It's an increasingly weird phenomenon, attracting the strangest bedfellows: Christian evangelicals convinced that all Jews are damned, quite literally, (unless they convert) embrace hell-bound, right-wing Zionist Jews and cast themselves as better friends to Israel (and all Jewry) than Jews who vote Democratic and oppose current Israeli government policies. This evangelical 'love' of Israel is not exactly ecumenical or particularly humane. It's mostly reflective of an apocalyptic theology - the belief that the Second Coming and the long-awaited rapture that will teleport Christians to heaven will occur only after the Jews return to Israel. Once, these views flourished mainly on the political fringe. Today they drive US foreign policy. Secretary of state Mike Pompeo is a fervent right-wing Christian Zionist, a holy warrior, engaged in a 'neverending struggle' until 'the rapture'.It should be obvious that this transactional support for Israel, based on a very particular Christian theology, is not inconsistent with at least inchoate anti-Semitism. (How else might we categorise the conviction that Jews are damned?) But the alliance between right-wing Christian and Jewish Zionists is transactional on both sides, and is partly a tribute to the power of partisan politics. Orthodox Jewish Republicans, like presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, are content to share the stage with far-right Republican preachers who have long expressed dim views of Jews and Judaism. As the New York Times observed: 'A Dallas evangelical pastor who once said that Jewish people are going to hell and a megachurch televangelist who claimed that Hitler was part of God's plan to return Jews to Israel both played prominent roles on Monday in the opening ceremony of the new American Embassy in Jerusalem.'But the weirdness of anti-Semitism today is not simply rooted in theology. It is also political, or perhaps, in some cases, psychological. Consider the strangeness of xenophobic presidential adviser Stephen Miller, a descendent of Jewish immigrants and an architect of Trump's draconian anti-immigration policies who embraces white nationalism. Listen to the rantings of Rudy Giuliani, the erratic, possibly demented, Italian-American Trump fixer, who declares himself a better Jew than Holocaust survivor George Soros. He 'doesn't go to church, he doesn't go to religion', Giuliani explains nonsensically. But Soros's real sin, of course, is the fact that he has devoted much of his considerable fortune to supporting liberal or progressive causes and candidates, and, according to Giuliani, 'he's an enemy of Israel'.What do Trumpists like Giuliani mean when they label someone an enemy of Israel? They mean that he opposes Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems to share a motto with Donald Trump: L'etat c'est moi. From this perspective, a lot of Israeli Jews eager to oust Netanyahu are also enemies of Israel, just as Americans who oppose Donald Trump are enemies of his state. (Trumpists, for example, condemn Americans who question the wisdom or legality of the Soleimani killing as treasonous terrorist lovers who mourn his death.)Jewish Americans who oppose both Trump and Netanyahu are deemed doubly treasonous. The nominally Protestant, apparently irreligious Donald Trump casts himself as 'King of Israel' and 'the chosen one' and claims that Jews who support Democrats (a majority of Jewish voters) are guilty of 'either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty... you vote for a Democrat, you're being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you're being very disloyal to Israel.'So Trump, this gentile 'King of Israel', schools Jews on their tribal obligations partly by indulging in anti-Semitic stereotypes: he chides them for violating what he assumes are, or should be, their dual loyalties to Israel and the US. He reminds them that they love money and will vote for him, even if they dislike him, because Democrats like Elizabeth Warren want to tax their wealth. 'You're brutal killers, not nice people at all', the president told a group of wealthy Jews, approvingly. [...][S]tereotyping is, of course, the basis of bigotry, and while Trump may feel some kinship with his stereotyped vision of 'money-grubbing' Jews, while he has Jewish grandchildren and a favoured daughter who converted to Judaism, he's encouraged and benefitted from a Christian nationalist movement and the rise of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Indeed, he employs anti-Semitic memes when they serve him politically. He has, for example, advanced the fiction that Jewish billionaire Soros funded the caravan of 'very dangerous' Central American immigrants seeking refuge in the US. After all, 'a lot of people are saying' that Soros, the right-wing symbol of an imagined globalist Jewish conspiracy, was behind the 'invasion' of people who 'don't have the wellbeing of our country in mind'. Trump made these remarks shortly after a crazed wingnut murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, in the belief that Jews were behind an 'invasion' of non-white immigrants.
The key exchange with Maddow comes after she asks Parnas if he met with Sergey Shaffer, a senior Zelensky aide. Maddow notes that it has been reported that Parnas conveyed to Schaffer that Zelensky must announce an investigation of Biden, in order to get the military aid released.Then this happened:PARNAS: The message that I was supposed -- that I gave Sergey Shaffer was a very harsh message. I was told to give it to him in a very harsh way, not in a pleasant way.MADDOW: Who told you to give it to him a harsh way?PARNAS: Mayor Giuliani, Rudy, told me after, you know, meeting the president at the White House. He called me. The message was, it wasn't just military aid, it was all aid. Basically their relationships would be sour, that he would -- that we would stop giving them any kind of aid that --MADDOW: Unless?PARNAS: -- unless there was an announcement made.The important thing here is that Parnas is alleging that Giuliani directly told him to convey the message to Ukraine that the military aid was contingent on announcing the investigations Trump wanted -- after talking to Trump about it.
The FBI has arrested three alleged members of a white supremacist group on federal gun charges and other alleged crimes, according to people familiar with the matter.The charges, expected to be unsealed Thursday, grew from an investigation of a somewhat new effort among online extremists who refer to themselves as "the Base," which is the English translation of "al Qaida." According to experts who track hate groups, the Base promotes racist views and seeks to unite different hate groups in preparation for a "race war."
"Those of us in the insurance industry constantly hustled to prevent significant reforms because changes threatened to eat into our companies' enormous profits," Potter wrote.Potter resigned his position at Cigna in 2008. And he testified to Congress a year later about the practices of an industry that "flouts regulations" and "makes promises they have no intention of keeping." He's since become a leading reform advocate.The activist said in the Times op-ed that healthcare executives were well aware their insurance often severely limited the ability of Americans to personally decide how they accessed and received medical care, unless they wanted to pay huge sums of money out of their own pockets."But those of us who held senior positions for the big insurers knew that one of the huge vulnerabilities of the system is its lack of choice," Potter said. "In the current system, Americans cannot, in fact, pick their own doctors, specialists or hospitals - at least, not without incurring huge 'out of network' bills."The "choice" talking point, Potter wrote, polled well in focus groups that insurers set up to test their messaging against reform plans, leading them to adopt it.Now he is shocked to see an argument that he had a hand in engineering used among Democrats battling to claim their party's nomination to face off against President Trump in the 2020 election - and Potter says the insurers likely see it as a huge victory for them."What's different now is that it's the Democrats parroting the misleading 'choice' talking point - and even using it as a weapon against one another," Potter wrote. "Back in my days working in insurance P.R., this would have stunned me. It's why I believe my former colleagues are celebrating today."
This has to be a first in American history. A foreign government rushing to the defense of a senior U.S. career Ambassador to defend her from people deputized by the President of the United States. And the Secretary of State refuses to say one word in her defense. https://t.co/r25A1Y4QN0
— Nicholas Burns (@RNicholasBurns) January 16, 2020
The White House budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report."Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law," the GAO wrote in an eight-page report.
Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg will blitz Iowa before the state kicks off the party's nominating contest on Feb. 3, while their key rivals will be largely unable to campaign because they must sit as Senate jurors in Republican President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.
Ukraine launches investigation into 'spying' on former ambassador by Trump's associates https://t.co/iJJlNzklAe
— The Independent (@Independent) January 16, 2020
To understand more about the motivations driving the rallies, and where they might lead, Mother Jones spoke at length to [Peyman Jafari, a researcher and historian at Princeton University's Center for Iran Persian Gulf Studies], who studies Iran's history, social movements, and politics.Could you give some background on the massive Iranian protests in November and December, and connect them to what's going on now?[T]here has been an accumulation of crises in Iran. The crises of competency, of legitimacy, the socioeconomic crisis. The current establishment has moved away from promises of social justice and equality, and has introduced more neoliberal policies since the 1990s. Now we see flexibility in the labor market, lots of precarious jobs, subcontracting. Wages are basically low. Lots of strikes we see happening are about unpaid wages or low wages. And then we have an environmental crisis, particularly in southern Iran, with drought and so on.All these crises are converging, and the demands are affecting both the lower classes and the middle classes, which have seen a huge drop in their income. So there is a chance of these [different protests] converging, but this will not happen automatically. What you need is actually people, organizations, trade unions, NGOs, activist networks that can make these connections, that can formulate these kinds of demands.Was there any overlap between Iranians who protested the Soleimani assassination and the people who demonstrated against the airplane attack or the gas price hike?Some people have been commenting that these protests mean Iranians were not united by the Soleimani assassination. But it's important to stress that Iran is a large country, and it's not monolithic. These can be existing groups, parallel to each other. Even more so, the same person can be against the assassination of Soleimani and be against corruption and authoritarianism in Iran. I think the assassination of Soleimani crystallized a nationalism that is still very strong in Iran. Those things can really exist simultaneously.There's a lot of Iran-related disinformation on social media, especially Twitter, Telegram, and Instagram, where accounts with few followers sometimes share unverifiable info about demonstrations and crackdowns. How concerned should we be about disinformation as we try to make sense of these protests?Disinformation is being sent out by the Iranian government and by the US government, which also organizes a disinfo campaign. You have these bots organized by very small but rich outside groups, such as the MKO [an armed, US-backed opposition group] and royalists, that create an echo chamber.Trump was bragging about his tweet in Persian being the most retweeted Persian-language tweet. But much of that retweeting happens by these bots, and through these online activist cyber armies like the MKO. Their activism, now, is basically tweeting. They have these halls of aging activists sitting behind computers and sending out tweets all day long. [On Saturday, Trump issued his first Farsi tweet: "To the brave and suffering people of Iran: from the beginning of my presidency, I have stood with you, and my government will continue to stand with you. We are following your protests closely. Your courage is inspirational."]That's definitely part of reality, but not the entire reality. There are other Iranians on Twitter, on social media, both outside of and within Iran, who are very active and taking positions. One should not dismiss those as not genuine. There is lots of genuine activity.Are distortions on social media a major concern within Iran, especially for protestors?In Iran, no. In Iran, people, by this time, know where everything's happening. When Trump tweeted in Persian, a lot of Iranians' reaction was just, "Shut up. You have instituted a travel ban. You have targeted our cultural sites. You have been sanctioning us." People are aware of that.
The phase one trade deal between the U.S. and China signed in Washington on Wednesday is notable not for what it includes, but for what it omits, according to international trade experts."Phase one is not a trade agreement but just puts an end to costly escalation that was going nowhere," said Peter Petri, a professor of international finance at the Brandeis International Business School.The agreement focuses heavily on a commitment by China for purchases of $200 billion worth of U.S. farm products and other exports, with much less emphasis on the bigger issues standing between the two countries. The two sides also agreed to restart semi-annual meetings to discuss economic reform and dispute resolution.In a highly unusual move, the administration did not make the actual agreement available ahead of the signing, as is customary -- raising some skepticism about the enforcement mechanisms contained in the text. "I'm looking at the technology transfer and intellectual property provisions to see what the specific enforcement mechanisms are. My question is, how is this going to work?" said Dean A. Pinkert, senior counsel at the law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed and a former commissioner of the U.S. International Trade Commission."The two sides have reached a deal simply by avoiding the difficult issues like intellectual property protection in China," said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics. "China has no desire to change the way its economy operates.""It doesn't so far include anything that is related to the entire issues surrounding Huawei, 5G, export controls, or a host of new technologies," said Jacob Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "More importantly, there is nothing here concerning Chinese subsidies and I think that, in many ways, is the big omission," he said. "If you're worried about China as a long-term tech competitor, then clearly the logic of that argument rests with the fact that the Chinese are quote-unquote rigging the system through state-owned subsidies."
For a man who owned casinos -- with a famously rocky track record on them -- President Trump doesn't evince much interest in safe bets. Most presidents with a booming economy look to consolidate their winnings ahead of a re-election campaign and dial down risks that could upend their electoral standing. But with the strike on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Trump has rolled the dice in his biggest foreign-policy gamble yet -- and might end up paying the price for it in November.What makes this gamble particularly remarkable is that Trump won over the right-leaning populists in the GOP by explicitly rejecting the interventionist "neo-conservatism" of the Bush administrations. He ran against the liberal-democracy interventionism of the Clinton and Obama administrations. Trump not only promised to stop starting new wars, especially in the Middle East, he pledged to end the wars in which we found ourselves.Why take this risk at the start of an election year? With near-unanimous backing in the GOP, Trump had kept both foreign-policy wings of the party in the same tent. His need was not to consolidate Republicans but to attract new voters without losing old ones.In this sense, the drone strike has already taken its toll. The more popular leaders of the GOP's non-interventionist wing have joined Democrats in publicly scolding Trump for overstepping his authority by killing an official of a foreign government, and without any consultation with Congress. Those include usual allies, like Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), as well as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), normally an enthusiastic supporter of Trump. They are not alone in their unhappiness; as many as 10 Senate Republicans may vote for a Democrat-initiated resolution rebuking Trump for overstepping his authority, limiting him to 30 days of action against Iran regardless of imminence without congressional approval. That's not enough to survive a veto, but it's enough to demonstrate the serious split the Soleimani strike has created within the GOP.
He may have grabbed headlines this week after his appointment to lead the prosecution team into Donald Trump's impeachment, but not a single contestant on 'Jeopardy!' last night could identify House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff from a photograph.The photo, a clue for a $12,000 prize, was within the 'US Representatives' category and accompanied by the hint: 'One-fifty-third of California's House delegation is this House Intelligence Committee chairman.'None of the three contestants buzzed in to identify him.
His 49%-42% lead is the largest among all the Democrats, though 9% remain undecided with voting for the Democratic nomination getting underway in Iowa on Feb. 3. Michigan's primary is March 10.Former Vice President Joe Biden leads Trump 50%-44% and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont holds a 50%-45% lead on the president in the survey, for which 600 likely voters were polled between Thursday and Sunday.The poll, which has a margin of error of 4 percentage points, also shows South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg with a 47%-43% lead on Trump and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts edging the president 48%-45%.