Bharat Rakshak

Sauce for the goose
IRFAN HUSAIN — PUBLISHED Dec 24, 2016
THE recent allegations about Russian interference in the US elections have been met in Washington with much shock and horror.

Michael McCaul, a Texan Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, thundered: “We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy.” Democrat Senator Charles Schumer, trumpeted: “That any country could be meddling in our elections should shake both political parties to their core.”

President Obama has ordered a cross-agency inquiry into these allegations, and there is talk of a bipartisan congressional commission to investigate. Although the Russians have denied these charges, the reality is that they had a clear motive to want a Trump victory, given Clinton’s animosity towards Vladimir Putin.

Whatever the truth of this latest episode in US-Russian rivalry, there is a large dollop of irony here. The US has been meddling in politics across the world for decades, propping up dictators and kings, toppling elected governments, and buying politicians.

Suddenly, when somebody else plays the CIA’s game on its home turf, there is vociferous condemnation. Lack of space prevents me from listing a full catalogue of American interference in other countries, but the CIA’s murky role abroad is well documented.

The CIA’s murky role abroad is well known.
More often than not, these covert operations have led to unwanted results. The outcomes of US meddling in Iran, the Congo and Chile are still felt decades later. Whole regions have been destabilised, and countries have seen their political development derailed by US interference in their affairs.

Perhaps the most notorious of these interventions took place in Iran in 1953 when a popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, was overthrown through a CIA-led coup that strengthened the long rule of Reza Shah Pahlavi. His repressive reign was ended by the Islamic revolution in 1979. Had the Americans — supported by the Brits — not removed a popular leader, the entire course of Iran’s recent history would have followed a more democratic path.

Similarly, the CIA-inspired coup that toppled Allende in 1973 ushered in the nightmare years of Gen Augusto Pinochet that saw thousands of Chileans killed and imprisoned. In 1961, Patrice Lumumba of Congo was removed and killed in a coup that had the CIA’s fingerprints all over it.

For decades, the Cold War was used to justify these interventions. Military dictators like Ayub, Zia and Yahya were propped up in Pakistan to further America’s anti-communist agenda. After the Soviet Union collapsed, the ‘fight against terrorism’ was used to justify further US meddling.

Beside toppling governments and setting up their own puppets, the Americans interfered in elections around the world. They were not alone: according to Dov Levin, from 1946-2000 the Soviet Union (later Russia) and the US intervened in 117 elections around the world, an average of one in every nine competitive elections.

It wasn’t just Third World elections the Americans were fixing: in 1948, the newly created CIA threw all its resources behind the Christian Democrats to keep a left-wing alliance from winning the elections. To this end, the CIA gave millions of dollars to its allies.

Writes Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post: “CIA operative Edward G. Lansdale, notorious for his efforts to bring down the North Vietnamese government, is said to have run the successful campaign of Philippines President Ramon Magsaysay. Japan’s centre-right Liberal Democratic Party was backed with secret American funds through the 1950s and 1960s. The US government and American oil corporations helped Christian parties in Lebanon win crucial elections in 1957 with briefcases full of cash.”

Henry Kissinger once remarked: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” This was in the context of the Chilean election that, despite the CIA’s outlay of $4 million in trying to block Allende, was won by the populist leader.

When China was accused of interfering in US elections in the late 1990s, Peter Kornbluh observed: “If the Chinese indeed tried to influence the election here … the United States is only getting a taste of its own medicine. China has done little more than emulate a long pattern of US manipulation, bribery and covert operations to influence the political trajectory of countless countries.”

Even within the US, elections have often been tainted by charges of irregularities and rigging. Lyndon B. Johnson’s Texas constituency was only one seat where electoral chicanery was rife. In 2000, Al Gore lost because of a few hundred ‘hanging chads’ in Florida, a state where Jeb Bush, the brother of George W Bush, was governor. And 83 vote counting machines in Detroit mysteriously broke down on election day last month.

So to those whingeing about Russian hacking, I can only say: “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

NEW DELHI — Family members of the Indian men shot at an Olathe, Kan., bar Wednesday in a possible hate crime said they feared that an atmosphere of fear and xenophobia in the United States means the country is not a safe place for Indians, with one Indian father exhorting parents not to send their children there.“There is a kind of hysteria spreading that is not good because so many of our beloved children live there,” said Venu Madhav, a relative of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the young software engineer fatally shot Wednesday night. “Such hatred is not good for people.”

Kuchibhotla and his friend and colleague Alok Madasani, 32, were at a bar crowded with patrons watching a basketball game Wednesday, witnesses said, when an allegedly drunken man began hurling racial slurs at them and then opened fire, reportedly shouting, “Get out of my country!”

Family members of the victims living in the southern city of Hyderabad told the Hindustan Times that the two friends — software engineers with the Olathe-based Garmin — had not antagonized Purinton, and that Purinton had “picked an argument” with the men, suggesting that they were staying in the United States illegally.“They tried to tell him that they had done their [master’s degrees] in Kansas in 2006 and had been staying there with valid work permits,” a relative said. No use arguing with a drunken man with a loaded gun !

In India, the minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, said she was “shocked” by the attack and “rushed” two diplomats to Kansas from the Indian Consulate in Houston. Meanwhile, cable news channels debated whether the United States was now a danger zone for those with brown skin. “Is this the new normal?” an anchor on NDTV news channel wondered.An estimated 300,000 Indians are working in the United States on H-1B high-skilled worker visas, most in the business outsourcing and software industries. The Trump administration is reportedly considering limiting or changing the program, raising fears among many H-1B workers.

CNN, NY Times and other news outlets blocked from attending WH gaggle

If you think the cases of little-girl genital mutilation that made national headlines last month after a flurry of arrests in Detroit is a one-off event, think again. The CDC estimates that more than 513,000 girls and women — most of them living in New York, DC and Minneapolis — are now at risk of such disfigurement across the country, a threefold increase since 1990. What’s behind the sickening trend? Muslim immigration.

Another brutally misogynistic byproduct of mass Muslim immigration is so-called “honor killings,” which also are on the rise in the US.

On Monday, reporters were barred from broadcasting live video or audio during the afternoon White House press briefing, the second briefing at which journalists were explicitly banned from making audio broadcasts since the previous Thursday. Press secretary Sean Spicer, flanked by counselor Kellyanne Conway and former Apprentice agitator-turned-communications liaison Omarosa Manigault, explained that the president’s appearance earlier with the president of Panama was enough for the whole class to share.

“I’ve said it since the beginning—the president spoke today, he was on camera. He’ll make another comment today at the technology summit,” Spicer said when asked why reporters couldn’t broadcast the briefing live. “And there are days that I’ll decide that the president’s voice should be the one that speaks, and iterate his priorities.”

Spicer’s decision to ban live broadcasting of the press briefing is the latest in a series of attempts to curtail transparency and visibility at the White House.

Spicer and deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders have collectively briefed reporters only seven times in all of June, including Monday and last Thursday’s no-broadcast gaggles. The length of those briefings have gone down, as well, averaging only 27 minutes per briefing this month.

UlanBatori wrote:6th District donkey& elephant less than 0.8 pts apart.

Yagnasri wrote:

UlanBatori wrote:6th District donkey& elephant less than 0.8 pts apart.

Is it Elephant strong hold?

No one can fire just one, when you can fire ten!

Unlike most Western countries, more than half of the US states do not have a legal minimum age of marriage. While in most US states, individuals age 18 have a right to marriage (with two exceptions—Nebraska (19) and Mississippi (21)), all states allow minors to marry in certain circumstances, such as parental consent, judicial consent, pregnancy, or a combination of these situations. Most states allow parties aged 16 and 17 to marry with parental consent alone. In most states, children under 16 can be married too. In the 23 states which have an absolute minimum age set by statute, this age varies between 13 and 17, while in 27 states there is no statutory minimum age if other legal conditions are met. Although in such states there is no set minimum age by statute, the traditional common law minimum age is 14 for boys and 12 for girls - ages which have been confirmed by case law in some states.[1] However even 11-year old girls have been known to be legally married[2].

In February 2017, new data by Girls Not Brides member Unchained at Last, revealed that over 248,000 children had been married in the United States between 2000 and 2010, mostly to adult men [3].

Child marriage, defined as a formal marriage or informal union before age 18, is a reality for both boys and girls, although girls are disproportionately the most affected. Child marriage is widespread and can lead to a lifetime of disadvantage and deprivation.

JAN. 21 “I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)JAN. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There's no evidence of illegal voting.)JAN. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.” (Official aerial photos show Obama's 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.)JAN. 25 “Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)” (The report never mentioned voter fraud.)JAN. 25 “You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore.” (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.)JAN. 25 “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that.” (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.)JAN. 26 “We've taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn't vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can't.” (Vetting lasts up to two years.)JAN. 26 “I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn't like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane's going to be better.” (Most of the cuts were already planned.)JAN. 28 “The coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost has been so false and angry that the times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.” (It never apologized.)JAN. 29 “The Cuban-Americans, I got 84 percent of that vote.” (There is no support for this.)JAN. 30 “Only 109 people out of 325,000 were detained and held for questioning. Big problems at airports were caused by Delta computer outage.” (At least 746 people were detained and processed, and the Delta outage happened two days later.)FEB. 3 “Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” (There is no evidence of paid protesters.)FEB. 4 “After being forced to apologize for its bad and inaccurate coverage of me after winning the election, the FAKE NEWS @nytimes is still lost!” (It never apologized.)FEB. 5 “We had 109 people out of hundreds of thousands of travelers and all we did was vet those people very, very carefully.” (About 60,000 people were affected.)FEB. 6 “I have already saved more than $700 million when I got involved in the negotiation on the F-35.” (Much of the price drop was projected before Trump took office.)FEB. 6 “It's gotten to a point where it is not even being reported. And in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it.” (Terrorism has been reported on, often in detail.)FEB. 6 “The failing @nytimes was forced to apologize to its subscribers for the poor reporting it did on my election win. Now they are worse!” (It didn't apologize.)FEB. 6 “And the previous administration allowed it to happen because we shouldn't have been in Iraq, but we shouldn't have gotten out the way we got out. It created a vacuum, ISIS was formed.” (ISIS has existed since 2004.)FEB. 7 “And yet the murder rate in our country is the highest it’s been in 47 years, right? Did you know that? Forty-seven years.” (It was higher in the 1980s and '90s.)FEB. 7 “I saved more than $600 million. I got involved in negotiation on a fighter jet, the F-35.” (The Defense Department projected this price drop before Trump took office.)FEB. 9 “Chris Cuomo, in his interview with Sen. Blumenthal, never asked him about his long-term lie about his brave ‘service’ in Vietnam. FAKE NEWS!” (It was part of Cuomo's first question.)FEB. 9 Sen. Richard Blumenthal “now misrepresents what Judge Gorsuch told him?” (The Gorsuch comments were later corroborated.)FEB. 10 “I don’t know about it. I haven’t seen it. What report is that?” (Trump knew about Flynn's actions for weeks.)FEB. 12 “Just leaving Florida. Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention. Very dishonest!” (The media did cover it.)FEB. 16 “We got 306 because people came out and voted like they've never seen before so that's the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan.” (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama all won bigger margins in the Electoral College.)FEB. 16 “That’s the other thing that was wrong with the travel ban. You had Delta with a massive problem with their computer system at the airports.” (Delta's problems happened two days later.)FEB. 16 “Walmart announced it will create 10,000 jobs in the United States just this year because of our various plans and initiatives.” (The jobs are a result of its investment plans announced in October 2016.)FEB. 16 “When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.” (Not always. They have released classified information in the past.)FEB. 16 “We had a very smooth rollout of the travel ban. But we had a bad court. Got a bad decision.” (The rollout was chaotic.)FEB. 16 “They’re giving stuff — what was said at an office about Hillary cheating on the debates. Which, by the way, nobody mentions. Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates.” (It was widely covered.)FEB. 18 “And there was no way to vet those people. There was no documentation. There was no nothing.” (Refugees receive multiple background checks, taking up to two years.)FEB. 18 “You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this?” (Trump implied there was a terror attack in Sweden, but there was no such attack.)FEB. 24 “By the way, you folks are in here — this place is packed, there are lines that go back six blocks.” (There was no evidence of long lines.)FEB. 24 “ICE came and endorsed me.” (Only its union did.)FEB. 24 “Obamacare covers very few people — and remember, deduct from the number all of the people that had great health care that they loved that was taken away from them — it was taken away from them.” (Obamacare increased coverage by a net of about 20 million.)FEB. 27 “Since Obamacare went into effect, nearly half of the insurers are stopped and have stopped from participating in the Obamacare exchanges.” (Many fewer pulled out.)FEB. 27 “On one plane, on a small order of one plane, I saved $725 million. And I would say I devoted about, if I added it up, all those calls, probably about an hour. So I think that might be my highest and best use.” (Much of the price cut was already projected.)FEB. 28 “And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.” (NATO countries agreed to meet defense spending requirements in 2014.)FEB. 28 “The E.P.A.’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands.” (There's no evidence that the Waters of the United States rule caused severe job losses.)FEB. 28 “We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five-year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials.” (They can't lobby their former agency but can still become lobbyists.)MARCH 3 “It is so pathetic that the Dems have still not approved my full Cabinet.” (Paperwork for the last two candidates was still not submitted to the Senate.)MARCH 4 “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.)MARCH 4 “How low has President Obama gone to tap my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!” (There's no evidence of a wiretap.)MARCH 7 “122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!” (113 of them were released by President George W. Bush.)MARCH 13 “I saved a lot of money on those jets, didn't I? Did I do a good job? More than $725 million on them.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 13 “First of all, it covers very few people.” (About 20 million people gained insurance under Obamacare.)MARCH 15 “On the airplanes, I saved $725 million. Probably took me a half an hour if you added up all of the times.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 17 “I was in Tennessee — I was just telling the folks — and half of the state has no insurance company, and the other half is going to lose the insurance company.” (There's at least one insurer in every Tennessee county.)MARCH 20 “With just one negotiation on one set of airplanes, I saved the taxpayers of our country over $700 million.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 21 “To save taxpayer dollars, I’ve already begun negotiating better contracts for the federal government — saving over $700 million on just one set of airplanes of which there are many sets.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MARCH 22 “I make the statement, everyone goes crazy. The next day they have a massive riot, and death, and problems.” (Riots in Sweden broke out two days later and there were no deaths.)MARCH 22 “NATO, obsolete, because it doesn’t cover terrorism. They fixed that.” (It has fought terrorism since the 1980s.)MARCH 22 “Well, now, if you take a look at the votes, when I say that, I mean mostly they register wrong — in other words, for the votes, they register incorrectly and/or illegally. And they then vote. You have tremendous numbers of people.” (There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud.)MARCH 29 “Remember when the failing @nytimes apologized to its subscribers, right after the election, because their coverage was so wrong. Now worse!” (It didn't apologize.)MARCH 31 “We have a lot of plants going up now in Michigan that were never going to be there if I — if I didn’t win this election, those plants would never even think about going back. They were gone.” (These investments were already planned.)APRIL 2 “And I was totally opposed to the war in the Middle East which I think finally has been proven, people tried very hard to say I wasn’t but you’ve seen that it is now improving.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)APRIL 2 “Now, my last tweet — you know, the one that you are talking about, perhaps — was the one about being, in quotes, wiretapped, meaning surveilled. Guess what, it is turning out to be true.” (There is still no evidence.)APRIL 5 “You have many states coming up where they’re going to have no insurance company. O.K.? It’s already happened in Tennessee. It’s happening in Kentucky. Tennessee only has half coverage. Half the state is gone. They left.” (Every marketplace region in Tennessee had at least one insurer.)APRIL 6 “If you look at the kind of cost-cutting we’ve been able to achieve with the military and at the same time ordering vast amounts of equipment — saved hundreds of millions of dollars on airplanes, and really billions, because if you take that out over a period of years it’s many billions of dollars — I think we’ve had a tremendous success.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)APRIL 11 “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve.” (He knew Steve Bannon since 2011.)APRIL 12 “You can't do it faster, because they're obstructing. They're obstructionists. So I have people — hundreds of people that we're trying to get through. I mean you have — you see the backlog. We can't get them through.” (At this point, he had not nominated anyone for hundreds of positions.)APRIL 12 “The New York Times said the word wiretapped in the headline of the first edition. Then they took it out of there fast when they realized.” (There were separate headlines for print and web, but neither were altered.)APRIL 12 “The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.” (NATO has been engaged in counterterrorism efforts since the 1980s.)APRIL 12 “Mosul was supposed to last for a week and now they’ve been fighting it for many months and so many more people died.” (The campaign was expected to take months.)APRIL 16 “Someone should look into who paid for the small organized rallies yesterday. The election is over!” (There's no evidence of paid protesters.)APRIL 18 “The fake media goes, ‘Donald Trump changed his stance on China.’ I haven’t changed my stance.” (He did.)APRIL 21 “On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It's actually a little bit more than that, but it's $725 million.” (Much of the price cuts were already projected.)APRIL 21 “When WikiLeaks came out … never heard of WikiLeaks, never heard of it.” (He criticized it as early as 2010.)APRIL 27 “I want to help our miners while the Democrats are blocking their healthcare.” (The bill to extend health benefits for certain coal miners was introduced by a Democrat and was co-sponsored by mostly Democrats.)APRIL 28 “The trade deficit with Mexico is close to $70 billion, even with Canada it’s $17 billion trade deficit with Canada.” (The U.S. had an $8.1 billion trade surplus, not deficit, with Canada in 2016.)APRIL 28 “She's running against someone who's going to raise your taxes to the sky, destroy your health care, and he's for open borders — lots of crime.” (Those are not Jon Ossoff's positions.)APRIL 28 “The F-35 fighter jet program — it was way over budget. I’ve saved $725 million plus, just by getting involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)APRIL 29 “They're incompetent, dishonest people who after an election had to apologize because they covered it, us, me, but all of us, they covered it so badly that they felt they were forced to apologize because their predictions were so bad.” (The Times did not apologize.)APRIL 29 “As you know, I've been a big critic of China, and I've been talking about currency manipulation for a long time. But I have to tell you that during the election, number one, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.)APRIL 29 “I've already saved more than $725 million on a simple order of F-35 planes. I got involved in the negotiation.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)APRIL 29 “We're also getting NATO countries to finally step up and contribute their fair share. They've begun to increase their contributions by billions of dollars, but we are not going to be satisfied until everyone pays what they owe.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)APRIL 29 “When they talk about currency manipulation, and I did say I would call China, if they were, a currency manipulator, early in my tenure. And then I get there. Number one, they — as soon as I got elected, they stopped.” (China stopped in 2014.)APRIL 29 “I was negotiating to reduce the price of the big fighter jet contract, the F-35, which was totally out of control. I will save billions and billions and billions of dollars.” (Most of the cuts were planned before Trump.)APRIL 29 “I think our side's been proven very strongly. And everybody's talking about it.” (There's still no evidence Trump's phones were tapped.)MAY 1 “Well, we are protecting pre-existing conditions. And it'll be every good — bit as good on pre-existing conditions as Obamacare.” (The bill weakens protections for people with pre-existing conditions.)MAY 1 “The F-35 fighter jet — I saved — I got involved in the negotiation. It's 2,500 jets. I negotiated for 90 planes, lot 10. I got $725 million off the price.” (Much of the price cuts were planned before Trump.)MAY 1 “First of all, since I started running, they haven't increased their — you know, they have not manipulated their currency. I think that was out of respect to me and the campaign.” (China stopped years ago.)MAY 2 “I love buying those planes at a reduced price. I have been really — I have cut billions — I have to tell you this, and they can check, right, Martha? I have cut billions and billions of dollars off plane contracts sitting here.” (Much of the cost cuts were planned before Trump.)MAY 4 “Number two, they’re actually not a currency [manipulator]. You know, since I’ve been talking about currency manipulation with respect to them and other countries, they stopped.” (China stopped years ago.)MAY 4 “We’re the highest-taxed nation in the world.” (We're not.)MAY 4 “Nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters.” (Polls show most Americans do care.)MAY 8 “You know we’ve gotten billions of dollars more in NATO than we’re getting. All because of me.” (The deal was struck in 2014.)MAY 8 “But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high — highest rating. The highest rating he’s ever had.” (Colbert's “Late Show” debut had nearly two million more viewers.)MAY 8 “Director Clapper reiterated what everybody, including the fake media already knows- there is ‘no evidence’ of collusion w/ Russia and Trump.” (Clapper only said he wasn't aware of an investigation.)MAY 12 “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.” (The F.B.I. was investigating before the election.)MAY 12 “When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” (Clapper said he wouldn't have been told of an investigation into collusion.)MAY 13 “I'm cutting the price of airplanes with Lockheed.” (The cost cuts were planned before he became president.)MAY 26 “Just arrived in Italy for the G7. Trip has been very successful. We made and saved the USA many billions of dollars and millions of jobs.” (He's referencing an arms deal that's not enacted and other apparent deals that weren't announced on the trip.)JUNE 1 “China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement. India will be allowed to double its coal production by 2020.” (The agreement doesn’t allow or disallow building coal plants.)JUNE 1 “I’ve just returned from a trip overseas where we concluded nearly $350 billion of military and economic development for the United States, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs.” (Trump’s figures are inflated and premature.)JUNE 4 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” (The mayor was specifically talking about the enlarged police presence on the streets.)JUNE 5 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” (Trump signed this version of the travel ban, not the Justice Department.)JUNE 21 “They all say it's 'nonbinding.' Like hell it's nonbinding.” (The Paris climate agreement is nonbinding — and Trump said so in his speech announcing the withdrawal.)JUNE 21 “Right now, we are one of the highest-taxed nations in the world.” (We're not.)

Frankly, I think we are being unfair to the Senate version of the health-care bill. Too much time has already been spent on all the problems it creates — for the indigent, the pregnant, the elderly, those who depend on Medicaid. But what about the problems it solves?

We are taking those too lightly, I feel. The Affordable Care Act placed a great burden on a great many people, and the Senate bill seeks to relieve their sacrifice.

Think of the families teetering at the steep pinnacle of the income distribution, wondering whether their finances will stretch to cover a lifesaving surgery for their purebred dressage horse. Thanks to the tax breaks this bill offers, they can rest assured that Dick Whittington Lord Mare Of London will get a replacement knee and continue to dance merrily over the course.

This is not just a tax break for the wealthy. It may well be the difference between life and death for countless sports cars and golf tourneys across America. Before, their money was wasted on dialysis for strangers who might possibly not even understand the finer points of badminton. Now that money is being restored, and it will go where it is most needed.

In gated communities across America, families will no longer have to live in agony each and every day as they stare at a red wine stain on their snow leopard carpet, knowing that with the ACA, they are deprived of the discretionary income to buy a new one.

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But it reflects something deeply disturbing that’s happening in America: the growth of a white nationalist movement that has been energized and emboldened by the xenophobic campaign of Donald Trump.

No one should be fooled into thinking this is a “free speech” movement. That’s a mantle being claimed by bigots whose ultimate – and, of course, impossible – goal is the creation of a white ethnostate. The irony is inescapable. In such as state, people of different races, ethnicities or religions – if allowed to live there at all – would surely be denied the kind of rights, like free speech, that our democracy guarantees to all.

Among the featured speakers is Richard Spencer, an openly racist figure who last November celebrated the outcome of the presidential election by quoting Nazi propaganda in German during a gathering just blocks from the White House. When some in the audience responded with sieg heils, he rewarded them with the words, “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!”

In his first college speech after that rally, Spencer told his audience that “America … belongs to white men. … We own it.” He has previously called for “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” whatever that is. Commenting on immigration in 2014, he wrote that unless “drastic action is taken,” the grandchildren of white people in America will “live in a country that is alien and hostile.”

Now, Spencer is returning to Washington. This time, because of recent demonstrations against him and other “alt-right” figures on college campuses, he is parading around as some kind of First Amendment martyr...................