Within the bill is a significant shift in the types of farmers who are now benefiting from taxpayer dollars, reflecting a decade of changing eating habits and cultural dispositions among American consumers. Organic farmers, fruit growers and hemp producers all did well in the new bill
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Farm Bill Reflects Shifting American Menu and a Senator's Persistent Tilling - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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An emphasis on locally grown, healthful foods appeals to a broad base of their constituents, members of both major parties said.
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hile traditional commodities subsidies were cut by more than 30 percent to $23 billion over 10 years, funding for fruits and vegetables and organic programs increased by more than 50 percent over the same period, to about $3 billion.
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Fruit and vegetable farmers, who have been largely shut out of the crop insurance programs that grain and other farmers have enjoyed for decades, now have far greater access. Other programs for those crops were increased by 55 percent from the 2008 bill, which expired last year, and block grants for their marketing programs grew exponentially.
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In addition, money to help growers make the transition from conventional to organic farming rose to $57.5 million from $22 million. Money for oversight of the nation’s organic food program nearly doubled to $75 million over five years.
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Programs that help food stamp recipients pay for fruits and vegetables — to get healthy food into neighborhoods that have few grocery stores and to get schools to grow their own food — all received large bumps in the bill.
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The bill also ties conservation requirements to crop insurance benefits, which many environmental groups praised. “I think this is the new coalition,” Ms. Stabenow said.
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Over all, healthy food has become more politically popular because of efforts to combat childhood obesity and diabetes and a growing national interest in the farm-to-table movement promoted by the first lady, Michelle Obama, and other national figures.
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Brooks, The GOP, And Respect « The Dish - 0 views
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Before Asians, Hispanics and all the other groups can be won with economic plans, they need to feel respected and understood by the G.O.P. They need to feel that Republicans respect their ethnic and cultural identity. If Republicans reject immigration reform, that will be a giant sign of disrespect, and nothing else Republicans say will even be heard.
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This is what so many on the right just don’t understand. Their very arguments against universal healthcare and gay marriage and immigration reform are all made as if the working poor, gays, and illegal Latino immigrants were not in the room.
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we are not dealing with actual conservatives, prepared to negotiate or reform the bill for the better. We are dealing with what Richard Hofstadter called “pseudoconservatives” – alienated, paranoid, visceral loathers of any concession to the party that just won popular vote majorities for House, Senate and the presidency.
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Chinese Journalist Detained in Beijing, One Day After Human Rights Talk With U.S. - NYT... - 0 views
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Mr. Xi has indicated that proposed economic reforms would not be accompanied by any significant political relaxation. He has instead repeatedly stressed his loyalty to party traditions and political orthodoxy
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Chinese state-run news media featured a commentary from the official Xinhua news agency that warned that if China embraced democratic ideas promoted by liberal intellectuals, it would succumb to turmoil worse than that in the Soviet Union after the collapse of Communism.
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Eric Cantor and the Death of a Movement - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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How big a deal is the surprise primary defeat of Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader? Very. Movement conservatism, which dominated American politics from the election of Ronald Reagan to the election of Barack Obama — and which many pundits thought could make a comeback this year — is unraveling before our eyes.
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the strategy famously described in Thomas Frank’s book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” in which Republicans would mobilize voters with social issues, but invariably turn postelection to serving the interests of corporations and the 1 percent.
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In return for this service, businesses and the wealthy provided both lavish financial support for right-minded (in both senses) politicians and a safety net — “wing-nut welfare” — for loyalists. In particular, there were always comfortable berths waiting for those who left office, voluntarily or otherwise
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The combination of a successful electoral strategy and the safety net made being a conservative loyalist a seemingly low-risk professional path. The cause was radical, but the people it recruited tended increasingly to be apparatchiks, motivated more by careerism than by conviction.
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it seems clear that Republican base voters didn’t trust him to serve their priorities as opposed to those of corporate interests (and they were probably right)
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whither movement conservatism? Before the Virginia upset, there was a widespread media narrative to the effect that the Republican establishment was regaining control from the Tea Party, which was really a claim that good old-fashioned movement conservatism was on its way back. In reality, however, establishment figures who won primaries did so only by reinventing themselves as extremists. And Mr. Cantor’s defeat shows that lip service to extremism isn’t enough; the base needs to believe that you really mean it.
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The Federal Budget Deficit Is Back to Normal - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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With the government’s budget year having concluded at the end of September, the Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the deficit for 2014 was 2.8 percent of G.D.P., down from 4.1 percent last year
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The deficit has declined in each of the past five years, and is now markedly smaller than the deficit (9.8 percent) registered in the 2008-09 fiscal year.
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The harder question is not whether fiscal policy is relatively tight — it is — but rather whether tight fiscal policy is appropriate.
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These latest deficit numbers arrive while voters claim to be highly engaged by the federal budget. A recent Gallup poll shows that 73 percent of registered voters say that the federal budget deficit is either “very important” or “extremely important” to their vote for in next month’s midterm elections, and the share is even higher among Republican voters.
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As the economic recovery continues, the deficit is expected to narrow even further next year. Based on current projections, the average deficit through President Obama’s second term will be smaller than it was through President Reagan’s second term.
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In terms of political implications, the Democrats may try to use the shrinking budget deficit as an argument to try to win support from fiscally conservative Republicans. But the reality of recent budget numbers is unlikely to win them much, because it stands so starkly at odds with the broader public perception that the deficit remains much larger than it really is.
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Egypt's El-Sissi Heads to Germany, Seeking Western Support - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi travels to Berlin on Tuesday, where German leaders are ready to roll out the red carpet for the ex-general despite his government's abysmal human rights record.
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But with much of the Middle East plunged into violent chaos in the years since the Arab Spring uprisings, Western nations have once again come to see many of the region's autocrats as partners for stability.
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Just this past Sunday, Egypt's state-sanctioned rights body criticized the practice of detaining suspects for extended periods pending the filing of formal charges and trial. It said that at least 2,600 people were killed in violence in the 18 months following Morsi's overthrow, nearly half of them his supporters.
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Another point of contention is Germany's Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a non-governmental organization linked to Merkel's political party
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The State Of The Union Set A Cunning Trap For Obama's Enemies. | The New Republic - 1 views
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He basically put together every modest, centrist, reasonable-sounding idea for public investment aimed at job creation and economic growth that anyone has ever uttered; and he did so at the exact moment that the GOP has abandoned the very concept of public investment altogether. He’s thrown into relief the fact that Republicans no longer seem interested in any government efforts to boost the economy, except where they offer an excuse to reduce the size and power of government.
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for everybody else, the contrast between a Democratic president with a lot of small, familiar ideas for creating jobs and growth, and a Republican Party with just one big idea, is inescapable. It’s a vehicle for the “two alternate futures” choice which Obama will try to offer voters in 2012.
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shared by Javier E on 24 Jan 11
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Michael Kinsley's Utopianism - NYTimes.com - 0 views
douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/...michael-kinsleys-utopianism
perfectibility wisdom politization ideology utopianism
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However wrongheaded you believe your ideological opponents to be, laying “all that ails the world” at their feet represents an absurd politicization of human affairs, and a spur to the most self-deluding sort of utopianism. After all,
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what ultimately ails the world is its inherent imperfectibility — its fallen character, if you’re a Christian; its irreducible complexity and tendency toward entropy and dissolution, if you’re a strict materialist.
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Particularly in a liberal democracy like ours, where the range of policy disagreement is relatively narrow by historical standards and nobody’s actually a Nazi or a theocrat, the beginning of political wisdom is the recognition that only a small fraction of existing human suffering can possibly be relieved by voting in one party or the other.
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The American Conservative » Everything Old Is Neo Again - 0 views
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What is a neoconservative? From the etymology of the word, it should refer either to someone who has newly become conservative—having been born a little liberal—or to someone who has revised conservatism into something new, without causing it thereby to cease to be conservative. It should, perhaps, refer to a political perspective that takes il Gattopardo’s maxim, “everything must change so that everything can remain the same,” very much to heart and to whatever lengths necessary.
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In 1976 Kristol asked, “What is a ‘Neoconservative’?” and answered, in so many words, someone who wants to make liberalism work. Someone with a preference for incorporating market mechanisms into regulatory policy rather than operating by bureaucratic fiat. With a hostility to the erstwhile “counterculture” and a preference for art or “quality.” Who believes in providing equality of opportunity rather than mandating equality of result. And who holds to a conviction that a world hostile to American values will also be hostile to American interests.
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“Neoconservatism … had no program of its own. Basically, it wanted the Republican Party to cease playing defensive politics, to be forward-looking rather than backward-looking … the substance of any specific agenda may not have much to do with neoconservatism, but the moving spirit does.”
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So what are young conservatives—or liberals or political agnostics—who read this book going to get out of it? What they will learn, and it is a terrible thing, is that the questions that we ask in our youth—in our twenties—may be the only ones we ever really ask. Kristol, from the very beginning, is asking himself only a handful of questions. Stalinism having been rejected as abhorrent, is there a coherent left? How can a democratic society be made virtuous? (He seems from the beginning to be more interested in this question than in how it may be made prosperous, or free, or equal.) And what did being Jewish mean to a man in the modern age—given that it clearly did mean something to him, from the first, and given that fidelity either to Jewish tradition or to Jewish nationalism was not what it meant? That is terrible enough: that we will spend the rest of our lives asking the same few questions from our twenties over and over. But if the bulk of the book is any indication, the greater risk is that we will think we have answered them.
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shared by Javier E on 15 Sep 11
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The Poll Paradox For Perry: Obama A 'Socialist' But Ending Social Programs Would Be Ter... - 0 views
2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/...medicaid-would-be-horrible.php
Republican survey science global warming opinion
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71 percent of Republicans in the poll agree that President Obama is a socialist. But 75 percent of them don’t think that the government should end Social Security. 78 percent think that ending Medicare would be a bad idea. And 61 percent say the same about Medicaid (health care for the poor).
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Perry’s famously stated that Social Security is a “ponzi sceme,” and has consistently defended that assessment. But only 33 percent of those polled thought was an accurate description of the program, versus 53 percent who didn’t. That means there is significant group, a 16 percent gap, between people who agree the program is a crime (ponzi sceme) but support eliminating it, which was the position of only 17 percent. In other words, despite the fact that Social Security is a federal offense, we should keep it anyway.
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on the fight between the science and anti-science sets of the Republican party, 27 percent think that global warming exists, but 27 percent also believe that natural disasters are caused by God, as Michele Bachmann “joked” at a campaign apparence.
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shared by Javier E on 15 Oct 11
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Greece's failed state and Europe's response | openDemocracy - 0 views
www.opendemocracy.net/...-and-europe%E2%80%99s-response
Greece state failed europe culture economics politics
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the problem with Greece is much more profound than most politicians and analysts have so far calculated. In stark reality, and far more dangerously than its present financial crisis threatening the euro project, Greece looks like a failed EU state, which, as such, puts at risk the stability of the entire European project. This is why a European political, rather than simply economic, plan for rescuing Greece must become a most urgent priority.
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failed states, according to the definition provided by the Crisis States Research Centre of the London School of Economics, can no longer reproduce the conditions of their own existence and, therefore, are under threat of imminent collapse.
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Greece’s increasing difficulty in coping with border security as tens of thousands of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers enter each year from Turkey.
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The civil service, notorious for its inefficiency and endemic corruption, has long ago lost all popular confidence in it. It is also unable to collect tax revenue.
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The failure of the state is clearly reflected in the fast deterioration of the services it provides in basic goods, such as education, health, sanitation, and transport. Diminished funds, frequent strikes, and low morale in public administration have combined to bring the state virtually to a halt.
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Nor are authorities able to protect citizens, and their properties, from social disorder, widespread vandalism, and occasional bouts of violence
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Turn to the political class and you will find that its authority has vanished into thin air. Prime minister George Papandreou may have shown political courage at times, but has no control over either his party or his government.
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Greece’s GDP will shrink by 5% this year and will be 2% smaller in 2012; the economy is expected to contract for four successive years. Greece is meanwhile faced with one of the greater human flights in her history. This includes three categories of individual, mostly young people, who should be the most valuable to Greece if Greece is to overcome its present crisis: academics and intellectuals; entrepreneurial middle-class professionals with technical skills and expertise; and long-term immigrants who, in the last two decades, were the backbone of Greece’s development
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Evidently, the problem with Greece is far deeper and much more serious than this country’s (already deep and serious) financial crisis. It involves nothing less than a complete and drastic overhaul of the Greek state system. It should however be equally obvious that, as Greece is an EU country, Europe cannot but face up to this problem and contribute to its solution, as any alternative route must inevitably lead to the collapse of the entire project of European integration.
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The Verdict, for Now, From France - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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In the first round of the French municipal elections on Sunday, the answer was not complicated: disenchantment with the Socialist administration of François Hollande, the most unpopular in modern times; fatigue with political scandals; and deep pessimism that either of the traditional parties of Left or Right is capable of addressing France’s structural and social ills.
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The National Front fielded candidates in fewer than 600 of 36,000 municipalities, and won about 5 percent of the total vote, compared with 47 percent for the center-right Union for a Popular Movement and 38 percent for President Hollande’s Socialists.
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'Dangerous Moment' for Europe, as Fear and Resentment Grow - 0 views
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LONDON - The sophisticated, military-style strike Wednesday on a French newspaper known for satirizing Islam staggered a continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments in some quarters, feeding far-right nationalist parties like France 's National Front. "This is a dangerous moment for European societies," said Peter Neumann, director of the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London.
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What Washington Refuses To Admit « The Dish - 0 views
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Let me put this as baldly as I can. The US fought two long, brutal wars in its response to the atrocity of September 11, 2001. We lost both of them – revealing the biggest military machine in the history of the planet as essentially useless in advancing American objectives through war and occupation. Attempts to quash Islamist extremism through democracy were complete failures. The Taliban still has enormous sway in Afghanistan and the only way to prevent the entire Potemkin democracy from imploding is a permanent US troop presence. In Iraq, we are now confronting the very same Sunni insurgency the invasion created in 2003 – just even more murderous. The Jihadism there has only become more extreme under a democratic veneer. And in all this, the U.S. didn’t just lose the wars; it lost the moral high-ground as well. The <img class="alignright wp-image-138319" src="https://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/troopsjoeraedlegetty1.jpg?w=398&#038;h=265" alt="" width="398" height="265" />president himself unleashed brutal torture across all theaters of war – effectively ending any moral authority the US has in international human rights.
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These are difficult truths to handle. They reveal that so many brave men and women died for nothing. And so we have to construct myths or bury facts to ensure that we maintain face. But these myths and amnesia have a consequence: they only serve to encourage Washington to make exactly the same mistakes again
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This is not just a Republican fixation. It’s a function of the hegemony reflexively sought by liberal internationalists as well.
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The US is intervening – despite clear evidence that it can do no real good – simply to make sure that ISIS doesn’t actually take over the country and thereby make president Obama look bad.
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But the IS was never likely to take over Kurdistan or the Shiite areas of Iraq, without an almighty struggle. And our elevating ISIS into a global brand has only intensified its recruitment and appeal.
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We responded, in other words, in the worst way possible and for the worst reasons possible: without the force to alter the underlying dynamic, without a breakthrough in multi-sectarian governance in Baghdad, without the regional powers taking the lead, without any exit plan, and all to protect the president from being blamed for “losing Iraq” – even though “Iraq” was lost almost as soon as it was occupied in 2003.
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the leadership in both parties cannot help themselves when they have a big shiny military and see something they don’t like happening in the world.
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Worse, our political culture asks no more of them. The Congress doesn’t want to take a stand, the public just wants beheadings-induced panic satiated by a pliant president (who is then blamed anyway), and the voices that need to be heard – the voices of those who fought and lost so much in Iraq – are largely absent.
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To go back in and try to do again with no combat troops what we could not do with 100,000 is a definition of madness brought on by pride. It is to restart the entire war all over again. It makes no sense – except as political cover.
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When will Washington actually admit its catastrophic errors and crimes of the last decade – and try to reform its own compulsive-interventionist habits to reflect reality rather than myth?
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Donald Trump: What we learned in 2015 - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views
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Few in Republican Party politics believed when Trump launched his improbable White House bid in June that he'd still be a factor -- much less the factor -- at the end of the year.
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topped national polls since he entered the race, and in the latest CNN/ORC poll last week he was at 39%, double his nearest challenger.
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Trump frequently insists he is not a politician at all and his image as a novice outsider unbeholden to GOP elites is crucial to his appeal.
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"He is a unique political animal who knows his audience and uses controversy as a political weapon better than anyone we have almost ever seen,
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Trump has already proved that he possesses one of the most valuable political attributes: the ability to sense something stirring in the electorate before anyone else.
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They also view Obama as the most partisan and polarizing president of their lifetime, even as Obama complains that Republicans have tried to thwart him at every turn and make compromise impossible.
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Gloves Come Off (Again) in Ukraine's Parliament - The New York Times - 0 views
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A brawl erupted after Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was dragged from the podium, which led to other members rushing in to join the scuffle.
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The prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, had been answering questions at the rostrum and apparently angered a member of Parliament, Oleg Barna, with one response. Mr. Yatsenyuk had deflected a criticism of his cabinet’s energy policy by noting the energy minister is a member of Mr. Barna’s party.
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Mr. Barna handed the bouquet to the perplexed Mr. Yatsenyuk, then set upon him, apparently trying to lift and carry off the prime minister, who resisted only by clutching the wooden rostrum. The brawl ensued as supporters of Mr. Yatsenyuk rushed to his defense, and then fought with backers of Mr. Barna.
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Free Mitt Romney! - The New York Times - 0 views
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Does Mr. Romney really think that his party would look more favorably on Obamacare if it worked even better than it has, if it cost no money at all? If so, he’s delusional. After all, the great majority of Republican-controlled states have turned down free money, refusing to let the federal government expand Medicaid (and in so doing pump money into their economies).
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from the point of view of the Republican base, covering the uninsured, or helping the unlucky in general, isn’t a feature, it’s a bug. It’s not about how much it costs in taxpayer funds or economic impact: the base is actually willing to lose money in order to perpetuate suffering.
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Tanzania election: CCM faces strong challenge from Ukawa - BBC News - 0 views
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Turnout has been high in Tanzania's most competitive general elections, officials say, as a new opposition coalition tries to end the governing party's 54-year grip on power.
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Opinion polls have put the governing Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party ahead, but the result is expected to be close.
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President Jakaya Kikwete, who is standing down after two terms, has called for peace ahead of the election, adding that "anyone who tries to cause trouble will be dealt with".
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shared by Javier E on 20 Oct 15
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Enter the Age of the Outsiders - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...-the-age-of-the-outsiders.html
reason anarchy institutions decentralization fringe spiritual meaning mission realism barbarism
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In the 1990s, the central political institutions radiated confidence, derived from an assumed vision of the post-Cold War world. History would be a slow march toward democratic capitalism. Nations would be bound in peaceful associations like the European Union. The United States would oversee a basic international order.
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This vision was materialistic and individualistic. Nations should pursue economic growth and a decent distribution of wealth. If you give individuals access to education and opportunity, they will pursue affluence and personal happiness. They will grow more temperate and “reasonable.”
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Since 2000, this vision of the post-Cold War world has received blow after blow. Some of these blows were self-inflicted. Democracy, especially in the United States, has grown dysfunctional. Mass stupidity and greed led to a financial collapse and deprived capitalism of its moral swagger.
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the deeper problem was spiritual. Many people around the world rejected democratic capitalism’s vision of a secular life built around materialism and individual happiness. They sought more intense forms of meaning. Some of them sought meaning in the fanaticisms of sect, tribe, nation, or some stronger and more brutal ideology
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In case after case, “reasonableness” has been trampled by behavior and creed that is stronger, darker and less temperate.
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The uncertain Republican establishment cannot govern its own marginal members, while those on the edge burn with conviction. Jeb Bush looks wan but Donald Trump radiates confidence.
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The Democratic establishment no longer determines party positions; it is pulled along by formerly marginal players like Bernie Sanders.
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Republicans blame Obama for hesitant and halting policies, but it’s not clear the foreign policy and defense apparatus believes anymore in its own abilities to establish order, or that the American public has any confidence in U.S. effectiveness as a global actor.
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the primary problem is mental and spiritual. Some leader has to be able to digest the lessons of the last 15 years and offer a revised charismatic and persuasive sense of America’s historic mission.
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This mission, both nationalist and universal, would be less individualistic than the gospel of the 1990s, and more realistic about depravity and the way barbarism can spread. It would offer a goal more profound than material comfort.