If you guessed that Cornel West filled in his standard ad libs more leftist than thou essay by professing that he loved, "Brother or Sister So-and-so," then proceeding to use the word "neo-liberal" in every sentence and "racist" and "globalist" in every other sentence, then you guessed right.

Yes, the so-called leftist is once again attacking members of the left while giving the right a free pass. Indeed, his anti-globalist rhetoric would not sound out of place in a Donald Trump speech. It is all the nativism with the white supremacy replaced by black nationalism. Yet, Bernie Sanders chose to put Cornel West on the DNC platform committee, which West then dumped on by endorsing Jill Stein.

Sadly, Cornel West is just an opportunist who cannot resist the attention he gets when attacks members of the left from the left. So, expect him to be featured widely in the upcoming 2018 election cycle. It should be a clue that you are on the wrong side of the argument when Richard Spencer is on your side.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/arts/ta-nehisi-coates-deletes-twitter-account-cornel-west.html?_r=0

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/20/16795746/ta-nehisi-coates-cornel-west-twitter

ut West’s criticisms resurfaced in the past month when he brought up Coates in an interview with the New York Times Magazine. In discussing the “black elite leadership” that has tried to fit into “a neoliberal world,” West cited “[d]ear brother Ta-Nehisi Coates” as an example. Commenting on Coates’s book, We Were Eight Years in Power, West remarked, “Who’s the ‘we’? When’s the last time he’s been through the ghetto, in the hoods, to the schools and indecent housing and mass unemployment? We were in power for eight years? My God. Maybe he and some of his friends might have been in power, but not poor working people.”

West further elaborated on this point in his op-ed in the Guardian on Sunday, arguing that Coates’s analysis of white supremacy neglects some of its worst crimes.

“He represents the neoliberal wing that sounds militant about white supremacy but renders black fightback invisible,” West wrote. “This wing reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.”

He added, “The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.”

This illustrates the problem with progressives like Bernie who try to blame Democratic losses on Democrats playing "identity politics" as he did right after the election.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/307014-sanders-dems-must-move-beyond-identity-politics

This ignores that Trump and Republicans have been playing the white resentment card with increasing impunity. The basic quid pro quo is that the white working class gets a scapegoat in the form of blaming minorities, immigrants and working women. In return, the rich get huge tax cuts and cuts in benefits that benefit the working class. This is modern populism. It is not about providing benefits to the working class. It is about stoking and reinforcing racism and sexism.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study

More than a year after President Donald Trump won the election, there are still some questions about what drove him to victory: Was it genuine anxiety about the state of the economy? Or was it racism and racial resentment?

Over at the Washington Post, researchers Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen have published the results of a new survey on these questions, with a focus on the 41 percent of white millennials who voted for Trump and the sense of “white vulnerability” that motivated them. The conclusion is very clear:

Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.

So what was? Racial resentment.

Even progressives are sometimes tempted to tap into this racism by catering to anti-immigrant, anti-trade and isolationist rhetoric. How many times have folks on this Board bought into the anti-Globalist chants? Not surprisingly, Russian trolls try to reinforce this here and throughout Europe to promote isolationism.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/12/17/how-white-nationalists-tapped-into-decades-pent-up-racism-spark-movement/859455001/

This summer's seemingly overnight arrival of the self-described "alt-right" and white nationalist groups — marked most prominently by a deadly car attack at the August "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va. — drew worldwide headlines, but the movement simmered for decades before it burst into public view.

Underlying that shift from society's fringes to center stage is a new strategy that taps into the frustrations of white people angry at a society they say has marginalized them and a new political landscape that appears to give voice to their cause.

President Trump’s election last year became a major rallying point for white nationalists, who watched as the Republican repeatedly amplified some of their views in campaign rallies and tweets.

“It just absolutely electrified this community,” Keegan Hankes, an analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hates groups, including the KKK. “They really felt like they had someone to rally behind.”

So, Trump is claiming that Democrats secretly like his tax plan a lot, but are not saying so, because of political reasons. You can just hear Trump's voice, "Bernie Sanders, you know you like my tax plan. You do. C'mon say it. Say it. I look in your eyes and you know want it."

At the same time, doesn't this sound like his encounters with women: "You know you enjoyed it when I as touching you. It was the greatest thrill of your life. Don't lie. Don't lie. Your welcome. You just let me know when you'd like another visit with little Donnie."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-says-democrats-like-his-tax-plan-a-lot/

President Trump made his closing argument for his tax plan Wednesday, saying Democrats like the legislation "a lot" but can't talk about it or vote for it for purely political reasons.

"We will have very little Democratic support, probably none, and that is purely for political reasons," Mr. Trump said in a speech at the White House Wednesday, surrounded by Christmas trees and families the White House invited to promote his tax plan. "They like it a lot. And they cannot say it."

The president offered his remarks just as House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise agreement in principle on the differences between their two versions of legislation. The conferees officially met for the first time on Wednesday, although members have been discussing the details of the bill, CBS News' Nancy Cordes has reported.

Republicans in the House and Senate hope to vote on -- and pass -- the legislation early next week. Senate Republicans are under additional pressure to pass the bill before Democrat Doug Jones -- Alabama's senator-elect after he defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election Tuesday night -- is seated in the Senate, though the election results are not likely to be certified until after lawmakers have voted on the bill. Jones' election will give the GOP only a 51-49 edge in the Senate, a slim majority as the Trump administration looks to its agenda in 2018 and beyond.

And in a parallel universe, Republicans are defending Moore by arguing that it was once okay for older men to go after 14 year old girls. I know some Democrats on this Board argue that Democrats should be just as rabid and partisan in defending their own, but I am not so sure I want to go down that road.

https://www.salon.com/2017/12/07/fox-news-guest-seducing-14-year-olds-may-not-have-been-that-unusual-40-years-ago/

On Wednesday night's Fox News broadcast of "Your World With Neil Cavuto," guest and CEO of the conservative advocacy group Independent Women's Voice, Heather Higgins, posited that, hey, maybe making sexual advances to a 14-year-old in the late 1970s wasn't all that out of the mainstream.

Speaking about the allegations against Republication Alabama senatorial candidate Roy Moore who, among other things, has been accused of initiating sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl in 1979, Higgins was asked by host Cavuto about the statute of limitations concerning statutory rape.

"You would think that that has expired for something that was 40 years ago," she said, "and I suspect that that’s part of why if you look at the polling in Alabama, a lot of the Alabamians don’t believe it."

She continued. "[Moore's] been in public life for a very, very long time. Dating somebody who was much younger may be something that we find repugnant, but 40 years ago in Alabama it may not have been that unusual."

Who knew that so many liberals and progressives are ideologically aligned with Sean Hannity. I read one post by someone on DU proclaiming that they are leaving the Democratic party because women Senators demanded that Senator Franken should resign due to credible allegations of harassment. These posts were echoed with violent sounding threats and remarks directors at Franken's accusers. Thus, you have to ask? Are we conceding that Franken's multiple accusers were all lying and making allegations of harassment for some personal advantage? Was Sean Hannity and Mercedes Colwin correct?

https://slate.com/business/2017/11/mercedes-colwin-tells-hannity-women-lie-about-harassment-for-money.html

I try not to allow myself to get worked up about the vile things Fox News hosts and their guests say on air most nights. But I’ve had trouble getting this clip from Thursday night’s Hannity out of my head. In it, a powerful female attorney with a management role at a major American law firm says that women frequently make up sexual harassment claims for money and that actual victims of sexual predators are “few and far between.”

Fox News legal analyst Mercedes Colwin was appearing on Sean Hannity’s show to discuss the bombshell allegations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who according the Washington Post took home and undressed a 14-year-old girl when he was a 32-year-old prosecutor. The segment went about how you would expect. Hannity argued that people shouldn’t rush to judgment and that Moore deserved our presumption of innocence. Colwin, an employment lawyer who has appeared on the network since 2005, invoked her experience representing “hundreds of corporate executives that have been accused of sexual misconduct,” and confirmed for Hannity that women often lie about harassment for political purposes or money.

Hannity: Do people do it for money? Do they do it for political reasons? Is that more common than people think?

Colwin: Oh definitely.

Hannity: They will lie to make money?

Colwin: Undoubtedly. I mean, there are individuals who will come forward with these outrageous allegations, and they fall…

Hannity: And that hurts women who are victims.

Colwin: Yes. I used to work in sex crimes in the DA’s office. It was very pitiful to see that. Because some jurors don’t believe it because they have, in their own lives, there are people who have made these accusations for money. You see this time and time and time again. And sexual harassment, that term is coined everywhere, frankly, the laws are very clear about what it takes to have some sort of violation of the law. You have to have some sort of damage. And these individuals, a lot of these women, it’s all about money, and they bank on the fact that these corporations have the reputation that they want to save.

The Mueller subpoena of Deutsche Bank, which happens to be up in its eyeballs in Russian money laundering problems, shows that Mueller investigation is starting to get real, which is why Trump's allies have started clamoring to fire Mueller.



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-robert-mueller-may-be-interested-in-trumps-deutsche-bank-records-w513399

If anyone was going to be the Forrest Gump of the Russia investigation, we're lucky it was Guardian reporter Luke Harding. Harding has spent years reporting on Russia, a career that's meant he's happened to be in certain important places at certain critical times, during which he's happened to interview central figures in the still-unfolding political drama gripping the United States.

For instance, weeks before news broke of a salacious dossier detailing alleged leverage Russia may hold over then President-elect Donald Trump, Harding and a colleague were in a London pub meeting with an ex-British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele about a story they were working on. And a few years earlier, Harding happened to be on assignment in Ukraine, where he happened to interview an American political consultant named Paul Manafort about the work he was doing for Russia's preferred presidential candidate. Then there was the day he spent driving around with Aras Agalarov – the Russian oligarch who connected Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Now Harding has incorporated those stories, along with other relevant experiences – such as the time the FSB broke into his home in Moscow, presumably to bug it, and left a book on sex and relationships on his bedside table – into a book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russian Helped Donald Trump Win. Among its most interesting chapters is one relating to Tuesday's news that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed Trump's records with Deutsche Bank.

In Collusion, Harding details Trump's attempts in 2008 to default on some $330 million he owed Deutsche Bank for its help financing the construction of the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago. The bank sued to force Trump to pay a portion of the debt: $40 million plus legal fees and interest. This was the middle of the financial crisis, a fact Trump tried to leverage in court, arguing he should not have to repay money he owed Deutsche Bank because it was "one of the banks primarily responsible for the economic dysfunction we are currently facing." In fact, Trump went on, because of the bank's role in creating this "once-in-a-century credit tsunami," Deutsche Bank owed him money, to the tune of $3 billion in damages.

With tonight's vote, Congress is about to give a huge tax cut to the rich, which gives the top 1 percent the return on investment they were banking on when they plowed millions of dollars into Republican elections. Yes, they are raising taxes and cutting benefits for the poor and middle class. Millions of people will lose their healthcare. Yet, Trump did get what they bargained for, validation by the President of their racial superiority. They have a man who will validate their prejudices that societies ills are caused by minorities, immigrants, women in the work force, gays, etc.

And what is the value of that false sense of superiority? Apparently, it is priceless. It is worth more than one's health. It is worth more than keeping one's daughters safe from a pedophile. This is the price of hate that we are now paying.