears
10:02 AM
Sign of things to come? Ryan beats Brady for #NFL MVP. @PatriarchTree @lamblock https://t.co/tX62nwc9sI
— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) February 5, 2017
Matt Ryan has won the 2016 AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year award. pic.twitter.com/ra1rX32AZe
— NFL on ESPN (@ESPNNFL) February 5, 2017
The Democrats face up to their Trump problem https://t.co/7uBvc0WlN5 pic.twitter.com/5dR52DAhXe
— POLITICO (@politico) February 5, 2017
Democrats don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep up the pace of protests against President Donald Trump — and they’re worried Trump and his team are counting on them to run out of energy before the White House does.Keep reading --- and relishing the flailing idiot leftists.
Two weeks into the Trump administration, party leaders have already reached a frantic, fevered pitch, throwing around talk of constitutional crisis and raising the specter of impeachment.
“The thing that we don’t want to do is anesthetize the public with dozens and dozens of press conferences and marquee events,” said Seattle Mayor Ed Murray. “Then it’ll just become background noise. I’m worried that’s exactly what they’re trying to maneuver us into doing.”
Democrats are having as much trouble defusing Trump now that he’s in the White House as they did all through last year’s campaign. Murray said he’s seen neither a clear understanding among leaders in Washington of how far left their base has careened in just the past few weeks nor the emergence of any infrastructure among progressive groups for turning what’s going on in the streets into concerted opposition.
“The question is: How do we respond beyond that?” Murray said. “I’m a little worried that we’re not there.”
House Democrats head to their retreat in Baltimore this week trying to come up with an answer.
“Some people on social media are already saying, ‘Yes! Impeach the guy.’ No. I think any time you’re talking about impeachment, which is historically extremely significant, that is not something you do on a whim,” said Rep. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas), explaining that he used the word himself earlier in the week as a warning of where things might go. “I think our response should be reasonable, it should not be exaggerated — but we fundamentally have to protect the integrity of the republic.”
Some of his colleagues will boycott Trump’s address before a joint session of Congress at the end of the month. Others are planning to go but come up with a way to protest that makes a splash. They’re trolling, referring to “President Bannon” in the hopes of goading Trump into sidelining Steve Bannon, his chief strategist, if he thinks people are seeing him as a puppet.
“I plan on being there at this point in time, I think it’s part of my responsibility,” said Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “I’m there to witness and hear what he has to say, and respond in kind.”
“We are going to continue to be the bulwark against the man. We’re going to stop him at every opportunity we have,” Crowley added. “This is going to be a gift that keeps on giving in some respects.”
Democrats are mobilizing around Republican members' town halls to protest Obamacare repeal. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is demanding that Mar-a-Lago, Trump's exclusive club in Florida, release its members list.
Some are trying other strategies of chipping away at Trump’s authority. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) says he’s looking to hit the House staffers who worked with the White House on crafting the travel ban and signed nondisclosure agreements that he says made them into employees of the administration too. “Sounds like double-dipping to me,” Gutiérrez said in an interview off the House floor on Wednesday. “There might be a law against that.”
But Democrats readily acknowledge Trump won last year in part by sparking so many simultaneous outrages among the left that they all blended together. Trump’s White House so far is following that model...
Facing a packed auditorium and raucous crowd, Republican Congressman Tom McClintock on Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017, defended his party’s national agenda and voiced strong support for President Donald Trump’s disputed executive actions to scale back Obamacare, ban refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.Continue.
Facing a packed auditorium and raucous crowd, Republican Rep. Tom McClintock on Saturday defended his party’s national agenda and voiced strong support for President Donald Trump’s controversial executive actions to scale back Obamacare, ban visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Vote him out,” hundreds of demonstrators chanted outside the Tower Theatre in downtown Roseville, the Republican-heavy population center of McClintock’s sprawling congressional district. Inside the theater, more than 200 people gathered for a town-hall event hosted by McClintock.
Attendees, some carrying signs that read “Resist,” “Dump Tom McTrump” and “Climate change is real,” pressed McClintock to denounce Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, acknowledge the science supporting the human causes of climate change, and oppose Trump’s executive order temporarily restricting refugee admissions to the U.S.
“I believe that order is constitutional,” said McClintock, one of several comments that elicited boos at the hourlong event.
McClintock’s visit drew hundreds of people, most of whom had come to express opposition to the new administration. Many identified themselves as liberal Democrats and progressives, while party registration in McClintock’s district – which incorporates all or part of 10 counties spanning from Tahoe to Yosemite – is solidly Republican.
“This is really all about resisting the Trump agenda,” said Wendy Wood, chairwoman of Indivisible Sierra Nevada, a local chapter of a political organization formed in response to the election. “Most of us have never participated in political activism of any sort. Something is happening here, and people here are not happy with (Trump) and McClintock. We’re here to vote them out.”
Roseville police and fire officials capped attendance inside the theater at roughly 200 people. Those left outside voiced frustration about being locked out of the theater, some saying they had driven for hours simply to see McClintock face to face.
“We just wanted to be able to ask questions of our representative and share our thoughts on key issues,” wrote Lauren Lake in an email. “I drove hours over a snowy pass to be there … we were told that the venue was at capacity and no one else would be allowed in.”
Inside the theater, McClintock took about a dozen audience questions. Some of the most passionate comments came from people who said they feared losing access to health care if Republicans press forward to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a clear replacement.
“What do you expect seniors and people with disabilities with low income to do if you take away our Medicare and Medicaid that we rely on to literally stay alive?” asked Amanda Barnes, who said she was paralyzed from her waist down after a hit-and-run accident in a crosswalk five years ago.
McClintock said his party did not yet have a replacement plan, but that there were several Republican-backed proposals still taking shape...
Hey ladies, the owner of 12 Rounds brewery in Sacramento has some special feedback on the Women's March ... pic.twitter.com/RpdBvd8VpE
— Nick Miller (@NickMiller510) January 24, 2017
Why do voicemails about 12 Rounds Brewing keep saying owner has right to say what he said? That misses the point. https://t.co/48nz3YzaT7
— Blair A. Robertson Ⓥ (@Blarob) February 5, 2017
Do craft beer patrons have a certain political bent? Are they likely to be more liberal, moderate or conservative? Do they wear way more plaid flannel shirts than the general population?Keep reading.
If you’re in the hospitality industry, here’s the only answer that should matter to you: It doesn’t matter.
When it comes to political views, breweries should have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Arguing about politics, religion and conspiracy theories are simply bad for business.
Understood by most already, this simple lesson came screaming into our collective consciousness nearly two weeks ago when award-winning brewer Daniel Murphy’s personal Facebook posts leaked into the public sphere, beginning with one where he said he was “disgusted” with the Women’s March. To put it charitably, some of Murphy’s other political and social views fall well outside the bounds of polite or even reasonable political discourse.
Can you suggest that the nation’s first black president was actually a Muslim and a traitor without decimating all that good will you’ve spent months building up? Can you use racist terms for Pakistanis? Why would you even go there? All those millennial couples and their cute kids and fluffy dogs I saw sitting outside drinking beer and socializing last summer? They likely don’t want to be connected to that kind of rhetoric.
To be a successful business that optimizes profits and is good for the community, a brewery should be a welcome place for people of all walks of life and political perspectives. This has nothing to do with the First Amendment or one man’s right to give his opinion. It’s Business 101.
Is there a way out of this hole Murphy has dug himself?
I asked straight-shooting Evan Elsberry of the popular restaurant Evan’s Kitchen, which is across 57th Street. He’s been handling the food program for Twelve Rounds – you can place an order from the brewery and have Elsberry’s superb cooking delivered in minutes. Several days ago, he walked across the street to check in with Murphy.
“I told him, ‘I don’t agree with what you said, but I’m going to stand by you as a business owner,’ ” Elsberry told me. “I know the guy personally and feel bad for him. It’s a good business. He just really messed up.”
Elsberry has seen the short-term spike in attention. He’s even benefited from it.
“In the last four days, I was swamped with orders from the brewery. It’s not hurting his business yet, but it’s going to catch up to him.”
A new company, Disrupt Marketing, was so intrigued by Twelve Rounds’ predicament that company co-founder Soreath Hok, a former news producer at KCRA Channel 3, wrote a detailed Facebook post with an abundance of excellent advice. She says the brewery needs to create personal, sincere videos that address those who feel let down or insulted by Murphy’s posts. Here’s an excerpt...
New #BenGarrison #cartoon #VirtueSignaling #berkeley Style #berkeleyRiots #MiloYiannopoulos more at https://t.co/Oj98iIxEAZ pic.twitter.com/knRH16rwRW
— BenGarrison Cartoons (@GrrrGraphics) February 3, 2017
When President Trump ordered a vast overhaul of immigration law enforcement during his first week in office, he stripped away most restrictions on who should be deported, opening the door for roundups and detentions on a scale not seen in nearly a decade.We're not "going back to chaos." That's ridiculous. We're enforcing the last to prevent FURTHER chaos from the leftist open-borders agenda.
Up to 8 million people in the country illegally could be considered priorities for deportation, according to calculations by the Los Angeles Times. They were based on interviews with experts who studied the order and two internal documents that signal immigration officials are taking an expansive view of Trump’s directive.
Far from targeting only “bad hombres,” as Trump has said repeatedly, his new order allows immigration agents to detain nearly anyone they come in contact with who has crossed the border illegally. People could be booked into custody for using food stamps or if their child receives free school lunches.
The deportation targets are a much larger group than those swept up in the travel bans that sowed chaos at airports and seized public attention over the past week. Fewer than 1 million people came to the U.S. over the past decade from the seven countries from which most visitors are temporarily blocked.
Deportations of this scale, which has not been publicly totaled before, could have widely felt consequences: Families would be separated. Businesses catering to immigrant customers may be shuttered. Crops could be left to rot, unpicked, as agricultural and other industries that rely on immigrant workforces face labor shortages. U.S. relations could be strained with countries that stand to receive an influx of deported people, particularly in Latin America. Even the Social Security system, which many immigrants working illegally pay into under fake identification numbers, would take a hit.
The new instructions represent a wide expansion of President Obama’s focus on deporting only recent arrivals, repeat immigration violators and people with multiple criminal violations. Under the Obama administration, only about 1.4 million people were considered priorities for removal.
“We are going back to enforcement chaos — they are going to give lip service to going after criminals, but they really are going to round up everybody they can get their hands on,” said David Leopold, a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. and an immigration lawyer for more than two decades...
🐯🐯🐯 photo by @denisetruscello pic.twitter.com/337hdRnzPb— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) January 27, 2017
Two plus years of an overwrought lip-synched Vegas show for Japanese tourists and drunk bachelorettes and something finally happened worth watching. This must be how those NatGeo photographers feel after being camped in a cold wet foxhole for months on end waiting to watch rare capybaras fucking.
Britney Spears suffered a wardrobe malfunction on stage during her show when her tit almost fell out of her costume. Suffered seems about as accurate as wardrobe malfunction when discussing what was probably either a completely planned Janet Jackson halftime moment or something everybody knew was bound to happen given the cut of her outfit. Spears' has had nonstop costume rips and tears and busted seams throughout the course of her big budget gay dancer extravaganza. Her wardrobe people know their suits better than NASA engineers understand the ones wrapped around astronauts being launched into space.
Faked or not, the tit is real.
Leftist UC Berkeley students and outsiders rioted last night to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from delivering a David Horowitz Freedom Center-sponsored speech demanding the end of “sanctuary campuses” that harbor illegal aliens. Milo's address, which was canceled amid violent mob attacks, fire-setting, and wanton property destruction, had been scheduled to mark the launch of the Freedom Center’s #nosanctuarycampusforcriminals campaign.Keep reading.
“One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down,” Yiannopoulos, tech editor at Breitbart News, said after being safely evacuated from the campus.
“This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley,” Mike Wright, a Berkeley College Republicans member told SFGate as smoke bombs exploded nearby. He said paint was thrown on his person. “It’s sad.”
“The so-called ‘sanctuary movement’ is a concerted effort by left-wing administrations in major cities to thwart the purposes of the Patriot Act, undermine federal immigration law, and cripple the efforts of the Department of Homeland security to protect American citizens from terrorist threats,” David Horowitz, founder and CEO of the Freedom Center, said on Jan. 31.
“Thanks to the efforts of left-wing activists and administrators, this seditious movement has now spread to our colleges and universities.”
Backed by the Freedom Center, Yiannopoulos, an outspoken gay, Jewish, Greek-born British citizen who ardently supports President Trump, was on campus to demand that federal grants to UC Berkeley be withdrawn and that university officials like UC President Janet Napolitano and Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks who endanger their students with their illegal alien-shielding policies be prosecuted.
UC President Napolitano, formerly President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, is under the microscope because, as head of the taxpayer-supported University of California system, she is deliberately harboring hundreds of illegal aliens attending UC system schools. She has forbidden campus police from working with immigration law enforcement and provided $5 million to aid the illegals UC is sheltering from ICE.
The University of California system even provides legal aid to illegal alien students who wish to keep breaking U.S. immigration laws.
The executive director of the University of California Undocumented Legal Services Center at the UC Davis School of Law explained to Rolling Stone in December what a sanctuary campus was.
“Basically it’s a concept that says, ‘You’re safe here, and your immigration status, we won’t ask,’” said Maria Blanco. “’We won’t turn you over. We won’t turn your records over.’”
Not all the rioters were from Berkeley.
Many of those dressed black bloc-style so police can’t identify them appear to be associated with the “antifa” movement. Antifa may be short for anti-fascist but these thugs, usually a mix of anarchists and communists, use violent fascistic tactics against their targets. These terrorists do not tolerate opposing views. Before the riots broke out those gathered carried signs that read “hate speech is not free speech.” Signs from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PLS) also showed up in Berkeley.
Antifa is also involved in the protests and melees at airports nationwide launched in opposition to President Trump’s Executive Order 13769 which as of Jan. 27 temporarily banned visitors from a handful of terrorism-plagued Muslim nations.
The Berkeley police had reportedly been given a “stand down” order which allowed rioters to generate mayhem. Later when the police declared the throng of troublemakers an unlawful assembly and ordered those present to leave, the mob chanted “you go first!”
After leaving the campus Yiannopoulos reflected on the night’s events in a video on his Facebook page...
@PatriarchTree In the mail, from Cambridge University Press: "Destroy the German occupiers!" pic.twitter.com/lbrex2HC2j— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 18, 2017
Graffiti at BAMFA building #MiloatCal pic.twitter.com/teHOWD3jqL
— Charlotte Kosche (@charlottekosche) February 2, 2017
Anarchists Respond to Trump’s Inauguration, by Any Means Necessary https://t.co/mXhsPZVZLT
— NYTimes Once (@nytimes_once) February 3, 2017
Who Are the #Anarchists? And why are both Trump and the Democrats so afraid of them? #DisruptJ20 pic.twitter.com/TSI0lDdMB6
— submedia (@submedia) February 4, 2017
The videotaped sucker punch that staggered the white nationalist Richard Spencer on Inauguration Day quickly inspired mockery on social media. But it echoed loudly in an escalating confrontation between extreme ends of the political spectrum.I hate these people. Anarchists were among the leftist goons that attacked me in Anaheim, in 2014. See, "Cowardly #ANSWER Communists Violently Harass 'American Power' at Anaheim Police Brutality Protest!"
With far-right groups edging into the mainstream with the rise of President Trump, self-described anti-fascists and anarchists are vowing to confront them at every turn, and by any means necessary — including violence.
In Berkeley, Calif., on Wednesday night, masked protesters set fires, smashed windows and stormed buildings on the campus of the University of California to shut down a speech by Milo Yiannopoulos, an inflammatory Breitbart News editor and a right-wing provocateur already barred from Twitter. Five people were injured, administrators canceled the event, and the university police locked down the campus for hours.
That followed a bloody melee in Seattle on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, when black-clad demonstrators — their faces concealed to minimize the risk of arrest — tried to prevent a speech by Mr. Yiannopoulos at the University of Washington, and a 34-year-old anti-fascist was shot and seriously wounded by a supporter of Mr. Yiannopoulos.
The outbreaks of destruction and violence since Mr. Trump’s inauguration have earned contempt from Republicans — including Trump supporters who say it is exactly why they voted for his promises of law and order — and condemnation from Democrats like Berkeley’s mayor, Jesse Arreguín. He called Wednesday’s display “contrary to progressive values” and said it “provided the ultranationalist far right exactly the images they want” to try to discredit peaceful protesters of Mr. Trump’s policies.
But anarchists and anti-fascists, who often make up a small but disproportionately attention-getting portion of protesters, defend the mayhem they create as a necessary response to an emergency.
“Yes, what the black bloc did last night was destructive to property,” Eric Laursen, a writer in Massachusetts who has helped publicize anarchist protests, said, using another name for the black-clad demonstrators. “But do you just let someone like Milo go wherever he wants and spread his hate? That kind of argument can devolve into ‘just sit on your hands and wait for it to pass.’ And it doesn’t.”
Anarchists also say their recent efforts have been wildly successful, both by focusing attention on their most urgent argument — that Mr. Trump poses a fascist threat — and by enticing others to join their movement.
“The number of people who have been showing up to meetings, the number of meetings, and the number of already-evolving plans for future actions is through the roof,” Legba Carrefour, who helped organize the so-called Disrupt J20 protests on Inauguration Day in Washington, said in an interview.
“Gained 1,000 followers in the last week,” trumpeted @NYCAntifa, an anti-fascist Twitter account in New York, on Jan. 24. “Pretty crazy for us as we’ve been active for many years with minimal attention. SMASH FASCISM!”
The movement even claims to be finding adherents far afield of major population centers. A participant in CrimethInc, a decades-old anarchist network, pointed to rising attendance at its meetings and activity cropping up in new places like Omaha.
“The Left ignores us. The Right demonizes us,” the anarchist website It’s Going Down boasted on Twitter. “Everyday we grow stronger.”
Little known to practitioners of mainstream American politics, militant anti-fascists make up a secretive culture closely associated with anarchists. Both reject social hierarchies as undemocratic and eschew the political parties as hopelessly corrupt, according to interviews with a dozen anarchists around the country. While some anarchists espouse nonviolence, others view property damage and even physical attacks on the far right as important tactics...
This is part of what people need now to strengthen #TheResistance: https://t.co/KjmysJRGdu Read&share. #NoBanNoWall #NoFascistUSA #MiloAtCal pic.twitter.com/raQBlp0tBb
— #NoFascistUSA (@RefuseFascism) February 4, 2017
A leaflet circulated at the Berkeley protest said Yiannopoulos has “no right to speak at Cal or anywhere else” because he’s a “tool of Trump’s possessive fascist government."Well, leftists don't want free speech. They don't want open debate and discussion, because they don't want their ideas exposed to critical examination (and repudiation). So, instead of engaging their opponents, they seek to destroy them. That's the textbook characteristic of fascism, hence the irony of "refuse fascism." For more on that, see Guy Benson, "Berkeley's 'Anti-Fascism' Protesters Embrace Fascism to Shut Down Free Speech."
This is just the latest variation on the age-old argument of the censor that “error has no rights,” or, put another way, that one only has a right to free speech if one is speaking the “truth.” It’s an insidious notion that needs to be opposed in every generation.
@TheRealAmerica_ @Wild_Phil pic.twitter.com/rA7BnbkURE
— Myles Lefleure (@myleslefleure) February 4, 2017
America First. The new @DerSPIEGEL cover by @edelstudio. @SPIEGELONLINE @SPIEGEL_English pic.twitter.com/P2b5d4GgBy
— Klaus Brinkbäumer (@Brinkbaeumer) February 3, 2017
Exclusive: Breitbart editor reflects on the riots that led to the cancellation of his speech at U.C. Berkeley, mainstream media creating environment for violence against conservatives, his new book, hate speech and more...He's irresistible, actually.
This is Trump's campaign ad for the 2020 election. Thanks Antifa, thanks leftists. pic.twitter.com/IT8Jbw4ZHS
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) February 2, 2017
Democrats prepare to fight Trump's #SCOTUS pick as GOP-led Senate weighs #nuclearoption on #filibuster https://t.co/nenGfcw6ea
— Lisa Mascaro (@LisaMascaro) January 31, 2017
After Republicans blocked a string of President Obama’s judicial and executive nominees, frustrated Senate Democrats in 2013 used their majority to change long-standing filibuster rules and allow confirmations with a simple majority.Heh.
Now Republicans are considering the same “nuclear option” to confirm President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court if Democrats mount a filibuster, as they appear poised to do.
So while Democrats sound alarms over Trump’s high court nomination and threaten to block it, their ability to actually stop him will be limited, thanks in part to their past willingness to change the filibuster rule when they held power.
Trump plans to announce Tuesday evening his choice for the seat made vacant last year by the death of conservative icon Justice Antonin Scalia.
Senate filibusters of Supreme Court nominees are rare, largely because the decision had been seen as too important to be bogged down in partisanship.
When President Johnson tried to elevate Justice Abe Fortas to the position of chief justice, senators filibustered in part over an ethics scandal that eventually forced Fortas to resign. In 2006, Democrats, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, tried to filibuster Samuel A. Alito Jr., but the effort fizzled and Alito was confirmed.
Trump has encouraged Republican senators to scrap the filibuster and quickly confirm his choice. “We have obstructionists,” Trump told Fox’s Sean Hannity last week. Asked whether he wants GOP leaders to change the rules for the high court, he said, “I do.”
Without a filibuster, Republicans have enough votes to confirm Trump’s pick, assuming the party is unified. Republicans hold a 52-48 majority.
But if a filibuster is allowed, they’d need Democrats to help reach the 60-vote threshold needed to defeat the tactic.
And Democrats are in no mood to cooperate with Trump. Many remain incensed that Republicans refused to consider President Obama’s choice of Judge Merrick Garland after Scalia’s death, leaving the court with only eight justices for nearly a year.
“This was a stolen seat; it’s not Trump’s to fill,” said one Senate Democratic aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation...
Democrats cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one, writes @DLeonhardt https://t.co/gRhzTJQj9U— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) February 1, 2017
It’s important to remember just how radical — and, yes, unprecedented — the Senate’s approach to the previous Supreme Court nominee was.It doesn't make him "deeply uncomfortable." Frankly, by a look at his Twitter feed, the dude's reveling in his partisan hatred and demonization of the administration.
Republican leaders announced last March that they would not consider any nominee. They did so even though Barack Obama still had 10 months left in his term and even though other justices (including Anthony Kennedy) had been confirmed in a president’s final year.
The refusal was a raw power grab. Coupled with Republican hints that no Hillary Clinton nominee would be confirmed either, it was a fundamental changing of the rules: Only a party that controlled both the White House and the Senate would now be able to assume it could fill a Supreme Court vacancy.
The change is terribly damaging for the country’s political system. It impedes the smooth functioning of the court and makes it a much more partisan institution.
Of course, the strategy also worked, and the flip from an Obama justice to a Trump justice will likely be the deciding factor in many of the most important cases in coming years.
So what can Democrats do?
First, they need to make sure that the stolen Supreme Court seat remains at the top of the public’s consciousness. When people hear the name “Neil Gorsuch,” as qualified as he may be, they should associate him with a constitutionally damaging power grab.
Second, Democrats should not weigh this nomination the same way that they’ve weighed previous ones. This one is different. The presumption should be that Gorsuch does not deserve confirmation, because the process that led to his nomination was illegitimate....
*****
Finally, the Democratic Party should begin planning its long-term strategy for the court, and that strategy needs to revolve around last year’s events. One option, for example, would be a plan first to deprive a Republican president of one nominee in coming years and second to offer a truce with Republicans.
I understand that all of these options sound aggressive and partisan, and it makes me deeply uncomfortable to make such an argument. But Democrats simply cannot play by the old set of rules now that the Republicans are playing by a new one. The only thing worse than the system that the Republicans have created is a system in which one political party volunteers to be bullied.
Mainstream Democrats will continue to denounce anyone to their left as naïve. But they're wrong to do so: https://t.co/eMnwY64Pk6 pic.twitter.com/L7WTqnPRjQ
— New Republic (@NewRepublic) February 2, 2017
In late October 2011, I was volunteering at the Occupy Wall Street library in lower Manhattan. Tucked into a corner of Zuccotti Park, the library was staffed mainly by anarchists of an exceedingly orderly bent. If society were suddenly freed from coercive institutions like libraries, these people would gladly spend the morning sorting donated books by Dewey decimal number—as they were doing in the mild fall weather. I was there for only a few days, but one conversation with a book borrower has stayed with me. He was having trouble understanding why he kept returning to the encampment. He wondered: Had anything like this happened before? Were there books that could tell him who had done it, and why? I felt I was meeting a victim of a political shipwreck. In my mind, he became emblematic of a left that felt itself so unmoored from any shared past that it was puzzled by its own existence.An interesting, although profoundly mistaken analysis. Hillary Clinton ran far to the left, much farther than her 2008 campaign, and farther left than both of Barack Obama's campaigns.
Now that Donald Trump occupies the White House, it’s easy to feel that we are all castaways in historical time. There is talk in some quarters of leaving the country, of turning blue cities and states into sanctuaries, not just for the undocumented, but for disillusioned liberals—a response that amounts to giving up on creating a just and inclusive democracy in this divided land. But such feelings of despair miss the deeper and perhaps more lasting political transformation that has taken place in the five years since Zuccotti Park.
Indeed, the irruption of radicalism at Occupy turned out to be prophetic. For the first time in decades, the left regained its focus and put down new roots. Fight for $15, the campaign for a higher minimum wage led by fast-food workers, made gains in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. Rolling Jubilee, founded in 2012, bought and canceled almost $32 million in medical and student debt. Black Lives Matter has forced America to reckon with police violence against black men and highlighted the economic isolation of many black communities. Last year, Bernie Sanders won more than 13 million votes. And recent polls show that a majority of Americans under the age of 30 now prefer socialism to capitalism. While it is unclear just what they mean by that, a renewed openness to radical ideas is unmistakable among young people. The mass protests in response to Trump’s policies, both at the women’s march and at airports around the country, in the last weeks show a sense of urgency and willingness to fight for robust legal equality and inclusiveness. At the very moment when establishment politics have been severely undermined—the GOP hijacked by Trump, the Democrats confounded by Hillary Clinton’s loss—the American left has been reborn.
For most of the 2016 election cycle, however, the left was told, implicitly or explicitly, that while they might be charming or admirable, they should leave real politics to the adults of the Democratic National Committee and the liberal commentariat. There was one candidate, we were assured, and one web of institutions and experts who understood how to get things done: They were battle-tested and ready to win, then to hit the ground governing. The rest of us had pretty sentiments; it was sweet that we thought the word democracy could refer to something larger in ambition and imagination than the current version of the Democratic Party; but politics means putting away childish things.
In the wake of Trump’s victory in November, the present leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to grasp the lessons of its own defeat. “I don’t think people want a new direction,” Nancy Pelosi insisted on Meet the Press just after the election. The DNC doubled down on that position in early January, announcing the creation of an anti-Trump “war room” staffed with Clinton operatives who will continue attacking Trump’s ethics, character, and speculative ties to Russia. This is the same strategy that failed to win the presidential election against a palpably flawed and eminently beatable candidate.
Though fragmented and incipient, this nascent left is now best placed to mount a convincing opposition to Trump, and to engage with the forces that brought him to power. With its focus on economic inequality and collective action, the left knows things that liberals have been reluctant to acknowledge, or in any event to say—knowledge that is necessary to embrace the populist moment, push back on its reactionary inclinations, and seize its progressive potential. The left is able to diagnose the malfunctioning of our democracy because, unlike the Democratic establishment, it starts from the premise that American democracy as it is currently constituted is profoundly insufficient...
The state of higher education in the age of Trump. #Berkeley pic.twitter.com/VrBZnYNcFD
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Police amassing on ground floor of Berkeley student union. Things could get...real. pic.twitter.com/p128zX7IT8
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Milo wasn't welcome in Berkeley. pic.twitter.com/3KUMorC0zL
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Trump presidency, day 13. #berkeley pic.twitter.com/A9MCOqWq6E
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
The graffiti on the destroyed generator says "Fuck Trump." pic.twitter.com/x9E5OVtdtt
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
People taking photos in front of defaced Walgreens on Telegraph Avenue. pic.twitter.com/3IO3xsJgkE
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
Berkeley protests. pic.twitter.com/oVLI9NHo3A
— Alexander Nazaryan (@alexnazaryan) February 2, 2017
UC Berkeley looks like a war zone right now thanks to violent protesters furious over #MiloYiannopoulos speech https://t.co/NUTF1NFfy0 pic.twitter.com/tQSYtcQUfL
— Jason Howerton (@jason_howerton) February 2, 2017
#BREAKING: Protest continues with the burning of a #MAGA hat & "fuck Donald Trump" chants #UCBerkeley pic.twitter.com/XrT1fm4pX1
— Kris Cruz (@rc_kris) February 2, 2017
Protesters migrating to Bancroft Way. Preparing to march. #UCBerkeley #MiloYiannopoulos pic.twitter.com/cJT86j7DX8
— Lilian Kim (@liliankim7) February 2, 2017
Police threaten use of batons, chemical agents for UC Berkeley protest: https://t.co/zaKBMCXz4X #MiloAtCal
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) February 2, 2017
#UCBerkeley responds after violent #protest forces cancelation of #MiloYiannopoulos speech: https://t.co/bYIzUvYuLN pic.twitter.com/WK2CpMhUu1
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) February 2, 2017
Proudly intolerant of genocide. Intolerant of a fascist government. Intolerant of #alternativefacts. #onevictory #MiloAtCal #NOFASCISTUSA pic.twitter.com/zx04LYKQzY
— #NoFascistUSA (@RefuseFascism) February 2, 2017
