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There are always those people.

The people who revel in being the exception to the rule. The women who want everyone to know that they're "not like other girls" and in fact think male chauvinism is super great. The Republicans who hate Trump. Black people who don't believe racism exists. Former liberals who think "something" has just gone "too far."

If you're thirsting for a ton of positive attention, if you want to feel truly valued and special, it's certainly one way to go. If I were to suddenly become a Republican, accept Jesus Christ as my personal savior, declare feminism a societal evil, or oppose abortion, not only would I be endlessly showered with praise, but everything I said would be considered to be extra valid and extra validating to those praising me. I could be used as a weapon against those I used to agree with. People love that shit almost as much as they love unlikely animal friendships.

Yesterday, The New York Times ran an op-ed titled "I'm a Liberal Who Thinks Immigration Must Be Restricted," by one Jerry Kammer, a senior research fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. It was not good.

In this op-ed, Kammer explains that he opposes immigration because of how immigrants drive wages down, which he appears to think is a brand new argument and not a large part of the justification for many of our more embarrassing anti-immigration laws, starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and moving forward. The act was a serious blight on the history of the labor movement, as it was supported by nearly every major union, with the notable exception of the Industrial Workers of the World.

He then pointed out that, once upon a time, other Democrats were also shitty on the issue of immigration, thereby justifying his own position today.

In 1970, Senator Walter Mondale warned that "we have a massive poverty population coming into the country" from Mexico. In 1983 a New York Times editorial argued that while the country needed immigrants, "what it does not need is such an uncontrollable flood of illegal migrants that it tries public patience." In 1994, Barbara Jordan, the civil rights icon chosen by President Bill Clinton to direct the Federal Commission on Immigration Reform, told Congress, "As a nation of immigrants committed to the rule of law, this country must set limits on who can enter." In 2003, Hillary Clinton declared that she was "adamantly against illegal immigration."

But by the time Mrs. Clinton was running for president in 2016, she was courting the Latino vote, pledging not to deport unauthorized immigrants who did not have criminal records.

Yeah, see, that's the thing about being a progressive as opposed to a conservative. Your views change over time and you learn and grow and you try to get better. Or at least that's what we all hope to do.

He also danced around suggesting that part of the reason immigration is bad is because it causes, ahem, "anxiety" and "social division" and "societal fracturing."

In Phoenix I spoke with Donna Neill, a volunteer organizer in a working-class neighborhood and the driving force in the construction of a park that was used primarily by immigrant children. Nevertheless, she supported Proposition 200.

She pointed to crowded classrooms, apartments where two or three families crammed into a space meant for one and home additions in violation of housing codes that went unenforced. "We're losing the simple things that make a society a society, but no one wants to step forward because they're afraid of crossing some line and being called a racist," said Ms. Neill.

And what line would that be? Why are these people so anxious? What exactly are the "simple things that make a society a society"? It sure seems like a lot of things have been glossed over here in service of trying to make racist people look like they are not racist.

Which, actually, is not all that surprising given that the Center for Immigration Studies, where Kammer works, is a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group known for promoting the work of white supremacists. In fact, a study conducted by the SPLC found that the CIS had promoted white supremacist material 2,012 times with much of it coming from VDARE, John Derbyshire and American Renaissance, the site owned by white supremacist Jared Taylor.

Now, Kammer can call himself a liberal, or, as he says, a "moderate Democrat," just like I can call myself a banana. He can even vote for Democrats if he likes, who am I to stop him? But despite my distaste for gatekeeping I'm going to say that working for an actual hate group pretty much disqualifies anyone from actually being a liberal in practice.

If he is truly so concerned about labor, if that is his first priority, there are many things he can do and and advocate for that don't involve attacking immigrants or working for a think tank that frequently links race and IQ.

Via the SPLC:

Oh. So if nothing else, all the CIS fellows could get Bret Stephens's job. A free pair of calipers comes with it!

[New York Times]

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Meet The NYT's 'Anti-Immigration Liberal' (Hint He Works At A Hate Group!) - Wonkette

Trumps allegations are not new he has sporadically claimed for years that the Democratic establishment sought to undermine Sanders in 2016, as have Sanders own supporters but they come as Trump has accelerated his offensive against the Vermont senator, who continues to show strength in early polling.

Earlier this week, Trump sought to play up a feud between Sanders and Warren, who are battling for progressive voters, and his campaign has begun to single Sanders out in press releases and on social media more often rather than focusing more exclusively on Biden.

Trump has also recently stepped up his attacks on former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is pouring money into TV ads attacking Trump to boost his late-start bid.

But Sanders rejected Trump's "attempts to divide Democrats" in a statement Friday evening.

Lets be clear about who is rigging what: it is Donald Trumps action to use the power of the federal government for his own political benefit that is the cause of the impeachment trial," he said. "His transparent attempts to divide Democrats will not work, and we are going to unite to sweep him out of the White House in November.

When the trial begins in earnest on Tuesday, all senators will be required to attend each day of the proceedings for as long as they last.

But Sanders isnt the only 2020 candidate who will be kept off the campaign trail as the impeachment trial drags on.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), whom polls have shown is within striking distance in Iowa; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is hoping for a come-from-behind victory in the Hawkeye State, and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), a longshot who has placed more stock in the New Hampshire primaries in less than a month, will all be sidelined by the proceedings.

The trial could be a huge boon to White House hopefuls like Biden and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who are clustered with Sanders and Warren at the top of the field. The senators currently running for president have all expressed disappointment at being kept off the campaign trail while pledging to fulfill their constitutional obligations and sending surrogates to campaign on their behalf.

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Trump accuses Dems of using impeachment trial to hurt Sanders campaign - POLITICO

Winston Churchill supposedly said: Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else. In his new book, Andrew Bacevich goes far towards proving the second half of that sentence and casts doubt on the first, without offering much in the way of alternatives.

In what is mostly a social history of the post-cold war era dont expect to find an analysis of the Balkan wars Bacevich seeks to chronicle how the US wasted little time in squandering the advantage it had gained. Few would disagree.

Yet he defines Americas supposed post-cold war consensus as globalized neoliberalism, global leadership, freedom (as the expansion of personal autonomy, with traditional moral prohibitions declared obsolete and the removal of constraints maximizing choice), and presidential supremacy. The 2016 election, he writes, presented the repudiation of that very consensus.

The villains in this telling are the elites who pushed the consensus heedless of other views or interests expectations raised, but unfulfilled; outraged citizens left with no place to stand to the point where Donald Trump was elected and no one could understand why.

In 2016, he writes, financial impotence was to turn into political outrage, bringing the post-cold war era to an abrupt end. As for the people who shop for produce at Whole Foods, wear vintage jeans and ski in Aspen, they never saw it coming and couldnt believe it when it occurred.

Bacevich argues that the seeds of this failure were present throughout the cold war, notably in Vietnam and Ross Perots insurgent White House run in 1992. But how could there ever have been a consensus if the country were so divided?

We have been here before, both in the history of the US and of ideology. Post-1989 featured the same universal self-congratulation and flinging up of caps that Thomas Carlyle critiqued in The French Revolution. Bacevich is right to criticize it again. But it is surely wrong to claim, for instance, that Reagans entire presidency was a pseudo-event, its achievements based on the masterful creation and manipulation of images. Mikhail Gorbachev, for one, doesnt think so.

Acerbic, even curmudgeonly his catalogue of Americas social ills is harsh but fair Bacevich veers between the commonplace and the sarcastic. The promotion of globalization included a generous element of hucksterism, he writes, the equivalent of labeling a large cup of strong coffee a grande dark roast while referring to the server handing it to you as a barista.

Clearly, for those who favor an expansive role for America and the west, and operating according to the principles of grand statecraft, the post-cold war years were the years the locust has eaten. Social mobility declined. The plight of the poor worsened. But JD Vance wrote more sensitively about this in Hillbilly Elegy and Bacevich adds little on either the wars or the peace.

Even if the Donald Rumsfeld-endorsed, technology-friendly Revolution in Military Affairs only purported to describe the culmination of a long evolutionary march toward perfection, which great power today does not rely on technology for military might? And what, other than isolationism, would preclude the possibility of another Vietnam?

Similarly, even as he chronicles their failures Bacevich is harshly critical of the view that presidents direct history. Abraham Lincoln, call your office. FDR too.

The elites Bacevich chides had many faults, and no president of the period left office fully content. But sometimes the authors strategy, as well as his history, is simply wrong.

The horrors of 9/11 notwithstanding, he writes, terrorism does not pose an existential threat to the United States and never has. As innumerable commentators have noted, terrorism is merely a tactic, and an ancient one at that.

Yet one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day, as the bumper sticker read, and any leader is responsible for maintaining vigilance. Which threats can be ignored? Air piracy? Chemical weapons? Nuclear smuggling? Bacevich never offers what he would do to states harboring terrorists, even while noting failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The book starts out critical of Trump but then takes a more nuanced position. Chiding Barack Obama as the one who saved globalized neoliberalism and inadvertently laid the way for a powerful backlash, he says Trumps detractors commit this categorial error. They confuse cause and effect. They charge him with dividing America. Yet which other recent president attacked fellow citizens so harshly and took delight in smashing the norms of political debate?

Bacevich focuses on the neoconservative project in terms of wars but ignores its Burkean focus on domestic policy, not least David Brooks idea of national greatness conservatism, a very different thing than Maga. John McCain, who articulated a similar vision of national purpose, and whose policies were designed to help Joe the Plumber far more than Trump has, gets one brief mention.

Some people saw what was happening and sought to answer the question Rabbit Angstrom asked and Bacevich cites: Without the cold war, whats the point of being an American? They were ignored.

Bacevich now urges Americans to ignore the tweets and focus on events. But the tweets are events, the way in which the old guardrails are broken down and the boundaries of legitimate discourse weakened, which has let loose some very dangerous ideas, not least on race and republican norms. A tweet is not a notification to Congress under the War Powers Act.

Despite Bacevichs call for conversation on issues formerly beyond the pale such as abandoning globalism and militarism, his book has a fatal weakness: he never quite says what or who he is for. He is too good a historian not to know there was a tendency of anti-anti-communism during the cold war. Perhaps his book is about anti-anti-Trumpism. But the pale is there for a reason

One hopes some future historian will find the seeds of success in our present troubles. Meanwhile, Americans must pick up the pieces as best they can.

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The Age of Illusions review: anti-anti-Trump but for what, exactly? - The Guardian

Were not even a full month into 2020, but the unmistakable buzz of a landmark election year is already thick in the air.

Many of us are understandably focused on the massive change Election Day could bring, but three upcoming dates in January offer us a chance to reflect on just what were fighting for come November. Equally critically, though, these dates show us why federal courts should matter to all of us and why Trumps efforts to pack the courts with narrow-minded elitists are so dangerous.

First up is Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 20. Dr. King spent his life fighting for and achieving important civil rights victories concerning voting, housing, and other issues. His call to give us the ballot led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and his leadership in the Chicago Open Housing Movement laid the groundwork for the Fair Housing Act, which passed one week after Dr. Kings death.

But right-wing judges, many of whom have been appointed by Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpNational Archives says it altered Trump signs, other messages in Women's March photo Dems plan marathon prep for Senate trial, wary of Trump trying to 'game' the process Democratic lawmaker dismisses GOP lawsuit threat: 'Take your letter and shove it' MORE, have seriously eroded that progress. Take the Supreme Courts 2013Shelby County v. Holderdecision, which effectively overturned a key section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and, as onestudyput it, opened the floodgates to laws restricting voting throughout the United States. Nowhere is that more evident today than in states across the South and Industrial North, where African American, Latino and young voters face a myriad of barriers to the ballot box.

More recently, Trump-appointed judges on the 5th Circuit cast crucial votes to seriously cut back rights under the Fair Housing Act, a decision that even a conservative judge appointed by President George W. Bushcriticizedbecause it moves us backwards on the pathway to equality and integration.

And 10 years ago, on Jan. 21, five conservative justices on the Supreme Court decided, in the disastrousCitizens Unitedcase, to overturn congressional limits on election spending. That decision made it legal for corporations, the very wealthy and other special interest groups to spend unlimited amounts of money influencing elections and dramatically diminished the political power of the rest of us. Eight years later, the amount of such independent expenditures had more thanquadrupled, from $205.5 million to over $1.1 billion.

Trump judges have made the situation even worse, most recently in an 8th Circuitdecisionthat partly struck down a state lobbyist registration and disclosure law, despite dissents by two conservative Bush judges. And on the 5th Circuit, a Trump-appointed judgeevenarguedthat limits on campaign contributions are unconstitutional, a position rejected by a number of conservative Bush judges.

Finally, Jan. 22, marks the anniversary of the Courts landmark 1973 decision inRoe v. Wade, which established womens right to abortion care.In the last few years, a growing number of states launched an unprecedented assault on reproductive rights, passing extreme early abortion bans and slashing state funds for reproductive health care.And on the federal level, right-wing federal judges, many of them Trump appointees, are also eager to weaken or overturnRoe.

For example, a 6th Circuit Trump judge wrote adecisionupholding a restrictive state law that requires doctors to subject women to unnecessary and potentially harmful procedures before providing abortion care. A 5th Circuit Trump judgecriticizedwhat he called the moral tragedy of abortion, puttingRoesquarely in his crosshairs. And in a currently pending Supreme Court case in which Trump appointees Brett KavanaughBrett Michael KavanaughDemocratic group plans mobile billboard targeting Collins on impeachment January reminds us why courts matter and the dangers of 'Trump judges' Planned Parenthood launches M campaign to back Democrats in 2020 MORE and Neil GorsuchNeil GorsuchJanuary reminds us why courts matter and the dangers of 'Trump judges' Planned Parenthood launches M campaign to back Democrats in 2020 Appeals court appears wary of letting Trump reinstate death sentences MORE may well cast deciding votes, more than 200 Republican members of Congress recently filed a brief asking the Court to consideroverturningRoe.

Januarys anniversaries show us why federal courts matter.

As we continue to look forward to Election Day, lets not forget what were fighting for and the dangerous role that Donald Trump, Republican legislators, and Trump-appointed judges are playing in stripping us of our rights.

Elliot Mincberg is a senior fellow atPeople For the American Wayand a former chief oversight counsel for the House Judiciary Committee.

Originally posted here:
January reminds us why courts matter and the dangers of 'Trump judges' | TheHill - The Hill

Donald Trump is taking his war with the media a step further as his administration explores ways to restrict access to sensitive economic data. The president has long criticized the press for pushing an agenda that doesnt align with his own, and Trump recently turned on Fox News a conservative outlet he once relied on.

Economic information that impacts the market, like employment data and GDP figures, is typically protected by a lockup. That means journalists are given access to the market-moving information 30-60 minutes before it is released inside a secure room. The reporters can make use of computers without internet access to write a story, which they are permitted to send out at a designated release time.

According to Bloomberg, the lockups could see significant changes in the days to come as Donald Trump and his administration mull over ways to increase security and cut down on what they see as an unfair advantage for media outlets. Its unclear exactly how Trump wants to change the procedure, but one potential option is removing computers from the room.

Changing the decades-old lockup procedure has several potential pitfalls. For one, it could result in government websites being inundated with traffic from those looking to trade based on economic data. It would also put traders against each other as they race to gain access to the data and profit from it.

For Donald Trump, the appeal of leveling the playing field among big-name news outlets and smaller players in the industry is likely a big part of the proposed changes. Not only has he criticized the media for treating him unfairly, but his supporters are working on a plan to buy their own channel.

Trump supporters have been working to acquire One America News Network in an effort to add another conservative voice to mainstream media. Fox News, they say, isnt doing enough for the Republican party. Trump has spoken out in support of OANN several times on Twitter. Its possible that the president wants to give the smaller news network a chance to compete with its larger peers with the lockup changes.

Donald Trump and his administration are also reportedly considering the changes to beef up information security. But if they want to protect sensitive information, they may want to start by deleting Trumps Twitter account. Over the past year, many have been skeptical about large trades that appeared to have had prior knowledge of economic and political events. Trump has been accused of interfering with markets via his comments on Twitter.

According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the frequency with which the President tweets in a given day also has an impact on market movement. Days where he sends out more than 35 tweets have served up negative returns. Equities typically make their way higher on days the president is more restrained with fewer than five tweets hitting the airwaves.

Vanity Fairs William D. Cohan wrote an article in October questioning whether Trumps Twitter behavior could be considered market manipulation. Cohan also pointed out several cases in which speculative trades offered big-time payouts. He raised the question of whether it could have been insider trading.

There is no way for another trader, let alone an outsider such as me, to know who is making these trades. But regulators know or can find out. One longtime CME trader who has been watching with disgust says hes never seen anything quite like these trades, not at least since al-Qaida cashed in before initiating the September 11 attacks. There is definite hanky-panky going on, to the worlds financial markets detriment, he says. This is abysmal.

Whatever his motivation, Trump looks likely to bring mainstream media down a peg in whatever way possible. According to Bloombergs anonymous source, the changes could be announced as early as this week.

This article was edited by Gerelyn Terzo.

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Donald Trump Could Deliver a Knock-Out Punch to the Media This Week - CCN.com