[guest post by Dana]

There is a new movement afoot. And while I get that these millennials are smugly convinced their cause is a worthy one, asking for a hand-out to pay for their hobbies activism is a bit embarrassing, no?

A group of millennial activists from across the country plan to open a “movement house” in Washington DC next month, which will serve as a permanent base to protest Donald Trump’s presidency.

The organizers are mostly women of color, many of whom campaigned for Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary.

The house, which will be set up by inauguration day on 20 January, has been dubbed “District 13”, in a reference to a rebellious neighborhood in the Hunger Games books and films. [Ed: Rebel Alliance would have been a better choice.]

Activists told the Guardian that it will serve as a “space for the best kinds of troublemakers from around the country”. The property will be located in Capitol Hill, close to the White House and the Capitol building, and will enable activists to quickly mobilize against Trump should he court controversy during his presidency.

…

The groups launched a crowdfunding effort on Tuesday to support District 13. They aim to reach $50,000, which will cover the house’s rent for one year.

Anyway, remember when a popular radio commentator was excoriated for wishing that President Obama’s policies would fail?

So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here’s the point. Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.” Why not? Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.” Somebody’s gotta say it.

Now, not only is hoping that a president not succeed, fashionable, it’s also admirable, and necessary:

“Ultimately it’s to make sure we hold him accountable,” said Moumita Ahmed, the founder of Millennials for Revolution, a group which span off from the Bernie Sanders-supporting Millennials for Bernie.

“Because his presidency is not normal at all. It’s our duty to make sure he doesn’t succeed.

“If he succeeds it’s a message that everything he stood for is OK. That it’s OK to get to power in the way that he did, and hurt all the people he’s hurt.”

District 13’s crowd sourcing page here. Because I know you want to give:

Millions of us took action this year to get Bernie Sanders into office – now we’re going to take the fight right to DC, up in Donald Trump’s orange face.

Try to destroy Medicare and the social safety net? In your face.

Try to roll back the Clean Air Act so we end up with China-style shelter-in-place warnings on bad air days? In your face.

Muslim registry and mass deportations of Latinos? In your face.

We’re going to take the fight to Trump by building a base right in the heart of Capitol Hill.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

This is unsurprising:

A 23-year-old Tunisian man sought as a suspect in the deadly truck attack at a Berlin Christmas market had been the subject of a terrorism investigation and slated for deportation, a top security official said.

…

The suspect had been on the radar of intelligence officials across Germany before Monday’s truck attack and was being investigated by state prosecutors on suspicion of planning an attack, said Ralf Jäger, the interior minister of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

The suspect’s application for asylum was rejected in June 2016, but he couldn’t be deported because he lacked a valid passport, Mr. Jäger said. German authorities sought to get a new passport, but Tunisia initially challenged whether the man was in fact a Tunisian citizen, Mr. Jäger said. The new travel documents happened to arrive on Wednesday, he said.

“This person attracted the attention of various security agencies in Germany because of contacts to a radical Islamist milieu,” Mr. Jäger said at a news conference.

At least there is now an acknowledgement of what so many already knew would be inevitable with taking in so many young, male refugees:

“There is clearly a connection between the refugee crisis and the elevated terror danger in Germany,” conservative lawmaker Stephan Mayer said after a closed-door briefing in parliament on the investigation. “The identity of this Tunisian also underlines this, since he clearly entered Germany…in the context of the refugee crisis.”

However, in spite of increasingly coming under fire for her immigration policies which allowed nearly one million refugees to enter the country, many of whom lacked identification, it appears that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will continue to put out the welcome mat anyway:

Ms. Merkel and other officials have emphasized that they did not want the attack to jeopardize Germany’s commitment to a free and open society, and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier reaffirmed that idea on Wednesday. “We want to uphold this way of life, and not let it be destroyed by anyone, not even whoever was responsible for what happened here,” he told reporters.

In spite of this most recent terror attack, Merkel still has her defenders:

Merkel has established herself as the best and strongest voice of the values of a liberal Europe, and her steadfastness under pressure – at least her rhetorical steadfastness, for her policies have been modified to accommodate some of her critics’ concerns – is a beacon in a continent that is increasingly inward turning, nativist and afraid.

And every time she stands up for what postwar Europe represents, she consolidates Germany’s rebirth. When in her summer press conference, on 31 August last year, as thousands of refugees trekked northwards into Hungary, she told the world “We can do it”, and when a few days later she announced that no one would be stopped from seeking asylum, and when a few days after that she posed for a selfie with one of the refugees from the first train to draw into Munich station, for millions of people around the world she reset the image of her country.

As a reminder, Monday’s attack, considered one of Germany’s deadliest, left 12 dead, 48 wounded, and of the wounded, it is being reported that 12 of them remain in serious condition.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Fake news is all the rage these days. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that he is establishing a group of media professionals as fact-checkers who will check and flag fake news:

The decision comes after Facebook received heated criticism for its role in spreading a deluge of political misinformation during the US presidential election, like one story that falsely said the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump.

To combat fake news, Facebook has teamed up with a shortlist of media organizations, including Snopes and ABC News, that are part of an international fact-checking network led by Poynter, a nonprofit school for journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Starting as a test with a small percentage of its users in the US, Facebook will make it easier to report news stories that are fake or misleading. Once third-party fact-checkers have confirmed that the story is fake, it will be labeled as such and demoted in the News Feed.

Also included in the described “respected fact-checking organization”: PolitiFact, Factcheck.org and the Associated Press. Obviously, there are any number of problems with this plan. Further, it’s troubling that along with several other politically liberal billionaires, the involvement of George Soros in the fact-checking effort is hypocritically being overlooked by the very media outlets claiming that this will be an objective and non-biased endeavor.

So, does it count as fake news when the fact-checkers themselves are posting intentionally incomplete or misleading reports?

Here is ABC News this morning – even after German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said yesterday that, “authorities have “no doubt” that the attack was intentional,” and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also said yesterday, “We must assume at the current time that it was a terrorist attack.”:

And, on a side note, shouldn’t this also be flagged as fake news, too?:

MSNBC host Chris Hayes reported on the comments made by Turkish assassin Mert Altintas in the aftermath of his murder of the Russian ambassador Tuesday, but curiously left out the fact that he yelled “Allahu akbar“– “God is great” in Arabic.

“The gunman was Turkish, a 22-year-old officer in the Ankara special forces,” the All In host said. “According to witnesses, the gunman yelled out, ‘Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria,’ wounding three additional people before being fatally shot by police.”

Video of the shooting is readily available online, and shows that Altintas immediately yelled “Allahu akbar” after firing the shots. While nearly all outlets included that fact in their reports on the shooting (including MSNBC earlier in the day), Hayes did not.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

It’s no secret that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers can count on the babbling foolishness of the rich and famous to boost the barbaric business of baby butchery.

On her “Women of the Hour” podcast, Lena Dunham voiced regret, not at having had an abortion, but at *not* having had one because it renders her without an authentic voice in the cause:

I still haven’t had an abortion, but I wish I had.

Dunham is a confused and muddled mess when she discusses the cultural stigmas of abortion. Through her lens, she is guilty of stigmatizing abortion because she hasn’t had one:

Dunham said that as an “abortion rights activist,” she always thought that she never did anything to “stigmatize abortion.”

“But one day, when I was visiting a Planned Parenthood in Texas a few years ago, a young girl walked up to me and asked me if I’d like to be a part of her project in which women share their stories of abortions,” Dunham said. “I sort of jumped. ‘I haven’t had an abortion,’ I told her. I wanted to make it really clear to her that as much as I was going out and fighting for other women’s options, I myself had never had an abortion.”

“And I realized then that even I was carrying within myself stigma around this issue,” Dunham continued. “Even I, the woman who cares as much as anybody about a woman’s right to choose, felt it was important that people know I was unblemished in this department.”

Of course, the unblemished Dunham doesn’t really care about all women’s right to choose. Just ask any unborn women taking a pair of scissors in the back of their skulls.

I get that ultimately, Dunham and her ilk want to see all cultural stigmas stripped away. To their foolish and misguided way of thinking, they seem to believe it would clear the decks for a conscience-free existence. But if there is one thing that should continue to have a cultural stigma attached to it, should it not be the willful action to end the life of another who is unable to participate in the decision-making? Shouldn’t our society continue to wince at, and struggle within the collective conscience about this? Not to condemn, not to abuse, but to always recognize that as all lives matter, this is not about just one woman and her life, but that it very clearly includes another. And that “other” is an innocent being forced to pay the ultimate price.

As someone said on the Twitters, maybe Dunham will get lucky this Christmas and find an abortion in her stocking.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

Well, despite the threats and harassment, despite the obnoxious pleas from has-been celebrities, despite the bloviating from pompous professors utterly full of themselves, despite the whiny and obnoxious Facebook posts and Tweets, and despite the semi-earnest and semi-hysterical petitions to change.org and the White House, President-elect Donald J. Trump has reached the 270 electoral college votes he needed to be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States next month.

Just thought you would want to know.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

First, from Turkey:

A gunman assassinated Russia’s ambassador to Turkey during a gallery opening in the capital, an act that Russian officials called an act of terror and that appeared to be aimed as retribution for the Kremlin’s role in bloodshed in neighboring Syria.

A video taken of the event shows Ambassador Andrey Karlov at the podium surrounded by framed artwork and then flinching when the sound of two gunshots are fired. The video then shows a Turkish-speaking gunman, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, yelling as he walked around the body of the ambassador splayed motionless on the floor.

“Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria. Until our regions are safe, you won’t have safety. Go Back! Go Back! Only death can take me from here,” shouted the assassin, who walks around holding the pistol toward the assembled crowd of onlookers. “Those who have a part in this atrocity will all pay for it, one by one.”

According to other sources:

The [gunman] also “shouted “Allahu akbar,” the Arabic phrase for “God is great” and continued in Arabic: “We are the descendants of those who supported the Prophet Muhammad, for jihad.”

Video here.

And dreadful news out of Germany:

At least 9 people were killed and 50 were wounded after a truck plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday evening, according to German police.

The truck ran into the market outside the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at around 8 p.m. local time on Monday.

A bystander tweeted that “there is no road nearby,” indicating that the incident was not an accident.

“People were crushed,” she said. “I am safe.”

Reportedly, the 18-wheeler had Polish plates and was speeding through the market at an estimated speed of 40 miles per hour. In spite of this, and in spite of German police at the scene “having indicated the incident is likely to be a terror attack,” two newspapers, the Berliner Zeitung and Berliner Morgenpost are reporting “that it was not immediately clear whether the incident was an accident or some kind of an attack on the market.”

It remains to be seen what further investigations into the matter reveal.

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Today is the day that the duty-bound 538 members of the Electoral College convene in their state capitols to cast their votes for their home state’s presidential vote winner. As you are aware, there has been a widespread push by Democrats for Electoral College members to break their pledge to represent their state’s will, and instead cast their vote for anyone but Trump.

What is conveniently being ignored by the president, Big Media and the DNC is the harassment, doxing, veiled threats, and even death threats directed at electors.

This from Michigan elector Michael Banerian:

“I’ve had death wishes, people just saying ‘I hope you die. Do society a favor, throw yourself in front of a bus.’ And just recently, I was reading a blog about me, and unfortunately these people not only called for the burning of myself, but my family, which is completely out of line.”

Electoral College member Ashley McMillan Hutchinson of Kansas described what it has been like for her in the period between Trump’s election victory to today’s vote:

Election Night left me in awe. There were many reasons to be pleased. Those blue-collar, fly-over, working-class voters who showed up in droves and put Mr. Trump over the edge in several swing states? Those are my people. They weren’t motivated by hate or race. They were disappointed in the current administration and lack of economic progress. The assumptions about this group of voters by the media and ivory-tower elite only motivated them to victory.

I was excited because I was an Electoral College member and I was casting my vote for the winner in a historic election. Then things got a little strange.

It started with a couple of emails three days after the election. Since Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote, former electors warned me that I would probably receive hundreds of emails urging me to change my vote to prevent Mr. Trump from getting to the White House. I answered the first few back and had some polite—and some not-so-polite—exchanges with folks urging me to vote for Mrs. Clinton. Grassroots groups such as Ask the Electors had found my work email and spread it to their email lists. They also published my work address, home address, cell phone and work phone.

I had intended on answering everyone who emailed me. Then the flood started. At its peak, I was receiving 500 emails an hour. At least 20 letters arrived at my office daily, and the calls came in 24 hours a day.

The majority of the notes called for the elimination of the Electoral College because it was undemocratic. As an elector, I can’t do anything about this, but I still don’t buy the argument. There are many provisions in our constitutional republic that allow for a departure from direct democracy. The Electoral College ensures that Americans from throughout the country can be represented.

Others told me to act as a faithless elector and vote my conscience to stop Mr. Trump from taking the presidency. Only 157 electors in history have broken their pledge and voted for an alternate candidate or abstained from voting, according to FairVote. There is a reason this tactic has never been successful: It assumes the worst of Americans. These letter writers are asking me to disavow my own people, because they are supposedly racist and easily fooled. I don’t buy it. I won’t violate the will of the people of Kansas simply because coastal elites think Mr. Trump tweets too much.

Electors in Pennsylvania have now been given police protection as a result of the increasing threats:

Thousands of emails land in their inboxes every day. Copies of the Federalist Papers and other books urging political courage are being mailed to their homes. They are even getting phone calls in the middle of the night.

Such has been the life of Pennsylvania’s 20 electors for President-elect Donald Trump since the Nov. 8 election.

One elector, Ash Khare, said he and each of the 19 others have been assigned a plainclothes state police trooper for protection.

“I’m a big boy,” said Khare, an India-born engineer and a longtime Republican from Warren County, who estimates he receives 3,000 to 5,000 emails, letters, and phone calls a day from as far away as France, Germany, and Australia. “But this is stupid. Nobody is standing up and telling these people, ‘Enough, knock it off.’ “

Mary Barket, an elector in Pennsylvania said that “she had avoided engaging with risk by refusing to open most of the letters, but she conceded that she feels “very uncomfortable in my environment”.” She also said that she is concerned with the impact of this on her family.

And proving that a promise to “report America and the world honestly, without fear or favor” is meaningless claptrap, there has been a shameful silence from The New York Times regarding the death threats and harassment.

Further, in a display of rank hypocrisy, and in what must be seen as tacit encouragement and support by the Democratic leadership, there has been no effort from President Obama to condemn members of his party for this egregious and unacceptable behavior against fellow Americans charged with fulfilling a pledged duty on behalf of their states. And as far as we know, no calls for have been made for the FBI to get involved with regard to death threats. Why not?? Remember, this is the same president who made a point to publicly warn Trump about the “dangerous rhetoric” of not accepting election results (when he believed Hillary was going to win):

That is not a joking matter. No, no, no. I want everyone to pay attention here. That is dangerous.

[W]hen you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people’s minds about the legitimacy of our elections, that undermines our democracy.

Well, how much more dangerous and unacceptable are threats of physical violence to Americans intent on fulfilling their patriotic duty, and how much more do these threats undermine our democracy, President Obama? Are we to assume that death threats are now subjectively judged by whom they target??

Hillary Clinton has remained silent as well. The same Clinton who famously berated Trump , saying that challenging election results was a “horrifying” thing, as well as being a “threat to our democracy.” Obviously, if the woman who expected to become the next president truly cared about any threats to our democracy and had any recognition of what the public sees as horrifying, she would immediately hold a press conference and call off the attack dogs.

Electorate Hutchinson of Kansas sharply summed up the situation:

I noticed another theme in the thousands of missives I’ve received. They don’t seek to understand or persuade—only to insist. Most of these people want it their way and they want it now. As a mother of two small children, I know how to handle that.

Yet, while Hutchinson and other electorates will follow through with their duties, it does not negate the responsibility of the President of the United States to, at the very least, publicly draw a red line in the Democratic party, condemning this completely unacceptable behavior, and warning that if it continues, there will be “unspecified consequences”. Sadly, though, as we’ve seen many times over, conviction of his words and a demonstrable follow-through has never been this president’s strong suit.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

Zsa Zsa Gabor was born a subject of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the reign of Emperor Charles IV. The U.S. had not yet entered the First World War. She lived to see her homeland go from monarchy to fascism to communism to democracy. She went through nine husbands (including, briefly, Paris Hilton’s great-grandfather) and she lasted eight decades in the spotlight ever since she was named Miss Hungary of 1936. Gone only about six weeks before she was due to (officially) turn 100. What a life.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

Like many of you, I have been decking the halls in preparation for Christmas. As is the custom, I pull out the 50 year old, well-worn nativity set that was inherited from aging parents long-since passed away. And because life is full of calamity, this holy family and friends are in a bit of disarray. Over the years, one or another of the hand-painted figurines have experienced some sort of physical trauma. Life comes at us fast, and there are no exceptions. Hence a regal wise man in flowing robes is now without arms and thus without a gift for the newborn Savior. A humble shepherd following the Star to see the miracle at hand, hasn’t got a head on his shoulders. Literally. Instead it sits next to his feet because no matter what glue has been used, he just keeps losing his head. Yet most distressing of all, Baby Jesus has gone missing. No matter how hard I’ve tried to locate the lost Savior, the little bed of straw continues to hold a child-made “clothespin Jesus” impersonator. Thankfully, Mary and Joseph have remained intact. And in spite of her missing babe, Mary’s face remains a steady composition of serenity as if she never doubted from the get-go that her child was meant to transcend the constraints of this fallen world.

Anyway, I was weighing out replacing this imperfect band of misfits and rebels daring to believe that the Glorious Impossible had arrived, but when I saw this “new” take on the old family, my broken down nativity never looked so good:

In the scene, Joseph — sporting a man bun — holds up a cellphone, Mary flashes a peace sign and Baby Jesus, wearing a beanie on his head, looks on. The Three Wise Men carry Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) Prime boxes and a shepherd sends Snapchat messages. Nearby, a cow enjoys gluten-free, all-natural grass feed next to a sheep wearing a Christmas sweater. Oh, and there’s a solar-powered stable, too.

I’m choosing to believe that along with being a “fun product,” its creators also intended it to be a clever social commentary accurately reflecting just how incredibly self-consumed and shallow our culture has become.

–Dana

[guest post by JVW]

The Wall Street Journal has an apparently interesting report today about Russian attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, at the same time that they were successfully hacking the DNC. I write “apparently” because I’m too cheap to have a WSJ online subscription, so I’ll share the summary from New York magazine (bold emphasis added by me):

Russian hackers tried and failed to infiltrate the Republican National Committee earlier this year by sending a series of phishing emails to a single employee, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The hacking attempt failed, in part, because the employee was no longer with the RNC and the emails were caught by a spam filter. The RNC wasn’t even aware of the attempted hacking until after Democratic National Committee leaders announced in June that their information had been compromised. Nervous, the RNC hired a private computer-security company that worked with the FBI and found that the phishing attempt had been blocked.

The revelation that Russian hackers attempted to get their paws on Republican emails has some in the intelligence community believing that Russia’s espionage “started as an information-gathering campaign aimed at both parties.” It only turned into an assault on Hillary Clinton, they believe, when the leaked DNC emails provided more ammunition.

By all means, let’s have full Congressional investigations of the Russian attempts to influence our elections, but only if Republicans demand that John Podesta and DNC employees testify how they were caught up by a low-level phishing scheme that could have originated from any suburban basement by the most novice of hackers. Let the country know that the Hillary Clinton campaign, the most technologically sophisticated campaign anyone had ever seen, came undone because nobody installed a spam filter on the organization’s email client.

The smartest people in the room indeed.

– JVW