Saturday, September 02, 2017
Why most evangelicals don’t condemn Trump - The Washington Post
"Most evangelical believers don’t condemn Trump for the litany of words or deeds that so disturb others, even when they disapprove. Probably half the people in churches across the country defined as ‘evangelicals’ were converted from lives that were even more unprincipled than the life Trump has led. Some experienced divorces, others used foul language, and many were addicted to drugs or alcohol.
In most cases, no immediate miracle happened with regard to their behavior at the moment of their confessions of faith or their emergence from the baptismal waters. The only miracle they were promised was the application of the grace of Jesus Christ, which, under New Testament doctrine, washed away their sins. They know Donald J. Trump is not worthy of the grace of God, because neither were they — which, to them, is the mystery and beauty of this undeserved gift."
(Via.). Why most evangelicals don’t condemn Trump - The Washington Post:
Mueller may have new evidence of Trump obstruction The New York Times reports that Robert Mueller has an early draft of a letter Trump and one of his aides composed when preparing to fire James Comey and is examining that letter in his investigation. David Frum, law professor Jed Shugerman, and Neera Tanden join. The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC
'We love the Dreamers': Trump close to decision on future of Obama program | US news | The Guardian #ResistanceIsNotFutile
"Donald Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday that the president would announce his decision on whether to kill off special legal provisions offered to “Dreamers”, people brought to the US illegally as children, on Tuesday."
'We love the Dreamers': Trump close to decision on future of Obama program | US news | The Guardian
'We love the Dreamers': Trump close to decision on future of Obama program | US news | The Guardian #ResistanceIsNotFutile
"Donald Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday that the president would announce his decision on whether to kill off special legal provisions offered to “Dreamers”, people brought to the US illegally as children, on Tuesday."
'We love the Dreamers': Trump close to decision on future of Obama program | US news | The Guardian
If You Want to MAGA, Save DACA Bret Stephens Bret Stephens NY Times
GOP leaders add their voices to the chorus calling for DACA program to stay - The Washington Post
I keep on saying that Trump's victory was a reaction to the Presidency of Barack America and the browning of America. The media all but ignores this obvious reality that even White liberals often do not want to accept the obvious meaning of "we want our country back" Trump and his supporters wants an America White people are in control , Black people are disenfranchised and where Mexicans have be chased across the 1846 border after U.S. troops in an imperial war under the banner of "Manifest Destiny" marched into Mexico City and demanded that Mexico cede half of it' territory to the US literally at gunpoint.
"House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other Republicans on Friday urged President Trump not to rescind an Obama-era program that allowed hundreds of thousands of immigrants to stay in the country legally, reflecting fears among some GOP leaders that his decision could be politically damaging for the party.
The entreaties came as Trump neared a decision on whether to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which has provided two-year work permits to nearly 800,000 immigrants known as “dreamers” who have been in the country illegally since they were children.
White House officials said Trump would make an announcement Tuesday, the deadline set by Texas and several other states to pursue a legal challenge of DACA if Trump does not terminate it. But in another sign of how politically charged the issue has become, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III announced Friday that the state was withdrawing support for the case, citing the “human” costs and calling on Congress to work out a legislative solution."
GOP leaders add their voices to the chorus calling for DACA program to stay - The Washington Post
Friday, September 01, 2017
Russian Election Hacking Efforts, Wider Than Previously Known, Draw Little Scrutiny - The New York Times
""The calls started flooding in from hundreds of irate North Carolina voters just after 7 a.m. on Election Day last November.
Dozens were told they were ineligible to vote and were turned away at the polls, even when they displayed current registration cards. Others were sent from one polling place to another, only to be rejected. Scores of voters were incorrectly told they had cast ballots days earlier. In one precinct, voting halted for two hours.
Susan Greenhalgh, a troubleshooter at a nonpartisan election monitoring group, was alarmed. Most of the complaints came from Durham, a blue-leaning county in a swing state. The problems involved electronic poll books — tablets and laptops, loaded with check-in software, that have increasingly replaced the thick binders of paper used to verify voters’ identities and registration status. She knew that the company that provided Durham’s software, VR Systems, had been penetrated by Russian hackers months before.
“It felt like tampering, or some kind of cyberattack,” Ms. Greenhalgh said about the voting troubles in Durham.
There are plenty of other reasons for such breakdowns — local officials blamed human error and software malfunctions — and no clear-cut evidence of digital sabotage has emerged, much less a Russian role in it. Despite the disruptions, a record number of votes were cast in Durham, following a pattern there of overwhelming support for Democratic presidential candidates, this time Hillary Clinton.
But months later, for Ms. Greenhalgh, other election security experts and some state officials, questions still linger about what happened that day in Durham as well as other counties in North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Arizona.
After a presidential campaign scarred by Russian meddling, local, state and federal agencies have conducted little of the type of digital forensic investigation required to assess the impact, if any, on voting in at least 21 states whose election systems were targeted by Russian hackers, according to interviews with nearly two dozen national security and state officials and election technology specialists.
The assaults on the vast back-end election apparatus — voter-registration operations, state and local election databases, e-poll books and other equipment — have received far less attention than other aspects of the Russian interference, such as the hacking of Democratic emails and spreading of false or damaging information about Mrs. Clinton. Yet the hacking of electoral systems was more extensive than previously disclosed, The New York Times found.
Pro-Russian Bots Sharpen Online Attacks for 2018 U.S. Vote - Bloomberg
"After violent protests rocked Charlottesville, Virginia last month, Republican Senator John McCain took to Twitter to condemn hatred and bigotry and urge President Donald Trump to speak out more forcefully.
Then pro-Russian bots got activated on social media.
Within hours, an online campaign attacking McCain -- a frequent Trump critic -- began circulating, amplified with the help of automated and human-coordinated networks known as bots and cyborgs linking to blogs on ‘Traitor McCain’ and the hashtag #ExplainMcCain.
After the 2016 U.S. presidential race was subject to Russian cyber meddling, analysts say the ferocity of more recent assaults is a preview of what could be coming in the 2018 elections, when Republicans will be defending their control of both chambers of Congress.
‘They haven’t stood still since 2016,’ said Ben Nimmo, a senior fellow in information defense at the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council in Washington, which tracked the activity. ‘People have woken up to the idea that bots equal influence and lots of people will be wanting to be influencing the midterms.’"
(Via.). Pro-Russian Bots Sharpen Online Attacks for 2018 U.S. Vote - Bloomberg:
The Nashville Statement Is an Attack on L.G.B.T. Christians - The New York Times
You wonder why Trump does not condemn Nazi supporters.
"This is what Trump’s “America First” means: A white America (committed, to be sure, to “take care of our African American people”), living behind higher walls and screens, lashing out to prove its strength and then retreating again — not a government suspiciously tolerant of foreign threats.
And this is also largely what “America First” has historically meant.
During the early 1930s, as the Nazis consolidated control over Germany, the U.S. media baron William Randolph Hearst began touting the slogan “America First” against President Franklin Roosevelt, whom he saw as dangerously likely to “allow the international bankers and the other big influences that have gambled with your prosperity to gamble with your politics.” Hearst regarded Roosevelt’s New Deal as “un-American to the core” and “more communistic than the communists” — unlike Nazism, which he believed had won a great victory for “liberty-loving people” everywhere in defeating Communism.
The most prominent of his opponents were the founders of the America First Committee, formed in September 1940. The committee opposed fighting Nazism and proposed a well-armed America confined largely to the Western hemisphere. It soon afterward adopted the noted aviator and enthusiast of fascism Charles Lindbergh as their favored speaker. Lindbergh accepted a medal from Herman Goering “in the name of the Fuehrer” during a visit to Germany in 1938, and “proudly wore the decoration.” He thought democracy was finished in Europe, that the western powers could not effectively resist the Nazi war machine and that the United States had better make terms with Adolf Hitler."
The Nashville Statement Is an Attack on L.G.B.T. Christians - The New York Times
The Nashville Statement Is an Attack on L.G.B.T. Christians - The New York Times
"This week, an influential group of evangelical Christians publicly doubled down on intolerance in a message about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people that represents a renewed commitment to open bigotry.
The Nashville Statement, released by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood on Tuesday, says that only heterosexuality is permissible, calls people born with intersex conditions “disordered,” derides transgender identities as “transgenderism” and makes clear that anyone who is an L.G.B.T. person is immoral.
While sentiments from a group like this, which describes itself as a “coalition for biblical sexuality,” are nothing new, the statement sent a particularly dangerous message to the approximately half of L.G.B.T. people who, according to the Pew Research Center, identify as Christian: You don’t belong in our religion. And anyone who so much as accepts you isn’t Christian either.
The statement can’t be written off as the regressive stance of a fringe group: More than 150 influential conservative evangelical leaders, half of whom belong to the Southern Baptist Convention, signed the statement. Steve Gaines, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and member of Donald Trump’s faith advisory board, endorsed it. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm, also signed on. Presidents of seminaries, editors and writers at the largest conservative publications, as well as presidents and directors of conservative think tanks added their names."
The Nashville Statement Is an Attack on L.G.B.T. Christians - The New York Times
Trump officials slash advertising, grants to help Americans get Affordable Care Act insurance - The Washington Post
"The Trump administration is gutting federal funds that help Americans sign up for health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, cutting grants to grass-roots groups that assist with enrollment by 40 percent and slashing an advertising budget from $100 million to $10 million.
The announcement late Thursday afternoon, just nine weeks before the start of the fifth annual enrollment season, is the first indication of how an administration determined to overturn the health-care law will oversee the window for new and returning consumers buying coverage for 2018.
In a conference call with reporters, three federal health officials extended the White House’s pattern of denigrating the ACA and its effectiveness. They also reversed a promise that Health and Human Services staff had made two months ago to nearly 100 organizations receiving “navigator” grants that their funding would be renewed.
While the administration is not eliminating either the grants or the advertising, the magnitude and abruptness of the cuts sparked an immediate outcry from the Senate’s top Democrats, consumer advocacy groups and members of the Obama administration, who had relentlessly championed ACA enrollment until they left office eight months ago."
Trump officials slash advertising, grants to help Americans get Affordable Care Act insurance - The Washington Post