Category Archives: Liberal

President Trump's national security adviser says a Washington Post report that says Trump shared intelligence with Russia "is false." USA TODAY

A great deal has been written and said about the media divide in the United States or how Americans tend to follow news organizations that reinforce their political beliefs and that divide was clearly in evidence Monday in the wake of a Washington Post story alleging President Trump shared classified information with Russian diplomats during a meeting at the WhiteHouse.

For example, a glance at the three major cable news networks at 8:20 p.m. ET revealed the following banners on the bottom of the screen:

While CNN and MSNBC focused on the report from the Post and the reaction from Trump's opponents, Fox News focused on a perceived hysteria among liberals a tactic the network also employed in the wake of the firing of former FBI director James Comey.

Just under an hour later, Fox News ran a banner reading, "McMaster: Washington Post story on Russia meeting is false," while CNN's banner read, "Sources: Trump shared classified info with Russian foreign minister."

On the Fox News website, the top story at 9:30 p.m. ET was about Hillary Clinton and the launch of her "Onward Together" PAC. The story about Trump was programmed beneath that under the headline, "'It didn'thappen': WH denies report Trump revealed classified info."

Read more:

Lawmakers slam reports Trump revealed classified intel to Russians

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'Post' scoop on Trump's Russia leak sets new reader record

On Breitbart, the top headline read"Deep State Strikes: Leaks Classified Info To Washington Post To Smear Trump, LOL: Reporters Negate Oversold Headline In 7th Paragraph."

The "deep state" refers to a theory repeatedly propagatedby Breitbartsince Trump took office, which says a cadre of government officials loyal to former President Obama have been working behind the scenes to undermine Trump.

The 7th paragraph from the Post story that theBreitbart headline refers to reads,"As president, Trump has broad authority to declassify government secrets, making it unlikely that his disclosures broke the law." The headline implies since the president did not break the law, the story is of little importance.

Read more:

Is it legal for Trump to share classified intelligence? Yes, but risky, experts say

The second headline on Breitbart was, "McMaster: WAPO Story 'False' 'I Was In The Room, It Didn't Happen'."An accuratesummation of the denial issued by Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

On The Washington Times website, the top story was "Officials dispute report Trump revealed classified information to Russians."

By contrast, CNN led after obtaining their own unnamed sources with a wide, banner headline reading, "Sources: Trump shared classified info with Russians." Four other stories critical of the White House preceded a video of McMaster's denial.

On the Fox News showHannity,host Sean Hannityopened by attacking the sources of the leaks to the Post.

"No White Housecan sustain these types of constant leaks," he said. "So, if you're in the White House, and you're this, if you're not there to serve your country and all you're doing is hurting the country, well, then you might want to get out of the way."

Hannity proceeded to report on the Comey firing and "the worst liberal media feeding frenzy in American history" that followed. He went on to explain why he believes Comey deserved to be fired and why Clinton should have been prosecuted for her handling of classified material on a private emailserver.

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How the latest Trump headlines played out in conservative, liberal media - USA TODAY

Next month Im returning to Marthas Vineyard. Its a lovely place and, for progressives, the ultimate safe space. It sometimes seems that Republicans need a green card just to visit, and that the island only issues 10 per year.

But this creates a problem: What passes for political wisdom can become, shall we say, insular. As a journalistic eminence murmured after enduring a dinner party where, in his view, progressive piety strangled reality by the throat: As Marthas Vineyard goes, so goes Cambridge, Berkeley, and the upper West Side of Manhattan.

Which puts me in mind of certain Democratic liberals and lemmings.

Hold the outrage, please. I like to think Im as progressive as the next guy, including ardent support for voting rights, LGBT rights, reproductive rights, racial justice, and preventing dangerous people from slaughtering innocents with guns. Over the years, Ive devoted considerable energy to these issues. But, for me, the current ideological fratricide among Democrats evokes the mythic rodents who commit mass suicide by jumping off cliffs.

This years contest for DNC chair in essence, a tiresome rerun of the fight between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders featured lemmings galore. Among them were the raucous activists who booed the liberal Tom Perez for beating the even more liberal, and more controversial, Keith Ellison, perpetuating the ongoing divide between the merely progressive and the truly pure.

Inescapably, this spectacle raised questions. What slice of the populace do these folks represent? At this critical juncture, were Perez and Ellison the best choices Democrats had? What about Pete Buttigieg, the young and appealing mayor of South Bend, Ind. who, having succeeded in a red state, emphasized expanding the partys appeal in middle America? And what does all this fractiousness portend for the Democrats ability to reverse their electoral fortunes?

Nothing good. To heal the wounds, Perez and Sanders launched a unity tour. Quickly, it foundered on their support of the Democratic candidate for mayor of Omaha, Neb., Heath Mello who, it transpired, had taken anti-abortion positions as a state legislator. Quickly, abortion-rights groups pounced, asserting that the partys support for Mello was unacceptable.

Progressives like Sanders and Elizabeth Warren defended the right of a local candidate to hold views at odds with theirs, sensibly distinguishing between a would-be mayor of Omaha and, say, a Supreme Court nominee. But the head of NARAL denounced this as politically stupid. Swiftly, Perez capitulated, asserting that Democrats commitment to abortion rights is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state.

Lets be clear. The Democratic Party firmly embraces reproductive rights and should. And, yes, the anti-abortion movement is tainted with misogyny, patriarchy, and fundamentalism. But, unavoidably, the debate over abortion includes a genuine ethical issue regarding how we define life. And, as a practical matter, a significant minority of Democrats oppose abortion; some are women who support maternal leave, better child-care policies, and wage equity.

Abortion rights should not, in itself, be a litmus test of decency or of who gets to be a Democrat in Nebraska.

But doctrinal purity is contagious. Shortly, Sanders stumbled, when asked if Jon Ossoff a Democrat opposing an antiabortion GOP zealot in a bright-red Georgia congressional district was a progressive. I dont know, Sanders flatly stated. Really? When did Georgia become Vermont? And when did progressive orthodoxy become so rigid and exclusionary?

But among Democrats, this ideological Stalinism is all too common. A few years ago, a friend and leader in the gun-control movement refused to support the incumbent Democratic senator from Arkansas, deeming him too compromised on guns. He lost to a Republican who opposes everything my friend cares about. Now Republicans control the Senate, and Neil Gorsuch sits on the Supreme Court.

This illustrates the complex relationship between moral urgency and political actuality. The civil rights movement was not driven by political exigency, but by the uncompromising commitment of brave men and women who transformed our national conscience. But translating civil rights into law required a Democratic president working through a Democratic Congress.

Too many activists fail to grasp this or that their desire to thwart Donald Trump exceeds their partys ability to do so. Thus some on the left threaten primary challenges against Democrats they perceive as insufficiently militant.

This is political self-immolation. The Democrats are defending Senate seats in red or purple states like Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Pennsylvania all of which Trump carried. Do these petulant purists really think that a Warren-style Democrat could win in Montana? Or care that they risk losing the last bastion of legislative resistance to Trump even, perhaps, the filibuster?

Already, Democrats are ceding most of America with alarming celerity. Since 2006, the party has lost 10 percent of its seats in the Senate, 19 percent in the House, 20 percent in state legislatures, and 36 percent of governorships. The 16 percent of counties won by Hillary Clinton resemble, demographically, a cocktail party on Marthas Vineyard urban, affluent, well-educated, and, increasingly, politically homogenous and sociologically isolated. In such circumstances, political antennae rust, litmus tests flourish, and a vision of deplorables sets in that mirrors the intolerance of the right.

No surprise, then, that many middle-class and blue-collar Americans including former Obama voters feel that national Democrats favor the wealthy. Programmatically, this simply isnt so. No doubt this misperception owes much to the GOPs rank dishonesty. But ideological rigidity and cultural condescension surely do not help nor, frankly, do enormous speaking fees from Wall Street.

So what should Democrats do? Some think the party should focus on turning out its core demographic well-educated whites, women, young people, and minorities; others on winning back some of the voters it lost to Trump. But this is a false choice. Nor is it sufficient for Democrats to define themselves merely by opposing Trump. Instead, the party needs to prioritize engaging voters rather than excluding them.

This requires what went missing in 2016: a compelling and unifying vision of how Democratic policies improve the lives of more Americans, helping unleash the potential of every person wherever and whoever they are to lift themselves and their country. This message of inclusion and economic opportunity transcends geography and demographics and, as well, any single issue or constituent group no matter how important. It says, rather, that every American is not merely worthwhile, but valuable.

That is what a national party looks like.

Richard North Pattersons column appears regularly in the Boston Globe. His latest book is Fever Swamp. Follow him on Twitter @RicPatterson.

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The Democrats' Liberal Lemmings - HuffPost

The bad news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history. The good news is that Donald Trump is the most incompetent president in modern American history.

He was too incompetent to understand his own health care bill, or accurately describe the direction in which the armada designed to intimidate North Korea was heading, or restrain himself from disclosing highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. But hes also too incompetent, it appears, to destroy liberal democracy.

When Trump fired James Comey a week ago, many Republicans denied that he had done so to shut down the FBIs inquiry into his campaigns Russia ties. Trump, they said, could not have been that stupid. He could not have been stupid enough to believe that firing Comey would quash the Russia investigation.

But, increasingly, it appears that Trump was. Rather than building a high-minded pretext for firing Comey, Trump, according to the New York Times, invited Comey to dinner in January and demanded his personal loyalty. If that wasnt incriminating enough, in February he baldly asked Comey to end the investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Then, after Comey asked for more funding to investigate the Trump campaigns Russia ties, Trump fired himessentially asking the man he had handed a loaded gun to fire it at his head.

In the hours after Comeys firing, the Trump cant be that stupid caucus globbed onto Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteins memo, which offered justifications for Comeys firing that did not reek of self-interest. But in an interview with NBC News Lester Holt, Trump admitted that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he made the decision to fire Comey, thus discarding Rosensteins fig leaf and exposing his political nakedness for all to see.

Thank goodness. The Kremlin, it turns out, is not the only institution able to outwit Donald Trump. American law enforcement and the American press can too. Comey, who unlike Trump knows the art of political CYA, reportedly kept a record of the Presidents efforts to obstruct justice. Trumps own White House is sabotaging him daily through massive leaks. And at both the Times and the Washington Post, the best reporters of their generation are participating in the journalistic equivalent of a dunking contest.

In retrospect, it was predictable. During the campaign, Trump advertised his hostility to liberal democratic norms. But he advertised his incompetence too. He slandered judges for their ethnicity and vowed tax investigations into the publishers of newspapers that criticized him. But he also let Texas Senator Ted Cruz give a prime time speech at his own convention that did not include an endorsement.

As a result of his own ineptitude, Trump is politically weaker than he was on Inauguration Day even though the economy is stronger. And its harder to mount a populist assault on the rule of law when youre not even that popular.

Yes, Trump can still do grave damage. Yes, hes exposed the fragility of Americas system of liberal democracy. But that system has one key advantage: The people protecting it are good at their jobs.

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American Institutions Strike Back - The Atlantic

Nicole Mincey is black, comes from a liberal Democrat background and watched closely what Barack Obama did for blacks during his presidency.

So why is she now running theonline ProTrump45 store featuring Adorable Deplorable shirts, Make America Great Again caps, Deplorable Lives Matter slogans and more?

Because shes black, comes from a liberal Democrat background and watched closely what Barack Obama did for blacks during his presidency.

Honestly, the reason I switched to being a Republican was I realized Obama didnt necessarily help black people during his presidency like he promised, she told WND.

On her store site, she saysTrump represents conservative and middle America.

The silent majority of America, the hard-working, military-serving, God-fearing conservative Americans. He doesnt ignore the middle states of America like most presidents but gives a voice.

Her store site includes a blogwith headlines such asFAKE NEWS EXPOSED!! Caught lying about Comeys words!! and Conservative federal judges coming SOON!!!

For her part in Trumps Make America Great Again agenda, she employs Americans and sells American-made products.

Her plan is simply to be a part of the rebuilding of America.

My idea is to spread a more conservative message, she said.

Shes received both positive and negative feedback.

People claim that Im a sellout, because Im black, she explained.

But the positive the praise for her store, products and entrepreneurship outweighs the negative, she said.

Were hoping to make it very successful.

She told WND her background made her ideally suited to bea Democrat.

I am from Newark, New Jersey. I was raised in a bad neighborhood, she said.

But she became an ex-Democrat because of the partys refusal to adopt self-responsibility.

Everyone is a victim in their eyes and you cant succeed unless the government helps you on someone elses expense. I went to a charter high school where we constantly received threats to [be] shut down by Democratic politicians. We had to always do fundraisers to stay afloat.

She said she was motivated by a desire to break liberal stereotypes.

The media has painted Republican conservatives as old, white people that are racist. Im a young black college student that is female. Liberals see me and dont know what to say because they cant throw the racist card at me.

While she used to be a regular college student with a job, now shes a college student with a small business and a job.

I saw a financial opportunity and took it. Thats the perks of capitalism, she explained, citing her 100,000 Twitter followers and the several thousand views each month of her store site.

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Black, liberal woman dumps Obama to run Trump store - WND.com

1970President Richard M. Nixon, in one of the misdeeds for which he most deserves infamy, appoints Harry A. Blackmun to the Supreme Court. Blackmun, a boyhood friend of Chief Justice Warren Burger, had served on the Eighth Circuit since 1959. Before that, he had been in-house counsel for the Mayo Clinic. His appreciation for the outstanding work done by the fine doctors at the Mayo Clinic is said to have led him to regret that he himself did not become a doctor. Those with a proper appreciation of Blackmuns Supreme Court decisionmakingincluding, but by no means limited to, his notorious opinion in Roe v. Wade (see This Day for January 22)might fairly observe that the medical professions loss was the nationsloss.

2009Ramona Ripston, Executive Director of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and (per its website) the individual responsible for all phases of the organizations programs, including litigation, takes part in a confidential strategy meeting with counsel planning to file a federal lawsuit against Proposition 8. After counsel files the complaint in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, Ripstons organization will file pre-trial and post-trial amicus briefs in support of plaintiffs, and Ripston will publicly rejoice over Judge Vaughn Walkers August 2010 ruling against Proposition 8.

But when Ripstons husband, arch-activist Stephen Reinhardt, is assigned to the Ninth Circuit panel charged with reviewing Walkers ruling, Reinhardt somehow will decline to recuse himself from the case.

2017Happy Mothers Day! No thanks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in 1974 co-authored a report proposing that Congress abolish Mothers Day and Fathers Day and replace them with an androgynous Parents Day. Observing Parents Day would, she explained, be more consistent with a policy of minimizing traditional sex-based differences in parental roles.

In that same report, the oh-so-moderate Ginsburg stated her strong sympathy for the proposition that there is a constitutional right to prostitution and a constitutional right to bigamy; criticized the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts for perpetuating stereotyped sex roles; and urged that prisons be co-ed rather than single sex. (See relevant excerpts from the report.)

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This Day in Liberal Judicial ActivismMay 14 - National Review

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During the brief press conference held aboard the papal plane returning to Rome from Fatima Saturday, the pontiff fielded a number of questions. One camefrom NBCs Claudio Lavanga, who pressed the Pope concerning his upcoming meeting with President Trump on May 24.

Without bothering to hide his evident dislike of the president, Lavanga set up an adversarial relationship between Trump and the Pope, telling the pontiff that while he is a bridge-builder, Trump is threatening to build walls.

It seems that the president also has opinions and decisions different from you in other areas, for example regarding the need to act against global warming or concerning the acceptance of migrants, Lavanga continued. So, on the vigil of your meeting with him, what opinions have you formed of the policies that President Trump has adopted on these issues and what do you expect from a meeting with a head of state that appears to think and act the opposite of you?

Carefully sidestepping the minefield planted by the journalist, Pope Francis said it would be imprudent of him to judge someone he hasnt yet met.

I never form a judgment of a person without first listening to him, and I believe that I shouldnt do so, the Pope replied. In speaking between ourselves, things will come out: I will say what I think; he will say what he thinks. But I have never, ever wanted to form a judgment without hearing someone out.

The Pope seemed in part to be walking back a comparable conversation from a year ago, where another journalist caught him by using a similar subterfuge.

On that occasion, while Trump was still just a candidate for the Republican nomination, Reuters journalist Phil Pullella drew a verbal caricature of Trump as a family-dividing ogre who was prepared to deport 11 million illegal immigrants. After hearing the description, the Pope famously responded that a man who only thinks of building walls is no Christian.

The papal spokesman subsequently had to clarify the Popes words, saying his comments werent a personal attack or an instruction on how to vote.

Since then, whenever a journalist has asked the Pope to comment on Trump, he has always responded by counseling prudence and giving the president a chance to prove himself.

On Trumps inauguration day last January, Pope Francis warned against rash judgments of the new President Donald Trump.

The interviewer from the Spanish daily El Pas told the Pope that the whole world is tense over the election of President Trump, calling him a xenophobe filled with hatred for foreigners.

The Pope said that the new president deserved to be judged by his actions, not by prophecies of what he may or may not do.

I think that we must wait and see, Francis said. I dont like to get ahead of myself nor judge people prematurely. We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion.

The Pope said it is most unwise to be afraid of something that might happen. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that dont take place. We will see. We will see what he does and then evaluate, he said. I prefer to wait and see.

In Saturdays in-flight press conference, NBCs Claudio Lavanga pressed the Pope further, repeating his question of how he would face a head of state with ideas in opposition to his (it should be mentioned that no journalist thought to ask the Pope this question regarding his meetings with Vladimir Putin, Ral Castro, Evo Morales or Barack Obama).

Once again, the Pope deftly parried the attack, counseling bridge-building rather than throwing up a wall.

There are always doors that arent closed, Francis said. We have to look for doors that are at least ajar, to pass through and speak of things we agree on and move forward from there. Step by step.

Peace is a work in progress, built day by day, he continued. And so is friendship between people, mutual understanding and esteem: they are built up every day. Respect for the other, saying what one thinks, but with respect, walking together Someone may see things in a certain way: that should be said, being very clear in what each one thinks.

Not giving up, Lavanga insisted one last time. So you think that he will soften his positions afterward?

To which the Pope responded: That is a political calculus that I would not allow myself to make. Even in the religious sphere, I am no proselytizer.

Despite Lavangas portrayal of the two leaders as polar opposites, in point of fact, the Pope and the President have a fair amount of common ground to build onarguably more than if Hillary Clinton had been elected.

Both leaders oppose abortion and euthanasia, defend religious liberty and conscientious objection, emphasize job creation, support the traditional family, and have spoken out strongly in defense of persecuted Christians in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Even on the question of immigration, Pope Francis asserted in January that every country has the right to control its borders, especially where the risk of terrorism exists. Here it is not so much a question of immigration vs. no-immigration, but legal immigration vs. illegal immigration.

In the end, the Pope is also aware that U.S. Catholics voted for Trump by a margin of 52 to 45 per cent. Both men represent something larger than themselves.

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Pope Francis Confounds Liberal Media, Refuses to Dis Trump - Breitbart News

These are Liberal principles and if you don't like them ... we have others.

Are there any principles that the Liberal Party still stands for?

Core Liberal convictions used to include: the importance of sound public finances; the need for honesty in budget forecasts; distrust of "government spending" as a solution to problems; and a preference for low taxes, to reward hard work and let individuals keep more of the income they earn.

Liberals used to subscribe fervently to all of these values and conservatives still do. But after this week's budget, it's unclear if the parliamentary Liberal Party still subscribes to any of them.

Consider them in turn.

After wavering during the Fraser years, the Howard government recommitted the Liberals to balanced budgets as a bedrock virtue. And it delivered, achieving 10 surpluses from 12 budgets and fully paying off the Commonwealth's net debt, despite inheriting large deficits and record debt from Labor. This success reaffirmed budget discipline as a central Liberal tenet, and was the firm anchor to which the politically successful Howard government was tethered.

Indeed, so effective was the Coalition in promoting budget discipline that, although the Rudd and Gillard governments failed to get the budget back to surplus post GFC, both felt compelled to repeatedly commit to that goal.

Yet now the Turnbull government has announced another $37 billion deficit this financial year, unchanged from two years ago, and at least a further three deficits to come to make 12 years of Commonwealth deficits in a row.

To put that in perspective, even after the severe early 1990s recession when unemployment topped 11 per cent, Australia only recorded seven consecutive deficits and one of those was negligible (just 0.1 per cent of GDP). Yet now, with unemployment below 6 per cent and projected to fall, the Turnbull government is untroubled by the prospect of adding at least six deficits to the six Labor already recorded.

Nor is it troubled by Commonwealth net debt hitting a new record level as a share of GDP, surpassing the previous mid-1990s peak, as it commits to huge new spending on health and education in a vain effort to out-Labor Labor.

What about the honesty of the latest fiscal projections?

It was the Howard government that brought in the Charter of budget Honesty and that introduced the underlying cash balance concept in 1996, to stop governments misleadingly claiming budget improvement through one-off asset sales. (Asset sales may or may not make sense each case must be judged on its own merits but they should never be done just to claim a temporary budget boost from "selling off the silver".)

And it was the Liberals that rightly attacked Rudd/Gillard Labor's approach of hiding big spending increases out beyond the budget forward estimates period; of using overly rosy economic projections to prop up its budget forecasts; and of employing accounting fiddles to ensure that billions of dollars of NBN spending never showed up in the budget bottom line.

Yet now the Turnbull government has embraced all three of these tricks.

With its sudden conversion to Gonski spending itself a complete reversal of the principles Liberals supposedly held dear until two weeks ago it now plans to splash $18.6 billion extra on schools over the next decade; yet 90 per cent of this spending is to occur in the final six years, hidden beyond the four-year horizon covered in the budget papers.

As for the budget's economic projections, the latest data show wages rising by less than 2 per cent a year. Yet this year's budget has wages growth rising to three per cent by 2018-19 and to 3.75 per cent two years thereafter enabling big projected increases in income tax revenue despite every single budget for at least the last six years having had wage growth forecasts that were more conservative but still proved over-optimistic.

And as for accounting fiddles, rather than reject Labor's fraudulent NBN approach, the Turnbull government has doubled down on it providing $14 billion to build the Inland Rail and the Western Sydney Airport without a cent showing up in the budget deficit. One doesn't have to oppose these projects to see that this is plainly deceptive.

Finally, what about Liberals' preference for small government and lower taxes? These also used to be defining Liberal values and still are for conservatives but Tuesday's budget shows that the Turnbull government doesn't even pretend to still believe in them.

After all, there's not much that's "small government, low tax" about raising taxes by $20.75 billion and spending by $14.5 billion or about being content for spending to remain at 25 per cent of GDP or more for seven straight years on your watch, the longest period at this level since the Second World War.

Clearly, the 2017-18 budget shows that the Turnbull Liberals have abandoned core Liberal principles on spending, on taxing, and on budget discipline and honesty just as they'd already abandoned other longstanding Liberal convictions on social matters, on valuing self reliance (think of the government's superannuation "reforms"), and on upholding Australian sovereignty (the mercifully thwarted effort to kowtow to China over extradition arrangements).

For Liberals who still believe in those principles, it's time to ask: why exactly should I continue to support a party that has no compunction about abandoning me?

Cory Bernardi is a South Australian Senator and leader of the Australian Conservatives

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Budget 2017: Why should Liberals support the principle-free Turnbull Coalition? - The Australian Financial Review

It comes as the party announces a series of promises on defence designed to sure up their support base and appeal to veterans.

The party today commits to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence and 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid if it wins power.

The Lib Dems are also proposing a careers for heroes policy that would give any solider who has served for more than 12 years free university tuition.

MrFarron, who became Lib Dem leader in July 2015, secured a majority in his constituency of around 9,000 votes at the last election.

However Tory strategists believe they have a genuine chance of unseating him this time round by winning over Brexit supporters.

It is very much Tory versus Lib Dem," said a Conservative source. "If you have 45 per cent of people voting for Brexit, then that is 45 per cent of people on side immediately.

If you add on people who think you need to get the best deal for Britain now were leaving, how much of the 55 per cent will back the Tories? Suddenly you start to see a different type of dynamic.

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Revealed: Tories plot 'Take-out Tim' strategy to oust Liberal Democrat leader from seat - Telegraph.co.uk

Nick Cleggsays hehas been passionately advocatingagainst a second coalition in Liberal Democrat circles, insisting there is no glue to hold together another government with either the Conservatives or Labour.

Mr Clegg, the former deputy Prime Minister, who took a leap into the political unknown seven years agoto enter, with David Cameron, intothe first coalition government since 1945, now believes such an alliance with Theresa May is nonsense and his party would never dignify the current collusion between the Tories and UkipregardingBrexit.

In an interview with The Independent on the day before Parliament was dissolved, the former Liberal Democrat leader, who led the party to acalamitous near-wipeoutat the last general election, said the forthcoming vote was a huge opportunity for his successor Tim Farron to capitalise on thetransformation of the political landscape in Britain over the last two years.

Asked whether he was optimistic about the prospects for arevival of the party, he said: We cant do much worse than 2015. So I think the only way is up.

He believes barring a dramatic event in the next four weeks Ms May will remain in Downing Street on 9 June.

But he criticised the Conservative party for treating the general election as a regal procession and a coronation rather than a contest.

Its an odd election, he added. The question really isnt who is going to be in government, its who is going oppose them [the Conservatives] and who is going to oppose them well.

They have this plutonium guard in the right-wing press that will sort of kneecap anybody who stands in their way and Jeremy Corbyn is helping tremendously with this hapless leadership of the Labour party. Its very, very likely Theresa May will be Prime Minister and then the question really becomes what kind of majority does she get, what kind of mandate does she get and how will she continue to be held to account for what I regard to be a series of very bad choices in terms of the future that she wants to impose on this country.

Asked whether Mr Farron was right to categorically rule out entering another coalition after the election, should the situation arise, he responded: Quite right too. In the discussions we had amongst ourselves as Liberal Democrats, I was probably one of the most vociferous advocates of that because times have changed completely.

When I was leader a long time ago now, prior to the 2010 election, the essay question for the Liberal Democrats was 'Would we step up to the plate in the wake of the terrible financial crisis in 2008 to provide responsible government for the country?' Now the essay question is entirely different it is 'Will we stand up to the plate to provide effective opposition?'

The big prize for the Liberal Democrats, he added, is to return back into the hands of the British people the right to decide their own future once we know what the Brexit deal is in the form of a second referendum. That of course is best done by reinforcing presence on the opposition benches, he said.

You have now a Government with some very powerful vested interests, some of these moneyed, rather shadowy elites that have financed the Brexit campaign in the first place.

The idea the Liberal Democrats are going to participate in that is of course a nonsense. It is diametrically opposed to everything we believe in, it is a very odd union of this methodical Prime Minister and rather shadowy, unaccountable elites, who have managed to shape the public debate in a way in which pursues their ends: not only the United Kingdom leaving the European Union but doing so in order to covert the United Kingdom thereafter into a sort of low-tax, offshore economy. That is an ideological journey that is absolutely contrary to everything that liberalism and the Liberal Democrats stand for.

Mr Clegg said in 2010 there was a meeting point for a coalition. We needed to do something exceptional to pull the country back from the economic brink and that was something which, in a sense, the glue that held the coalition together, he added.

Theres no such glue at all.

But the former leader of the Liberal Democrats refused to choose whomhe would he would prefer as Prime Minister in four weeks time. Its such an invidious choice I couldnt possibly choose, he laughed. I think the sort of slightly self-indulgent nostalgia youve got in the leadership of the Labour party is as damaging as the sort of divisive, Ukip-lite approach to life that we now have from the Conservative party. There are millions of people in the country who I suspect feel pretty hopeless at the moment politically."

Mr Clegg was last photographed with his old coalition partner Mr Cameron at the Ivy Brasserie in Kensington, west London, as the pair had breakfast together. But he refused to divulge in any details of the conversation. We had a cup of coffee and a light breakfast if you really must know, he said. Much though we disagree on all sorts of things, not least Europe, we had worked together for many years so we were just catching up.

Unsurprisingly, it wasnt a get-together for public consumption.

Asked if the coalition he agreed to enter seven years ago had been a mistake, he replied: Clearly not a mistake from the countrys point [of view].

The record shows it was a remarkably stable and moderate government compared to what we now have. It was a remarkably stable government compared to all the governments that were toppling in the rest of Europe and we did some really big, progressive things.

The tragedy is, we were hardly thanked for it, to it put it mildly. The moment the reins came off the Conservatives they screwed it all up again. Having worked so painstakingly to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after the economic damage of 2008, theyve now gone a blown a 59bn further Brexit blackhole in our public finances.

But the issue of tuition fees remains something that has tarnished his record and still continues to blight the prospects the Liberal Democrats, especially among younger voters.

At the beginning of this month, Mr Cleggfaced a grilling from the ITV Good Morning Presenter Piers Morgan over the coalitions decision to treble fees for students and became visibly infuriated, describing Mr Morgan as pompous.

To be honest, he likes the sound of his own voice too much. I was more sort of thinking 'Am I ever going to have a minute to say anything?' added MrClegg.

Nick Clegg calls Piers Morgan 'pompous' and 'extraordinary' during interview

Hes like a lot of self-absorbed people, he loves the sound of his own voice. To be honest I was just reacting to the idea that we had a few precious minutes together on television and it was taken up by the sound of his own voice.

The former Lib Dem leader, however, concedes that the decision was something immensely damaging to us politically.

We had choices to make, he adds. There just wasnt enough money to do everything we did, so the choices we made, I think will stand the test of time. We choseto invest in the poorest kids at the youngest point in their lives.

Heres the really uncompromising truth: I am not the first and I wont be the last politician who found he couldnt do exactly what he wanted in power than he had hoped in opposition."

The rest is here:

Nick Clegg: 'I was one of the most vociferous advocates against another coalition' - The Independent

During an interview with Glenn Beck, former Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly complained of a liberal "hit job" that did him in.

"In the weeks to come we're going to be able to explain all of it," O'Reilly said Friday in his first interview since being fired on April 19. "It has to do with destroying voices that the far left and the organized left-wing cabal doesn't like."

While Fox's critics don't see it that way, a powerful mix of lawyers and liberal groups have indeed sought to amplify allegations of sexual and racial harassment at the network in a series of scandals that have also cost the jobs of founding CEO Roger Ailes and co-president and veteran executive Bill Shine.

They're not backing off, as they seek more firings and try to influence a British regulator's ruling on Fox News parent company 21st Century Fox's bid to acquire the Sky satellite network.

The drama has upended the most powerful conservative brand in media, one that has long rallied its viewers with talk of liberal conspiracies. O'Reilly's voice, for two decades the one most followed in cable news, has been silenced for now.

Shortly before O'Reilly was fired, his lawyer distributed a copy of an email as evidence of a "smear campaign." It was sent by Mary Pat Bonner, a consultant who helped raise money for former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, less than two weeks after The New York Times reported on settlements paid to quiet claims against "The O'Reilly Factor" host. It invited people to a phone update on a campaign to pressure advertisers.

Bonner's firm was hired by Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog founded in 2004 to criticize conservative media outlets, particularly Fox. The calls were an effort to keep various organizations that opposed O'Reilly informed, said Angelo Carusone, Media Matters president.

The groups include Color of Change, a racial justice organization; Sleeping Giants, social media activists who try to persuade companies not to advertise on conservative web sites; and UltraViolet, a women's rights group co-founded by a leader of Moveon.org that advertises on its web site the O'Reilly firing as one of its successes.

Carusone characterized the organizing as "not that much," basically sharing information and advertiser lists. But he said he gets the need for O'Reilly's supporters to concentrate on a foe.

"It's not as sexy as I think the idea is," he said. "But I understand why it's appealing to say."

Pressure put on O'Reilly advertisers to pull commercials from his show is a tactic familiar to Carusone, who led a similar campaign that choked lucrative ad dollars from Beck's former Fox show and drove him from the network.

O'Reilly's relatively swift firing less than three weeks after the Times story appeared may have worked in Fox's favor.

Carusone said Media Matters had been preparing a campaign for May, a key month in the television business when many companies allocate their advertising dollars, to encourage a general boycott of Fox News, not just O'Reilly's show. He still supports that goal, but concedes O'Reilly's firing has sapped it of any momentum. Many advertisers have returned to O'Reilly's old time slot, now occupied by Tucker Carlson.

Read more here:

Bill O'Reilly Tells Glenn Beck His Firing From Fox News Was a Liberal 'Hit Job' - NBCNews.com