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By Froma Harrop

"Rising to the bait" is a fishing term. Anglers lure fish hiding in the deep by positioning bait on or near the surface. Fish that rise to the bait usually end up on someone's dinner plate.

Conservative groups routinely try this technique on college liberals. Their lure is an inflammatory right-wing speaker. The catch comes in duping liberals to act badly as censors of free speech or, even better, violently. The public sees them as spoiled college kids.

Why else would Berkeley College Republicans invite the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos to speak on their famously left-leaning University of California campus?

Taking their cue in a play their enemies wrote, the offended ones made a big deal out of this cartoonish character. The cameras caught "protesters," some wearing masks, in full rampage. They trashed the campus before heading off into downtown Berkeley to smash some windows. (By the way, who exactly were these people hiding their identities?)

Over at the State University of New York at Buffalo, agitated students all but shut down a speech by Robert Spencer, an alleged Islamophobe. Spencer's claim to fame is his controversial Jihad Watch website.

Behind many such speaking engagements is a group called Young America's Foundation. And behind Young America's Foundation are the Koch brothers, Richard and Helen DeVos and other very rich financiers of the right. Their agenda relies on discrediting anyone to their left.

Frankly, I don't care enough about Ann Coulter to even dislike her. But the left seems determined to revive her career.

Coulter's scheduled speech at Berkeley was canceled after protests raised security concerns. It should surprise no one that the foundation was picking up her $20,000 speaking fee. College Republicans and the foundation are now suing Berkeley for allegedly violating Coulter's First Amendment rights.

What should smart lefties do? Three things.

One is develop a very thick skin. Many of you are unable to distinguish between merely provocative and totally offensive. You can simplify by dropping such distinctions. Both kinds of speech are protected. If right-wingers choose to invite promoters of disgusting views, let them own it.

Two is to understand this about the opinion business: Success can come from drawing a positive response or a negative one. Failure is no response. Thus, the most effective way to block an obvious attempt to bait you is to swim away. Don't petition. Don't attend.

Wit, meanwhile, makes for a great offense. As the writers at "Saturday Night Live" have taught us, mockery is a more fearsome weapon than raw rage.

Three, when campus conservatives book speakers custom-designed to enrage you, try this clever tactic: Host a sensible conservative to give a talk at the same time. The growing ranks of anti-Trump conservatives offer a pool of highly promising candidates.

Such speakers would draw audience and attention away from the flamethrower across campus. Finding common ground is good for the civic culture, and joining forces enhances power. Importantly, you would come off as open-minded and also be open-minded. We'd all do well to listen more to opinions contrary to our own.

Resist the flashing lures. The choice for campus liberals comes down to this: Either you frustrate those who would provoke you or you become their dinner.

Froma Harrop (fharrop@gmail.com) is a syndicated columnist and a former member of The Providence Journal's editorial board. She can be followed on Twitter: @FromaHarrop.

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Froma Harrop: Conservatives bait college liberals - The Providence Journal

British Columbia's final ballot count starts today to determine which party forms the province's next government almost two weeks after election day, barring judicial recounts.

Christy Clark's Liberals held a slight lead heading into the final count, needing only one riding to change in their favour for the slimmest of majority governments in the province's 87 seat legislature.

But the prospect of a minority government also looms large.

After the May 9 vote, the Liberals had 43 seats, New Democrats 41 and the Greens three.

All eyes over the next few days will be on the Courtenay-Comox riding on Vancouver Island where the NDP currently holds a nine vote lead.

The riding is the focus of an official recount, as is Vancouver-False Creek, won by incumbent Liberal Sam Sullivan by more than 400 votes.

Once the results are known, political horse trading between the Liberals, NDP and Greens is expected to intensify as the parties manoeuvre towards co-operation agreements in what could be a minority government or a bare majority.

Clark and NDP Leader John Horgan have reached out to the Greens since the election.

Green Leader Andrew Weaver has appointed a negotiating team and articulated three major demands: official party status along with electoral and campaign finance reforms.

"Andrew Weaver, I would say, is almost giddy with anticipation of a chance to play a role I don't think he even dreamed about," said Prof. Michael Prince, a social policy expert at the University of Victoria.

"To get this split, 43-41, is kind of like a Hollywood movie for him."

Weaver was the only elected Green in the legislature prior to the election, but he was re-elected along with Vancouver Island Greens Sonia Furstenau and Adam Olsen, making Canadian history for the party.

Prince said the Liberals have their fingers crossed that the vote changes in Courtenay-Comox, giving them a one-seat majority, but Clark has already signalled she's preparing to work with the Greens to preserve her government.

"But the overlaps between the NDP and the Green platforms are much more obvious and substantial than they are for the Liberals," he said.

Weaver and Horgan have butted heads personally in the past and during the campaign, but the possibility of forming a government and wielding power has the adversaries looking to work together, Prince said.

"This is politics," he said. "This is about policy and having an opportunity for influence."

Glen Sanford, the NDP's deputy director, said 60 per cent of B.C. voters rejected Clark's Liberals and people want change.

Sanford said his own family's political history is repeating itself in the current election drama.

His mother, Karen Sanford, served as the Courtenay-Comox member of the legislature for the NDP in the 1970s and '80s. The riding was also subjected to a recount when her mother was in office.

At the time he was working on a fishing boat and voted in Ucluelet. Sanford said his absentee ballot was among those that gave his mother the victory.

"I remember my skipper saying it was a good thing it was a slow day for fishing, because if we had been catching lots of fish there was no way he'd have stopped to come in and vote," he said.

Elections BC, the government agency that administers provincial elections, said almost 180,000 absentee ballots must be counted.

The final count will take place from Monday to Wednesday. Elections BC said the results will be posted and refreshed on the agency's website starting on Monday.

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Final BC vote count starts today, stakes high for Liberals, NDP, Greens - CBC.ca

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Posted: May 21, 2017 12:01 AM

That liberals are hypocrites is not news. Just take a look at the net worth of any Democratic Party leader who routinely rails against the 1 percent. But in the age of Trump, where the hatred that normally drives what were told is the tolerant left has been turned up to 11. All standards have gone out the window; no hypocrisy is too great, no conspiracy theory too insane for someone on the left to advance it and its drone army to believe.

It must be easy to be a liberal in 2017. You dont have to think for yourself. You dont have to prove anything. And your life can swirl in a bubble where youll never have anything you say challenged in a serious way. Liberals have become the bad guy in Lethal Weapon 2 their membership in the progressive club grants them a sort of diplomatic immunity from reality.

The same people who cheered the release of traitor Bradley Manning after serving only seven of 35 years for giving thousands of classified national security secrets to Wikileaks clutch their pearls to this day over the same website publishing unclassified emails from the Clinton campaign.

Is Wikileaks evil or righteous? Do they support the information it receives only if that information damages national security and puts American lives at risk? Sure seems like it.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, the left has become the Fox Mulder of politics. There is nothing beyond the pale or too insane to be advancedas long as it is against a Republican. If its not, if its critical of the left, its dismissed as paranoia.

Ive never written or spoken about the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich because, honestly, I havent seen anything but wild speculation about it. Was he the source of the DNC email leak to Wikileaks? I have no idea. If someone offers real proof, Ill bite. Until then his death is just another senseless murder.

The lack of evidence hasnt stopped some on the right from connecting dots that may or may not exist to advance a political agenda. But just because I tend to agree with a lot of the policy objectives the people connecting those dots want advocate not mean Im on board with everything they do. If Im disgusted when a Democrat does something, Im disgusted when a Republican does it too. The same cant be said for liberals.

Liberal journalists raged against the right over Rich both because there was a grieving family here and its distasteful to dredge up conspiracy theories in that circumstance, and because they are outraged a story has advanced for which there is no evidence. These are awful behaviors, but the left engages in them frequently and gleefully.

On the matter of advancing theories lacking proof, there isnt a liberal publication that not only functions under the assumption Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton, but prints stories and editorials alleging it on a regular basis.

Its been almost a year and there is still zero evidence of this conspiracy, yet the Washington Post, New York Times, and every other left-wing birdcage liner has a team of reporters opining in their pages and on cable news about how this myth is fact.

Even Democratic members of Congress, whod sacrifice their grandchildren to find a crumb of proof, have admitted there is none. It had to kill Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Maxine Waters to admit it, but they did. Journalists cant.

Instead they run anonymously sourced stories, many of which are denied on the record by the very people implicated in them. They leave those stories, uncorrected, on their websites because the conspiracy must be true.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had to have threatened to resign if the president used his letter as justification for firing FBI Director James Comey; anonymous sources told them he did.

Never mind that Rosenstein personally, unambiguously denied the story. Liberals need it to be true. As such, the original story sits, uncorrected, on the Washington Post website without mention of Rosensteins unequivocal denial. It would be journalistic malpracticeif journalism still had standards.

The same goes for countless stories in which Casper the Friendly Leaker whispers something into the ear of some liberal reporter that fits the narrative so perfectly it snaps in place like the last Lego.

Comey was fired just after requesting more money for Russia probe? Obviously. It doesnt matter that the acting Director of the FBI denied it under oath or that there is zero evidence; it just has to be true.

Someone is going to read you a couple of lines over the phone from a dear diary entry by Comey that claimed the president hoped the FBI would leave Michael Flynn alone? It doesnt matter that you dont know the context, or that Comey didnt tell anyone at the time, or you werent even allowed to see the words on the page. Trump is corrupt, so it has to be true. And so on.

When it comes to love of anti-Trump-perfectly-fitting-the-left-wing-narrative conspiracy theories, facts just get in the way. Journalists are ready to roll around like a happy dog in the sun on the grassy knoll of news.

As for the idea that respect for the dead should dictate decorum, these credentialed degenerates stepped down from their high horses long enough to cheer the death of Fox News founder Roger Ailes. I dont know how damaged someone has to be to write the things they wrote thinking something sick is one thing; believing the world needs to know it is a disorder yet to be named yet there they were, dancing on his grave before his family even had a chance to digest their loss.

You say someone is a monster and insensitive to the family for theorizing about a murder last summer, but you cant wait for the body to get cold to express glee over someones passing because you didnt like their politics? Theres a special place in hell for people like that.

Liberals, particularly journalists, have morphed into something very disturbing since the arrival of Donald Trump onto the political scene. Theyve achieved a new level of hypocrisy and disgusting cruelty that would shame a normal person.

Something deep inside them, at their core, is fundamentally damaged. Whether it was broken before the election or not is irrelevant, its their driving force now. Were they civilians, theyd likely be shouting at streetlights and losing the argument. Since theyre journalists, theyll probably win a Pulitzer.

BREAKING: General Michael Flynn Will Plead the Fifth

Read more from the original source:
There's Something Fundamentally Wrong With Liberals - Townhall

Island Packet

If liberals hate him, Trump must be doing something right Island Packet The talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was positively giddy, opening his monologue on Wednesday by praising Mr. Trump for what he called his epic trolling of liberals. This is great, Mr. Limbaugh declared. Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably ... and more »

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If liberals hate him, Trump must be doing something right - Island Packet

Anthony Albanese says the budget was an ideological surrender and Bill Shorten says it was an admission of guilt. Reporting of differences were over-egged. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian

Perhaps the greatest demonstration of how bereft of purpose the Liberal party has become is that the only thing most commentators agreed about the budget was that it was Labor-lite. But such branding, while a damning indictment of the Liberal party, also contains traps for the ALP should it believe the fight has been won.

Its not hard to see why the budget was quickly viewed as a capitulation to Labor. While the ALP has long argued that revenue needs to be raised, the Liberal party has equally long believed the path to surplus requires cuts to government spending.

And so when the budget contained new taxes and only fractional cuts in total government spending, the natural response was that it appeared a very Laboresque approach.

Measures within the budget also helped with that branding. The bank levy, the increase in the Medicare levy, and the cuts to higher education to pay for schools funding were things either previously proposed or done by the ALP.

But given the budget also carried with it a tax cut for those earning more than $180,000, a continuation of the company tax cuts, and increased penalties for those luxuriating on the $535.60 a fortnight under Newstart, it also begged the question of what it says about the ALP that such a budget could be considered Labor-lite?

It suggests that you dont need a very progressive budget to get that moniker a worrying thing for the ALP and explains somewhat the response in the past two weeks by Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese.

The response by Albanese this week also brought with it some odd suggestions that he was attacking Shorten. The basis of this were suggestions his speech to the Transport Workers Union was greatly different to Shortens budget reply.

Clearly I need to read more between the lines or ignore a lot more of the actual text, because to me the differences were merely rhetorical. Albanese, for example, asserted that the budget was an ideological surrender by the LNP; Shorten by contrast labelled it an admission of guilt.

Perhaps there is a difference there, but certainly not enough to be worthy of the over-egged headlines suggesting Albanese is making a leadership move.

But while there is a need for the ALP, as Albanese puts it, to celebrate their victories, the ALP likewise should shudder to think voters might think this budget was a Labor one.

Winning from opposition is hard enough without having voters already thinking theres not much point changing government. So it was not surprising Shortens budget reply speech focussed on the theme that this is not a Labor budget.

That desire to differentiate also highlights the need for the ALP to keep pushing its agenda even at the risk (such that it is) of being seen as too left.

In this context, Shortens decision to keep the 2% deficit levy for those earning over $180,000 is eminently sensible. Indeed the best thing about the decision is it has revealed the limpness of the arguments opposing it.

An ALP leader who doesnt get accused of class warfare after a budget reply speech has fallen at the first hurdle.

For example, because it would see a top tax rate of 49.5%, Scott Morrison, has taken to suggesting it means people earning over $180,000 would spend one day working for the Government and one day working for yourself.

Such purposeful misleading of how the income tax system works where you only pay the top tax rate on money earned over $180,000 is telling. You only need to mislead when the truth would highlight the weakness of your argument.

Of course all the talk of the horrors of a 49.5% tax rate forgets that this very day with the deficit levy still in place (it ends on 30 June) and the current Medicare levy of 2%, the top tax rate is 49%.

Who would have thought a 0.5% increase was enough to turn Australia into a socialist paradise?

That measure plus the policy to increase the Medicare levy only for people earning over $87,000 led to the conservative media branding Shorten as indulging in class war. That should not worry him. An ALP leader who doesnt get accused of class warfare after a budget reply speech has essentially fallen at the first hurdle.

But while keeping the deficit levy is understandable, the position on the Medicare levy is less clear. Given the Gillard government had raised the rate from 1.5% to 2% for the same reason, it is a bit odd to now suggest it should only apply to those earning over $87,000.

As Katharine Murphy noted it means the ALP has to find money elsewhere to fund its own policies policies that will differentiate itself much more effectively from the government than will the Medicare levy.

But while Albanese may not be about to challenge for the leadership (unless Shorten commits more unforced errors such as the Australians first advert), there remains a strong policy debate within the ALP.

The recent Guardian Australian politics live podcasts featuring Wayne Swan and Chris Bowen highlight the intriguing debate going on within the party.

On the surface it is between the centre and the left, but more accurately it is over how progressive that centre should be.

And while the calls from many in the media for the ALP to return to a sensible centre will resonate loudly, the budget shows Labor does best when it pushes that centre towards the progressive side of politics.

A Labor budget needs to be marked as being more than one where taxes are increased and that might entail grabbing some of the revenue delivered by the Liberal partys capitulation and spending it in different ways.

Because while the Liberal party might now agree on the need to raise revenue, how that revenue is spent remains very much in dispute.

The ideological battle over how you can return the budget to surplus appears to be won, but that is not the war and in truth it was always a sideshow.

How and to whom government services and benefits are delivered, what rights you have at work, whether or not your family has decent access to education, health and child care, are always of much greater concern to voters than how the budget is predicted to return to surplus in four years time.

Just because the Liberal party may have raised the ideological white flag, doesnt mean the ALP needs to put up the mission accomplished banner.

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Liberals raise budget white flag, but Labor can't put up 'mission accomplished' banner - The Guardian