Daily Archives: February 14, 2017

WA premier Colin Barnett and deputy premier Liza Harvey earlier this month at Government House in Perth on the day the state election was called. Photograph: Danella Bevis/AAP

A resurgent One Nation is looking to the Western Australian state election, on 11 March, as its first opportunity to demonstrate its growing support since last Julys federal election. Recent polling suggests One Nation is on track to win numerous seats in Western Australias upper house, and could even break through in the lower house.

One Nations prospects were given a further boost at the weekend when the Liberal party announced a preference swap with the minor party: Liberal preferences will favour One Nation in the upper house, while One Nation will give the Liberals a boost in lower house marginal seats.

The Liberal/National government in WA is facing an uphill battle to win a third term in office, and One Nation preferences will give them a boost. When One Nation first broke through in the late 1990s, they took a hefty chunk out of the Coalition vote, and that vote often did not return as preferences.

Recent polls have put One Nation on as high a vote as 13% in Western Australia. In contrast, the party polled just over 4% in the Western Australian Senate race in 2016. Last week on my blog I analysed where One Nation did best in that Senate election, and what the One Nation vote could look like if it jumped to 13%.

One Nations vote is strongly concentrated in regional areas, with a much lower vote in Perth. This reflects how One Nation performed in the 2001 Western Australian state election, where they won three upper house seats in regional areas.

Conveniently for One Nation, the Western Australian upper house is severely biased in favour of country voters. Approximately three-quarters of the states population lives in the Perth metropolitan area, but Perth voters only elect half of the states upper house. These regional voters overwhelmingly favour parties on the right, and this has helped give the current government a sizeable majority in the upper house.

If One Nation was to poll 13%, they would easily poll over a quota in the Agricultural, Mining and Pastoral, and South West regions, and could do reasonably well in the East Metropolitan region, giving them four seats in the upper house. This is made easier thanks to those Liberal preferences.

One Nation could well be a threat to Nationals seats in the lower house, too, but they wont benefit from Liberal preferences in those races. Liberal preferences to One Nation in the lower house could have had a devastating effect on the Nationals, wiping out quite a few of their MPs and making it much harder for the Liberal party to form government. In the upper house, on the other hand, One Nation are likely to win multiple seats with or without Liberal assistance, and a re-elected Liberal government would have an interest in working with a One Nation bloc in the balance of power.

There is a four-way contest for conservative votes in regional Western Australia. The Liberals and Nationals will be competing against each other for seats in both houses, alongside One Nation and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party, who hold two seats in the upper house.

Upper house preferences were formally lodged on Monday, and we saw some unusual decisions motivated by the Liberal-One Nation deal. The Nationals have decided to favour the Greens over their Liberal coalition partners, while the Shooters have gained preferences from many parties, including the Nationals.

The Liberal-National governments chances of re-election will be boosted thanks to One Nation preferences, but only if the deal can hold. Upper house preferences in Western Australia are required to be lodged ahead of time, and they will flow regardless of whether a party can find the volunteers to distribute how-to-vote cards at polling place, thanks to the group voting ticket system (the same system which was used for the Senate prior to law changes in 2016).

In contrast, One Nation preferences in the lower house are only as good as the partys capacity to hand out how-to-votes making the recommendation. One Nation voters have traditionally been happy to follow their partys recommendations, but there are signs that some One Nation candidates are not willing to go along with their partys deal. If candidates in key seats refuse to go along with the deal, the Liberal party could be left empty-handed, after giving away something quite valuable.

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One Nation could gain more than the Liberals from Western Australia seats deal - The Guardian

BALTIMORE They werent ready for Hillary, and now theyre definitely not ready for her daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

The activists who fueled Sen. Bernard Sanders presidential bid last year and who have become the raging heart of the party as it seeks to rebuild itself, shudder at the thought of the 36-year-old daughter of the former president and secretary of state searching for a race of her own.

Chelsea needs to go away, said Guinevere Boyd, a 49-year-old from Alaska who attended a Democratic National Committee forum this weekend. She has nothing to offer. She has said some horrible clueless things about progressives and progressive issues.

For decades the sideshow to her parents, the younger Ms. Clinton has stepped out of their shadow in the months since her mothers loss to Donald Trump in the presidential race.

On Twitter, she has been mixing gripes against Mr. Trump with praise for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, and a plea to the public to let the presidents youngest son, Barron, have the chance every child does to be a kid.

Late last week, the heavy political bent of her tweets prompted speculation that she was eyeing the seat of Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand, New York Democrat, if it opens.

Ms. Clinton flatly ruled out that notion over the weekend and told reporters that Ms. Gillibrand is running for re-election anyway.

But the former first daughter has previously said that seeking public office is absolutely a possibility.

Attendees at the DNC forum predicted that she would have a tough time ditching the family baggage.

The country does not have any more appetite for any Clintons, said Mike Bender, 61, of Baltimore. Enough is enough, and frankly I think the Clinton policies, going back to Bill, are what took the Democrats to the center and the right, and you can see what kind of enthusiasm that inspired.

Still, some of the activists at the DNC forum didnt rule out Ms. Clinton entirely.

They said she should wait at least a decade for the anti-Clinton sentiment to burn off or that they would judge her on her own merits if she runs for office.

I dont know, said Ali Khawar, of the District of Columbia. I think if she decided to run, that is her right as a citizen, and I will judge her on her merits and to the extent that voters think her familial relationship are good or bad, that is something for them to judge her on.

Ms. Clinton serves as vice chairwoman of the Clinton Foundation and is featured in a photograph with her father, former President Bill Clinton, on the groups website.

The foundation is still coming to grips with a loss that has tarnished the Clinton brand.

The loss also left Mr. Clinton in a leadership post he was planning to vacate had his wife won.

The New York Times reported this month that the foundation is regrouping amid lingering questions over what roles the Clinton family will play.

The foundation has raised $2 billion since its beginning in 1997 and remains a force. But fundraising dropped off during the election campaign as it came under withering attacks from Mr. Trump, who accused the Clintons of offering special access at the State Department to foundation donors.

Mrs. Clinton was never charged with any wrongdoing.

Also, hacked emails released by WikiLeaks toward the tail end of the campaign unearthed turmoil between Ms. Clinton and longtime family confidant Doug Band, who helped launch the Clinton Foundation. He called her a spoiled brat and said she used foundation resources for her wedding and life for a decade.

Ms. Clinton, meanwhile, said she suspected Mr. Band was leveraging his role at the foundation and the family name to line his pockets and help launch his own company. Mr. Band defended himself in a 12-page memo to, among others, Bill and Chelsea Clinton, explaining how his company, Teneo Holdings, raised money for the Clinton Foundation.

In response to an email, The Clinton Foundation dismissed the idea that Ms. Clinton is viewing a more active role in politics to promote the Clinton Foundation and to bring the fundraising from which Mr. Band suggested she personally benefited back to where it was before the presidential campaign.

The press office said the idea is based off false assumptions. It pointed to a Washington Post fact-checker that found there is no evidence that the foundation picked up the tab for Ms. Clintons wedding and a Politifact analysis that said, The Clintons do not take any sort of paycheck, bonus or fees from the Clinton Foundation.

Ms. Clinton, meanwhile, also has political scars from the primary campaign, where she served as a top surrogate for her mother and warned voters that Mr. Sanders health care plan would empower Republican governors to take away Medicaid, to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans.

Independent fact checkers have said that Ms. Clinton mischaracterized the Vermonts independents position, and activists are still fuming.

It was a big lie, Ms. Boyd said. If she is going to be like that, who needs her? She doesnt get it. She always had money. She is very out of touch with the American people. I dont think she has really circulated with the American people since she was maybe 4 [years old] or something.

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Chelsea Clinton future run for political shunned by liberal activists ... - Washington Times

Are American universities now spaces where democratic free expression is in decline, where insecurity, fear, and an obsessive, self-preening political correctness make open dialogue impossible? This was a view voiced by many at the start of the month, after the University of California, Berkeley, canceled a speech by the right-wing provocateur, Milo Yiannopoulos, when a demonstration against his appearance spun out of control. Yiannopoulos had been invited to speak by campus Republicans, but headlines the next morning were dominated by images of 100 to 150 protesters wearing black masks, hurling rocks, fireworks, and Molotov cocktails en route to doing $100,000 dollars of damage to a student center named after the great icon of pacifist civil disobedience, Martin Luther King, Jr.

The university itself quickly rejected the rioting group of protesters, issuing a statement that read: We deeply regret that the violence unleashed by this group undermined the First Amendment rights of the speaker, as well as those who came to lawfully assemble and protest his presence. But official disavowals were not enough to spare Berkeleywhich consistently ranks as the top public university in the countryfrom headlines depicting it as yet another college campus succumbing to anti-democratic sentiments. These headlines were followed by high-profile denouncements, from Donald Trump calling for defunding the university to the Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams announcing he was ceasing his alumni giving.

Berkeley is only one of a growing number of universities that have been highlighted as waning in their commitment to free speech. A little over a year ago, Yale came under scrutiny for a notorious case involving a debate about censoring Halloween costumes on campus. And last spring The New Yorker published an in-depth investigation of how a new activism at Oberlin College had weakened a sense of open dialogue. A few months before that The Atlantic also ran a big cover story highlighting how in the name of emotional well-being college students across the country were now increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they didnt like.

Such reports have in turn reinforced a longstanding political narrative, which seeks to demean Americas universities as ideologically narrow, morally slack, hypersensitive, and out of touch. For example, commentators like the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat have argued that Americas university system is genuinely corrupt in relying on rote appeals to left-wing pieties to cloak its utter lack of higher purpose.

But does this widespread portrait of universities as morally weak and anti-democraticcirculating at least since the time of Allan Bloomreally hold true? This vision of American universities is largely inadequate in at least two ways. First, it incorrectly blames increased fragility exclusively on the university system itself and, second, it relies on a reductive caricature of Americas institutions of higher learning.

Undoubtedly a threatened sense of identity has led to a rise of some left-wing students making unreasonable demands in terms of censoring or excluding certain material. For example, at Oberlin College there was increased pressure on administration and admissions to expunge the institution of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy. As part of this one student prominently called for trigger warnings so that students could prepare themselves for emotionally-challenging texts like Sophocless Antigone. This call in turn vexed faculty, other students, parents, and administration, generating divisions on campus. Yet a closer look reveals that the fragility of identity politics is far from limited to the left on college campuses.

Identity politics places individual and group notions of selfhood at the center of politics. As the philosopher Charles Taylor has argued at length, the main goal of identity politics is recognition or validation of a given identity by others in society. I have written elsewhere about how identity politics (normally associated with American liberalism) is actually a major engine fueling the rise of Trump. The categories of left and right often distort the ways in which cultural trends, like those associated with identity politics, are far more widely shared across American life. While some left-wing groups on campus are guilty of retreating from open dialogue, a conservative-identity movement has likewise tried to buffer students from having to hear ideas that upset them.

One of the more troubling examples of this is the attempt to stigmatize certain professors through the website ProfessorWatchList.org, which compiles lists of professors that purportedly need to be monitored due to their radical agenda. This website professes to fight for free speech and the right for professors to say whatever they wish but at the same time it publicly isolates professors whose perspective is seen as offensive or shocking to conservative students. Through the use of this website students can now know before they ever walk into their college classrooms if their professor is too radical to take seriously (or perhaps even too radical to take the class). At best the website serves as a massive trigger warning for conservative-leaning students; at worst it is a modern Scarlet Letter.

Because both the left and the right more generally are struggling to muster the confidence to be routinely exposed to dissenting points of view, it is neither fair nor constructive to lay the problem of hypersensitivity at the feet of Americas liberal universities. Rather, America as a whole is experiencing an extraordinary sense of fragility around identityuniversities, like the rest of America, find themselves immersed in these tensions.

Reducing American universities to inaccurate clichs about the collegiate left does serve a hard-nosed political function: It marginalizes, excludes, discredits, and diminishes these institutions and intellectuals more broadly from public debate and office. This is part of a much longer tradition of anti-intellectualism in America, first tracked by Richard Hofstadter and more recently chronicled by Susan Jacoby. This culture of anti-intellectualism is likely an important factor in why the number of American professors who serve in Congress is dwarfed by politically dominant professions like lawyers and businessmen.

It has been a standard trope since at least the 1960s to dismiss the liberal academy and its intellectuals out of handas when William F. Buckley famously quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard. More recently the American right has routinely celebrated books by authors like Roger Scruton and Michael Walsh who rest the responsibility for what they see as an apocalyptic civilizational collapse squarely on the shoulders of professors in college classrooms.

But these attempts by other elite groups within society to gain popular political power by attacking universities and intellectuals has only been possible through distortions of reality. The ideological reality of American universities is in fact much more complex than the readymade bromides of the culture war. As of 2016, the United States is home to more than 4,000 institutions of higher education. Among them exists tremendous heterogeneity when it comes to educational missions, specialty and focus, civic and spiritual goals. A total picture of Americas academy would include everything from bustling state schools like the University of Alabama to small Catholic colleges like Thomas Aquinas College; it would span elite Ivies like Harvard and Princeton and highly affordable community colleges like Santa Monica College; it would include places specializing in sciences and engineering like Colorado School of Mines and art institutes like Rhode Island School of Design. American higher education has in part excelled due to a willingness to generously fund and support a wide diversity of institutions.

Even the internal life of universities is far more complex and diverse than the standard anti-intellectual story about them is able to capture. There is, for example, a great variety of ideological and political sensibilities found across the faculties of American universities. At the philosophical level, law schools unsurprisingly tend to presuppose a certain basic deference toward American ideological and legal norms; departments of economics are often (though not always) heavily shaped by classical economics and theories that incline toward advocacy of markets; a similar point could be made of business schools. Humanities and social-science faculties in the United States for their part have scholars of great books, humanists, and, yes, radicals.

Berkeley itselfperhaps the American university with the strongest reputation for liberal activismis far more complex a place than the standard caricatures allow. (I know because I completed my graduate education there and yet now teach at a private Christian university.) For example, Berkeley hosts a wide range of political clubs, including the largest College Republicans group in the state of California. It is also home to more than 50 student religious organizationsincluding everything from evangelical and Catholic to Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist groups. This diversity of spiritual options is hardly the same as the lack of higher purpose held together by a few empty left-wing pieties described by Douthat. A pluralism of spiritual traditions housed by the same university is not the same as a vacuum, much less a single monolithic liberal voice. Indeed, how many people know that in addition to seven Nobel Laureates, Berkeley also has John Yoo, one of the countrys most prominent conservative legal scholars on the law faculty (who zealously defended some of George W. Bushs most controversial policies)?

Ultimately, the deep philosophical problem with the standard political narrative about Americas universities is that it is far too essentialist and reductive. The criticisms are essentialist because they hold that American universities can be fairly described in terms of a few core features (liberal, hypersensitive, intolerant); theyre reductive because they assume that other complex aspects of university life can be simplified to these elements. But is the professor who holds unorthodox or even radical political views really unable to shed light on the poetry of T. S. Eliot, the paradoxes of behavioral economics, or the history of religion? America impoverishes itself when it determines beforehand whom it can and cannot learn from in this way.

Any society that routinely attacks and undermines the institutions that support its greatest minds is caught up in an act of either extravagantly nave or profoundly sinister self-sabotage. Americas college campuses remain places of astounding diversity in which democratic exchange of the highest kind still routinely takes place. The countrys university system remains, with all its imperfections, the best school for American democracy.

If the United States is to flourish in the coming generation in the way it did in the prior century, it will need to embrace and even learn from the diversity and dialogue of its universitiesnot destroy them through simplistic grabs for popular power.

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Deconstructing the 'Liberal Campus' Cliche - The Atlantic

Kathleen Gray and Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press Published 11:05 p.m. ET Feb. 13, 2017 | Updated 5 hours ago

President Donald Trump has barred all refugees from entering the United States for four months. See how many resettled here last year and how they differ from other immigrants. USA TODAY NETWORK

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Tech companies had strong responses to Donald Trump's executive order banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S., and some took action in response. USA TODAY

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Hear the chants protesters belted out at San Francisco International Airport on behalf of refugees banned under President Trump's executive order on immigration. USA TODAY NETWORK

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US President Donald Trump's executive order suspending refugee arrivals for at least 120 days and barring visas from seven Muslim countries has lost its first legal battle after a federal judge ordered detainees at US airports be released. Video provided by AFP Newslook

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Protests flared as President Trump's executive order blocked refugees from entering U.S. airports, including travelers who already had valid visas. USA TODAY NETWORK

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In the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration Friday, many critics quickly took up a familiar rallying cry, lifting words from the Statue of Liberty that have for decades represented American immigration. Time

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President Donald Trump has barred all refugees from entering the United States for four months, and indefinitely banned all refugees from Syria. USA TODAY NETWORK

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Lawyers say dozens of travelers from countries named in President Trump's recent executive order were held at John F. Kennedy International Airport and other airports Saturday amid confusion about whether they could legally enter the country. Time

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Shortly after signing documents in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said his crackdown on refugees and citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries "is not a Muslim ban." (Jan. 28) AP

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Iran says U.S. citizens are no longer welcome in the country. Buzz60

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Activists protested on Saturday the detention of two Iraqi citizens at New York City's JFK airport, one day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the US. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES Video provided by AFP Newslook

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US President Donald Trump unleashed a wave of alarm Saturday with his order to temporarily halt all refugee arrivals and impose tough controls on travelers from seven Muslim countries. Video provided by AFP Newslook

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Lawyers are taking action against President Donald Trump's immigration policy. Veuer's Keleigh Nealon (@keleighnealon) has the story. Buzz60

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President Donald Trump's signing of an executive action to bring sweeping changes to the nation's refugee policies is causing fear and alarm for immigrants in the U.S. whose family members will be affected. (Jan. 27) AP

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Confusion, worry and outrage grew Saturday as President Donald Trump's crackdown on refugees and citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries took effect. (Jan. 28) AP

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Speaking backstage at the SAG Awards, actress Lily Tomlin admits she's worried about Donald Trump "changing the laws." (Jan. 30) AP

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Protests to President Trumps executive order on immigration have been polarizing for other reasons. USA TODAY NETWORK

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On the red carpet before the SAG awards, Lily Tomlin, Dev Patel, Jeffrey Tambor, and others express shock over the travel ban signed by President Trump. (January 29) AP

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Oscar season is looking more and more like one very well-dressed protest against President Donald Trump after a fiery SAG Awards where Hidden Figures triumphed. (Jan. 29) AP

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Two American basketball players are unable to rejoin their team in Iran due to the countrys response to Donald Trumps immigration ban, according to Chris Mannix of The Vertical. Time Sports

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For the second day in a row after President Trump signed an executive order banning immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations, protesters gathered by the hundreds and flooded their local airports. USA TODAY NETWORK

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Donald Trump's executive order on ethics looks a lot like Obama's, which looks like Clinton's. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

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White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus confirms green card holders moving forward will not be affected. Time

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Hundreds of protesters in Boston chanted and held signs opposing President Trump's executive order banning all refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S.

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The former New York City mayor says he helped craft the president's executive order temporarily barring refugees and some foreign citizens. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

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A federal judge issued an emergency order Saturday night temporarily barring the U.S. from deporting people from nations subject to President Donald Trump's travel ban. Time

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Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that temporarily bans refugees from entering the U.S. Video provided by Newsy Newslook

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Washington State Governor Jay Inslee used fiery words to describe his feelings on President Trump's executive order banning legal U.S. residents and visa-holders from Muslim-majority nations entering the U.S. USA TODAY NETWORK

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Protests have erupted for the second day after US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to temporarily bar refugees and citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. (Jan 29) AP

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How many refugees did the U.S. admit in 2016, anyway?

Tech world responds harshly to Trump's immigration ban

Protesters: 'We are people; we are not illegal'

Donald Trump immigration ban loses first legal battle

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Trump says refugee crackdown 'not a Muslim ban'

Iran says U.S. citizens are no longer welcome in the country

Activists protest Trump's immigration policy at JFK airport

Sudanese react to US control on travelers from Muslim countries

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Tomlin: 'We have to be vigilant and stop certain behaviors'

Immigration ban protests spark backlash

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Part of Trump's ethics order might look familiar

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Raw: Protests Continue After Immigration Ban

Kelly Breen, of Novi, attended her first protest in January outside of the Troy congressional office of U.S. Rep. David Trott, R-Birmingham.(Photo: Kathleen Gray/Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo

As the election results began rolling in late onthe evening ofNov. 8 and it appeared that Republican Donald Trump was going to win the presidency, Kelly Breen could watch no longer.

It was looking worse and worse, so I grabbed a beer and my dog and took a walk to the park to think, said the 39-year-old Novi resident, attorney and supporter of Democrat Hillary Clinton. The next day, I came home from work and my husband said, 'Youre going to do something, arent you?'"

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It was her turn to get politically active, so her husband said he would pick up the slack with their two kids and Breen got to work, starting small and applying for a couple of vacancies on various Novi city commissions.

And late last month, she attended her first protest a rally to support the Affordable Care Act that attracted a couple of hundred people on a Monday lunch hour in front of the Troy congressional office of U.S. Rep. David Trott, R-Birmingham.

With peoples lives at stake, you have to think what is the issue is at hand. Right now, its the Affordable Care Act and that people in war-torn areas have a safe place to be, she said. Those are actual life-and-death matters.

Breen is just one of thousands of people in Michigan who are getting politically active in the wake of the election of Trump as the 45th president of the U.S.

From the millions of people around the world who attended the Womens March the day after Trump was inauguratedJan.21 to the 200 people who showed up at a Washtenaw County Democratic Party meeting on Super Bowl Sunday to the 600 people who crowded into a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Cascade Township, last week, the early days of the Trump administration are beginning to look like the tea party movement that blossomed in 2009 in response to the presidency of Barack Obama.

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Anti-Trump fervor sparks a new, liberal kind of tea party activism - Detroit Free Press

Melissa McCarthys Saturday Night Live impersonation of Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has gone viral. And Alec Baldwins rendering of Donald Trump on the same US show is so good that the president despises it, which was surely the goal. As Michael Moore noted: Trumps skin is so thin we can discombobulate him with satire. So is the political comedy boom spreading to Britain? Private Eyes sales are at their highest ever, and the comedian Bridget Christie is on a 35-date tour of Because You Demanded It, a show devoted to Brexit.

The trouble with satire, though, is that we all love it when it is directed at our enemies and at those who are objectively ludicrous. Just when you thought Trumps real-life entourage had become beyond parody, McCarthy squeezes an extra bit of ridicule out of the spectacle with her depiction of Spicer, the angriest press secretary in the history of press briefings, foaming at the gum-stuffed mouth while he hurls a Moana doll (immigrant) into a cardboard box (Guantnamo) to illustrate extreme vetting.

The real test of satire, though, is if we still laugh when it is directed at our friends. Or at ourselves. Plus, as the editor of Private Eye Ian Hislop has hinted, theres a flipside to the popularity of satire in difficult times. He likes to quote Peter Cooks dry reference to the thriving 1930s Berlin cabaret scene, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler.

That doesnt mean satire isnt a vital safety valve. Hislop employs that quote only to show that he doesnt take himself or his magazine too seriously: he is satirising himself. But already his warning is being taken literally on social media, where theres an idea springing up that the whole Trump-Brexit thing is just not funny any more, and maybe its somehow borderline treacherous to be making jokes when you should be resisting or marching or doing something really useful like sending a lot of earnest tweets.

This attitude is why liberal America will tie itself up in knots wondering if its morally acceptable to laugh at Trump. (If you really are wondering this, no one can help you. Or possibly ever make you laugh at anything.) And its why in the UK we wont get the thing we should have, which is our own Saturday Night Live.

Its strange in a way because SNL is almost a telly version of Private Eye. With one important caveat: Private Eyes target is anyone and anything. SNLs favourite target certainly currently is always the right. But if the Eyes humour works for us in print, why dont we have anything like it on British television?

The most obvious difference is audience size. Even an unsuccessful topical late-night show in the US is going to have huge viewing figures compared with the UK. Plus US satire has international resonance and an afterlife on YouTube and social media. We flatter ourselves in Britain that our political narrative is as interesting as Trump. But you dont see screenshots of Private Eyes Brexit covers (however brilliant) going viral globally.

But we could hold our own politicians to account via ridicule on TV, couldnt we? And yet we dont. That is largely due to the BBCs public service remit. The BBC has the knowhow and the track record to broadcast something like this. But how would they do it? In a world where statistically more of the audience for Have I Got News for You must be Daily Mail or Telegraph readers rather than Guardian fans, it is amazing that it has survived. Imagine designing a political satire show that appeals equally to those two demographics. Its impossible.

Spitting Image hit the widest range of targets at a time when politics was a broader church and voters were less touchy. The brilliant Yes, Minister got away with a lot by never stating Jim Hackers political affiliation. Later, The Thick of It employed the same trick. The point was: it could just as easily be about any party, because they could all be idiots. The show cut through the partisan.

This is the best kind of satire: one that gets through to everyone regardless of political leanings. Otherwise were just laughing at what we already we agree with in our own cosy bubbles. The real challenge for satire would be to do on British (or American) television what Private Eye manages to do in print: attack everyone evenhandedly and with the self-awareness to occasionally attack yourself.

The main thing in the way of mainstream satire, of course, is the collapse of the centre. In the UK and the US we saw the same trend last year. Half the population is indifferent or hostile to politics and doesnt vote. The other half is split almost down the middle, with the winning side gaining its victory by a couple of percentage points. So half the country doesnt care or is disillusioned; one quarter is insecure in victory; and the other quarter is insecure in defeat. In Britain this does not make for a scenario where you can pull in a national TV audience and get them all to laugh at the same thing.

Still, lets see someone try. Worst case, its an entertaining public crucifixion and what better way to draw us together, Monty Python-style? Satires golden age will truly be upon us when a Saturday Night Live clip mercilessly dissecting liberal angst gets as much traction as the wonder that is Sean-Spicer-as-a-woman dry-humping a desk. I cant see it happening any time soon. Enjoy the bubble.

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A new satire must emerge one that breaks out of the liberal bubble - The Guardian

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Liberal Frenzy: 'Impeach' Trump; 'Traitor! Resign by Morning' CNSNews.com (CNSNews.com) - Liberal activists, stung by their election loss, have been angling to get rid of President Trump since the day he took office. Some of them are now seizing on the resignation of National Security Director Michael Flynn as the scandal ... Justice Department warned White House that Flynn could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, officials sayWashington Post all 1,873 news articles »

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Liberal Frenzy: 'Impeach' Trump; 'Traitor! Resign by Morning' - CNSNews.com