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babylonsister

babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
January 12, 2020

'Evangelicals for Trump' was an awful display by supposed citizens of the Kingdom of God

https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/4421150002?fbclid=IwAR1GecOE72Lu2medVKVKqnLi_5pPHsCjvgcTQpSyXBO94pnoI2W5HsXIL0Q

'Evangelicals for Trump' was an awful display by supposed citizens of the Kingdom of God
Trump mocked his enemies, trafficked in half-truths, instilled fear and expressed zero humility. My fellow evangelicals loved every minute of it.
John Fea | Opinion contributor | 17 hours ago


I have spent my entire adult life in the evangelical community. I had a born-again experience when I was 16 and I never looked back. I currently teach history at a Christian college with evangelical roots. As a historian, I study American evangelicalism.

But I have never seen anything like what I witnessed last week as I watched President Donald Trump speak to a few thousand of his evangelical supporters at El Rey Jesus, a largely Hispanic megachurch in Miami, during the kickoff to his “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign.

snip//

Message to evangelicals: Impeachment is about Donald Trump. It's not an attack on you.

I am used to this kind of thing from Trump, but I was stunned when I witnessed evangelical Christians — those who identify with the “good news” of Jesus Christ —raising their hands in a posture of worship as Trump talked about socialism and gun rights.

I watched my fellow evangelicals rising to their feet and pumping their fists when Trump said he would win reelection in 2020.

Trump spent the evening mocking his enemies, trafficking in half-truths in order to instill fear in people whom God commands to “fear not,” and proving that he is incapable of expressing anything close to Christian humility.

His evangelical supporters loved every minute of it. On Friday night, Christians who claim to be citizens of the Kingdom of God went to church, cheered the depraved words of a president, and warmly embraced his offer of political power. Such a display by evangelicals is unprecedented in American history.

I usually get angry when members of my tribe worship at the feet of Trump. This time I just felt sad.



John Fea, a history professor at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is the author of "Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump." This column is adapted from a post on his blog. Follow him on Twitter: @JohnFea1
January 12, 2020

'History has proven her right': Barbara Lee's anti-war push succeeds on Iran




'History has proven her right': Barbara Lee's anti-war push succeeds on Iran
The veteran liberal Democrat helped unite her caucus on legislation to restrict Trump's authority to attack Iran.
By SARAH FERRIS
01/10/2020 12:57 PM EST
Updated: 01/10/2020 01:10 PM EST


Longtime anti-war dissident Barbara Lee’s name wasn’t on the resolution the House overwhelmingly approved on Thursday to halt hostilities with Iran. That distinction went to Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a freshman Democrat who served multiple tours in Iraq as a top-level CIA analyst.

But it was the 73-year-old congresswoman who had helped push the Democratic caucus over decades to unite and hold President Donald Trump’s presidential military powers in check, according to interviews with nearly a dozen of her colleagues.

“The historical and current credit needs to be given to her,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said. “Even if it was a Democratic president, even if it was Obama, it was her courage and her consistency to say, ‘This is a role for Congress.’”

“More times than not, history has proven her right,” he added.


It was Lee who, in 2001, stood alone in a bruised and angry America to oppose post-Sept. 11 warfare. A generation later, the California Democrat is helping to lead a party-wide crackdown on the expansion of Trump’s presidential war powers.

more...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/10/barbara-lee-war-iran-097145
January 11, 2020

An anguished question from a Trump supporter: 'Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?'

My sister's find on
Facebook © 2020



An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’

The serious answer: Here’s what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don't...

That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."

That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."

That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."

That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."

That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you chirped, "He sure knows me."

That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, "That's cool!"

That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.

That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"

That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."

That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"

That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"

That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"

That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."

That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"

That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"

That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."

That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"

That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.”

That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.

What you don't get, Trump supporters in 2019, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.

Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering
.
January 11, 2020

2020's gonna be a game of inches and Republicans are inching backward

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/11/1910776/-2020-s-gonna-be-a-game-of-inches-and-Republicans-are-inching-backward#read-more

2020's gonna be a game of inches and Republicans are inching backward
Kerry Eleveld for Daily Kos
Daily Kos Staff
Saturday January 11, 2020 · 2:00 PM EST


After a week of punditry hailing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's strategic advantage in the impeachment article skirmish, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Friday that she would transmit the articles to the upper chamber as early as next week.

Pelosi has been holding on to them since Dec. 18, when the House voted to impeach Donald Trump over his extortion of Ukraine. While some on the left wanted her to hold on to them longer or even indefinitely, Pelosi largely achieved her goals of unearthing new evidence and shining a spotlight on McConnell's promise to rig the trial.

Holding the articles was a tactical move by Pelosi. It was a battle; the war is 2020. And with the emergence of new emails directly implicating Trump in the Ukraine aide freeze and Bolton's openness to testifying, Pelosi put McConnell's vulnerable senators in a much more painful position. Senate Republicans will almost surely vote to acquit Trump but now there's at least rumblings about witnesses at this point—a signal that the situation got too politically dicey for senators like Maine's Susan Collins to entirely ignore.

Witnesses or not in the Senate, Pelosi set herself up with cards left to play throughout the year. Let's start with the State of the Union address just three weeks from now on Feb. 4th. McConnell gets to grapple with how quickly to try to dispense with his Senate trial. But perhaps even more importantly there's question of Bolton's testimony. If McConnell stuffs it, then the House can subpoena him. It's a prospect that clearly terrifies Trump, who is already promising to muzzle Bolton through an executive privilege claim. But even a court battle could result in Bolton testifying sometime before November, potentially a worst-case scenario for both Trump and half a dozen Senate Republicans in tough reelections bids.

And then there was Trump, with his mission accomplished speech on Wednesday. Some pundits even fell into the trap of suggesting he would be able mark his reckless act of warmongering down as a "W" after it seemed Iran was deescalating the conflict. But early polling along with Trump's bumbling indicate exactly the opposite. Trump's impulsive assassination order has been followed by more than a week of his deputy's utter failure to explain why Trump greenlighted the Soleimani operation after two previous presidents spent decades intentionally taking a pass on it. Honestly, the overwhelming ineptitude and obvious lying of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and Trump has been mesmerizing. Trump has even invented the idea that Soleimani was planning attacks on four embassies—something that Esper, Pompeo and others mysteriously failed to mention while they were briefing Congress on the intelligence Wednesday.

Instead of a "win," Trump's military strike appears to have confirmed voters' worst fears about him even if many Americans are momentarily breathing a sigh of relief. Indeed, by a 2-1 margin, a 54% majority of Americans said Trump's actions have made America less safe in a USA Today/Ipsos poll.

Americans also overwhelmingly shared the view that the strike makes it more likely that Iran will attack U.S. interests in the Middle East (69%), that terrorists will wage attacks on U.S. soil (63%), and that the U.S. will go to war with Iran (62%). Americans also think the strike increases the likelihood that Iran will produce a nuclear weapon, 52%-8%.


Americans were ripe to reach these conclusions. As conservative David Frum wrote in The Atlantic this week, Trump is the "least trusted president in the history of polling," with two-thirds of Americans calling him dishonest and 61% saying he does not respect democracy. Beyond that, polling on Trump's handling of foreign policy has been routinely dismal with anywhere from 55% to 60% of the public disapproving of it.

It's difficult to know how any of this will play out months down the road, but the "wartime" presidential bump that some Republicans seemed to be counting on appears to be a dud. And given the fact that Trump and his national security team have spent more than a week lying to the nation about the rationale behind the Soleimani strike, that bump will likely never materialize. Perhaps even more importantly, reluctant Trump voters have been reminded once again that no 401(k) is worth another military engagement that costs trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and potentially spirals into a regional war or worse.

2020 is going to be a game of inches, and Trump spent the first full week of the year inching backward.
January 11, 2020

Wealth Tax Has Broad Public Support

https://politicalwire.com/2020/01/11/wealth-tax-has-broad-public-support/

Wealth Tax Has Broad Public Support
January 11, 2020 at 7:53 am EST By Taegan Goddard


A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds 64% of Americans strongly or somewhat agreed that “the very rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to support public programs” – the essence of a wealth tax.

Results were similar across gender, race and household income. While support among Democrats was stronger, at 77%, a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agreed with the idea.
January 11, 2020

Trump's Rationale for Killing Soleimani Is Falling Apart

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/trump-soleimani-iran-lying-threat-bombing-intelligence.html


Trump’s Rationale for Killing Soleimani Is Falling Apart
By Jonathan Chait
Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images


Why did the United States kill Iranian general Qasem Soleimani? President Trump, in remarks to the nation the morning after the attack, gave a clear rationale. Soleimani “was planning new attacks on American targets, but we stopped him.”

That information has not been made public. But the glimpses behind the curtain have not inspired confidence that Trump’s story is on the level.

The most damning assessment is indirect. When the administration shared its intelligence with select members of Congress, many of them came away unimpressed, if not outright disgusted. Rep. Gerry Connolly described the presentation as “sophomoric and utterly unconvincing.” Even Republican Senator Mike Lee, heretofore an unquestioning Trump supporter, called it the worst briefing, at least on a military issue, he’s seen in the “nine years [he’s] been here.” This is the equivalent of a person who owns 14 house cats reporting that they walked out of the theater halfway through Cats.

Exactly what the administration said, or failed to say, remains classified. But the administration’s public explanations have hardly added clarity. Trump’s initial remarks did not mention any new threat to a U.S. embassy. The next day, he said, “We did it because they were looking to blow up our embassy,” presumably in Baghdad. Last night, at a rally in Toledo, he expanded the threat to “embassies,” multiple. In a new interview with Fox News, he has specified the threat as being to four embassies. Oddly, these details seem not to have been included in the briefing to Congress, which raises the question of why information is too classified for members of the U.S. government, but low-level enough to share with the Fox News audience.

A senior administration official and a senior defense official tell the Post they were “only aware of vague intelligence about a plot against the embassy in Baghdad and that the information did not suggest a fully formed plot.” Both sources denied any awareness of “threats against multiple embassies.”

Other ancillary details have made the case look more questionable still.
Trump reportedly told associates he acted in part to placate Republican Senators whose support he needed to shape the Senate impeachment trial. The Washington Post reports today that, on the same day as the Soleimani strike, another American mission attempted, but failed, to take out a different Iranian commander in Yemen, where Iran is involved in a civil war. This seems like a strange coincidence if the second target was also linked to an imminent threat to the U.S. “This suggests a mission with a longer planning horizon and a larger objective, and it really does call into question why there was an attempt to explain this publicly on the basis of an imminent threat,” Iran scholar Suzanne Maloney told the Post.

And of course Trump lies all the time, about everything. He specifically lies about the U.S. intelligence community, the conclusions of which he habitually disregards when it suits his purpose. Last year, he dismissed U.S. intelligence that found Iran was abiding the terms of the nuclear deal. So the notion Trump would mislead the country about Iran-related intelligence again hardly seems far-fetched.

It is probably true that Soleimani was linked to plans that posed some kind of threat to the United States at some point. Soleimani was indeed a very dangerous and aggressive figure. But Trump’s claim that he had to be killed right away in order to save American lives is not one that should be taken at face value.

This post has been updated.
January 11, 2020

What If Pelosi Sent Just One Article of Impeachment?

https://politicalwire.com/2020/01/10/what-if-pelosi-sent-just-one-article-of-impeachment/

What If Pelosi Sent Just One Article of Impeachment?
January 10, 2020 at 8:15 pm EST By Taegan Goddard


George Conway and Neil Katyal: “The first article of impeachment effectively charges the president with shaking down Ukraine; the second impeaches him for his unprecedented obstruction of Congress. That gives the speaker room to maneuver. She could choose to tweak her announcement and send only the second article, on obstruction, for trial. Or she could transmit them both — along with a House-approved provision advising the Senate that if it fails to obtain adequate witnesses and documents, the House will reopen the investigation into Article I and subpoena that material itself…”

“Holding the first article back and letting the second go forward would be a powerful and precise response to McConnell’s unprecedented attempts to avoid committing to a real trial. It makes practical sense but also highlights what’s at stake here. Trump would be forced to undergo two impeachment trials instead of one — but that’s a fair price for him to pay for his attempts to hide evidence from the American people.”
January 11, 2020

Police arrest Iranian man carrying weapons and $22,000 in cash near Mar-a-Lago

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/iranian-man-arrested-near-trump-mar-a-lago-resort-today-had-weapons-cash-2020-01-10/?fbclid=IwAR0WkdLL0tbIDJnLrqfy9-nfbb3oujP1qyGnW-7mXr6JaBjz87SPn7njcqE

Police arrest Iranian man carrying weapons and $22,000 in cash near Mar-a-Lago
By Jeff Pegues
January 10, 2020 / 6:14 PM / CBS News


Police in Palm Beach, Florida, arrested an Iranian man carrying weapons and cash not far from President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort on Friday. The man, an Iranian national identified as Masoud Yareilzoleh, was arrested after Palm Beach police received a call about a suspicious person.

When they caught up to the man, they said he had a machete, pickax and two knives along with $22,000 in cash. Police also searched a car associated with Yareilzoleh at Palm Beach International Airport.

The arrest happened near the Flagler Memorial Bridge, about four miles from the president's Mar-a-Lago, although Mr. Trump was not there at the time.

Yareilzoleh is in the Palm Beach County Jail. It's not clear what his intentions were but investigators are monitoring the situation.

The arrest comes after several suspicious incidents at Mar-a-Lago involving Chinese nationals, and amid stepped up security around the country.

First published on January 10, 2020 / 6:14 PM
January 10, 2020

Iraq calls on US to make withdrawal plans, Trump admin declines

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/iraq-calls-us-make-withdrawal-plans-trump-admin-declines

Iraq calls on US to make withdrawal plans, Trump admin declines
01/10/20 12:48 PM
By Steve Benen


snip//

As we’ve discussed, the initial response from the Trump administration to the Iraqi parliament’s vote was acquiescence. Earlier this week, officials in Baghdad received a signed letter from Marine Brig. Gen. William Seely, who commands Task Force Iraq, not only declaring the U.S. intention to withdraw, but including specific and detailed information about how it would occur.

In apparent reference to the Iraqi parliament’s vote, the letter said, “We respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.”

As is too often the case, the Trump administration struggled to keep its story straight about the letter, before eventually saying the whole thing was an unfortunate “mistake.”

Today, however, the administration had an entirely new message for our allies in Baghdad: We’re not leaving. The New York Times reported:

The State Department on Friday rebuffed the Iraqi government’s request to begin discussions on pulling out troops, saying that any American officials going to Baghdad during a state of heightened tensions would not discuss a “troop withdrawal,” as the Iraqi prime minister had requested. Instead, discussions would be about the “appropriate force posture in the Middle East.”

The statement from Washington was a direct rebuttal to Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi of Iraq, and was certain to add to the friction between the two nations.


Well, yes, I’d say “friction” is inevitable when one country asks another to leave, and the response is, “No.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters this morning that the administration is “going to continue” its mission in Iraq, and a State Department spokesperson insisted that the United States is a “force for good” in the region.

It appears Iraq may have come to a different conclusion. It also appears the Trump administration doesn’t care.

January 10, 2020

How Ruth Bader Ginsburg is trying to check the conservative majority


Live TV
How Ruth Bader Ginsburg is trying to check the conservative majority
By Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer
Updated 10:12 AM EST, Thu January 09, 2020


Washington(CNN) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is in the liberal minority on the Supreme Court but has a way of steering the debate on a case.

Ginsburg spoke to CNN in a rare interview in her chambers this week. The 86-year-old four-time cancer survivor has resumed an active role in oral arguments and is often the first of the nine justices to pose a question. She regularly asks whether the Supreme Court should even decide the legal issue before it.

By framing the debate in this way, Ginsburg could limit the five conservative justices from setting new precedent over the dissent of the court's four liberals.


Ginsburg's approach goes back to her time in law school -- but her expertise and emphasis offers liberals a path forward when the balance of power on the court is now solidly conservative. Ginsburg has taken up the cause in multiple recent disputes regarding the 2nd Amendment, criminal sentencing and tax law.

In an interview late Tuesday, Ginsburg talked about the rules for getting through the courthouse doors. She would not discuss specifics of any pending case and sidestepped questions about strategy or the ideological stakes on this divided court.

She said that procedural concerns can stop judges from intervening prematurely but noted that procedural safeguards can also ensure that worthy litigants are not kept out of the courthouse.

"It's just instinctive to me," she said. "Procedure is supposed to serve the people that law exists to serve."


more...

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/01/08/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-civil-procedure/index.html

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