Trump enters the stage

Aegean · December 23, 2019, 11:04am

Nietzsche diagnosed the dis-ease but did not trace it to its organic origins, but only to its conscious expressions - evaluations, judgments.

Wittgenstein correctly saw how modern disorders expresse themselves linguistically but offered no solutions because his kind benefited from obscurity and confusion, inspiring later generations to justify the ‘end of philosophy’ and the meaninglessness of language.

To imply that existence is intentional is to return to ancient superstitions.
Only life has intent - the word can only be used in reference to it and only it - an awakening to existence.
Existence has no intent, no telos, no motive. To believe that it is even absolutely, completely, ordered is to project organic prejudices into its inorganic essence.
Complex unities can be explained without it, using the simple interactivity of energies - attracting/repelling and harmonizing, or disharmonizing.
No intent required. So, to insist exposes the mind’s intent - projection.

Politics, and marketing is entirely psychology based, and this is where the defensiveness of nihilism can be traced. It is what is being exploited and manipulated by those who intuitively understand it.

Meno2 · December 23, 2019, 2:57pm

And this is where the argument slams into a differentially unresolved brick wall: the difference between the general and the specific acquisition of cultural types.
This is where when the general sources require a multiform approach, as in all realms of science, the onto logical priority, the reflective one, which this is the exact point of the succeeding series of modeled
economy of the calculus of species differentiation, entailing all substantial forms of capital, having no descriptive exits from the Protestant ethic of the sense of production , to the epostomolagocallly different general forms of special relativity . This proceeds regardless of who thought it up. The identity of the ‘who’ simply does can not matter, theories have been politically deconstructed as.to whether Darwin or Kammerer’s approach of evolution fits best a programmable series of.functional analysis,l.
Humanity comes before it’s differential types can develop, that also is really a fact.
Can a partially differentiated typicality presume such partiality before such succession can be realized? Probably not.
These generic considerations , while approaching a continuum of general anthropological sequences , proceed uninterrupted without tracing differentiability at a certain point ?At this time , the idea of a missing element between a late animal and the very first Adam, again sets a useless game in improbable exact points of digress.
In the same in borderline psychopathology, what subtlety of difference is there that approaches general treatment of neurosis from the larger series of triggers that psychopathology presents, in treating of a differential patterns?
There is no sign which can account for it. This is why Jumg broke off of Freud’s circle.

It does really not matter whether the most basic sense of it lies in a level of certainty where it chases it’s own tail, am argument resting in an indifferentiable series of signs, that Wittgenstein points to, ideas capture the signs them selves generally, before functional applications can ‘clarify’ them.
No, Ideas are not dead in thenl water then essential supposition preceeds even it’s own hypothetical , being IT’s own progenitor.

Nature preceded nurture in an absolute sense and it has a primordial and reflexive ontogenesis, primary differentiation between it’s unrecognized elements a lasting trace of cosmological certainty.

And lastly , this is why the phenomenological world is preposesses by the eidectic, because interpretation is judged as substantial, as if it was conductance of matter, but it matters not, even if the dialectical is primarily of first order signification or second. The de construction of that notion does conclude justly that the deconstruction of repeated calculus of many variables proceed irrespective of whether awareness of it is a sine quo quid, or a quid pro quo . Existential dialectic does proceed in a wholly determinate pattern, in fact it is not even realized as such, because it is not primarily consistent with matter, it simply does not matter.
De construction points to both, a necessary and cognitively parrelel universes inference subsisting in and with relative contingencies, family of resemblances set in an absolute and immutable set of what may be best described as apeothetic divination.

Meno2 · December 23, 2019, 9:06pm

House Judiciary Committee says it could draft ‘new articles of impeachment’ against Trump

PUBLISHED MON, DEC 23 2019 3:10 PM EST

Kevin Breuninger

Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee say that the panel could draft and recommend “new articles of impeachment” against President Donald Trump if additional evidence is revealed by former White House counsel Don McGahn.

McGahn’s testimony is “relevant to the Committee’s ongoing investigations into Presidential misconduct and consideration of whether to recommend additional articles of impeachment,” the panel’s lawyers write.

Democrats have been fighting for months to enforce a subpoena for McGahn to testify as part of the impeachment proceedings in Congress.

Don McGahn, White House counsel, listens during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018.

Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee said Monday that the panel could draft and recommend “new articles of impeachment” against President Donald Trump if additional evidence is revealed by former White House counsel Don McGahn.

Democrats have been fighting in court for months to enforce a subpoena for McGahn to testify as part of the impeachment proceedings in Congress. They argue that McGahn’s testimony is “central” to parts of the House committee’s investigation into Trump, which is not yet complete even though the Democrat-led chamber passed two articles of impeachment against him last week.

And McGahn’s testimony is “also relevant to the Committee’s ongoing investigations into Presidential misconduct and consideration of whether to recommend additional articles of impeachment,” lawyers for the Judiciary Committee wrote in a submission to the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals.

“If McGahn’s testimony produces new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the Articles approved by the House, the Committee will proceed accordingly—including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment,” the lawyers wrote.

Trump was impeached on two articles — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — related to his efforts to have Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announce investigations involving former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, and a debunked conspiracy that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump allegedly withheld hundreds of millions of dollar in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine while he was pushing for the probes into his political rivals. His administration refused to comply with congressional Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, and it has pressured numerous government witnesses not to cooperate.

The Judiciary Committee’s court filing Monday followed an entry from attorneys for the Justice Department, who argued that the House’s vote to impeach Trump undermines the push from Democrats to have McGahn’s subpoena enforced quickly.

The DOJ lawyers wrote that there is no longer “any justification for otherwise expediting the Court’s decision in this case,” outside of an already-scheduled Jan. 3 hearing, where both sides will argue their cases.

But the Judiciary Committee’s attorneys countered that Trump’s impeachment in the House has “reinforced,” rather than undercut, the need for an “expeditious resolution of this appeal.”

McGahn, the lawyers argue, was a key witness to Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice detailed in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election meddling and possible coordination between the Kremlin and Trump’s 2016 campaign.

McGahn could help the Judiciary Committee establish a “pattern of obstructive behavior” that would bolster the case for impeaching him on obstruction of Congress, the panel’s lawyers wrote.

“The Committee continues to suffer harm with each additional day that it is denied access to McGahn’s testimony,” the lawyers wrote. “The Committee should not be required to wait any longer.”

Trump’s holiday menu: handouts for billionaires, hunger for the poor

Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib

Republicans defend cuts to food stamps by saying that keeping people hungry will make them work harder. But we know this is just about cruelty

When it comes to billionaires benefiting from the generosity of the American taxpayer, the holiday spirit is alive year-round. Taxpayers paid out $115m to Donald Trump so he could play golf at his own resorts.

And Amazon didn’t just pay zero in federal taxes on $11bn in profits – taxpayers gifted the corporation $129,000,000 in rebates. That’s enough to pay for CEO Jeff Bezos’s three apartments in Manhattan, including a penthouse, that cost him $80m.

And what about government generosity for those who actually need help? Tax dollars are somehow much harder to come by when they’re not going to handouts for the rich. The average person in poverty, struggling to put food on the table, gets about $134 a month in nutrition assistance.

Now, just in time for the holidays, Trump has finalized the first of three policies that will make this disparity even more obscene. Two years after passing a $1.5tn tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, the Trump administration plans to strip 3.7 million people of their nutrition benefits.

The administration’s first step is to kick 700,000 adults off of nutrition assistance as they struggle to find work. The second step: trying to punish families who have high childcare and housing costs. And third, they want to hurt families who already are making difficult choices between food or heat.

Together, the three proposals will cut billions of dollars from one of our nation’s leading anti-poverty programs. Meanwhile, the Republican tax scam is working exactly as planned. Today, the richest 400 billionaires pay lower taxes than any group in America – including the poor. Nearly 100 of the top Fortune 500 companies now pay nothing in taxes.

This is what oligarchy looks like: Trump’s appetite to shower the ultra-wealthy with corporate welfare is endless – and so is his administration’s willingness to assault our nation’s most vulnerable and hungriest families.

Republicans defend this by saying that keeping people hungry will make them work harder. But we know this is just about cruelty. We know that withholding food from needy people who are underemployed only deepens the crisis of poverty in America.

Some states will be hit harder than others. Vermont could see a 30% cut to benefits, and one in five low-income people who rely on nutrition assistance could no longer be eligible to participate. In Michigan, about one in seven would be kicked off food aid, with an estimated 15% cut in benefits. This is absolutely devastating.

It goes without saying that we must fight as hard as we can against the Trump administration’s savage attack on nutrition assistance. But we need to go beyond that. We must demand that the ultra-wealthy finally start paying their fair share so we can dramatically expand nutrition support. In the richest country in the history of the world, we have a moral obligation to eradicate the hunger that more than 37 million of our fellow Americans suffer every day.

We can start by increasing nutrition assistance by $47 per person per month – that is the shortfall between what low-income people need to prepare adequate meals and what they get in benefits. We should also significantly increase the income threshold for this program, so everyone who needs help gets it. We must also guarantee that all schoolchildren get free breakfast and lunch at every public school in America.

And we should also lift the onerous conditions on what people can buy with nutrition assistance. One Vermonter shared how, in the cold winter months, she wished she could buy her children a hot-roasted chicken from the store, because she had no access to an oven. Under the current program, she can only buy the day-old cold roasted chicken. Multiple Michigan families have similar stories to share. These are the kinds of requirements that force poor people to jump through humiliating hoops but they accomplish nothing in the fight to end hunger.

Ultimately, we must make a choice as a society: will we tolerate the insatiable greed and cruelty of the billionaire class?

This holiday season, we should work in our communities to make sure our most vulnerable neighbors are taken care of and do not go hungry. But we must also be prepared to mobilize millions of people to defeat the Trump administration’s latest attack on the poor – the same way we came together to block Republicans’ attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act and kick 32 million Americans off their health insurance.

Defending already inadequate benefits is not enough. Ultimately, we must make a choice as a society: will we tolerate the insatiable greed and cruelty of the billionaire class, whose control over our political system lets them take food out of the mouths of hungry school kids? Or do we build a humane, equitable society that ends poverty, hunger, and homelessness – and allows everyone to live with dignity?

As the new year approaches, let us commit to fighting for a government and an economy that works for the overwhelming majority of the people. That is how we will make food security a human right in America.

rights re

Opinion +

Rudy Giuliani’s anti-Soros tirade exposes three uncomfortable truths

Opinion by Lev Golinkin

Updated 11:09 PM EST, Tue December 24, 2019

Editor’s Note: (Lev Golinkin writes on refugee and immigrant identity, as well as Ukraine, Russia and the far right. He is the author of the memoir “A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.)

(CNN)Monday evening, as American Jews gathered to celebrate the second night of Hanukkah, news broke of Rudy Giuliani’s anti-Semitic tirade against billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

The remarks, which came during an alcohol-laden interview with New York Magazine, cap off a long, alarming year for anti-Semitism both in the United States and abroad.

Lev Golinkin

Indeed, the most dangerous thing about living at a time of constant stories about anti-Semitism is how quickly the hatred is normalized. Two and a half years ago, chants of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virginia, stunned America; today, anti-Semitism is just a part of the news cycle.

And so, as we take stock after this latest news, it’s time to face three uncomfortable truths. First, despite his claims, Giuliani’s comments are unmistakably anti-Semitic. Second, this anti-Semitism is not merely vile but dangerous: The anti-Soros tropes like those evoked by Giuliani may tacitly encourage those prone to violence, resulting in Jewish bodies on the streets. Most disturbingly, we can’t write this off as the inebriated ravings of a single man. Everything Giuliani said had been repeated, over and over, by President Donald Trump, by Republican lawmakers and by Fox News hosts.

Of course, today’s surge of anti-Semitism isn’t limited to Republicans; the problem is widespread. Some of the leaders of the Women’s March have been plagued by accusations of anti-Semitism and a horrific kosher market attack in Jersey City earlier this month is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism thought to be fueled in part by a hatred of Jews, according to the state attorney general.

But the proliferation of anti-Semitic tropes in the GOP is so worrying precisely because it’s widespread and systematic. By now, there’s enough evidence to say that, in much of today’s Republican Party, anti-Semitic tropes are not an irregularity but a feature.

What happened to Rudy Giuliani? It’s a long story

Giuliani’s attack runs the anti-Semitic gamut, from medieval accusations of Soros not being truly religious (similar slurs were used during the Spanish Inquisition, which led to the torture and forced conversion of Jews) to claims that Soros controlled a US ambassador and “elected” district attorneys – which builds on the classic anti-Semitic trope of powerful Jews controlling the government.

Giuliani’s baseless accusation – indeed, the GOP’s obsession with Soros – is the embodiment of modern anti-Semitism, which is, at its root, a conspiracy theory: the belief that Jews are secretly undermining white nations by manipulating ideology, media, money and immigration.

Over the past 300 years, anti-Semites on both sides of the Atlantic have tirelessly spread this deadly lie, tweaking it to suit their needs. To the Russian czars as well as American anti-Semites like Henry Ford and Joseph McCarthy, the Jews were responsible for bringing communism in order to destroy their nations.

The Nazis used this conspiracy to blame Jews for orchestrating Germany’s loss in World War I; today’s white terrorists like the Pittsburgh shooter use it to claim Jews are bringing in immigrants to turn America into a white-minority state.

Trump is trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes. It must stop

Every conspiracy theory needs a “them,” the shadowy puppet master pulling the strings. In the 1800s, it was Baron Nathan Rothschild, the original Soros, a businessman accused of manipulating European currency. Henry Ford focused his anti-Semitic tracts on the Warburg family and their advocacy for the Federal Reserve system.

Today’s Jewish bogeyman of choice is Soros. And, according to a number of prominent Republicans, Soros is everywhere.

In the wake of the horrific Parkland school shooting, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre exploded in an entire dog-whistle concerto, accusing globalists and Soros of plotting to take away Americans’ guns. Congressman Steve King stated that Soros is bringing immigrants to America; the same conspiracy theory was given by the Tree of Life shooter as his motivation for massacring 11 Jews in Pittsburgh. Theories of Soros being behind Black Lives Matter, Trump’s impeachment, and protests against the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court have proliferated in the past several years.

The embrace of anti-Semitism posing as anti-Soros conspiracies has gone far beyond the fringe. It’s easy to dismiss the Pittsburgh terrorist or even King and Giuliani as outliers. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has also propagated the Soros theory, tweeting out a lie about Soros and other Jewish Democratic donors attempting to buy elections.

How to stop the horrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism

Rep. Louie Gohmert, like Giuliani, accused Soros of not being truly Jewish. A prominent Republican lobbyist repeated unfounded claims that Soros had ties to the former US ambassador to Ukraine. President Donald Trump has promoted the theory of Soros bringing migrants to America.

Fox News, in particular, has been a bastion for Soros conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, host Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment to claims that Soros is “hijacking” our democracy and “remaking” the United States. Last month, another host, Laura Ingraham, blamed Soros for GOP losses in Virginia’s state election.

Indeed, earlier this month Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League took the unusual step of calling out Fox’s role in the proliferation of Soros theories in an NBC op-ed with the blunt headline “Fox News is normalizing anti-Semitism even as violence against Jews surges.”

This, then, is the state of the Republican Party as we enter a new decade as well as what will surely be a tense election year: An anti-Semitic theory has been embraced by the President of the United States, members of Congress and the No. 1 conservative cable network.

This is not simply an obsession with a prominent billionaire. It’s no longer a fringe theory. It’s not drunken ramblings by the ever-bumbling Giuliani. It is the world’s bloodiest anti-Semitic belief that has now become a tenet and a rallying cry for some of the biggest names in one of the two political parties in the United States.

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and the outrage and rebalance of the biblical right

Opinion +Live TV
Rudy Giuliani’s anti-Soros tirade exposes three uncomfortable truths
Opinion by Lev Golinkin
Updated 11:09 PM EST, Tue December 24, 2019

article video

Editor’s Note: (Lev Golinkin writes on refugee and immigrant identity, as well as Ukraine, Russia and the far right. He is the author of the memoir “A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.)

(CNN)Monday evening, as American Jews gathered to celebrate the second night of Hanukkah, news broke of Rudy Giuliani’s anti-Semitic tirade against billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

The remarks, which came during an alcohol-laden interview with New York Magazine, cap off a long, alarming year for anti-Semitism both in the United States and abroad.

Lev Golinkin
Indeed, the most dangerous thing about living at a time of constant stories about anti-Semitism is how quickly the hatred is normalized. Two and a half years ago, chants of “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virginia, stunned America; today, anti-Semitism is just a part of the news cycle.

And so, as we take stock after this latest news, it’s time to face three uncomfortable truths. First, despite his claims, Giuliani’s comments are unmistakably anti-Semitic. Second, this anti-Semitism is not merely vile but dangerous: The anti-Soros tropes like those evoked by Giuliani may tacitly encourage those prone to violence, resulting in Jewish bodies on the streets. Most disturbingly, we can’t write this off as the inebriated ravings of a single man. Everything Giuliani said had been repeated, over and over, by President Donald Trump, by Republican lawmakers and by Fox News hosts.

Of course, today’s surge of anti-Semitism isn’t limited to Republicans; the problem is widespread. Some of the leaders of the Women’s March have been plagued by accusations of anti-Semitism and a horrific kosher market attack in Jersey City earlier this month is being investigated as an act of domestic terrorism thought to be fueled in part by a hatred of Jews, according to the state attorney general.

But the proliferation of anti-Semitic tropes in the GOP is so worrying precisely because it’s widespread and systematic. By now, there’s enough evidence to say that, in much of today’s Republican Party, anti-Semitic tropes are not an irregularity but a feature.

What happened to Rudy Giuliani? It’s a long story
Giuliani’s attack runs the anti-Semitic gamut, from medieval accusations of Soros not being truly religious (similar slurs were used during the Spanish Inquisition, which led to the torture and forced conversion of Jews) to claims that Soros controlled a US ambassador and “elected” district attorneys – which builds on the classic anti-Semitic trope of powerful Jews controlling the government.

Giuliani’s baseless accusation – indeed, the GOP’s obsession with Soros – is the embodiment of modern anti-Semitism, which is, at its root, a conspiracy theory: the belief that Jews are secretly undermining white nations by manipulating ideology, media, money and immigration.

Over the past 300 years, anti-Semites on both sides of the Atlantic have tirelessly spread this deadly lie, tweaking it to suit their needs. To the Russian czars as well as American anti-Semites like Henry Ford and Joseph McCarthy, the Jews were responsible for bringing communism in order to destroy their nations.

The Nazis used this conspiracy to blame Jews for orchestrating Germany’s loss in World War I; today’s white terrorists like the Pittsburgh shooter use it to claim Jews are bringing in immigrants to turn America into a white-minority state.

Trump is trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes. It must stop
Every conspiracy theory needs a “them,” the shadowy puppet master pulling the strings. In the 1800s, it was Baron Nathan Rothschild, the original Soros, a businessman accused of manipulating European currency. Henry Ford focused his anti-Semitic tracts on the Warburg family and their advocacy for the Federal Reserve system.

Today’s Jewish bogeyman of choice is Soros. And, according to a number of prominent Republicans, Soros is everywhere.

In the wake of the horrific Parkland school shooting, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre exploded in an entire dog-whistle concerto, accusing globalists and Soros of plotting to take away Americans’ guns. Congressman Steve King stated that Soros is bringing immigrants to America; the same conspiracy theory was given by the Tree of Life shooter as his motivation for massacring 11 Jews in Pittsburgh. Theories of Soros being behind Black Lives Matter, Trump’s impeachment, and protests against the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation to the Supreme Court have proliferated in the past several years.

The embrace of anti-Semitism posing as anti-Soros conspiracies has gone far beyond the fringe. It’s easy to dismiss the Pittsburgh terrorist or even King and Giuliani as outliers. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has also propagated the Soros theory, tweeting out a lie about Soros and other Jewish Democratic donors attempting to buy elections.

How to stop the horrifying resurgence of anti-Semitism
Rep. Louie Gohmert, like Giuliani, accused Soros of not being truly Jewish. A prominent Republican lobbyist repeated unfounded claims that Soros had ties to the former US ambassador to Ukraine. President Donald Trump has promoted the theory of Soros bringing migrants to America.

Fox News, in particular, has been a bastion for Soros conspiracy theories. Earlier this year, host Tucker Carlson devoted an entire segment to claims that Soros is “hijacking” our democracy and “remaking” the United States. Last month, another host, Laura Ingraham, blamed Soros for GOP losses in Virginia’s state election.

Indeed, earlier this month Jonathan Greenblatt of the Anti-Defamation League took the unusual step of calling out Fox’s role in the proliferation of Soros theories in an NBC op-ed with the blunt headline “Fox News is normalizing anti-Semitism even as violence against Jews surges.”

This, then, is the state of the Republican Party as we enter a new decade as well as what will surely be a tense election year: An anti-Semitic theory has been embraced by the President of the United States, members of Congress and the No. 1 conservative cable network.

This is not simply an obsession with a prominent billionaire. It’s no longer a fringe theory. It’s not drunken ramblings by the ever-bumbling Giuliani. It is the world’s bloodiest anti-Semitic belief that has now become a tenet and a rallying cry for some of the biggest names in one of the two political parties in the United States.

View on CNN
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What It Would Take for Evangelicals to Turn on President Trump

Michael Luo

December 23, 2019

Christians concerned about Trumpism may need to turn their focus inward to counter the corrosive influence of Fox News and other forces permeating evangelical culture.

One night in 1953, the Reverend Billy Graham awoke at two in the morning, went to his study, and started writing down ideas for the creation of a new religious journal. Graham, then in his mid-thirties, was an internationally renowned evangelist who held revival meetings that were attended by tens of thousands, in stadiums around the world. He had also become the leader of a cohort of pastors, theologians, and other Protestant luminaries who aspired to create a new Christian movement in the United States that avoided the cultural separatism of fundamentalism and the theological liberalism of mainline Protestantism. Harold Ockenga, a prominent minister and another key figure in the movement, called this more culturally engaged vision of conservative Christianity “new evangelicalism.” Graham believed a serious periodical could serve as the flagship for the movement. The idea for the publication, as he later wrote, was to “plant the Evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems.” The magazine would be called Christianity Today.

During the next several decades, Graham’s movement became the dominant force in American religious life, and perhaps the country’s most influential political faction. From the late nineteen-seventies through the mid-eighties, evangelicals became increasingly aligned with the Republican Party, progressively shifting its priorities to culture-war issues like abortion. Today, evangelical Protestants account for approximately a quarter of the U.S. population and represent the political base of the G.O.P. Despite President Trump’s much publicized moral shortcomings, more than eighty per cent of evangelicals supported him in the 2016 election. Last week, however, Mark Galli, the ninth editor to lead Christianity Today since its founding, in 1956, published an editorial calling for President Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. “The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” Galli writes. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.” Galli, who will retire from his post early in the new year, implores evangelicals who continue to stand by Trump to “remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.”

Galli and other contributors to the magazine have been critical of Trump in the past, but the forcefulness of the editorial took many by surprise. The piece became a sensation, trending online and receiving widespread media coverage. On Twitter, Trump lashed out at the magazine, labelling it a “far left” publication that “has been doing poorly.” Graham’s eldest son, Franklin, who became the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association after his father’s death, in 2018, claimed that his father would have been “very disappointed” by the piece and had, in fact, voted for Trump in the 2016 election. “It’s obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism,” Franklin wrote on Facebook. On Sunday, Timothy Dalrymple, Christianity Today’s president and chief executive officer, issued a statement defending the editorial and reaffirming one of Galli’s assertions: that “the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness”—the heart of believers’ evangelistic mission.

There has long been a segment of evangelical leaders and commentators who are critical of the President, including Russell Moore, the head of the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention; Peter Wehner, the author of the recent book “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump”; and David French, a writer and constitutional lawyer whom anti-Trump conservatives courted, unsuccessfully, to mount a third-party bid against Trump in 2016. The Christianity Today editorial reflects much of their distress—about the moral hypocrisy of Christian supporters of Trump, the damage done to efforts to serve as ambassadors for the gospel in an unbelieving world, and the ways Trump and his Administration have perpetuated racism, xenophobia, and other traits that are antithetical to the God of justice and mercy. In late 2017, the Reverend Timothy Keller, a renowned Presbyterian pastor in New York City, wrote a piece for The New Yorker on the future of evangelicalism, with the headline “Can Evangelicalism Survive Donald Trump and Roy Moore?” “ ‘Evangelical’ used to denote people who claimed the high moral ground; now, in popular usage, the word is nearly synonymous with ‘hypocrite,’ ” Keller writes. Last year, a group of evangelical pastors, nonprofit leaders, college presidents, and scholars convened at the Billy Graham Center, at Wheaton College, in Illinois, to discuss ways to revitalize the movement in light of its turn toward Trumpism. The meeting disbanded with little to show for it, but the organizers issued a press release that states that an “honest dialogue about the current state of American evangelicalism” had occurred.

There has been little to suggest that these rumblings of dissent represent any kind of threat to Trump’s political support. Many of these Trump critics might be best understood as part of a more urban, internationalist, and broad-minded élite class within the evangelical movement. In his 2007 book, “Faith in the Halls of Power,” D. Michael Lindsay, a former sociologist at Rice University and currently the president of Gordon College, distinguished between “cosmopolitan” and “populist” evangelicalism. The populist wing of the movement “depends on mass mobilization and large-scale democratic action” and “relies upon a rhetoric of dichotomies (as in ‘good’ and ‘evil’) and appeals to the commonsense concerns of average people,” Lindsay writes. He points to prominent figures such as James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, and the pastor and televangelist Joel Osteen as representatives of populist evangelicalism. He describes cosmopolitan evangelicals as having “greater access to powerful institutions” and writes that “the social networks they inhabit are populated by leaders from government, business, and entertainment.” The problem for Trump opponents is that, when it comes to electoral sway and cultural influence within evangelicalism, the populists exercise far greater leverage.

Lindsay’s focus is on documenting the emergence of the élite class of evangelicals. He devotes less attention to the root causes of differing cultural and political attitudes between cosmopolitan and populist evangelicals—though those causes may hold the key to understanding evangelicalism’s turn toward Trumpism. Earlier this year, James L. Guth, a political scientist at Furman University, published a study on the prevalence of populist traits among white evangelicals, including distrust of political institutions, preference for strong leadership, and commitment to majority rule. Guth finds that these qualities—characteristics that lead to support for populist leaders like Trump—permeate white evangelicalism. It is a disquieting conclusion and suggests that evangelical support for Trump may be far more deeply entrenched than previously understood. Guth suggests that evangelical backing of Trump is less transactional—about his ability to, say, deliver conservative appointments to the Supreme Court—and more about certain shared cultural beliefs. Guth writes that “white evangelicals share with Trump a multitude of attitudes, including his hostility towards immigrants, his Islamophobia, his racism and nativism, as well as his ‘political style,’ with its nasty politics and assertion of strong, solitary leadership.”

The crucial question, then, is: What is driving these attitudes? In a forthcoming book, “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” the sociologists Andrew L. Whitehead, a professor at Clemson University, and Samuel L. Perry, a professor at the University of Oklahoma, propose a cultural framework for understanding support for Trumpism that goes beyond religious categories. Through extensive survey work, they discover that an amalgam of cultural beliefs—fusing Christianity with American identity and centered on the belief that America is, and should be, a Christian nation—is a better predictor of support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction, political party, ideology, religion, or a host of other possible determining factors. Whitehead and Perry call this framework “Christian nationalism” and argue that the popularity of these beliefs among white evangelicals explains their support for Trump.

Notably, Whitehead and Perry find that about a quarter of white evangelicals hold beliefs that do not align with Christian nationalism. They also find that though greater religiosity is correlated with Christian-nationalist beliefs, once those beliefs are accounted for, Americans who engaged in more frequent religious practice—church attendance, prayer, and bible reading—were less likely than their less observant peers to subscribe to political views normally associated with Christian nationalism, such as believing that refugees from the Middle East pose a terrorist threat to the United States, or that illegal immigrants from Mexico are mostly dangerous criminals. In other words, Whitehead and Perry find that the threat to democratic pluralism is not evangelicalism itself but the culture around evangelicalism. The true motivator for Christian nationalists is not actually their religious beliefs but the preservation of a certain kind of social order, one that is threatened by racial minorities, immigrants, and Muslims. “Where Christian nationalists seek to defend particular group boundaries and privileges using Christian language, other religious Americans and fellow Christians who reject Christian nationalism tend to oppose such boundaries and privileges,” they write.

Their findings highlight serious obstacles for anyone hoping that white evangelicals will abandon Trump, but they also suggest a path forward. Within evangelicalism, cultural influence in the secular world is highly prized as part of advancing the message of Christianity. Christians concerned about Trumpism and worried about the future of their faith, however, may need to turn their focus inward, to reshape the culture of evangelicalism and counter the corrosive influence of Fox News and other demagogic forces that sow division and breed suspicion. Cultural change is daunting—much of what ails the evangelical faithful is not entirely under the control of their leaders—but the challenge is not so different from the one Graham contemplated more than sixty years ago, in the middle of the night, as he launched his movement to unify Christian believers and transform them into a positive force for society.

What it Would Take for Evangelicals to Turn on President Trump

Meno2 · December 26, 2019, 3:27am

Kenneth Star thinks the Speaker is overreaching:

Nancy Pelosi is overreaching into the Senate’s power to convict, he says, by setting conditions into the procesiraal matters, namely delaying the fprwewarding of the impeachment.

Accorming to Start, such a mover certainly interferes with the process by which the Senate can conduct it’s business.

Ken Starr says the impeachment of President Trump…: youtu.be/Fy7B61vnf-8

Meno2 · December 26, 2019, 4:58pm

OPINION - POLITICS

Pelosi’s best move might be to keep impeachment in her pocket and not send it to the Senate

PUBLISHED THU, DEC 26 2019 8:00 AM EST

UPDATED 19 MIN AGO

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi holds a press conference after the House passed Resolution 755, Articles of Impeachment Against President Donald J. Trump, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on December 18, 2019. -

Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

The House Democratic leadership has wanted no part of impeachment since the “blue wave” swept them back into power in the 2018 midterm elections.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi made this explicit earlier this year in an interview with The Washington Post Magazine. “I’m not for impeachment,” she said.

“Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

Translated, what she meant was: in this political environment, impeachment will never be bipartisan. It will never get 67 votes “aye” votes in the Senate. So why put 25–35 vulnerable Democratic House members in marginal or pro-Trump districts in harm’s way? (More to the point: Why should she put her tenure as Speaker of the House at risk?) Why engage in a process that will enrage the President’s supporters and give him a rallying cry (“witch hunt”) for his re-election campaign? Why make it harder for Democratic Senate candidates running in states that Mr. Trump won?

Impeachment put a lot at risk and promised little if any, political reward. The only way to resolve the “Trump issue” (from her point of view) was to vote him out of office. Impeachment wasn’t helpful to that cause.

The Washington Post Magazine interview was the first of a number of attempts (both public and private) by Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership to shut down the impeachment “groundswell” on the left and in the media. Down the street, President Trump was doing everything he could to enrage the media and the Democratic Party’s “progressive” wing and in so doing, escalate their demands for impeachment proceedings. The intra-Democratic Party conflict, he and his handlers reasoned, would generate copious media coverage and highlight the party’s socialist insurgents.

A key piece of the president’s reelection effort is to make the Democratic Party’s left wing (“The Squad,” among others) the face of the Democratic Party. As White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney put it a while back, the Trump reelection message revolves around three “issues”: the economy, immigration and Democratic Party “socialism.” Engaging “the Squad” and other left-wing (preferably black) legislators has been a “go-to” tactic of Trump’s pre-season election campaign.

Trump miscalculated in thinking that, in the end, Pelosi could and would shut it down. It was a rookie mistake on Trump’s part; another example of how an absence of empathy leads to miscalculation. You can’t deal productively with someone like Pelosi if you don’t make an attempt to understand the politics of her position.

In the event, miscalculation left Trump with the ignominy of being only the third U.S. president in the nation’s history to be impeached. There was no way to spin that away. It was an “own goal” of epic proportions.

That said, the politics of the vote were (and remain) tricky. No one has any doubt, really, that the president did what he stands accused of doing. But 'persuadable" voters are not convinced that the charges warrant his removal from office and they were unnerved by the speed of the House’s “deliberations.” It didn’t seem deliberate at all. It seemed like a rush to judgement.

What does Pelosi do now?

For the moment, she’s waiting, using the Christmas break to give her caucus members a chance to take soundings in their districts. But the truth is she can’t really afford to wait. Removing the president of the United States from office doesn’t wait for constituent service. Trivial as our politics is and has become, there’s no way around the magnitude of what’s happened and what might happen next. Impeachment has global implications. It sets historic precedents. And the Democrats own it, for the moment, so it’s their job to resolve it or at least move it along.

Pelosi’s best option would be a “pocket veto.” Legislative leadership, of course, can’t execute a “pocket veto.” That’s an executive function. But something very much like a “pocket veto” would serve Pelosi and her party’s interests well.

She could say: “I’m not sending these articles of impeachment over to the Senate. There’s no point in doing so. The majority leader has made it clear that he has no interest in a ‘fair trial.’ There’s no point in wasting everyone’s time and taxpayer money to arrive at a decision that Republican senators have already made. Everyone, including each and every Republican member of the Senate, knows that President Trump did exactly what he stands accused of doing. And impeachment is a fact. So we’ll let it stand as is; a monument to the president’s dishonesty and corruption, to be contemplated and remembered by Americans for generations to come.”

Owie! That would light up the night sky over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, no? The White House and the reelection campaign committee would erupt in a volcano of tweets and seething appearances on Fox News. God only knows who, aside from Pelosi, would be the target of Team Trump’s collective wrath.

But everyone else, or virtually everyone else, would accept Pelosi’s proposed political resolution with gratitude. Republican Senators would be happy to be rid of the dreary task of defending the president’s conduct. Democratic senators would no longer have to explain why what voters perceive as a felony is actually a capital crime. The “progressive caucus” might be upset for a time, but Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t play quarterly politics. She plays a long game, emphasizing yards gained and time of possession. She can bank the House vote on impeachment as a first down, which, for Team AOC, it was and is.

If AOC is OK with a Pelosi “pocket veto,” then her massive social media following will follow along. Which in turn will bring along all the other Democratic left-wingers and their media allies. House Democrats in marginal districts will be thrilled to have the issue die a quick death. And as an added bonus, the “Pelosi rebellion” will be counted, by any number of cable television chatterboxes, as a 'win-win" for the party’s two main factions: Pelosi’s authority remains intact, Team AOC made its points and advanced its cause. Harmony restored and a tricky issue shelved, the House Democratic majority in the 2020 general election will be (all-but) secured.

Pelosi was right about the politics of impeachment back in March. Democrats don’t need to convince voters who favor impeachment to vote Democratic. They’re already committed to doing just that. And Democrats will never convince voters committed to President Trump of anything, really. The 2020 election is about those that remain — “the persuadables.” Whoever persuades them wins.

Pelosi’s job is to guide her party toward its political advantages. Impeachment is not an advantage. It’s a 48%-to-48% issue. Health care is an advantage. Shoring up Social Security is an advantage. Climate change is an advantage. Gun control is an advantage. She wants the House of Representatives, especially the Republican members, debating those issues. Because every time House members do, it helps her party’s cause.

Don’t be surprised if she executes the congressional equivalent of a “pocket veto.” It’s a smart play. And she’s nobody’s fool.

John Ellis is the Editor of News Items and a former columnist

Meno2 · December 27, 2019, 12:03am

Beating Donald Trump in the 2020 election isn’t everything; it’s the only thing
Debating wine cellar fundraisers, free tuition and ‘Medicare for All’ won’t rid America of an unfit president: Our view
THE EDITORIAL BOARD | USA TODAY | 49 minutes ago

To the casual observer of the Democratic debates, it seems like candidates are spending a lot of time debating improbable ideas like free tuition — that is, when they are not arguing the appropriateness of holding fundraisers in wine caves.

While President Donald Trump is holding pep rallies in key battleground states, the Democrats are engaged in what looks at times like a squabble within an academic department.

Perhaps as a result, the ratings for the Democratic encounters have been slipping with each installment. To some degree, this is the inevitable outcome of a race pitting an incumbent against a large field of would-be challengers.

Focus on winning 2020
But there is also a warning in it: Few of the ideas being debated are getting much traction beyond Democratic true believers. And even many Democrats are ready to see some winnowing of the field in the early caucus and primary states.

This is a pretty good indication that the party’s voters should focus largely on one overriding issue: which of the candidates is best equipped to defeat Donald Trump next November.

Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, at the Democratic presidential debate on Dec. 19, 2019, in Los Angeles.
Andrew Yang and Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, at the Democratic presidential debate on Dec. 19, 2019, in Los Angeles.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
OPPOSING VIEW: Voters want change, not centrism

In just a few short years, Trump has promoted the interests of U.S. foes, needlessly run up massive government debts, thwarted progress on climate change, done palpable harm to America’s health care system, and turned the once-proud party of Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan into a adulation cult.

Ridding the nation of his unfit leadership is far more important than who has the most extensive plan to hand out free money (we’re looking at you, Andrew Yang) or require everyone to get their health care through an expanded Medicare (Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders).

The Democrats need a nominee who can go toe-to-toe with Trump, explain to the electorate why he is so wrong in so many ways, and build a consensus on taking the nation in a new direction.

Practical proposals
This is not to say issues don’t matter. If the candidates merely criticized Trump and touted their own electability, they would come off as lacking substance. But the ideas and issues they present in the primaries need to be the kind that can garner widespread support in a general election — particularly in crucial states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

These would include practical proposals to preserve and expand health coverage, rebuild America’s standing in the world, adopt sounder fiscal policies and address climate change.

Meno2 · December 27, 2019, 7:26pm

youtu.be/XnGes2cdFwE

Messianic claim:

Related video: Donald Trump refused to say what his favourite Bible verse is after he claimed it was his ‘favourite book’

Trump shares claim he is ‘heaven sent’ and suggests Obama ‘kicked Jesus out’ of US

President’s post comes as administration records ‘historic lows’ for refugee resettlement

4 hours ago

Donald Trump has promoted a post claiming he is “heaven sent” and suggesting Barack Obama “kicked” Jesus out of the US in a string of tweets just days after Christmas.

The president spent some of his Friday evening retweeting praise for himself, including one post from January 2018 with a picture of a man who appears to be Jesus Christ and a caption saying: “Obama kicked me out. Trump invited me back.”

“I truly believe this man was heaven sent in order to save and protect the most gracious, benevolent, and in turn, prosperous country ever,” the caption to the post said, referring to the president.

Mr Trump’s decision to share the post follows a number of current and former Trump administration officials who have suggested the president was sent by God.

The suggestion about Jesus Christ, a man who is thought to have been from the Middle East, also comes as refugee resettlement in the US has dropped to “historic lows” during the Trump presidency.

Donald Trump celebrity president: A decade in two halves

Data from the State Department shows that the US is no longer the world’s top country for refugee admissions after substantial declines since Mr Trump’s inauguration, according to the Pew Research Centre.

The president added a comment of “Thank you!” to the post, which he has also shared on his Instagram account.

In November, Rick Perry, the US secretary of energy, described Mr Trump as the “chosen one” and said he had told the president that he was picked by God to rule.

It isn’t just Rick Perry who believes Donald Trump is the ‘chosen one’

Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the UN, followed Mr Perry with similar comments and claimed Mr Trump’s election showed “everything happens for a reason”.

“I think God sometimes places people for lessons and sometimes places people for change,” Ms Haley said.

“And you can look at everything that has happened [in Mr Trump’s presidency], and I think we are seeing a lot of changes, and I think we are gaining a lot of lessons.”

Sarah Sanders, the former White House press secretary, has also claimed God “wanted Donald Trump to become president”.

In August, Mr Trump promoted a claim that Jewish people in Israel love him as if he is the “King of Israel” and like he is “the second coming of God”.

However, the president’s spiritual credibility has been called into question in recent days.

Earlier this month, the religious magazine Christianity Today backed Mr Trump’s impeachment and called for evangelicals to examine their “unconditional loyalty” to his presidency.

The magazine’s stance provoked an angry response from the president, who accused the publication of being part of the “far left” on Twitter.

Meno2 · December 29, 2019, 4:55pm

Trump is in debt!

Huge debts up to his ears likened to his life, .to Russia, China, the German Banks, the IRS, and the enforcers.are nuclear triggers tied to economic and ideologically vested national intelligences.

These interests are tied sub marginally to residual modes of.operational proceeders, encompassing , a tightening web of international money flows, that have not changed since the bottom one of.seeking the source of money flow

Meno2 · December 31, 2019, 12:13am

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Explosive new revelations just weakened Trump’s impeachment defenses

By Greg Sargent

Opinion writer

December 30, 2019 at 9:58 AM EST

If Mitch McConnell is going to pull off his scheme to turn President Trump’s impeachment trial into a quick and painless sham with no witnesses, the Senate majority leader needs the story to be covered as a conventional Washington standoff — one that portrays both sides as maneuvering for advantage in an equivalently political manner.

But extraordinary new revelations in the New York Times about Trump’s corrupt freezing of military aid to Ukraine will — or should — make this much harder to get away with.

McConnell badly needs the media’s both-sidesing instincts to hold firm against the brute facts of the situation. If Republicans bear the brunt of media pressure to explain why they don’t want to hear from witnesses, that risks highlighting their true rationale: They adamantly fear new revelations precisely because they know Trump is guilty — and that this corrupt scheme is almost certainly much worse than we can currently surmise.

That possibility is underscored by the Times report, a chronology of Trump’s decision to withhold aid to a vulnerable ally under assault while he and his henchmen extorted Ukraine into carrying out his corrupt designs.

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The report demonstrates in striking detail that inside the administration, the consternation over the legality and propriety of the aid freeze — and confusion over Trump’s true motives — ran much deeper than previously known, implicating top Cabinet officials more deeply than we thought.

Among the story’s key points:

As early as June, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney worked to execute the freeze for Trump, and a top aide to Mulvaney — Robert Blair — worried it would fuel the narrative that Trump was tacitly aiding Russia.

Internal opposition was more forceful than previously known. The Pentagon pushed for the money for months. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security adviser John Bolton privately urged Trump to understand that freezing the aid was not in our national interest.

Trump was unmoved, citing Ukraine’s “corruption.” We now know Trump actually wanted Ukraine to announce sham investigations absolving Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage and smearing potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden. The Times report reveals that top Trump officials did not think that ostensibly combating Ukrainian “corruption” (which wasn’t even Trump’s real aim) was in our interests.

Lawyers at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) worked to develop a far-fetched legal argument that Trump could exercise commander-in-chief authority to override Congress’ appropriation of the aid, to get around the law precluding Trump from freezing it.

Michael Duffey, a political appointee at OMB, tried to get the Pentagon to assume responsibility for getting the aid released, to deflect blame away from the White House for its own role in blocking it. This led a Pentagon official to pronounce herself “speechless.”

Duffey froze the aid with highly unusual bureaucratic tactics, refused to tell Pentagon officials why Trump wanted it withheld and instructed them to keep this “closely held.” (Some of this had already been reported, but in narrative context it becomes far more damning.)

It’s impossible to square all this with the lines from Trump’s defenders — that there was no pressure on Ukraine; that the money was withheld for reasonable policy purposes; and that there was no extortion because it was ultimately released. As the Times shows, that only came after the scheme was outed.

Multiple officials worried that the hold violated the law or worked extensively to skirt it. Others saw Trump’s actions as contrary to the national interest and never got a sufficient explanation for his motives. One top official executing the scheme tried to distance the White House from it and keep it quiet.

The Post’s View: Trump’s pardon of Gallagher just got even more appalling

What makes all this new information really damning, however, is that many of these officials who were directly involved with Trump’s freezing of aid are the same ones Trump blocked from appearing before the House impeachment inquiry.

This should make it inescapable that McConnell wants a trial with no testimony from these people — Democrats want to hear from Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffey and Blair — precisely because he, too, wants to prevent us from ever gaining a full accounting.

We now have a much clearer glimpse into the murky depths of just how much more these officials know about the scheme — and just how much McConnell and Trump are determined to make sure we don’t ever learn. That’s so indefensible that it might even breach the levee of the media’s both-sidesing tendencies.

( and /The Washington Post)

Trump’s defenders are taking a huge risk

Here’s another possibility. If McConnell does pull off a sham trial leading to a quick acquittal, more might surface later that, in retrospect, will get hung around Republicans’ necks and reverse-reveal just how corrupt their cover-up really was.

As George T. Conway III has noted, in such a scenario, Trump’s defenders will suffer blowback from “the very evidence they sought to suppress.”

This new report underscores the point. The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is currently battling the administration over a tranche of OMB and Pentagon documents related to the aid freeze that CPI just obtained due to a court order. This is how Duffey’s emails surfaced, but much of what CPI has obtained has been blacked out.

CPI is asking a judge to lift the blackouts, and a ruling is expected as early as March. So it’s plausible that CPI could obtain a great deal of new information — showing even more clearly how worried officials were that Trump’s freeze was breaking the law — in only a few months.

That could come after Senate Republicans ran a sham trial and acquitted Trump. Do they really want to be on the hook for having suppressed such evidence, even in the face of a whole new round of deeply incriminating revelations?

Apparently they see that outcome as less risky than allowing witnesses to testify. Which again shows how worried they are about allowing the American people to gain a full accounting of Trump’s corruption.

RELATED STORIES

The Republican leadership argues that the case for impeachment is terminally weak and wants to expedite the trial of Trump to move on quickly to the election campaign. To convict Trump of either article, at least two-thirds of the Senate must vote to do so, meaning a number of Republicans must flip.

To achieve that, Democrats hope that the witnesses they want to testify, including Trump’s former national security adviser Ambassador John Bolton, and the as yet unreleased documents will deliver enough evidence to convince Republican Senators to turn against Trump.

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press outside the grand ballroom as he arrives for a New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 31, 2019. Trump is impeached and faces a trial in the Senate.

The Economist/YouGov poll found that Americans were divided on Pelosi’s delay. Those who approved totaled 38 percent while slightly more disapproved at 39 percent. The remaining 23 percent were not sure.

“Remember when Pelosi was screaming that President Trump is a danger to our nation and we must move quickly,” Trump tweeted on New Year’s Eve.

“They didn’t get one Republican House vote, and lost 3 Dems. They produced no case so now she doesn’t want to go to the Senate. She’s all lies. Most overrated person I know!”

Just before Christmas, Pelosi wrote on Twitter: "The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct.

“President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process. What is his excuse now?”

The headline of this article has been updated.

Meno2 · January 3, 2020, 12:25am

The New York Times

Christianity Today Editor Laments ‘Ethical Naïveté’ of Trump Backers

Mark Galli was overwhelmed by the response — both vocal criticism and quiet praise — to his editorial in a prominent evangelical magazine calling for President Trump’s ouster.

Mark Galli’s last day as editor in chief of Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine, is on Friday. He had already planned to retire before writing an editorial calling for President Trump’s removal.Credit…David Kasnic for The New York Times

By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Jan. 2, 2020Updated 6:05 p.m. ET

People have been upset with Mark Galli before. As the editor in chief of Christianity Today, a prominent evangelical magazine, he has printed some controversial editorials. But the people he irks usually do not include the IT department of his own publication.

That is what happened when Mr. Galli published an explosive editorial on Dec. 19 arguing that President Trump should be removed from office. So many readers flocked to read the editorial online that the website crashed, overwhelming those whose job it was to keep it running.

Mr. Galli had been working for Christianity Today for two decades after being a Presbyterian pastor for about 10 years, first in Mexico City and later in Sacramento, Calif., but the response to the editorial was like nothing he had ever seen. The traffic to the website was 50-fold what it is on a typical day.

‘PROFOUNDLY IMMORAL’

Five of the editorial’s sharpest rebukes of the president.

Mr. Galli’s last day with the magazine will be Friday. He had announced his retirement in October, long before the editorial and the response to it.

In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, he said he was shocked by the magnitude of the reaction to the editorial — but also by evangelicals’ willingness to stick by Mr. Trump for more than three years. The interview has been edited and condensed.

Did you ever expect the sort of reaction this editorial received?

Not in the least. On a very viral article, we might get 4,000 or 5,000 on the site at one time. Not only did this crash the site almost immediately, but when it came back on, there were between 15 and 17,000 people on our site for hours. I’ve kind of gotten in trouble with my IT department because they said, “Why didn’t you give us a heads up?” and I said, “I had no idea.”

Friday I came into the office, and the desk phone we’re speaking on now literally rang — this is not hyperbole — all day, and I did not pick it up once because I was also getting messages by email, text messages and calls on my cellphone.

There was quite a bit of criticism from evangelicals and others of the piece. What did you make of that opposition?

I was a little surprised that Donald Trump and then Franklin Graham thought it was worth commenting on. And it did strike me as a bit ironic that they both said that it wasn’t significant or going to make any difference. It makes you immediately think that they do think it’s significant, or they wouldn’t comment on it.

I suppose the thing that was most surprising, and which I’m still trying to wrap my head around, was the positive response. People wrote to me and said they had felt all alone and were waiting for someone in the evangelical leadership to say what the editorial said. I wish I could tell you that I had noticed that and wanted to respond to it, but I didn’t see that. There were a lot of people who were feeling alone and they’re not feeling that way now.

Despite that, of course, evangelicals as a bloc largely support President Trump. Is there anything Trump could do to lose that support?

I’ve been surprised by the ethical naïveté of the response I’m receiving to the editorial. There does seem to be widespread ignorance — that is the best word I can come up with — of the gravity of Trump’s moral failings. Some evangelicals will acknowledge he had a problem with adultery, but now they consider that a thing of the past. They bring up King David, but the difference is King David repented! Donald Trump has not done that.

Some evangelicals say he is prideful, abrasive and arrogant — which are all the qualities that Christians decry — but they don’t seem to grasp how serious it is for a head of state to talk like that and it does make me wonder what’s going on there.

Do you think evangelicals’ willingness to excuse Mr. Trump’s behavior will translate to a more broad willingness to forgive bad behavior by politicians, or does it seem to be Trump-specific?

I think his supporters would say it is limited to Trump. But I will say that some of his closest followers are, in a sense, being discipled by him. Mr. Trump’s typical response to a critic is to frame the entire conversation as a competition between success and failure. When the editorial published, the first response coming out of the mouth of some leading evangelicals was “That’s Christianity Yesterday” or “You’re a dying magazine.” They’re taking their cues on how to react in the public square from Donald Trump, whose basic response is to denigrate people.

What’s next for you? Do you plan to engage more with politics?

I’m planning to take advantage of the benefits of retirement: more time with my grandchildren, more time on the stream to do fly-fishing. If I can use religious language to talk about this, it does seem like providence has intervened in my life and made sure I’m not going to relax for the next few months.

I was planning to continue to write and comment, and this just put an exclamation point on it. I feel like I need to keep talking about things on my website and I’ve already been invited to write for The Los Angeles Times and The Guardian and I’m going to do that. I’m going to write as honestly and as charitably as I can about the movement that I’ve been a part of for 50 years.

Have your views about Mr. Trump changed since 2016? And who did you vote for then?

Like many, I was not happy with either candidate, and so I voted for a third-party candidate. And you’re about to ask me who that is, and I don’t remember. The most important thing is, I didn’t want to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.

We published one hard-hitting editorial in 2016 asking if voters had fallen into the sin of idolatry. After Trump was elected, I spent the first three years of his administration just trying to understand why conservatives and why very conservative evangelicals would vote for him and support him so enthusiastically.

The right and the left clearly wanted to excommunicate each other from the movement, so whenever I had the opportunity, I tried to get evangelicals on the left, center and right to have a reasonable conversation. I wanted to continue that when I sat down to write the editorial, but something in me clicked and I thought: That approach doesn’t work anymore. Given what we now know about what the president has done, we need to speak out more directly about this.

Do you view politics or religion differently than you did before Mr. Trump’s presidency?

I’m actually not a political person. I don’t follow political reporting too much. I find it caustic, both to the culture and to one’s own heart. I often say the most political things Christians do is, every Sunday, go to church and say “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

I’ve been thinking more deeply about what the relationship is between Christian faith and political life. I had drawn much more of a separation between politics and faith in my past, and I need to rethink that. I certainly don’t want to do what mainstream Christianity has done and make politics indistinguishable from faith — especially on the left, and now on the right. But is there a way to talk about our nation’s issues that is not merely partisan, but raises questions of ethics and morality and ideals?

Trump and Evangelicals

Christian Post Editor Resigns Over Editorial Defending Trump

Dec. 24, 2019

Evangelical Leaders Close Ranks With Trump After Scathing Editorial

Dec. 20, 2019

Evangelical Magazine Christianity Today Calls for Trump’s Removal

Dec. 19, 2019

Meno2 · January 3, 2020, 2:43pm

CONGRESS

Pelosi says Trump carried out strike on Iranian commander without authorization and she wants details
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the U.S. strike that killed the commander of Iran’s Quds Force “risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence.”

Jan. 3, 2020, 1:40 AM EST

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on the Trump administration to immediately brief lawmakers on the U.S. airstrike that killed a top Iranian commander in Iraq and what the White House plans to do next.

The strike in Iraq was directed by President Donald Trump and killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s secretive Quds Force, the Defense Department announced Thursday night.

The move, which is likely to provoke retaliation from Iran, comes amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Tehran over rocket attacks aimed at coalition forces in Iraq. U.S. officials have said those attacks were likely carried out by Iranian-backed militias with links to the Quds Force.

“Tonight’s airstrike risks provoking further dangerous escalation of violence. America — and the world — cannot afford to have tensions escalate to the point of no return,” Pelosi said in a statement late Thursday.

The strike was carried out without an “authorization for use of military force” against Iran and without the consultation of Congress, the speaker said.

“The full Congress must be immediately briefed on this serious situation and on the next steps under consideration by the Administration, including the significant escalation of the deployment of additional troops to the region,” Pelosi said.

This browser does not support the video element.

The Defense Department characterized the strike as “decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad” and said in a statement that Soleimani “was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Several Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Sen. Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, praised Trump’s move.

Graham said in a statement that Soleimani “had American blood on his hands” and welcomed what he called Trump’s “bold action against Iranian aggression.”

“To the Iranian government: If you want more, you will get more,” Graham said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the airstrike that killed top Iranian general was done with Congressional authorization. Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images file
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a longtime hawk on Iran, tweeted his “congratulations” to the Trump administration for the strike and said he hoped “this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.”

Meanwhile, Ari Fleischer, who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary, said on Fox News that he hoped Soleimani’s death would be cheered in the same way Osama Bin Laden’s was.

Soleimani and the Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and other coalition forces and orchestrated attacks on bases in Iraq within the last several months, including a Dec. 27 attack that killed a U.S. contractor and wounded several service members, the Defense Department said.

Democrats were quick to condemn Soleimani on Friday but expressed concern about the consequences of his death and what they said was a lack of domestic oversight.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted that Soleimani “was responsible for unthinkable violence and world is better off without him.”

“But Congress didn’t authorize and American people don’t want a war with Iran,” Schiff said. “All steps must now be taken to protect our forces against the almost inevitable escalation and increased risk.”

Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama, questioned Trump’s ability to handle the potential unknown consequences from the airstrike.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, called the U.S. strike an “act of international terrorism” and an assassination. He said in a tweet that it was an “extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation.”

“The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism,” Zarif said.

In addition, at least two Congressional Republicans called on the Trump administration to provide more details to Congress on its strategy for the region or any further steps.

Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, in a statement commended the strike but said that the administration must be prepared for possible retaliation and should “consult closely with Congress on any next steps should the situation escalate.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, also pushed for more information from the White House. “It’s imperative that the US & our allies articulate & pursue a coherent strategy for protecting our security interests in the region. I will be pressing the Administration for additional details in the days ahead,” he tweeted.

Democratic presidential hopefuls raised concerns about the strike.

Former Vice-President Joe Biden said that while “no American will mourn” Sulimani’s death, killing him was a “huge escalatory move in an already dangerous region.” He said in a statement that Trump had “tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said that although Suleiman “was a murderer, responsible for the deaths of thousands, including hundreds of Americans,” the strike was a reckless move.

“Our priority must be to avoid another costly war,” Warren tweeted.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, tweeted that “Trump’s dangerous escalation brings us closer to another disastrous war in the Middle East that could cost countless lives and trillions more dollars.”

Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, tweeted Thursday night: “We have a president who has no strategic plan when it comes to Iran and has only made that region less stable and less safe.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said Soleimani “was responsible for directing Iran’s destabilizing actions in Iraq, Syria, and throughout the Middle East, including attacks against U.S. forces,” but she also said the immediate focus is on protecting U.S. military and diplomatic personnel in Iraq and the region.

“The Administration needs to fully consult with Congress on its decision-making, response plans, and strategy for preventing a wider conflict,” she tweeted.

In addition to Soleimani, the deputy of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was also killed, according to Iraqi state television and the PMU.

He had been accused of plotting attacks on the United States since the 1980s. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by Kuwait for his role in the 1983 attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait, in which five Kuwaitis were killed.

Phil Helsel is a reporter for NBC l
News.

LIVE
Updated
1 minute ago
News > World > Middle East
Iran news – live: Trump claims Qassem Soleimani was ‘plotting to kill’ Americans, and tells US citizens to leave Iraq after killing of Iran’s top general
-------- -------- -------- ------'-

{ At the very least, a minimal view can be held that there is internal politocal expediency in the move to impress a naive public, that there is no politocal connection, especially that it is happening when a impeachment judgement by the senate is impending, and that there was not even any kind of notice to Congress}*

*{ } are my own narratives.

&everyone knows whom scaramucci called a paranoid schizophrenic. Well, not everyone, will sell their soul in a Faustian bargain, who will not take themselves out, for fear of, without the will not to further unravel.

youtu.be/XEiUZ-MU4rQ

Course probably was dropped for that reason

youtu.be/ywhi4Fry-DA

youtu.be/vN4Jrrcl-ks

Meno2 · January 4, 2020, 3:33pm

The Guardian - Back to home

‘Incredibly dangerous’: Jeremy Hunt reacts to Qassem Suleimani assassination – video
Jeremy Hunt
Hunt: US confrontation with Iran is ‘dangerous game of chicken’
Comments come as Foreign Office cautions against all but essential travel to Iraq and Iran

Simon Murphy
@murphy_simon
Sat 4 Jan 2020 06.27 EST

Jeremy Hunt has called the US’s escalating confrontation with Iran over the assassination of Tehran’s top general an “incredibly dangerous game of chicken”.

He made his comments as the Foreign Office updated its travel advice on Saturday, warning British nationals against going to Iraq apart from essential travel to the Kurdistan region in the north of the country. The government is also urging Britons to avoid all but essential travel to Iran.

It has also updated its travel advice for Lebanon and urged British nationals in the country to remain vigilant and issued similar travel advice for British nationals in Israel, Afghanistan and Palestine.

As concerns grow about reprisals over the killing of Qassem Suleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad, the former foreign secretary urged the UK to use its position as a key US ally to push Donald Trump to take a more consistent foreign policy approach.

US failing to give UK warning of military strikes, says senior MP
Suleimani, who spearheaded Tehran’s military operations in Iraq and Syria as commander of the elite Quds force, was considered the second most powerful figure in Iran. The 62-year-old, who was implicated in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, was killed on Friday morning when his vehicle was targeted by a drone as local allies from the Popular Mobilisation Forces drove him from the airport.

Hunt, who served as foreign secretary before standing down in July after losing the Tory leadership race to Boris Johnson, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s an incredibly dangerous game of chicken going on at the moment because both sides have calculated that the other side cannot afford and doesn’t want to go to war.

“So they are doing increasingly extreme things, not just the assassination of general Suleimani, but the bombing of the Saudi oil facility last September is another example of this. And, of course, it is true that neither side wants to go to war but it’s also true that both sides are compelled to react when things like this happen and that is the risk in the current situation.”

Loading video
Footage shows aftermath of US airstrike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani – video
Hunt said it was impossible to predict whether the reaction to the killing would be immediate or play out longer term. “It’s clear that they [Iran] will have to react and that will have been calculated by the United States,” he said. “This is a very difficult situation for allies of the United States, like ourselves, because I happen to be someone who believes the world is safer when America is involved in what’s happening beyond its shores.

“The UK cannot afford to be neutral if we want to be a serious global player but this is a very, very risky situation and I think that the job we have to do is as one of the US’s closest allies is to use our influence to argue for more consistent US policy. Because sometimes the US seems torn between a desire to appear strong and decisive and influential across every region in the world and the other desire, which is to get its troops home, to reduce the risk to American lives on the ground and to concentrate on the big power competition with China.

“And it’s those two conflicting forces that are tugging at the president and that makes people miscalculate because I’m sure, Suleimani thought that the US might not react to some of the things he had been plotting and planning and that was, of course, a big miscalculation. And it’s those miscalculations that are dangerous.”

Asked whether he believed Trump miscalculated by ordering the strike, Hunt said: “Only time will tell. But, as I say, I would rather an America that was active and involved in the region. Despite being known for his rhetoric, actually what has characterised Trump is his caution in deploying troops.”

Hunt said the apparent decision by the US not to inform the UK in advance of the strike was not in the spirit of its relationship as a close ally. He said: “Well, I think it’s regrettable because, as one of the US’s closest allies, I think it’s an important aspect of that relationship that there are no surprises in the relationship.

“But it may also have been because they didn’t want to put us in a difficult position of asking us to make a judgment whether we agreed or not with what was done. I think our relationship with the US is one where we shouldn’t overestimate our influence, but we shouldn’t underestimate it either.”

Jeremy Corbyn has written to the prime minister, who has been on holiday on the private Caribbean island of Mustique, calling for an urgent meeting of the privy council to discuss whether the strike had heightened the risk of a terrorist attack in the UK.

In his letter, the Labour leader asked if the UK had spoken to the UN to discuss consequences for peace and security and what measures had been taken to ensure the safety of UK nationals.

I’ve written to Boris Johnson requesting an urgent Privy Council briefing and answers to questions following the US assassination of Qassem Suleimani. pic.twitter.com/kOw36b6Ex2

— Jeremy Corbyn

Meno2 · January 4, 2020, 3:39pm

Protests planned across US to condemn Trump administration actions in Iraq, Iran

GRACE HAUCK | USA TODAY | 1 hour ago

CHICAGO – More than 40 demonstrations were planned across the U.S. Saturday to protest the Trump administration’s killing of a top Iranian general and decision to send about 3,000 more soldiers to the Middle East.

The protests are being spearheaded by Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER), a U.S.-based anti-war coalition, in conjunction with more than a dozen organizations. Demonstrations were expected to protest outside the White House, in New York City’s Times Square and more.

Another international protest is expected at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate.

“The targeted assassination and murder of a central leader of Iran is designed to initiate a new war. Unless the people of the United States rise up and stop it, this war will engulf the whole region and could quickly turn into a global conflict of unpredictable scope and potentially the gravest consequences,” the organization said on its website.

Timeline: How tensions escalated with Iran since Trump withdrew US from nuclear deal

Organizers could not say how many people were expected to attend the protests, but Facebook events suggest that hundreds of people planned to participate. Nearly 300 people indicated interest in a Facebook event for a protest in Madison, Wisconsin, along with nearly 200 people for protests in both Chicago and Burlington, Vermont.

“We’re having the protest to say no to war and to bring the troops home from Iraq,” said Anamaria Meneses, an organizer with the Justice Center en El Barrio, ANSWER’s New York City branch. “Our tax dollars shouldn’t be spent on killing people abroad. We should stand against senseless wars.”

ANSWER’s national headquarters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ANSWER coalition formed in the wake of 9/11, organizing demonstrations against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that drew hundreds of thousands of protesters. While it has since led some of the biggest and most successful protests in the U.S., the coalition is not without its critics. Some groups have accused the coalition of supporting anti-Semitism; others have scrutinized its approach to supporting the rights of undocumented immigrants.

The protests come after several days of escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran that started with the killing of an American contractor.

Democrats warn against ‘march’ to war: Trump orders killing of Qasem Soleimani

It’s also the latest in a broader beef between the two nations, including President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear pact in 2018 and subsequent sanctions he imposed on Iran in order to make them come to a new deal.

Thousands of Iranians protested against the U.S. airstrike in the nation’s capital, Friday, while some Iraqis sang and danced in Baghdad.

Contributing: Nicholas Wu, USA TODAY.

Protesters demonstrate over the U.S. airstrike in Iraq that killed Iranian Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 3, 2020. Iran has vowed “harsh retaliation” for the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad’s airport that killed Tehran’s top general and the architect of its interventions across the Middle East, as tensions soared in the wake of the targeted killing.

VAHID SALEMI, AP

Baghdad protests break out outside US embassy following deadly airstrikes

Originally Published 4 hours ago

Updated 1 hour ago

Meno2 · January 5, 2020, 2:23pm

Skepticism mounts over evidence of ‘imminent’ threat that Trump says justified Soleimani killing

By Zachary Cohen, CNN

Updated 8:37 AM EST, Sun January 05, 2020

l

Washington (CNN)Top US national security officials continue to defend the Trump administration’s claim that it killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in response to an impending threat to American lives, but the lack of evidence provided to lawmakers and the public has fueled lingering skepticism about whether the strike was justified.

President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and top military officials have offered similar explanations for targeting Soleimani, citing an “imminent” threat from his plans to carry out what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley called a “significant campaign of violence” against the US in the coming days, weeks or months.

But questions have continued to swirl in recent days about the imminence of such Iranian attacks, whether the administration fully considered the fallout from such a strike against Soleimani, and if an appropriate legal basis was established for the presidential authorization of lethal force.

How Trump’s decision unfolded to kill a top Iranian general

A Republican congressional source familiar with the administration’s decision to strike Soleimani acknowledged that in the past the President “has been reluctant to take military action” in this case, the killing of an American contractor, the wounding of others, and the subsequent embassy protests “crossed his line.” His advisers also pointed out to the President that if he “didn’t respond now, they (Iran) will continue to cross it.”

“I am very confident he was not reluctant,” said the source. When Trump finally gets ready to act, they added, “you can’t out escalate him.”

CNN has previously reported that there was internal debate over the decision and work behind the scenes to develop a legal argument before the operation was carried out.

After a meeting Sunday in Mar-a-Lago where President Donald Trump was briefed by senior members of his national security team on options regarding Iran, some officials emerged surprised the President chose to target Soleimani, according to a source familiar with the briefing.

The officials who briefed Trump included Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Pompeo, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Milley.

The source said that some aides expected Trump to pick a less risky option, but once presented with the choice of targeting Soleimani he remained intent on going forward.

Failure to connect the dots

Since that time, the US has provided few details about those specific threats posed by Soleimani and failed to clearly outline the legal underpinnings.

The administration has failed to connect the dots in a way that provides a clear picture of an imminent threat and that argument has been obscured by inconsistent messaging from US officials.

One thing that has become relatively clear is that the operation to take out Soleimani did not hinge on some kind of golden opportunity to target the Quds force commander, unlike the missions that killed Osama bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Some information has surfaced.

A source briefed on the latest intelligence told CNN that before the strike, specific information showed Iranian surface to air missiles and other military weaponry that the US had been watching, were moving in on at least two US air bases, as well as US embassies in the region.

Dems question order to kill Iranian military leader. Trump hasn’t publicly explained his reasoning

Additionally, the source said that the situation was different because the US had advanced notice of his plans to kill Americans and that the previous reason not to kill him has gone away – fear that it could cause the IRGC to specifically target Americans.

O’Brien made the case Friday that the strike was prompted by intelligence related to Soleimani’s movements coupled with ongoing attacks that he was planning against US diplomats and military personnel.

“Soleimani was in the Middle East, in Iraq, and traveling around the Middle East. He had just come from Damascus, where he was planning attacks on American soldiers, airmen, Marines, sailors, and against our diplomats. So this strike was aimed at disrupting ongoing attacks that were being planned by Soleimani, and deterring future Iranian attacks, through their proxies or through the IRGC Quds Force directly, against Americans. As President Trump said today, this action was taken to stop a war, not to start a war,” he said.

When asked by a reporter if the threat was “imminent,” Milley responded Friday saying, “absolutely,” but defined the time frame as days and maybe weeks.

He also warned that attacks could still happen, meaning the threat was not eliminated by killing Soleimani.

One Republican congressional source, when asked about whether there was intelligence that attacks were imminent, said there was “no doubt he was there to plan attacks against the US,” referring to Soleimani.

Trump administration warns Congress Iran could retaliate against US ‘within weeks’

Soleimani was under frequent surveillance by the US intelligence community, according to a senior administration official.

“Capturing intel from this guy would be a top priority,” the official said. Counterintelligence officials were routinely monitoring his movements, gathering information on who he was meeting with and what he was doing as he moved around the region. The official said he was definitely not in a secure undisclosed location like bin Laden and Baghdadi.

That kind of visibility gave the intelligence community a multitude of options for taking out Soleimani. This factor would obviously be of great use to the intelligence community were Soleimani determined to be moving toward an imminent attack on US interests.

This official, however, could not confirm whether that was the case prior to the Soleimani operation.

Lawmaker doubts

Some lawmakers have said that the information provided in classified settings last week painted an incomplete picture, prompting more questions about whether the threats cited by the administration meet the legal standard of “imminent.”

One Democratic source who was briefed Friday by administration officials said the information offered was “absolutely unconvincing” as far as proving there was an imminent threat and Democratic lawmakers have raised similar concerns.

In an interview with CNN Friday, Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said more than once that he does not believe an attack on the United States was imminent as President Donald Trump and other top administration officials have said.

“My staff was briefed by a number of people representing a variety of agencies in the United States government and they came away with no feeling that there was evidence of an imminent attack,” Udall said, adding he believed the President is only saying an attack was imminent to justify killing Soleimani.

Trump and Rouhani trade warnings after killing of top general

Still, the US military remains comfortable with calling Soleimani’s potential plan imminent, a US defense official told CNN Saturday.

“It all depends on what you call imminent,” the official said, “but we believe he was in the final stages” of ordering attacks when he visited Beirut and Damascus in the days before he was killed."

The official added that while they continue to believe the intelligence showed Soleimani was planning multiple attacks at multiple locations, they do not have absolute detailed evidence of everything he was trying to execute.

Separately, a senior defense official told CNN there were multiple intelligence indicators that he was continuing to plan attacks. A significant turning point came when the US contractor was killed a week ago, the senior official said. “The intelligence may be no different of him (Soleimani) planning” attacks as he had in the past, but this was different because an American had been killed, added the Republican congressional source.

Another US official hedged, saying said the threat posed by the attacks Soleimani was accused of planning was “pretty imminent”.

The official added, when asked if Soleimani was needed to be alive for these threats and plans to be executed in the same way that he planned them, that after his death “things will change.”

Killing of American contractor crossed line for Trump, source says

Trump’s assertion that the strike was meant to “avoid a war” and claims by administration officials that the operation was intended to de-escalate have also prompted confusion. However, a source familiar with the administration’s thinking told CNN that those comments offer some insight into what the intention behind the attack was.

This source said the argument for targeting Soleimani, rather than Iranian assets, centers around the idea that it was a preemptive move intended to de-escalate the situation by deterring any plans to attack American embassies or bases.

The reasoning behind this, the same source told CNN, is that if Iran were to fire on a US base or embassy, it would trigger a large-scale military response by the US, so by killing Soleimani, the hope was that it would cause the Iranians to change their behavior.

Aim to reestablish a deterrent?

But that rationale may betray the administration’s true goal of reestablishing a deterrent against Iran – a step national security officials have long said was necessary but does not necessarily provide evidence of an imminent attack as required for the President to legally authorize lethal force.

A separate US official raised additional questions about the motive for the strike, telling CNN it had presidential authorization at this level and they opted for a preemptive option after the previous moves of maximum pressure didn’t change the Iranian pattern of behavior.

Former CIA director David Petraeus seemed to also conclude that the objective of the strike was deterrence in a recent interview with Foreign Policy.

“The reasoning seems to be to show in the most significant way possible that the US is just not going to allow the continued violence—the rocketing of our bases, the killing of an American contractor, the attacks on shipping, on unarmed drones—without a very significant response,” he said.

Trump warns Iran if it hits any Americans or American assets ‘we have targeted 52 Iranian sites’

“Many people had rightly questioned whether American deterrence had eroded somewhat because of the relatively insignificant responses to the earlier actions. This clearly was of vastly greater importance. Of course it also, per the Defense Department statement, was a defensive action given the reported planning and contingencies that Soleimani was going to Iraq to discuss and presumably approve,” Petraeus added.

But Petraeus’ comment noting the Pentagon’s assertion that the strike was defensive underscores the confusion caused by the administration’s shifting legal justifications for the operation and failure to explain its definition of “imminent.”

Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland also told CNN that one of his representatives was at the Friday briefing and said “nothing that came out of the briefing changed my view that this was an unnecessary escalation of the situation in Iraq and Iran.”

Van Hollen went on to say: “While I can’t tell you what was said, I can tell you, I have no additional information to support the administration’s claim that this was an imminent attack on Americans.”

CNN’s Kevin Liptak, Barbara Starr, Jim Acosta, Pamela Brown, Nck Paton Walsh and Jamie Gangel contributed to this report.

{Two logical systems at play

The meaning of collusion

The optics of the popular front drives trump, with a reactive search for meaningful yet hollow references to the basis of collusive and swampish images of what America echoes in it’s post WW2 days. That mirror started to crack way back in the sixties, in the infantile stage of its manifold superiority, which became fixed into it’s adolescence. However, it had short tenure for lasting imperium for it lacked the eidectic tendency for post modern residency.

That belonged to ancient civilizations of history. Now its coming home to roost, overcoming it with a terror.

The optics as phenomenal presence of familial meaning, is beset by internal dynamics, because the politocal presence and its progenitor lost the history of their mutual imterrelation.

That nexus lost the hidden dialectic between its actual and it’s remote function as a modus operandi in universal politocal affairs. The whole structure of the dynamic of this relations is on hold, as the unanswered question remains , what new definitions is that state, that epoch is capable to be sustained in a hidden future?}

The derivitive of none system of logic, has become an optical illusion , the resemblances to meaning broken, while the other one has lost its deductible glory}

In fact the scepter that hung in the air prior to WW2 has not diminished and Obama was right in his neutral attitude toward international world affairs, and the damgerousnstamdoff standoff has been prematurely directed.

The best of it is that Trump is a reactionary whose logic tries to reduce the now irreducible and colluded state of affairs into a vastly less progressive political economy of the US, while feeding that hunger with personal ambitions of his own.

That is explosive and he is far from being a continental politician, & he forgets the importance of the French leaders , cut to Jefferson, how that shaped the Constitution. And that goes for the short sighted Republican Party as well.}

Meno2 · January 5, 2020, 4:21pm

Meno_ wrote:

{The best of it is that Trump is a reactionary whose logic tries to reduce the now irreducible and colluded state of affairs into a vastly less progressive political economy of the US, while feeding that hunger with personal ambitions of his own.

That is explosive and he is far from being a continental politician, & he forgets the importance of the French leaders , cut to Jefferson, how that shaped the Constitution. And that goes for the short sighted Republican Party as well.}*

*my comments

Meno2 · January 5, 2020, 6:53pm

LIVEUpdated2 minutes ago

News > World > Middle East

Iran news – live: Iraq votes to expel US troops as Iranian MP says ‘we can attack the White House itself’ amid vows of retaliation after Trump threat to bomb civilian sites

Follow here for the latest updates

Andy Gregory

2 minutes ago

Donald Trump has prompted further condemnation after he threatened to strike 52 targets, some apparently civilian sites, if Iran retaliates over the US assassination of military commander Qassem Soleimani.

As bombs fell near the US embassy in Baghdad, the US president was labelled a “monster” and accused of plotting war crimes after promising swift retribution at high level targets “important to Iranian culture”.

Meanwhile, the Iranian parliament opened with politicians chanting “death to America”, as Iraq also held an emergency session in the face of pressure to expel the thousands of US troops stationed there to prevent an Isis resurgence.

KEY POINTS

Iraq votes to expel foreign troops

MP claims Iran can ‘attack the White House itself’

UK foreign secretary backs Trump’s ‘right’ to kill Soleimani

Trump accused of threatening war crimes

Iran promises ‘crushing and powerful’ retaliation

3 minutes ago

Ceremony to honour Soleimani in Tehran ‘cancelled due to mass turnout’

Sunday night’s ceremony for Soleimani at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla mosque has been cancelled, after the huge number of mourners delayed the arrival of the late military commander’s body to Tehran, AFP reported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as saying.

“Considering the glorious, intense and million-man presence of the revolutionary people of Mashhad in the ceremony to bid farewell to Islam and Iran’s great general Qasem Soleimani and since the program is still continuing … it is not possible to hold the event in Tehran,” the Guards said.

Mourners were advised to attend an alternative ceremony planned at the University of Tehran on Monday.

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 16:54

34 minutes ago

‘There will be dead Americans’: Former CIA chief issues warning to Trump as Iran crisis deepens

Michael Morell, a former acting and deputy CIA director, said the killing of Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani would spark a “harsh retaliation” from the Iranian government, and that US citizens would be targeted, Clark Mindock reports.

“Soleimani was an evil genius. He had a lot of American blood on his hands. The world is a better place without him. The problem is that comes at a very high cost,” Mr Morell, who served during Barack Obama’s presidency, told CBS.

"Number one, there will be dead Americans, dead civilian Americans, as a result of this. Possibly over the next few days in any place where Iran has its proxies, Iraq is the most likely place, but also Lebanon, Bahrain, other places in the Middle East.”

‘There will be dead Americans’ after Trump’s order to kill Iran leader, says former CIA chief

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 16:21

49 minutes ago

Pompeo insists assassination was justified

“Senior leadership had access to all of the intelligence,” Mr Pompeo told ABC. There was no scepticism. I think General Miller used the term ‘we would have been culpably negligent had we not taken this strike’.

“The intelligence assessment made clear that no action - allowing Soleimani to continue his plotting and his planning, his terror campaign - created more risk than taking the action that we took last week.”

When pressed on Donald Trump’s threat to bomb cultural sites – which many insist would constitute war crimes, Mr Pompeo said the US will “behave lawfully”.

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 16:06

57 minutes ago

Helicopter footage purports to show vast scale of mourning in Iran

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 15:58

1 hour ago

Trump’s wisdom in Soleimani assassination questioned further as Iraq moves to expel US troops

Veteran diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, says the US departure from Iraq will lead to greater Iranian influence in the country.

David Corn of Mother Jones and MSNBC points out that Donald Trump got his wishes for US withdrawal, albeit perhaps not in the way anyone expected.

Meanwhile, George Conway, husband of Kellyanne, Mr Trump’s counsellor has denounced the president as a “sociopath” in response to an observation about the shortsightedness of his decision to assassinate Soleimani

In response to expulsion vote, Iraqi politician and militia leader calls for US ‘humiliation’

It appears some in Iraq are not content with the non-binding resolution to expel foreign forces from the country, notably a militia leader who, in the wake of Soleimani’s assassination, called for dormant anti-US military groups to prepare “to protect Iraq”. Reuters reports:

Populist Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said the parliamentary resolution calling on the government to end foreign troop presence did not go far enough and called on local and foreign militia groups to unite.

“I consider this a weak response insufficient against American violation of Iraqi sovereignty and regional escalation,” Sadr, who leads the largest bloc in parliament, said in a letter to the assembly read out by a supporter.

Sadr said a security agreement with the United States should be cancelled immediately, the US embassy should be closed down, US troops must be expelled in a humiliating manner, and communication with the US government should be criminalised.

And in perhaps the most significant sign of the longstanding tensions Donald Trump has exacerbated, the militia leader continues:

“Finally, I call specifically on the Iraqi resistance groups and the groups outside Iraq more generally to meet immediately and announce the formation of the International Resistance Legions,” he said.

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 15:42

1 hour ago

Iraq votes to expel foreign troops

At an emergency parliamentary session, Iraqi politicians have voted in favour of a resolution telling the government to end the presence of foreign troops in Iraq, and ensure they not use its land, air, and waters for any reason.

“The government commits to revoke its request for assistance from the international coalition fighting Islamic State due to the end of military operations in Iraq and the achievement of victory,” the resolution read.

“The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.”

Parliament resolutions, unlike laws, are non-binding to the government, but Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul Mahdi had earlier called on parliament to end foreign troop presence.

Some 5,200 US troops are reported to be stationed in Iraq, with America announcing the deployment of an additional 3,000 to the region following the killing of Soleimani.

Yesterday, Nato suspended its operations in Iraq, where it had been assisting Iraqi troops in preventing the resurgence of Isis.

Iraq complains to UN about American drone strikes

Iraq’s foreign ministry has lodged official complaints with the United Nations secretary general and Security Council over the airstrikes that killed Soleimani and several Iraqi milita leaders.

The complaint is about “American attacks and aggression on Iraqi military positions and the assassination of Iraqi and allied high level military commanders on Iraqi soil,” the ministry said in a statement.

It described the attacks as “a dangerous breach of Iraqi sovereignty and of the terms of US presence in Iraq” and called on the Security Council to condemn them.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Mr Abdul-Mahdi warned that it was “a dangerous escalation that will light the fuse of a destructive war in Iraq, the region, and the world.”

If you are travelling in the Middle East, or have imminent plans to visit the region, here’s a must-read article from The Independent’s veteran travel correspondent Simon Calder.

As the Iran crisis escalates, is it safe to travel to Dubai and the Middle East?

Changing planes in Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi? Holiday in the UAE or Oman? On a cruise to or from the Gulf

Here’s some footage of the start of Iran’s parliamentary session today, in which politicians began by chanting “death to America”.

Tonight, Iranian politicians are expected to meet to discuss the next step of their commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal.

Hezbollah says Soleimani assassination marks new phase in Middle East’s history

Referring to the date of Soleimani’s killing, the group’s leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said it was a “date separating two phases in the region … it is the start of a new phase and new history not just for Iran or Iraq but the whole region”.

He was speaking at the start of a rally in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut to commemorate Soleimani.

Criticism over Boris Johnson’s silence on the Iranian crisis continues to roll in, as Dominic Raab sparked fears of the government’s intentions by citing Donald Trump’s “right to self-defence” in ordering the killing of Soleimani.

And an interesting observation from Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer:

Speaking to Andrew Marr, Mr Raab insisted the PM had been in “constant contact”, to discuss the crisis, adding: “What really matters is that there is a very clear strategy and message.

“There has not been a vacuum at all – the prime minister has been in charge.”

Andy.Gregory

Iran to decide commitment to nuclear deal tonight, foreign ministry spokesperson says

“Tonight, there will be a very important meeting to decide about our next nuclear step and the implementation of the deal … considering the recent threats [by America] it should be underlined that in politics, all developments and threats are linked to each other,” said spokesperson Abbas Mousavi, according to state news agency IRNA.

In reaction to the US policy of “maximum pressure” and punishing sanctions since Donald Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement in 2018, Iran has taken several actions in violation of the deal, involving the production of materials that could be used to create nuclear weapons.

Iran has warned that it will further decrease its commitments if European parties fail to shield Tehran from US penalties. In November, Iran gave Britain, France and Germany a third 60-day deadline to salvage the deal.

On Saturday, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke with his counterparts in Germany and China, before issuing a public statement calling on Iran to “avoid any further measure of violation of the Vienna Agreement”.

The Independent’s international correspondent Borzou Daragahi reported Iran’s claims in November it had amassed 500kg of enriched uranium, more than the 300kg limit set by the nuclear deal, and was producing enriched uranium at a rate of six kilograms per day.

Around 1,100 kilograms of reactor-grade uranium would be required to produce enough highly enriched fissile material for a single nuclear weapon.

Here’s a visual of the Iranian parliamentary session as politicians chanted “death to America”, and the speaker warned: “Mr Trump, this is the voice of Iranian nation. Listen.”

EPA/ICANA NEWS AGENCY HANDOUT

Elsewhere in Tehran, angry mourners burned American and Israeli flags.

And in the city of Ahvaz, tens of thousands of mourners turned out as Soleimani’s coffin was paraded through the streets.

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 13:13

3 hours ago

While Trump’s usual allies have defended the seemingly reckless decision to kill Soleimani, he faced criticism from one unusual source last night – Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 13:02

As Dominic Raab says Trump had a right to self-defence, scepticism is mounting over US claims of an ‘imminent’ threat

According to Middle East analyst Rukmini Callimachi, US officials briefed after the drone strike on Soleimani have contradicted official claims that by killing the Iranian general, America averted an “imminent” attack.

Ms Callimachi, who reports for the New York Times and provides analysis for NBC, said one official had described the justification for the “chaotic” strike as “razor thin”.

Echoing similar reports elsewhere, the official said that after the attack on an Iraqi base which killed an American defence contractor, Mr Trump was given several options for retaliation, of which killing Suleimani was the “far out option”.

Despite alleged fury at the killing of the US contractor, Mr Trump is said to initially have gone with a more moderate option of strikes on the Popular Mobilisation Forces. He reportedly changed his mind after the protests at the US embassy in Baghdad.

One Republican source told CNN that Mr Trump had been warned by his advisers that if he did not take some form of military action, Iran would continue to attempt such attacks.

“I am very confident he was not reluctant,” he said, adding that when Mr Trump has decided to act “you can’t out escalate him.”

Raab’s defence of Trump criticised by Labour

The foreign secretary took an abrupt turn in his position on the Soleimani killing this morning, as he insisted Donald Trump had “a right to self-defence”.

Given the shadow chancellor had previously urged Boris Johnson, who has been silent during his Carribean holiday, to go beyond calls for restraint and condemn the attacks outright, he was quick to criticise Mr Raab for his comments to Sophy Ridge.

Emergency parliament meeting in Iraq over future of US troops looks uncertain

The session called to debate the withdrawal of US troops was due to begin at 1pm local time (10am GMT), but is still yet to commence.

According to CNN, only about 20 of a possible 329 politicians have arrived, casting doubt on whether or not the meeting will take place.

Since the US airstrike that killed Soleimani and the Popular Mobilisation Forces commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, rival Shiite leaders have come together in an unusual show of unity to call for the expulsion of US troops from the country.

“There is no need for the presence of American forces after defeating Daesh (Islamic State),” said Ammar al-Shibli, a member of the parliamentary legal committee told Reuters. “We have our own armed forces which are capable of protecting the country.”

Hadi al-Amiri, the top candidate to succeed Muhandis, repeated his call for US troops to leave Iraq during Saturday’s funeral procession.

While several parties have now floated plans to restrict the US presence in Iraq, to various degrees, prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi’s approval also hangs in the balance for plans announced on Saturday to restrict the movement of coalition forces in Iraq.

It is unclear how far-ranging the proposed restrictions would be. Some 3,000 additional US troops have been deployed to the region, which currently houses 5,200 American soldiers.

5 hours ago

Iranian MP claims Islamic Republic has power to ‘attack the White House’

“We can attack the White House itself, we can respond to them on the American soil. We have the power, and God willing we will respond in an appropriate time,” said Abolfazl Abutorabi, a hardline MP, according to Iranian news agency ILNA .

The hardline lawmaker urged Iran “should crush America’s teeth” in response to a question on whether and how the Islamic Republic would react to the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, in a furious parliamentary session held on Sunday.

“This is a declaration of war, which means if you hesitate you lose,” Mr Abutorabi added. “When someone declares war do you want to respond to the bullets with flowers? They will shoot you in the head.”

The Independent’s international correspondent, Borzou Daragahi, said the MP was an obscure lawmaker known for making incendiary remarks and suggested the claims should be treated with a large dose of scepticism.

He said Iran was not believed to have any missiles capable of reaching Washington DC, and an individual suicide attack would likely be the only realistic means of Tehran targeting the capital.

Any significant military action by Iran would have to be vetted and approved by its Supreme National Security Council, a body that includes Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and the leaders of the various branches of government and armed forces.

Mr Abutorabi also echoed previous suggestions that Iran could target ships in the Strait of Hormuz, where the Royal Navy was sent yesterday to escort ships.

“There are tens of thousands of possibilities for us to respond. Responding to the Americans in open waters does not pose any problem for us in terms of international regulations. We can take our revenge inside Iraq or in open waters.”

Andy.Gregory

5 January 2020 12:09

5 hours ago

Baghdad rocked by blasts late on Saturday night, near US embassy and forces

With funeral processions were still taking place last night in Baghdad, as some Iraqis mourned the death of Soleimani and commander of the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, there were several explosions at significant locations across the city.

The US-led coalition confirmed a rocket attack had taken place inside Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where the US embassy and government buildings are housed.

Another hit the nearby Jadriya neighbourhood, some 500 metres from the president’s usual residence of As-Salam palace. Police sources told Reuters five people were injured.

Several more mortars were fired at the Balad air base north of the city. The US-led coalition said no troops were hurt.