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02/18/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

FOUND: Obama’s Activists’ Training Manual For Protesting Trump

Switching Sissy is ready to parade himself again.

An Obama-tied activist group training tens of thousands of agitators to protest President Trump’s policies plans to hit Republican lawmakers supporting those policies even harder this week, when they return home for the congressional recess and hold town hall meetings and other functions.

Organizing for Action, a group founded by Obama and featured prominently on his new post-presidency website, is distributing a training manual to anti-Trump activists that advises them to bully GOP lawmakers into backing off support for repealing ObamaCare, curbing immigration from high-risk Islamic nations, and building a border wall.

In a new Facebook post, OFA calls on activists to mobilize against Republicans from now until Feb. 26, when “representatives are going to be in their home districts.”

The protesters disrupted town halls earlier this month, including one held in Utah by House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who was confronted by hundreds of angry demonstrators claiming to be his constituents.

The manual, published with OFA partner “Indivisible,” advises protesters to go into halls quietly so as not to raise alarms, and “grab seats at the front of the room but do not all sit together.” Rather, spread out in pairs to make it seem like the whole room opposes the Republican host’s positions. “This will help reinforce the impression of broad consensus.” It also urges them to ask “hostile” questions — while keeping “a firm hold on the mic” — and loudly boo the the GOP politician if he isn’t “giving you real answers.”

“Express your concern [to the event’s hosts] they are giving a platform to pro-Trump authoritarianism, racism, and corruption,” it says.

The goal is to make Republicans, even from safe districts, second-guess their support for the Trump agenda, and to prime “the ground for the 2018 midterms when Democrats retake power.”

“Even the safest [Republican] will be deeply alarmed by signs of organized opposition,” the document states, “because these actions create the impression that they’re not connected to their district and not listening to their constituents.”

After the event, protesters are advised to feed video footage to local and national media.

“Unfavorable exchanges caught on video can be devastating” for Republican lawmakers, it says, when “shared through social media and picked up by local and national media.” After protesters gave MSNBC, CNN and the networks footage of their dust-up with Chaffetz, for example, the outlets ran them continuously, forcing Chaffetz to issue statements defending himself.

The manual also advises protesters to flood “Trump-friendly” lawmakers’ Hill offices with angry phone calls and emails demanding the resignation of top White House adviser Steve Bannon.

A script advises callers to complain: “I’m honestly scared that a known racist and anti-Semite will be working just feet from the Oval Office … It is everyone’s business if a man who promoted white supremacy is serving as an adviser to the president.”

The document provides no evidence to support such accusations.

Protesters, who may or may not be affiliated with OFA, are also storming district offices. Last week, GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher blamed a “mob” of anti-Trump activists for knocking unconscious a 71-year-old female staffer at his Southern California office. A video of the incident, showing a small crowd around an opening door, was less conclusive.

Separately, OFA, which is run by ex-Obama officials and staffers, plans to stage 400 rallies across 42 states this year to attack Trump and Republicans over ObamaCare’s repeal.

“This is a fight we can win,” OFA recently told its foot soldiers. “They’re starting to waver.”

On Thursday, Trump insisted he’s moving ahead with plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which has ballooned health-insurance premiums and deductibles. “Obamacare is a disaster, folks,” he said, adding that activists protesting its repeal are hijacking GOP town halls and other events.

“They fill up our rallies with people that you wonder how they get there,” the president said. “But they’re not the Republican people that our representatives are representing.”

As The Post reported, OFA boasts more than 250 offices nationwide and more than 32,000 organizers, with another 25,000 actively under training. Since November, it’s beefed up staff and fundraising, though as a “social welfare” non-profit, it does not have to reveal its donors.

These aren’t typical Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street marchers, but rather professionally trained organizers who go through a six-week training program similar to the training — steeped in Alinsky agitation tactics — Obama received in Chicago when he was a community organizer.

Chicago socialist Saul Alinsky, known by the left as “the father of community organizing,” taught radicals to “rub raw the sores of discontent” and create the conditions for a “revolution.” He dedicated his book, “Rules for Radicals,” to “Lucifer.” Michelle Obama quoted from the book when she helped launch OFA in 2013.

Obama appears to be behind the anti-Trump protests. He praised recent demonstrations against Trump’s travel ban. And last year, after Trump’s upset victory, he personally rallied OFA troops to “protect” his legacy in a conference call. “Now is the time for some organizing,” he said. “So don’t mope” over the election results.

He promised OFA activists he would soon join them in the fray.

“Understand that I’m going to be constrained in what I do with all of you until I am again a private citizen, but that’s not so far off,” he said. “You’re going to see me early next year, and we’re going to be in a position where we can start cooking up all kinds of great stuff.”

Added the ex-president: “I promise you that next year Michelle and I are going to be right there with you, and the clouds are going to start parting, and we’re going to be busy. I’ve got all kinds of thoughts and ideas about it, but this isn’t the best time to share them.

“Point is, I’m still fired up and ready to go, and I hope that all of you are, as well.”

http://nypost.com/2017/02/18/obama-linked-activists-have-a-training-manual-for-protesting-trump/

02/18/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Angela Merkel Welcomes More Muslim Refugees, “Islam Not Source of Terror’

These animals contribute nothing but rape, pedophilia, beheadings and the end of civilization.

Angela Merkel says Europe must take MORE refugees and Islam ‘isn’t source of terror’

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has launched a staunch defence of her refugee policy.

The embattled leader says Europe has an obligation to take displaced people from Syria and Iraq.

She also said Islam “is not the cause of terrorism” and that combatting extremism needs the cooperation of Muslim countries.

In a wide-ranging speech at a Munich security conference, the German chief also vowed to work closely with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the fight with ISIS in the Middle East.

Mrs Merkel has come under fire for taking in up to one million refugees amid security concerns and a string of migrant sex attacks across Germany.

After the Berlin lorry attack at a Christmas market in December, ex-UKIP leader Nigel Farage said events such as that will be “Merkel’s legacy”.

Mrs Merkel had been a strong critic of Brexit, saying she had “deep regrets” about it.

She will go to the polls in September against Social Democrat candidate Martin Schulz, the former European Parliament President.

On Putin, she said Europe’s ties with Russia remained challenging, but it was important to work with them in the fight against Islamist terrorism.

She said: “The joint fight against Islamic terrorism is one area where we have the same interests and we can work together.”

Her comments about Islam and refugees follow her criticism of Donald Trump’s travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

New US Vice-President Mike Pence was in the audience and reaffirmed the US’ commitment to NATO in a speech of his own.

Germany is under increasing pressure to increase military spending, would do “everything possible” meet a NATO target for spending two percent of economic output on defence by 2024, Merkel told the conference.

Only last week, a student was dragged into woods and raped by a migrant who spoke no English near the campus of Bochum University.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/589410/Angela-Merkel-more-refugees-Syria-Iraq-German-chancellor-terrorism-ISIS

02/18/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

140 More Somali Mooslims Settled in US After Travel Ban Halted by Courts

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Fellow refugees say at least 140 Somalis have been settled in the United States after being blocked for days by President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The refugees spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns about their safety. They remain at the world’s largest refugee camp, Dadaab, which hosts more than 200,000 Somalis.

The group of 140 which had been vetted by U.S. authorities had been on the brink of traveling to the United States, but Trump’s ban left them in limbo at a transit camp in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. They then were sent back to refugee camps.

But a U.S. court later suspended Trump’s ban.

The refugees were brought back to Nairobi in the past week before leaving for the U.S.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_KENYA_TRUMP_TRAVEL_BAN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-02-18-10-06-35

02/17/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Half of the Families Text One Another While In the Same House

Now HALF of families text each other in the same house: Experts say tech craze could have a ‘catastrophic’ effect on family life

45 per cent of people message somebody under the same roof on their phones
In a third of households, people use their mobiles during their mealtimes
More than four in ten parents complain their children have ignored them

Some will find it depressing. Others will recognise an all-too familiar snapshot of tech-obsessed modern life.

But nearly half of families with children now text each other when they are in the same house.

Just under a third of us (32 per cent) are guilty of tapping out messages on mobiles when we want to talk to someone under the same roof, according to research.

That figure rises to 45 per cent for households with children – suggesting the phenomenon is only set to get worse.

It’s not the only way mobiles get in the way of family time at home.

In a third of households, people use their mobiles during their mealtimes.

More than four in ten parents complain their children have ignored them at the table because they were so distracted by their phones. In fact, tablets and mobiles are so prevalent at home, they are also depriving us of rest.

A quarter of the 2,800 adults surveyed by Aviva admitted at least one person in their household was losing sleep because they were staying up too late on their phone, and one in five said that there was someone at home who just couldn’t ‘switch off’.

Last night campaigners warned the surge in mobile phone usage could be ‘catastrophic’ for family life. Dr Richard House, a psychologist, said: ‘These communication technologies are almost certainly having long-term and possibly dramatic impacts on family life.

‘It is potentially catastrophic for the human relational values that underpin family life at its best, with real, face-to-face communication being increasingly displaced and sidelined by the machine.’

However, it is not always the youngsters of the household who are to blame.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4233404/HALF-families-text-house.html

02/17/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Democrats Say Obama’s Strategy is “Grade A Bullshit”

It is difficult to overstate just how enraged state Democratic activists and leaders are with Organizing for Action (OFA), the political and community-organizing army that grew out of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.

The nonprofit, which functions as a sort of parallel-Democratic National Committee, was founded to mobilize Democratic voters and supporters in defense of President Obama’s, and the Democratic Party’s, agenda. Instead, the organization has drawn the intense ire, both public and private, of grassroots organizers and state parties that are convinced that OFA inadvertently helped decimate Democrats at the state and local level, while Republicans cemented historic levels of power and Donald J. Trump actually became leader of the free world.

These intra-party tensions aren’t going away, especially now that OFA “relaunched” itself last week to protect the Affordable Care Act, boost turnout at congressional townhalls, and train grassroots organizers gearing up for the Trump era.

“This is some GRADE A Bullshit right here,” Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party, wrote in a private Democratic-listserv email obtained by The Daily Beast. Handwerk was reacting to news of OFA’s post-election retooling, which was shared “without comment” to the group of state-level Dems by Crystal Kay Perkins, executive director for Texas Democrats.

“It also to me seems TONE DEAF—we have lost over 1,000 seats in the past 8 years… all because of this crap,” Handwerk continued. “Let’s get through the next two weeks—but then we gotta figure this out and keep the pressure on. WOW.”

Others on the thread shared these sentiments.

“Yes, it sure is,” Katie Mae Simpson, executive director for the Maine Democratic Party, replied. “OFA showed up in Maine, organized a press conference on saving [Obamacare], with one of our Dem legislative leaders speaking, all without ever mentioning that they were in state and organizing. They hired someone I know, which is somewhat helpful, but my god, they don’t have a very good alliance-building process.”

Such grievances, though expressed privately, are nothing new among state Democratic Party leadership.

“[With] all due respect to President Obama, OFA was created as a shadow party because Obama operatives had no faith in state parties,” Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb told Politico last week.

“I love and adore everything about President Obama except for OFA,” South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Jaime Harrison (who is also running to chair the Democratic National Committee) said at a recent DNC “future forum,” according to The Washington Post.

President Obama, himself a proud community organizer, had long been credited with leading a savvy, vigorous grassroots campaign to win the White House in 2008. However, it wasn’t long after he first stepped into office before state-level Democrats all around the country began sounding the alarm that his formidable grassroots army was being left to wither and rot.

Furthermore, just days after the second inauguration of President Obama, DNC members were still loudly expressing fear that OFA ran the risk of denting the national party’s fundraising and (more importantly) diverting much-needed resources and organizing power.

Too many Democrats started seeing OFA as just another boogeyman. For instance, when reached by The Daily Beast for this story, two Democratic operatives independently referred to OFA as “The Devil.”

“If we were having a conversation about state parties, I would say OFA hurt state parties badly,” Handwerk told The Daily Beast, elaborating on his leaked email. “It certainly had an undercutting effort. And there is a lot of work state parties do that isn’t very sexy… and that becomes incredibly difficult when budgets are cut in half because people are trying to curry favor with the president and his allies.”

Perkins and Simpson did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Handwerk, who has worked in the red state for years, says his personal experiences with OFA weren’t bad, per se—it’s that they were nonexistent.

“Supposedly, Louisiana has had, on paper, a state director for OFA who has been in the role for what I’m told is multiple years—none of us know who she is,” he said. “She only just followed me on Twitter [four] days ago. That’s how I know who she is.”

This OFA state lead is Carolyn Sawyer, who told The Daily Beast that “I really have not talked with [Handwerk]. I’m sure he’s aware of us. I’m sure they’re aware of what we’re doing but there doesn’t seem to be an interest to come together on what we’re working [on].”

Sawyer, who says she has been in the position since as early as 2013, contended that “we have reached out to the Louisiana Democrat Party [and] would be more than happy to come together to work on issues… But [as to] why he doesn’t know what we’re doing, we haven’t been secret. I can’t speak to that.”

When asked if she was aware of the tension between the state party and OFA, she said she was “not quite aware, but I do know that it exists.”

After Obama handily won re-election in 2012, Handwerk says that OFA came to town to present Louisiana Dems with a gameplan. The outside group was purportedly ready to send organizers down south, to help prop up and “like-minded people” in deep-red areas.

“They told us this, so many of us didn’t see them as a threat,” Handwerk said.

Obama’s second term passed, and Louisiana Democrats say they saw promises unfulfilled.

“Nothing has really been done here,” the executive director lamented. “I have not seen any real evidence of OFA doing any real work, certainly not here in Louisiana.”

Talk to Democrats across state lines, and you hear similar stories. “I was never a fan of OFA,” Marcel Groen, chairman for Pennsylvania Democrats said, tersely.

The decimation of the Democratic Party during, and leading up to, the Age of Trump is not, however, any single organization’s fault. The DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign raised many times more money than OFA for the 2016 cycle, and that didn’t stop President Trump, either.

To the defeated and angry liberal activists and operatives, OFA is just one of several “devils”—one that is emblematic of large-scale institutional problems.

“We’ve seen over the last eight-plus years a deterioration of permanent state infrastructure,” one red-state Democratic operative, who requested anonymity, said. “And OFA built an alternative infrastructure that was very top-down. OFA’s actions were wasteful, duplicative, and it made no sense… There were these tensions on the ground that we saw that all over the country. Local officials felt tossed aside. A lot of these red states were abandoned. The OFA model was never a 50-state strategy—it was about the president’s agenda.”

When asked if there was much confidence in the newly rebooted OFA, the operative simply said, “It’s like seeing an ex-girlfriend show up.”

Members of OFA would, of course, strongly disagree with such assessments, and are quick to point to their track record during presidential races.

“OFA is focused on investing in grassroots organizing nationwide—we’re engaging people who have never been involved before, connecting them to others in their communities, and empowering them to realize their own ability to enact change,” Jesse Lehrich, OFA communications director, told The Daily Beast in an email. “Building this kind of well-trained network of volunteers who can mobilize to win fights on key issues boosts the progressive movement in both the short and long term. Just look at Obamacare: OFA volunteers are organizing with their fellow constituents to ensure lawmakers hear exactly what’s at stake for them if the law is repealed, and the tide is rapidly turning.”

Also, OFA isn’t completely without defenders at the state level. David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, told The Daily Beast that the best thing a reeling Democratic Party can do right now is not censure OFA, but learn from its victories.

“The president created something that did really good organizing—it won states we otherwise would not have won,” Pepper said. “My attitude is learn everything there is to learn from its incredible successes. For state parties, we should mimic what made it so strong… However, the strength of parties has obviously eroded because too much emphasis has been put on building out other organizations. In some ways, I think OFA becomes something of a scapegoat for the erosion of state parties.”

And as Democrats struggle to navigate the uncharted, treacherous terrain of the Trump years, Obama’s one time grassroots juggernaut will be right there fighting alongside them. Now, it’s a matter of the group convincing a host of skeptical progressives that it can still be a worthy ally.

“I don’t know what the mission is with the new OFA, what the purpose is supposed to be,” Jaime Harrison told The Daily Beast. “There are a lot of these various [outside] groups… and if having all these other groups means diminishing the impact of state parties, that’s where I have a problem. We need to figure out the best path forward. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean a world without OFA, but… we have to focus on rebuilding the party across the board, not just focusing on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/17/leaked-emails-dem-state-leaders-think-obama-s-new-organizing-army-is-grade-a-bullshit.html

02/17/2017 by The Doctor Of Common Sense

Incoming! McCain Trashes Trump on Euro-Trip

John McCain just systematically dismantled Donald Trump’s entire worldview

John McCain is increasingly mad as hell about President Trump. And on Friday, he went after Trump — hard.

During a speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, the Republican senator from Arizona delivered a pointed and striking point-by-point takedown of Trump’s worldview and brand of nationalism. McCain didn’t mention Trump’s name once, but he didn’t have to.

And even considering the two men’s up-and-down history and the terrible things Trump has said about McCain, it was a striking display from a senior leader of a party when it comes to a president of the same party.

In his speech, McCain suggested the Western world is uniquely imperiled this year — even more so than when Barack Obama was president — and proceeded to question whether it will even survive.

“In recent years, this question would invite accusations of hyperbole and alarmism; not this year,” McCain said. “If ever there were a time to treat this question with a deadly seriousness, it is now.”

In case there was any doubt that this was about Trump. Here’s what followed:

“[The founders of the Munich conference] would be alarmed by an increasing turn away from universal values and toward old ties of blood and race and sectarianism.”
“They would be alarmed by the hardening resentment we see towards immigrants and refugees and minority groups — especially Muslims.”
“They would be alarmed by the growing inability — and even unwillingness — to separate truth from lies.”
“They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent.”

That’s Trump, Trump, Trump and Trump.

McCain continued: “But what would alarm them most, I think, is a sense that many of our peoples, including in my own country, are giving up on the West, that they see it as a bad deal that we may be better off without, and that while Western nations still have the power to maintain our world order, it’s unclear whether we have the will.”

Trump has repeatedly suggested a desire to pull out of or scale back on international involvement and agreements. His slogan is “America first,” after all. And it’s not just on free trade: It’s also when it comes to things like NATO, the transatlantic military alliance that Trump has suggested the United States is getting a bad deal on and has flirted with not enforcing.

Then McCain invoked some of those close to Trump and emphasized that his message won’t square with theirs:

I know there is profound concern across Europe and the world that America is laying down the mantle of global leadership. I can only speak for myself, but I do not believe that that is the message you will hear from all of the American leaders who cared enough to travel here to Munich this weekend. That’s not the message you heard today from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. That is not the message you will hear from Vice President Mike Pence. That’s not the message you will hear from Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. And that is certainly not the message you will hear tomorrow from our bipartisan congressional delegation.

McCain then concluded with another direct shot at Trump.

“I refuse to accept that our values are morally equivalent to those of our adversaries,” he said. “I am a proud, unapologetic believer in the West, and I believe we must always, always stand up for it. For if we do not, who will?

Two weeks ago, you may recall, Trump suggested the United States didn’t exactly have the moral high ground on Russia. Asked by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly about wanting good relations with a “killer” like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump demurred.

“There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” Trump said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”

Ever since, it seems, he and McCain have been on a collision course. McCain didn’t fight back when Trump questioned his war-hero status long ago — perhaps because both men were trying to win elections — but the battle between McCain and the White House is picking up steam.

And on Friday, McCain traveled across the Atlantic to deliver a calculated, planned attack on Trump’s entire system of beliefs.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/17/john-mccain-just-systematically-dismantled-donald-trumps-entire-worldview/?utm_term=.cea6f946762c

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Angela Merkel says Europe must take MORE refugees and Islam ‘isn’t source of terror’

Now HALF of families text each other in the same house: Experts say tech craze could have a ‘catastrophic’ effect on family life

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