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Some people plan to sit out the primary election and just vote in the general election in November.

In the primary election, you will be voting for delegates to the national convention. These delegates will select the candidate who will be on the ballot in November. In the general election you will be voting for electors to the Electoral College. These will actually elect the president.

Tennessee has 11 electors to the Electoral College. It is winner take all. The last time that Tennessee voted for a Democrat in the presidential election was in 1996, and the state has become redder every year since.

My point is that if you are a Democrat in Tennessee, your vote in November is less important than the vote in March. The presidential election will be decided in the swing states Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska's second congressional district, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The decision for Democrats is who has the best chance to win in those areas of the country. This decision will be made in the primaries.

Please consider carefully and show up to vote on Super Tuesday, March 3 (early voting ends Feb. 25).

Jim Milburn, Lookout Mountain, Tennessee

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Limbaugh, Trump are two peas in a pod

It's a good thing I didn't have a brick handy as I watched the latest State of the Union speech. If I had, I'm pretty sure I would have given in to the urge to hurl it at my TV the moment I saw Trump present the Presidential Medal of Freedom to one of the most racist, misogynist, hate-spewing purveyors of half-truths and ultra-conservative nonsense alive today besides the announcer of the award himself, that is.

Rush Limbaugh is to freedom what Lester Maddox was to the Civil Rights movement, or what Andrew Jackson was to Native American goodwill. It's disconcerting to know that he has a following of 15 million fans who hang on his every word.

The TFP's conservative editorial page editor, Clint Cooper, wrote glowingly of Limbaugh as a "pioneer." I suppose there is some truth to that, if the criterion for a talk-radio pioneer is being one of the longest-running and most prolific bloviators of hate, bigotry, and alt-right white male privilege of all time.

Rick Armstrong, Monteagle

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Remember, politics, religion not same

Hate and outrage were quite obvious between Democrats and Republicans during the impeachment trial of President Trump. It continued throughout the State of the Union address.

Two days later at the National Prayer Breakfast, lacking was the assurance of restored unity and nonpartisanship. The president was acquitted, but the American people will never forget the dangerous partisan politics that played out by the opposing party.

Politicians think it's their duty to apply their best reasoning, including conscience and judgment, to their work rather than some perception of universal truth. Politics is not religion. It is not the battleground of good and evil. Religious people worship God. They do not worship political parties or ideologies.

Political opponents are not enemies. They all are advocates for the common good. They are to be a unifying force working to bind the nation together. They should advocate political compromise and make the case that the spirit of compromise is consistent with their faith.

Discussing religion and politics, I mean Judeo-Christian faith. I don't doubt the sincerity of our politicians' faith; however, the prayer breakfast promotes humility in the face of God's judgment and calls each other to fellowship across political differences.

Amos Taj, Ooltewah

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Primary election crucial for Democrats and more letters to the editors - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Welcome to the Voodoo West, a place where everybody wants the impossible and hopes for the unrealistic.

The West used to be the global middle class of politics. The ideals were great, the goals were moderate, and everyone was hard at work. Now the ideals are forgotten, the goals are grandiose, and laziness, especially lazy thinking, prevails.

This is the impression you can get of Western politics if you take one or two steps back, extract yourself from the daily fear and loathing of headline politics, and try to get a proper reading of the bigger picture.

The West consists of those parts of the world in which the ideas of the French and American revolutions of the late 18th centuries are embraced as the standard for public affairs.

The standards established by these revolutions rational self-government, regulated power distribution, proper legal procedure, freedom of speech, property rights form a great ideal that is not easy to live up to.

The yardstick of Westernness was therefore not whether a society would adhere to these standards flawlessly, but how seriously it would deal with violations against them.

Knowing full well that in a world run by humans perfection is impossible to get, the basis of western politics is not spotlessness but self-correction.

The basis for such permanent self-adjustment is a realistic view on where things stand. What is required is soberness about one's own goals and their achievability, and about the power, resources, limitations and weaknesses one brings to the game.

None of the West's major protagonists seems to have a very balanced assessment of these factors these days. Most of them run on delusion, self-deceit, dreams, misinterpretations of reality and what Marx would have called "false consciousness".

Take the United States. This president's foreign policies are fundamentally based on the idea that the US is endowed with an endless supply of strength and power that will forever make it the most powerful country in the world which will forever be able to prevail in any conflict it chooses or is forced to enter.

Such a country needs no rules, no treaties, no international organisations or multilateral institutions. Most importantly, it needs no allies, just tributaries.

Absolute sovereignty reigns supreme for such a country, and it is allowed to behave accordingly.

Or at least its president is. The flawed assumptions of limitless strength creates its own fatal political logic. If power is endless, values are negotiable.

If values are negotiable, power becomes absolute. And if power becomes absolute, corruption becomes absolute as well.

If allies are dispensable, treating them with disdain is not just possible, it is excusable. Sooner or later they will then no longer be allies. Within the paradigm of big power competition, the faith in one's own endless strength becomes a self-defeating proposition.

But this is not just about the United States, even though as the West's key power it deserves special scrutiny. Other parts of the West have their own extreme bouts of self-betrayal.

Germany believes that it can benefit from a shared European currency without paying for it. It also believes that it can have a strong, free and rich Europe in the world without arming and going to war for it.

It also believes that the UN is guaranteeing world peace. And it believes that if only the rest of the bunch was as virtuous as Germany, the world would be a better place.

The UK believes its special relationship with the US is still intact.

It truly seems to believe that it was EU regulations that prevented it from becoming a Singapore in the North Sea.

Perhaps it even believes it is desirable to be Singapore at all. It believes it can strike better trade deals outside of the EU than inside of the EU. And it really believes rather strongly that exiting the EU has anything to do with regaining control over its own affairs.

President Emmanuel Macron, on behalf of France, seems to believe that he can lead Europe on the euro, on defence, on China and on agricultural policy without too many of the quarrels of Brussels compromise-making and alliance-building.

He believes he can somehow make his country's nuclear deterrent meaningful for all of Europe without sharing it. He is also the crown witness for all of those who believe that European strategic autonomy is somehow in the books, despite zero evidence in its favour.

The Fridays for Future movement seems to believe that you can rebuild the economy of 500 million people in Europe without any politics involved, just by decree based on good intentions and a culture of generational victimhood.

Europe's alt-right hardliners believe they can build better lives for anyone based on a permanent battle against 'the other'.

Europe's illiberals and nationalists believe that the culture they want to preserve can be protected by building fences or stifling domestic dissent.

Hyper-integrationist activists believe that a European republic is about to emerge any moment now, leaving all national bickering and narrow identities behind.

The European Commission seems to believe that it can be a relevant geopolitical force by leveraging its trade and regulatory powers, but it is still unable to convince any EU member state that the commission should actually be geopolitical at all.

The principal driver of European politics at both the country and the EU level seems to be delusion and self-deceit.

The continent that gave the world the liberating force of enlightenment has collectively reverted to believing in fairy tales and the soothing power of cozy narrowness.

The leaders in Moscow and Beijing like what they see, and they are doing everything to strengthen the trend.

In this age of political endarkenment, pragmatists, non-zealous idealists, un-cynical realists and level-headed leaders without an unduly elevated sense of self-importance are needed more than ever. Irrationality often makes for the most beautiful moments in life.

But it makes for very bad politics.

See more here:
Western 'endarkenment' and the voodoo politics of Europe - EUobserver

When the White House released its plan for the creation of a Palestinian state that also gives due consideration to Israeli security, writes Seth Mandel, a number of major Jewish organizations rushed to condemn it. The self-styled pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street lambasted the plan for being too pro-Israel, as did the Israel Policy Forumfounded in the 1990s at the behest of Yitzak Rabin. Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) responded equivocally. To Mandel, this attitude is only a symptom of a deeper problem:

What we are seeing is [that] American Jewish leaders fail to take seriously the rising tide of anti-Semitism that masquerades as anti-Zionismand even the way progressive groups enable it.

Consider the story of the anti-Semitic crime spree in New York. . . . The media ignored the violence until there was blood in the streets; the organized Jewish world reacted like a deer in the headlights; non-Orthodox rabbis sneered at the aredi community as it absorbed daily assaults; Jewish intellectuals pretended nothing was happening. [One journalist wrote that] far-right extremism constitutes the paramount threat to American Jewish life today. It was a line the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had been pushing hard as well.

But the renewed violence in the New York area wasnt coming from white nationalists or alt-right poseurs. Many of the attacks caught on tape featured African-American suspects in outer-borough neighborhoods where religious Jews were framed as land-grabbing outsiders, with some residents telling interviewers they viewed Israel as the point of origin for these Jews. In Jersey City, the shooters were reportedly Black Hebrew Israelites, a kind of extreme black nationalist group, apparently motivated by a conspiracy theory that Jews pull the strings of the police to kill black peoplea calumny that took original form as a claim that Israel was training U.S. cops to persecute minorities. Israel very quickly becomes Jews.

Following the October 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the Jerusalem Post asked the ADL whether it would finally drop its long-held opposition to federal security grants for synagogues and other houses of worship. The answer was no. The ADL, an official explained, was still opposed on constitutional grounds. In 2004, the [Reform movements] Religious Action Center put out a memo opposing security funding for Jewish institutions. It dropped its opposition [only] after the Pittsburgh shooting. The constitutional issues were a pretext to elevate liberal political stances over Jewish communal needs, but now appear not to be worth the public-relations headache.

Read more at Commentary

More about: ADL, AIPAC, American Jewry, Anti-Semitism

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The American Jewish Establishment Has Failed to Grapple with the Threat of Anti-Semitism - Mosaic

I, too, know the joys of watching Kent State "gun girl"Kaitlin Bennett get marched off a campus.

Before Bennett was driven off Ohio University campus by a crowd of protesting students this weekmore on that later I had the pleasure of watching as she was ejected from a Bernie Sanders town hall for workers at a high school in Lordstown, Ohio. Later that night, conservative conspiracy theorist, pal of white supremacists and (former) Bumble aficionado Jack Posobiec tweeted a video of Bennetts ejection from the event that went viral and, to my surprise, I made a cameo.

While the focus of the video is on Bennett as shes marched out of the event, oneeagle-eyed Twitter user chose instead to focus on the joy it brought others. Namely, me.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Yeah, thats me in the gray peacoat, mockingly waving at Bennett as she was led out of Sanders rally.

Im ashamed to admit that my brain has been poisoned by the internet enough that I actually recognized Bennett when she arrived at the event. Evidently no one else did, as they let her simply walk into the town hall.

Afterwards, people debated on Twitter whether Bennett should have been kicked out or allowed to stay. In an embarrassing attempt to adhere to nebulous notions of journalistic ethics, my hometown broadcast station even gave Bennett who was at the event on behalf of Alex Jones InfoWars conspiracy website airtime to share her thoughts on what happened.

When questioned by the station, the Sanders campaign (correctly) responded:"We are disappointed the people of the Youngstown community are being shown on the local broadcast news content from InfoWars, a white supremacist platform that has been banned from YouTube, Apple and Facebook for hate speech and targeting the parents of children who died in Sandy Hook."

Turns out Bennett is still at it. Monday she was run off campus by a mob of OU students shouting No one f*****glikes you, Dont come back and (my favorite) Wheres your diaper?, a reference to the widespread rumor that Bennett soiled herself at a frat party at Kent State University.

OU protesters mocked and yelled profanities at Bennett as she and her crew of Liberty Hangout lackeys retreated to their vehicle an enormous orange Ford pickup truck that might actually be more embarrassing than Bennetts rumoredsoiling incidentand fled the scene.

Bennett, of course, is making a big deal of this. Her first port of call was to run to Trump on Twitter and ask himto take away OUs funding, calling the students terrorists in a tweet. She claims the crowd turned against her because she was a Trump supporter.To be fair, OU is a pretty liberal campus, especially for Ohio,but its far more likely that a generation that grew up watching kids their age get gunned down every few months might not take kindly to a conservative gun activist known for open-carrying an AK-47 round college.

Also, lets be honest. Political views aside, at this point, everyone knows Bennetts grift, especially if you are, like me,from northeast Ohio. She drives around the region looking for political events where she can turn up with hermicrophone in search ofunwitting people to interview. Of course the interviews are usually done in bad faith and questions are asked in a way to make people look like liberal wackos for the delight of her audience, who I assume are either geriatrics or horny alt-right dudes.

This bit was played out when Jay Leno was doing it and it was called Jaywalking, and now Bennett is carrying the torch. Even her peers in the world of young "trying to make it cool" conservatismlike Charlie Kirk and his toddlers at Turning PointUSA, as well as the always-entertaining conspiracy theoristsJacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have upped their game to keep the grift fresh. Its hardly shocking to anyone anymore to see college kids being mean to Bennett. Her shtick is getting stale.

I will give this one to Bennett, though:It takes a monumental lack of self-awareness to cry to the President of the United States that students on a college campus acted like "terrorists" by shouting mean things, and to then turn around and threaten to return to that same campus with an brigade of armed people. That about Bennett, at least, is truly original.

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I once went unexpectedly viral because of 'gun girl' Kaitlin Bennett. This week, she reached a new level of hypocrisy - The Independent

Extinction Rebellion protesters dig up a lawn of Trinity College. (Reuters photo)

On Monday, members of an environmental activist group dug up a part of the lawn of Trinity College Cambridge while sparing an apple tree that descended from the one that inspired Sir Isaac Newton. According to news reports, the digging was to protest the colleges alleged role in the destruction of nature, but the protesters symbolically protected the famous apple tree to highlight the colleges collusion in the destruction of farmland.

The group calls itself Extinction Rebellion (XR) and claims to follow the principles of non-violent civil disobedience movements. It was launched in the UK on October 31, 2018, as a response to a report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that implied we only have 12 years to stop catastrophic climate change and our understanding that we have entered the 6th mass extinction event, XR says on its website.

Critics have referred to the groups supporters as environmental fanatics. In its FAQ section, the website raises the question whether the group comprises law breaking anarchists or economic terrorists or eco-fascists; the answer posted is that the members are strictly non-violent and reluctant law breakers.

Before the Trinity College vandalism, another widely reported instance of law-breaking happened in April 2019. The group held a large demonstration in London over a course of 11 days that led to more than 1,100 arrests. Activists caused damage of an estimated over 6,000 at the Shell headquarters and glued themselves and sat on top of trains on the citys light railways.

For the UK, the group lists three demands to tell the truth, which means that the government must declare a climate and ecological emergency; that it must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by the year 2025; that the government must create and be led by a Citizens Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice to meet big, wide-ranging and complex challenges. Such a Citizen Assembly would bring together ordinary people to discuss, investigate and make recommendations on ways to respond to climate change emergencies.

The group says it does not want to rely on traditional systems like petitions or writing to MPs and is more likely to take risks, which includes getting arrested. It claims its movement is to demand adequate action for the unprecedented global emergency, for which polite lobbying, marching, voting etc havent yielded the desired results from decision-makers.

On Wednesday, The Guardian reported that a man and two women have been charged with criminal damage after the digging of the Trinity College lawn. Three others have been charged with criminal damage over another protest that took place the following day. All six people have been released on bail to appear at Cambridge magistrates court on March, The Guardian said quoting police.

Why is it that toxic propaganda posts are shared so widely? In Antisocial: How Online Extremists Broke America, Andrew Marantz, a journalist with The New Yorker, explores how online fringe ideas spread fake news; how truth becomes fake news; and how a candidate who was dismissed as a joke was eventually elected US President by the dark side of the Internet.

To write this book, Marantz spent time with alt-right groups and propagandists who are experts in using social media to their advantage, and he learnt how to make content go viral. Everyone knows the most basic rule of the internet: Dont feed the trolls, and dont take tricksters at their word. The trolls, of the alt-right called themselves provocateurs, or shitposters, or edgelords. And what could be edgier than joking about Hitler? Marantz writes in the book.

Marantz has written extensively about technology, social media, the alt-right, the press, comedy and pop culture.

Pulitzer-prize winning author Elizabeth Kolbert has praised Mrantzs latest book, writing: Antisocial is at once funny and scary, antic and illuminating. Its a must-read for anyone still struggling to understand the last election or hoping to make sense of the next one.

In its review, The Guardian calls it an absorbing and disturbing book that raises two awkward questions. One is whether digital technology now constitutes an existential threat to liberal democracy. Second, was the old media ecosystem, with its elitist gatekeepers, editorial control, political bias and other flaws, really worse than what we have acquired? Or, pace Winston Churchill on democracy, was it just the worst system apart from all the others?

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This Word Means: Extinction Rebellion - Yahoo India News