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Welcome to Evesplaining, politics writer Eve Peyser's new column about why everyone else is wrong and she's right.

This weekend as every weekend, liberals on the internet were buzzing with rage about Trump. This time, it was about an FCC investigation of Stephen Colbert, the late-night host who made waves last week for a monologue joke with this punchline: "The only thing [Trump's] mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's cock holster."

Now, friends, this is a bad joke. There's a whiff of weird homophobia, it doesn't accurately describe the current tense state of US-Russia relations, and "cock holster" makes it sound like Putin is putting his cock in Trump's mouth when it's at rest. It wasn't long before the right-wing internet took a break from calling liberals "snowflakes" and got outraged, throwing around the rather troll-y #FireColbert hashtag. Some people complained to the FCC about the joke. And that's when liberals decided to start a cycle of counter-outrage.

An article on the Hill headlined, "FCC to investigate, 'take appropriate action' on Colbert's Trump rant," which currently has more than 101,000 shares, seems to have been the spark that ignited the left-wing firestorm. To prominent liberals like Sarah Silverman, this was evidence of a Trump administration effort to censor comedians.

"Wow. This is chilling. This kind of shit has to be fought hard at every turn," Silverman wrote on Twitter. And she was not alone in her analysis.

"This is what government censorship looks like," Teen Vogue columnist (and VICE contributor) Lauren Duca remarked, linking to the same article.

"Good thing there's no way this could have a chilling effect on speech critical of the president," Politico reporter Eric Geller wrote.

"States becoming authoritarian often go after comedians early. And remember, there's a woman serving jail time for laughing at Jeff Sessions," liberal commentator Sarah Kendzior opined, referring to a Code Pink activist convicted of charges relating to a protest at Sessions's confirmation hearing.

"When they start to take away our jokes, we should all be worried. All Americans. Regardless of party. This is not normal," comedian Mike Birbiglia asserted.

Except an FCC investigation of obscenity complaints is normal. Really, really normal.

Although free speech is protected by the First Amendment, there are still rules about what can be shown on TVthat's why you don't hear "fuck" on primetime TV and graphic sex scenes are quarantined on networks like HBO and Showtime. The FCC website is pretty clear about this, and also clear that it takes complaints seriously.

"FCC staff reviews each complaint to determine whether it alleges information sufficient to suggest that a violation of the obscenity, profanity or indecency prohibition has occurred," the organization's website explains.

So why were prominent liberals up in arms about this routine FCC investigation? In part, it had to do with how the media framed this non-story. Most people don't know how the FCC process works, and "investigation" is a scary word. Moreover, the "resistance" thinks of Trumpwho is notoriously hostile to the media and political comedyas an authoritarian trying to stifle free speech. The idea that the FCC is now engaging in witch hunts of anti-Trump jokesters is a convenient falsehood.

There are lots of legitimate reasons to criticize the Trump administration's relationship to free press and the First Amendmentthis FCC story is not one of them. And in an age of mass misinformation, especially from the conservative media, it's bad for the public to have these false stories circulating. Fighting fake news with more fake news only creates mass confusion.

The FCC investigation into Colbert's scandalous joke isn't the only questionable story the liberal media has embraced to fit its narrative. Last week, New York ran an article with the headline, "In Trump's America, Being Sexually Assaulted Could Make Your Health Insurance More Expensive," which aggregated a Mic story espousing a similar claim. The libertarian website Reason debunked these claims, explaining that the truth was a lot more mundane and complicated:

Nothing in the new Republican health care bill specifically addresses sexual assault or domestic violence whatsoever. What it does say is that states can apply for waivers that will allow insurance companies, under certain limited circumstances, to charge higher premiums to people based on their personal medical historiesthat's it. (States that are granted the waivers must also set up special high-risk insurance pools to try and help defray costs for these people.) Under Obamacare, no such price variances based on preexisting conditions are permitted.

BuzzFeed was among the few generally left-leaning websites that focused on debunking questionable claims made about the AHCA. The AHCA is a devastating bill that stands to make healthcare unaffordable for the majority of the country, but there's no clause that explicitly makes rape a preexisting condition.

Again, there are plenty of real and dangerous things to be outraged over, and plenty of ways Republicans advance policies that hurt women in particularbut fudging the truth about whether a frighteningly cruel healthcare bill categorizes rape a preexisting condition doesn't do the resistance any favors. It delegitimizes the real story, which is just as sinister as the false narratives that get spread on social media.

Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.

Original post:
The Fake News Liberals Don't Want to Talk About - VICE

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Posted: May 08, 2017 12:01 AM

Liberals are upset theyre always upset that the evil GOP of Hate has condemned America to a return to a marginally more progressive version of the nightmarish hellscape that was our country before Obamacare passed on March 21, 2010. Once again, the lifeless bodies of those who fail to buy themselves health insurance will be piled upon the sidewalks, left to be carted away as they were in the dark ages of the 90s and 00s no doubt by industrious undocumented workers who should be paid a living wage for performing this job that Americans just wont do. And the Republicans will sit by, watching through their monocles, giggling at this grim tableau of human misery until they grow bored and return to their regularly scheduled agenda of puppy torture and crushing the dreams of young women who want only break the glass ceiling and be the very best me I can be.

Or something.

Because, for Democrats trying to appeal to their Partys base of unaccomplished coastal snobs and indolent, welfare-grifting morons, Armageddon is always just around the corner whenever conservatives do anything. Or whenever conservatives dont do anything. Its sort of, heads you lose, tails you also lose, now give us more power and all your money.

The GOPs recent first baby steps toward the repeal of Obamacare set the liberals to rebooting their utterly predictable script. This isnt just about some changes to how health insurance is sold. No, instead House Republicans vote[d] to sentence millions of Americans to death. Yeah, someone wrote that headline on purpose.

When in doubt, deploy the hyper-hyperbole. How many of us Americans will die because we are transitioning back to a slightly more liberal version of the healthcare system of seven years ago? All of us! But then, well all die anyway even if we stay with Obamacare, but thats not the point. There is no point its all a lie and everyone except the very stupidest among us (who all vote Democrat anyway) knows its a lie, yet the Dems spew it anyway. This is about ginning up their base.

So, off we go to the Numbskull Olympics. Taking the gold for Freestyle Idiocy is California Democrat Senator Kamala Harris, who is incredibly stupid even for a California Democrat senator. She tweeted that 129 million people are going to lose their health insurance and presumably die. This is surprising, both because the 129 million figure is so insanely dumb that merely seeing that figure drops the readers IQ into freefall, and also because Kamala somehow managed to count past 10 without taking her shoes off.

Kamala also announced, without citation, that health care is a right for all. Those of us familiar with the Constitution are confused, since that document is entirely free of any such right, nor of any other right to force others to toil to provide you with things you want for free. What is in there are the rights to speak freely and petition, but Kamala discovered a footnote that says those enumerated rights dont apply to citizens who dare doubt the other great Mystery Right, the penumbraed and emanated right to freely kill babies. And dont bother asking about the Second Amendment either; sophisticated folk like Kamala arent restrained from indulging their limitless appetite for petty oppression by the express enumeration of rights.

Apocalyptic liberalism is the natural consequence of power-centered politics unmoored from principle. Its not persuasion; its manipulation. After all, its hard to persuade people to just give you power and money simply because you covet them. So why allow yourself to be limited some phallocentric document of pallor like the Constitution, or by the results of the bourgeois process of drawing conclusions from facts and evidence, when you can wield raw emotion to compel your preferred result before the marks can actually think through the consequences?

For example, theres the viral celebrity sob story. Jimmy Kimmels baby got sick but got better, so the same kind of people who made the VA a festival of success must take over your healthcare. Wait, what? A kid got sick why do you hate sick kids? All kids are going to get sick and die because you reject single payer!

And we must call it single payer health care because the more accurate term, taxpayer health care, fails to adequately distract the listener from the reality. And only the Kamala-dumb think that theyll see ever rich libs like Jimmy Kimmel sitting next to them in the endless lines waiting for the doc when DMV healthcare fires up.

The climate change scam is another classic dystopian distraction. No time to think! You must all immediately cede us power over you and give us all of your money or everyone is going to die die die!

WHY DO YOU WANT ALL THE CHILDREN TO DIE!?

Of course, one might think that the fact that the oceans didnt swallow us in 2009 like Al Gore promised would be an inconvenient truth, but no. Your citation to observable data merely identifies you as a denier. Liberals sure freakin love their #science, but #hashtag #science methodology doesnt involve objectively analyzing data, then refining or discarding the original theory when the evidence does not support it. #Science involves liberals shrieking until they either terrify or bore the normals into submission and the normals finally hand liberals their power and money. #Science isnt a process its a pose and a grift.

But, heres the problem you look really, really lame if you scream about how the end of the world is coming in just a few short years, then a few years later theres no mushroom cloud at the end of the rainbow. The weird weather religion cultists cant translate their jeremiads into actual legislation in large part because normal people expect that if theres really global warming it will actually get hotter. Every froth-lipped paranoid who screamed that we have just five years left back in 2007 has to contend with the troublesome fact that we havent been baked, drowned or frozen. False alarms are a bad look 1970s ice age rage, anyone?

The same with the Obamacare repeal. What happens when 2018 rolls around and the streets arent littered with the corpses of hard-working Americans deprived of coverage by the malignant Thurston Howells of the GOP? Probably the same thing that happened in 2014 the Democrats will look stupid, again, and get righteously pummeled. So bring on 2018, you paranoid prediction pinkos. Your lying about an apocalypse now will lead to your apocalypse then.

Read more:
For Fussy Liberals, It's Always Apocalypse Right Now - Kurt Schlichter - Townhall

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE / international affairs May 7, 2017 05/07/2017 5:51 pm By Heather Hurlburt Share Dont get too comfortable. Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images

As anti-fascists everywhere breathe a sigh of relief over Emmanuel Macrons big victory in the French presidential election, many Americans will take away from today that the French made a different choice in the contest between a liberal centrist and right-wing populist.

Thats true as far as it goes, of course. But that comparison might not be the most apt one. What if, instead of an alternative to what was in 2016 or a forecast of what could be in 2020 in the U.S., Macron is a French remake of 2008? As Emily Schultheis noted, Macrons campaign tactics, from a 2016 listening tour to the recruitment of thousands of grassroots enthusiasts to a massive database, were new to France. A figure with an Establishment pedigree who runs as an outsider on a platform that mixes new touches and the oldest standards involved borrowing Barack Obamas playbook and Macrons strategists will tell you so.

But looking ahead to the challenges Macron faces in governing, the similarities to Obama reappear. First, the French public is profoundly alienated from government and the urbanites that are so excited about Macron forget this at their peril. One in four French voters didnt show up for the second round and though that number sounds great to Americans, it is the lowest second-round turnout in France since 1969. Thats the year Charles de Gaulle left politics, as student protests, riots, and violence rocked France from one end to the other. The years that followed featured economic contraction, crippling strikes, and profound questioning and anxiety about Frances place in the world.

Of the 75 percent that did vote, more than one in ten turned in a deliberately spoiled ballot blank, or with another name written in. Thats the highest level ever recorded in France, and twice as high as the last presidential election. That leaves just two-thirds of French citizens who bothered to vote for one candidate or the other; the fact that two-thirds of them voted for Macron stills leaves him shy of majority approval among eligible voters, though he will surely do his best to claim a national mandate in the French legislative elections next month.

Macron has pledged to run a candidate in every district in France next month. He says half will come from civil society, and half will be women. Six weeks is a very short time to build a complete electoral slate, leading to speculation that many sitting Socialist legislators will come over to his En Marche party. The Socialists currently hold a majority, and the first poll published predicted that Macron could possibly claim another big victory or he could fall just short.

This matters enormously for two reasons. First, Frances government is a hybrid of presidential and parliamentary. The president must appoint a premier of whom the legislature approves. So a president who lacks a parliamentary majority is presented with an ideological opponent as his key implementer. Second, Foreign Policys Emily Tamkin warns that French political parties have not been accustomed to compromise and coalition-building across ideological lines. Macron, who has never held elective office, will have to ride herd over at best a majority mixing longtime politicians who have been successful on their own terms, and new civic activists who have entered politics with entirely different motives, power bases, and expectations.

In this respect, his situation may be more like Donald Trumps than Obamas. It may be a bit extreme to suggest that such a coalition will be as fraught, and as unproductive, as the coalition of mainstream GOP, Freedom Caucus, and Trumpistas that are currently ruling the roost in Washington. But the potential parallels ought to make Macron fans sober up fast Monday morning.

Regardless, the National Front is not going away, and neither are the issues that fueled its rise. While Macron and his lieutenants must try to define and build their political party even as they set the agenda for governing France, Marine Le Pens party has its platform, its legislative candidates, its infrastructure and a steady trend of rising votes at every level in France. At 10 percent, unemployment is twice as high as in Germany, the Netherlands, or the U.K. Seething racial resentments and terror networks nurtured in French prisons defy easy solutions. And Le Pens Gaullist nostalgia hit home in Frances smaller towns and cities, left behind as globalization spurred growth only in major centers.

Americans wrote their French friends lots of open letters in recent weeks, imploring them not to make the same mistakes we did. Perhaps Americans ought to write one more, thinking of 2009: Dont assume, because the candidate of wide smiles and new ideas has triumphed, that old fears and resentments and older power structures are gone for good.

Heather Hurlburt (@natsecHeather) directs New Americas New Models of Policy Change initiative and has held foreign-policy positions in Congress, the White House, and State Department.

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The Trump supporter will be challenging a Democrat-controlled seat in Southern California.

To state the obvious, you dont want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians, the former acting attorney general testified.

He has just nominated ten federal judges. Democratic senators can use the arcane blue slip practice to block three.

The liberal network continues to bring on former Fox News talking heads.

What were they chatting about huddled at the back of the Tick Tock?

Ever-anxious about their first-in-the-nation status yet happy to leverage it, Iowans lean into another caucus cycle.

Or rather, Trump thought he was kidding.

Whomever could it be about?

If women wanted to pay the same amount as men, they should have thought of that before they got a uterus.

The party came into power promising a string of high-speed victories. Now, after a lot of screwups and delays, its mired down.

Steve Bannon may have stepped in to save his former Breitbart colleagues job.

Abdul Hasib died in an April 27 raid, along with dozens of ISIS fighters, in eastern Afghanistan. He had led the terror group for less than a year.

They may replace some academics with people who work in the industries being regulated.

He hopes theyll look at the facts and speak the truth, even when it contradicts party positions though thats not really their style.

Local authorities could face fines or jail time for refusing to comply with federal immigration officials.

Kim Hak-song, a university professor, is the fourth U.S. citizen currently imprisoned in North Korea.

Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut is trying to sell liberals on restrained realism in Syria and other global hot spots.

In his new book, longtime urban optimist Richard Florida appears worried.

Macron won big over a right-wing nationalist in Frances election. That was the easy part.

The European political Establishment exhales.

Read the original:
French Liberals Should Stay Worried - New York Magazine

Protesters hold rally against proposed changes to Affordable Care Act / Getty

BY: Andrew Kugle May 8, 2017 10:44 am

Prominent liberals are repeating the talking point that the new Republican health care bill classifiesrape and sexual assault as a pre-existing condition, but several fact-checking organizations have discredited the claim.

House Republicans on Thursday passed the American Health Care Act, which the GOP has touted as a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, in a 217 to 213 vote. After the bill passed, liberals were quick to claim that the plan would classify rape and sexual assault as a pre-existing condition and allow insurance companies to deny Americans coverage or charge higher prices.

The Washington Postfact checker gave the claimfour pinocchios, meaning the paper found the statement to be completely false.

"The notion that AHCA classifies rape or sexual assault as a preexisting condition, or that survivors would be denied coverage, is false," the Post reported.

PolitiFact and BuzzFeed News also said the claim was false.

Several news publications, however, rushed to publish stories that reported the false talking point. The liberal Huffington Postpublished an article that blamed Republicans for making it more difficult for rape survivors to report what happened to them. The site claimed that Republicans were an "ally of rapists."

CNN joined the hysteria andpublished an article titled, "Rape and domestic violence could be pre-existing conditions."

The millennial news publication Mic tweeted out a video that stated rape survivors could be denied coverage because they were raped.

Several reporters parrotedthe talking point as if it was fact. GQ special correspondent and former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann said that President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) "can burn in hell."

Fusion senior reporter Emma Rolleradded that domestic violence would be considered a pre-existing condition.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.) repeated the false claim, tweeting that the bill makes her "sick."

Other prominentliberals shared their disguston Twitter over the false claim.

Read more here:
Prominent Liberals Cite False Claim That GOP Health Care Bill Makes Rape a Pre-Existing Condition - Washington Free Beacon

It'snot yet seven months since the territory's last trip to the polls but the Canberra Liberals have begun to outline their strategy for winning the 2020 ACT election.

Four years out from their next shot at the Legislative Assembly'stop floor, the party has started looking at ways to address the shortfalls that saw them once again consigned to Opposition.

A month after theirdefeat at last October's election, the Canberra Liberals asked assistant federal director Stuart Smith to undertake an external review of the party's election campaign - although presidentArthur Potter said it was a normal part of thepost-election mop-up and not a reflection on the drubbing they received.

After more than 50 face-to-face meetings, post-election polling research and analysis of financial information, Mr Smith handed down 30 recommendations, which appear to point to problems with understaffing, poor budget allocation, patchy communication between candidates and party officials, and candidates going off-message.

His recommendationsindicatean absence of grassroots engagement and poor organisation which could have cost the Libs their first shot at office since 2001.

Instead, the Liberals were hit by a 2.2 per centswing against them, despite a series of factors playing against the incumbent Labor government.

In the weeks after the election, Canberra Liberals leader Alistair Coe said the citywideresultwas close -Labor winning 92,000 votes and the Liberals 88,000 -but Labor's targeted communications with households bested the Libs' "Canberra-wide campaign" and they needed to learn from that.

To this point, Mr Smith called on the Libs to appoint a coordinator for each electorate from March 2020 onwards, to monitor candidate activity, resolve disputes and provide advice on which areas or demographics to target.

Mr Smith said the party should also analyse all of ACT Labor's failings since the 2001 election and create a dossier on both a chronological and portfolio basis of their stuff-ups.

He said all candidates needed to be armed with a complete and regularly updated set of talking points across all policy areas.

Candidates needed to make better use of social media and other "modern communication tools" and keep their corflutes simple with as little text as possible to make a maximum impact on people driving by too.

The management committee neededto come up a fundraisingcampaignfor 2017, 2018 and 2019 to bankroll pre-campaign research, staff and advertising.

Mr Smith advised that a bigger slice of the overall expenditure cap in 2020 shouldbe set aside for advertising and messaging.

He saidindividualcandidate's expenditure caps should be lowered and each candidate given acostedmodel campaign budget template upon preselectionwithsuggestionson how much they should spend.

Television ads should be syndicated on social media with a portion of the digital advertising budget set aside for sponsoring posts to reach a broader audience.

The Canberra Liberals also needed to hire more campaign staff, including those with design and publishing skills, as soon as possible after the Federal Election.

An extra bookkeeper should be brought on from August to October 2020 to help with internal accounting during the peak period and money should continue to be set aside for research during the whole election campaign.

A sub-committee should be formed next year to identify and approach candidates for the next election and a 'candidates expression of interest' period should be set up, so potential candidates can be trained up before pre-selection in February 2020.

All candidates and MLAs should meet with the campaign director once a month between March and August 2020 and after that have a daily teleconference through to election day.

The Liberals have already moved on at least one of Mr Smith's recommendation -they launched a dedicated community engagement websitelast week.

Read more:
How the Canberra Liberals plan to win the 2020 ACT election - The Canberra Times