Category Archives: Liberal

Media Matters for America

Fox News Dismisses Huge Town Hall Participation As Paid Liberal Organizing Media Matters for America Members of Congress are preparing to confront a wave of activism when they return home to their districts next week for the first congressional recess since President Donald Trump took office, as liberal activists plan to use town halls and other ... and more »

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Fox News Dismisses Huge Town Hall Participation As Paid Liberal Organizing - Media Matters for America

A provocative, button-pushing shocker that buries itself under your skin and lingers ... Daniel Kaluuya and Alison Williams in Get Out. Photograph: Justin Lubin/Universal Pictures

Theres a great, often under-appreciated, history of social commentary within the horror genre. From John Carpenters politically charged They Live to Bryan Forbes haunting adaptation of The Stepford Wives, Ira Levins icy take on the male fear of second-wave feminism, scares and satire used to arrive simultaneously. But somewhere along the way, that tradition has been jump-shocked out of its seat, popcorn flying, and replaced with vapidity, an impatient teenage audience force-fed predictable thrills over a story that might provoke or inspire debate.

Jordan Peele doesnt want to make things easy for his audience. Like the greatest sketches from his co-authored Comedy Central show Key & Peele, his new film Get Out is designed to lift the facade of post-racial America and showcase the ugliness that lies beneath. Whats quite astounding is not only how sharply he manages this but that he does so while also crafting a terrifying horror film.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is understandably nervous. His girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), is taking him home to meet her parents for the first time. Its a frightening rite of passage for anyone, but Chris has an added level of concern: hes black and shes white. Rose brushes off his worry, assuring him that he has nothing to fear and initially, it seems like shes right. Her father (Bradley Whitford) is perhaps a bit too self-consciously woke (I would have voted for Obama for a third term he insists) and her psychiatrist mother a bit too keen to hypnotize him out of his smoking habit, but theyre friendly and seemingly unperturbed by his race.

But Chris starts to feel uncomfortable. Theres something up with the other black people in the house: a rather spooked groundskeeper and maid. Why are they acting so strange? Why is Roses mother so obsessed with hypnotizing him? And why the hell are all these white people suddenly descending on the house?

While writer-director Peele could have taken the easier, oft-trodden route of exposing the racism of redneck hillbillies, hes decided to target the underlying bigotry of rich liberals instead and, in doing so, has made something fiercely original. The white people Chris encounters wouldnt consider themselves racists but name-checking Jesse Owens doesnt give one a free pass. Referring to how well-endowed Chris must be or how his genetic makeup would make him a beast in a fight arent compliments, theyre reductive and offensive stereotypes that only serve to make him feel uncomfortable and fetishized.

As these micro-incidents stack up, Chris experience becomes a microcosm of what many black people experience in the US and beyond: telling someone that theyre welcome is different from actually welcoming someone. While the mechanics of the nefarious plot thats ultimately uncovered might be a tad silly, theyre grounded by the uneasy journey that weve taken to get there. The grotesquery of the white suburbanites might seem exaggerated at times but theres an embarrassingly well-observed truth to the interactions we see and Peeles comedic background ensures that nervous laughter is never too far away.

But Peele isnt interested in purely making a point, hes also determined to make a genuinely scary horror film and doesnt disappoint. Theres a refreshing lack of tired jump scares with Peele instead utilizing a queasy atmosphere of dread and a terrifically choreographed escalation of suspense and crowd-pleasing thrills. Its an artfully framed and remarkably accomplished debut film, and Peele has carefully cast an ensemble of skilled actors who effortlessly conjure up a believably fraught dynamic. Theres a successful piece of stunt casting with Williams, a star of HBOs Girls, but her white privilege isnt over-egged and instead, her character seems even more shocked at what unfolds around them. Its in smart opposition to the British actor Kaluuya, who, in a star-making role, calmly and glumly accepts the insidious racism around him before letting rage take over.

Get Out is a provocative, button-pushing shocker that buries itself under your skin and lingers, its genre trappings serving as devious delivery for a scathing takedown of liberal white suburbia. Its rare for a studio horror film to feel this fresh and daring and its arrived at a frighteningly topical moment for a country where racism is scarier than ever.

Get Out is released in US cinemas on 24 February and in UK cinemas on 17 March

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Get Out review white liberal racism is terrifying bogeyman in sharp horror - The Guardian

To press the issue, Sanders veterans, along with allied activists and organizers, have launched a new political action committee called We Will Replace You. The group is demanding that Democrats on Capitol Hill uniformly oppose all Trump nominees, including Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, demand the firing of top Trump strategist Steve Bannon and use all the levers of their limited congressional power to gum up the White House agenda -- or face opposition from within their own party.

They are also asking new supporters to sign a pledge -- written at the top of their homepage -- promising to back "primary election challengers against any Democrats who won't do everything in their power to resist Trump."

"Democrats need to know there is an actual political cost and this isn't just going to be folks showing up at their offices, but folks showing up at the ballot and different organizations supporting challengers who are going to push the party in a different direction," said Max Berger, a co-founder of #AllOfUs, the millennial progressive group that launched the new campaign.

Early opposition to the Trump administration, most visibly in the form of mass protests and rowdy recriminations against Republicans at town hall meetings around the country, has turned up the heat on long-simmering efforts by the left to pressure moderate Democrats. With the party now totally out of power in Washington and at a crossroads, activists who gained experience during Occupy Wall Street and through work with the Movement for Black Lives, the Fight for $15 and other aligned causes see an opportunity for greater influence.

"We've had a generation of protests where people have learned how to fight those in power. But eventually, you get to a point where you realize that it's necessary for the communities that you represent to actually have power and not just to protest," Berger said. "The leaders that we see coming out of those movements are now looking to win elections and represent the communities they have been serving for the past decade."

We Will Replace You is operating as a hybrid PAC, meaning it can raise money and offer capped support to specific candidates while also making independent expenditures from a separate account. Co-founder Claire Sandberg, a former digital organizing director for the Sanders campaign, said the group is banking on a financial groundswell, delivered through ActBlue and other familiar channels, to deliver an early boost.

"We've seen the power of what an army of small dollar donors and grassroots volunteers can do when they are asked to do something that they believe in," she said. "We don't think that we need a giant pile of cash to make this project extremely successful electorally."

As Republicans learned earlier this decade, dedicated efforts to influence policy from within by launching contentious primary fights can yield mixed results. For every Mike Lee or Ted Cruz, both tea party-backed candidates who took on the GOP establishment before knocking off Democratic opponents in Senate races, there have been cautionary tales, like Sharron Angle and Richard Mourdock, who fumbled away seats Republicans expected to win.

Democrats have little margin for error in 2018, when 10 of their own come up for re-election. Republicans currently hold 52 seats in the upper chamber. If the GOP can flip eight more, they will claim a filibuster-proof majority and go forward with virtually no constraints on their legislative agenda.

Sandberg dismissed concerns, most often voiced by party centrists who backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary, that a "tea party of the left" could harm Democrats on Election Day.

"We reject out of hand the notion that pushing Democrats to be better candidates will lead to more Republican victories," she said. "The much greater danger is a Democratic base that is uninspired by the party's tepid response to the Trump administration will not feel motivated to turn out."

We Will Replace You expects to ramp up its efforts in the summer. It has not yet named or set its sights on any particular race, though it could offer support to Virginia gubernatiorial hopeful Tom Perriello, who is running this year in a primary many Democrats will look at as a bellwether for 2018.

Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told CNN that while there has been "a constant appetite" for pitting progressive newcomers against establishment picks in open seat primaries, the increased pressure on elected Democrats has been a long time coming.

"There's been ebbs and flows in the willingness to primary incumbents and that will likely be way more on the table in 2018 than it's been in past cycles," he said. "And most likely there will be at least one clear poster child that people identify and collaborate around."

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Liberal group threatens to challenge Democrats with primary ...

Liberals have discovered a new word.

Lie: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.

MSNBC's Lawrence ODonnell went so far as to crown himself the enemy of Trump lies. Interestingly, the concept of lying has been noticeably absent from liberal vocabulary for the last eight years.

This characterization was nowhere to be found when President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaMellman: Rating the presidents Webb: The future of conservatism Moulitsas: Trumps warped sense of reality MOREs then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday talk shows and blamed the Benghazi attacks on a YouTube video. In lockstep, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly assured the families of the four dead Americans that she would get the videomaker; this promise came despite Clinton knowing full well that terrorists were to blame.

Indeed, Clinton wrote in two emails in the immediate aftermath of Benghazi that these Americans were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group not at the hands of a spontaneous protest triggered by a video. Nevertheless, she purportedly deceived the families of these American heroes.

The L-word was absent when the Obama administration promised 37 times if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it, only to be followed by millions of Americans losing their plans and doctors en masse. According to NBC, the Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance. Liberals, nevertheless, played the naivet card.

Lying allegations were nonexistent when Hillary Clinton vowed that she did not email any classified material to anyone on my email only to be followed by a revised vow that she never sent nor received any information that was classified at the time it was sent and received before finally arriving at the promise that she never received nor sent any material that was marked classified.

Is your head spinning? Mine too! Clintons evolving and lawyerly defenses of course came as the evidence of her sending and receiving classified information became public. As the facts grew, so too did evidence of Clintons intentional deception.

Rather than label the Obama and Clinton duplicities as lies, liberals rationalized them. Obama and Clinton did not intend to deceive, and thus they did not lie.

Rice and Clinton were caught up in the fog of war during Benghazi, as Clinton stated to a congressional panel. Obama did not realize millions would lose their plans. And Clinton, despite having three decades of government experience, just did not know how to handle classified information.

In other words, because these liberals did not intend to deceive a questionable notion at best, given the facts they did not lie.

If the left would use this same exacting precision in analyzing the words of President Trump, not only would they find that Trump is not lying but that he lacks the nefarious cover-up motives involved in several of the aforementioned Democratic mistruths.

For instance, I was at Trumps Saturday rally in Melbourne, Fla., where he urged his audience to look at whats happening last night in Sweden.

The left used Trumps vague statement to impart sinister suspicion. How dare he make up a terrorist attack!? and liar! were but a few of the apoplectic freak-outs. Meanwhile, the person beside me heard it entirely differently. Hes referring to information he gathered regarding Sweden last night, this person said.

Trumps clarification on Twitter that his last night remark indeed referred to a Friday night Fox News segment on crime in Switzerland validated the latter interpretation over the former. Nevertheless, the former interpretation was adopted as gospel.

The lefts lying narrative was again on full display when Trump stated that the murder rate was the highest it has been in 47 years. The liberals accused Trump of intentionally planting a false statistic, but they ought to have done a cursory Google search, which would have clarified exactly what Trump was getting at: the U.S. had just seen the biggest increase in murders in 45 years.

Trump used this statistic several times throughout the campaign, and Politifact rated his statement as mostly true. But this time Trump left out one word increase and the left lost it, resorting to the lying label.

The truth is liberals are using every tactic possible to drown the Trump presidency. False allegations of racism, bigotry, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and now lying each have their own chapter in the Trump takedown playbook.

As it turns out, the only lies being told are not by President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpWH adviser Stephen Miller: 'Nothing wrong' with Trump travel order Mellman: Rating the presidents Webb: The future of conservatism MORE but by liberals, who will hypocritically mischaracterize Trumps every action. They do so intentionally the very definition of a lie.

Kayleigh McEnany is a CNN political commentator who recently received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. She graduated from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and also studied politics at Oxford University.

The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.

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Liberal 'lies' about President Trump - The Hill (blog)

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"Today, sports writing is basically a liberal profession, practiced by liberals who enforce an unapologetically liberal code," writes Bryan Curtis at The Ringer. He's right.

You can see it in the way sportswriters police a consensus against the Washington Redskins' name, or for on-field political activism. They tweet against President Trump, and for undocumented immigrants. They pile on populist loudmouths like former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, and may even be punishing him for his politics with their Hall of Fame ballots. They proudly admit that they are at a remove from their readers. HardballTalk's Craig Calcaterra owns it: "It's folly for any of us to think we're speaking for the common fan."

Curtis is generally pleased with sports journalism's leftward shift, and treats the possibility of non-conforming writers as a potentially amusing but unnecessary curio. "Would it be nice to have a David Frum or Ross Douthat of sports writing, making wrongheaded-but-interesting arguments about NCAA amateurism?" he asks. "Sure. As long as nobody believed them."

Well, I think I may be this curio myself.

I run a subscription newsletter about baseball The Slurve that is deliberately constructed to be an escape from politics for my readers (and for me). But I'm still a conservative who does a lot of sports writing. Besides The Slurve, I've written a few sports pieces in ESPN Magazine, and occasionally inflict my wrongheaded (but interesting!) sports arguments on readers here at The Week.

Predictably (and perhaps self-interestedly), I think the increasing ideological uniformity of sports writing is bad for sports journalism and for sports themselves. And in the way that it encourages conformism and intellectual laziness, it is probably bad for causes dear to liberals in sports.

Calcaterra is right that liberal sports writers aren't speaking "for the common fan." More often they are speaking at the common fan, or even just at a caricature of a fan that they assembled from the most voluble sports talk radio callers and the obscure Twitter accounts that jeer their work. The liberalism on offer on sports pages is rather infatuated with the norms and aspirations of the class of people from which journalists are drawn. And this narrowness usually puts them in an antagonistic position not just with fans, but with the entire sports culture beyond journalism.

The recent self-consciousness of progressive sports writers also misleads many of them into thinking all their quarrels are with conservative ideas, when they are in fact just arguing with the voluble and inarticulate. Sports radio hosts and their callers are often (wrongly) taken as the stand-in for opposing ideas.

Some of the debates in baseball in particular are given ideological or racial names, when in fact they are generational. Take the debate about bat-flips, which is often cast as one between stodgy white conservatives and fun multicultural liberals who prefer a Latin game. There is a reason why older Baby Boomer writers, who are themselves veterans of a deeply hierarchical system that rewarded time-serving veterans who spent decades writing formulaic gamers, are more likely to admire and defend the hierarchical culture among athletes that includes hazing a rookie, or letting expressive or cocky young players know they have to earn their place in the pecking order. And it's not a surprise that younger writers who smashed through to national audiences through opinionated new digital platforms admire the more expressive players.

But there's only so much that this new crop of sports writers can truly identify with in the players they admire. Socially cosseted with other journalists, liberal sports writers increasingly identify with the only set of actors in the sports world that come from a cultural milieu relatable to their own: the new class of rationalizing, brainy executives. In another generation, sports writers dreamed futilely of being Willie Mays or Gordie Howe. Now they want to be Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. And their copy and concerns increasingly seem to be written for each other and for these analytics-loving general managers.

Sometimes the problems this produces aren't strictly political. Brian Kenny, the loudest of the sports rationalizers, once asked if anyone should care about no-hitters anymore. After all, nine innings is just a small sample size, and throwing a no-hitter can be a bit flukish. No one thinks that the last person to throw a no-hitter is, by definition, the best pitcher in the game. Kenny used the political-ish rhetoric of liberals to make this point. He was advocating a modern, progressive, and data-driven view of baseball against "antiquated" and misguided "values."

Kenny's argument wasn't wrong as much as it was wrong-footed. He wasn't advocating a progressive view, just the general managers' view that a single game isn't useful for ranking a player or determining his next contract or his trade value. But fans (and players) can still enjoy games as individual dramatic events, apart from the fact that they add a marginal amount of new data to an evaluative spreadsheet. And don't forget, a big story of the last decade has been the humbling of the clever-dick sabermetricians and the journalists who championed them, as new forms of data and deeper insights into front offices confirm some of the once-scorned wisdom of the ages.

The pattern of over-identifying with general managers is endemic to liberal sports journalism, and the not-so-secret truth is that liberal sportswriters increasingly hold the culture that produces athletes and their fans in contempt, or even find it dangerous and threatening. Fans are treated as a distracting nuisance, in thrall to their tribal affinities and over-invested in homegrown players or even in winning itself. How quaint.

The culture of athletes is treated as alien and toxic, a kind of pit in which womanizing bros, aggressive rageaholics, and icky religious freaks are allowed to flourish and enjoy a high income and status that would be justly denied to people who act and think in this way in any other profession. When macho athletes like Yasiel Puig are profiled, it is often in a superficial way in which their background is mined for all political resonance and dramatic tension, but the actual personality is carefully obscured. Athletes are famously hard to get to know, but sportswriters often just seem incapable of getting their head into a macho, competitive, aggressive culture. And sometimes, sports writers seem to be appealing to the general manager or team HR departments to enforce liberal norms on their highly paid assets.

The smaller portion of athletes who happen to share cultural affinities or political commitments with liberal sports writers are given glowing, intimate, get-to-know-you portraits. Stories like "How Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin a bike-riding, socially conscious, Animal Collective-loving hipster is redefining what it means to be a football player." I wonder if there was a follow-up asking all other football players whether they were redefined by Barwin's presence. It's notable that journalists who do seem to get along with average athletes, like Bill Simmons or even Stephen A. Smith, are treated with a little bit of suspicion by the rest of the sports writer tribe.

The almost hegemonic liberalism in sports journalism is due to many factors. It's a product of the culture of prestige journalism, which is becoming more rarefied and conformist. It's also a product of the digital age, in which straight-down-the-line game stories aren't enough to feed the content maw of the internet. It's a product of athletes partially retreating from journalists for fear of being hurt with their sponsors, and journalists needing more than ever to create more colorful human interest stories without that access.

It's also true that conservative ideas tend to be slower off the block. Because they are defenders of tradition, conservatives' arguments often strike liberals as either an unreflective devotion to the way things are (or were), or as being too subtle to be credible. One progressive baseball writer confessed to me privately that my traditionalist argument against expanding the designated hitter to the National League struck him as "koan-like" and that he had trouble deciding whether it was inarguably true or pure nonsense.

The lack of intelligent conservatives in sports, or at least their relative shyness about their ideas, also allows progressive sportswriters to advance ideas without challenge, sometimes all the way into dead ends. Take the debate about Native American mascots in logos. Of course it makes perfect sense to remove or alter any logos that offend people. But all mascots are reductive caricatures. Was the problem that the logos were offensive or that there is so little representation of Native Americans in our culture that their presence as mascots seems mocking by default? Has no one stopped to notice there is something odd about an anti-racism that will cause an evermore diverse country to declare rooting for white-faced mascots the only safe thing to do? How will this deletion of all non-white faces look in 50 years?

The more astonishing piece of conventional wisdom generated by younger self-styled progressive sports writers was their argument against "PED hysteria." Many writers simply said fans didn't care enough, and many liked the results of a juiced game anyway. Some even took it to the logical conclusion: that sports leagues should preside over a free-for-all with performance-enhancing drugs. This is a strangely anti-labor and anti-regulation stance for liberals. It gives tacit encouragement for athletes to ignore both federal laws and their own health interests because of what the market demands. And it wouldn't solve the problem of marginal players taking PEDs to hang on. It would only make them turn to more exotic and dangerous drugs.

And that brings us to a stranger irony for progressive sports writers. Having committed themselves so thoroughly to arguments against "moralizing" or against "tradition," they actually become handmaidens for the interests of owners and capital. Having demythologized all values that are not purely rationalistic, making themselves deaf to arguments for some abstract "integrity of the game," they can mount no principled objection to, for example, commercial advertising being imposed on the bases in baseball. They will be met with their own favorite arguments that "the sky didn't fall" the last time traditionalists objected to some alteration. And in this respect it is notable that the NBA, whose writers tend to be even more progressive than the norm among sports writers, was the first major American sports league to announce that it would sell advertising space on player jerseys.

Similarly, if MLB commissioner Rob Manfred says that a pitch clock and starting a man on second base in extra innings would be good for the game, liberal sports writers would have already debarred themselves from the kind of arguments that would preserve continuity between the game of Mel Ott and Mike Trout.

Liberal sports writers do a lot of good. But they should be a little more analytical when it comes to their own position, and their own culture, and whether it is encouraging sloppiness and arrogance in their thinking, whether it is causing them to broadcast their disdain for the very people they cover, and whether it is fostering in them a charmless contempt for a huge portion of their readers that they can't hide and we can't unsee.

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The arrogant thinking of liberal sports writers - The Week Magazine

President Trump on Tuesday said that liberal activists are orchestrating agitated crowds in GOP lawmakers' home districts across the country.

The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad! Trump wrote on Twitter.

The so-called angry crowds in home districts of some Republicans are actually, in numerous cases, planned out by liberal activists. Sad!

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Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) and Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) both encountered protesters at recent gatherings in their home districts.

House Oversight Chairman Jason ChaffetzJason ChaffetzGOP rep pushes back on Trump's tweet about town hall protests Trump: Protesters at GOP town halls 'planned out by liberal activists' Juan Williams: Senate GOP begins to push Trump away MORE (R-Utah) earlier this month faced a group of demonstrators back in his district, as protesters called into question his treatment of President Donald TrumpDonald TrumpWH adviser Stephen Miller: 'Nothing wrong' with Trump travel order Mellman: Rating the presidents Webb: The future of conservatism MORE.

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Trump: Protesters at GOP town halls 'planned out by liberal activists' - The Hill

New York Post

The liberal takeover of sports writing, how 'Jane Doe' switched sides, and other comments New York Post Norma McCorvey testifies before the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 1998 on the 25th anniversary of Roe vs Wade. Getty Images. War historian: Will New NSA Get Leeway He Needs? Selecting Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as national-security adviser is ... and more »

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The liberal takeover of sports writing, how 'Jane Doe' switched sides, and other comments - New York Post

EL PASO Beto ORourke has long believed that the closer you get to the Mexican border, the less you fear it. So on a recent afternoon, the Democratic congressman who may challenge Ted Cruz for his U.S. Senate seat walked into Juarez for lunch.

The mere name of this Mexican city conjures images of bloodthirsty cartels or seedy red-light districts the kind of place, some have argued, against which the United States should seal itself with a big, beautiful wall.

ORourke is strongly opposed to that plan. Among other things, it would make it harder to visit the bar he took his wife to on their first date.

It was a little bit of a test, to see if she was up for an adventure, he said, ducking into the dimly lit interior of the Kentucky Club.

She was. After drinks, he recalled, they bumped into a camera crew that tried to enlist the attractive couple to kiss on camera for a TV commercial but ORourke begged off. Es mi hermana, he told them: Shes my sister. Ten months later, they were married.

ORourke isnt naive about the violence that plagues parts of the city. Still, he maintains that crime is not the only story about the U.S.-Mexico border, nor even the most important one. He sees Juarez as a place where an open mind and a stomach for risk can lead to meaningful connections and long-term partnerships.

The question for the 44-year-old with statewide ambitions is: Can he get the people of Texas to see the same thing?

Inside the bar, where Elizabeth Taylor and Steve McQueen once partied and the margarita was supposedly invented, the congressman grabbed a table lined by photos of matadors and Mexican baseball players. He was greeted by an El Paso friend, Miguel Fernandez, whose telecommunications firm does work on both sides of the border.

Fernandez talked about his fear that President Trump will spark a trade war between the two countries. At least tell me, where are you now on running for Senate? Fernandez asked, taking a sip from his bottle of Sol. More than 50-50?

Im pretty close, ORourke said. I really want to do this.

Democrats might look at ORourke a small-business owner with hipster credentials, a GenXer who speaks fluent Spanish and looks more like a Kennedy than the Kennedys do and see a candidate of thrilling national potential, marred only by where he happens to live. But then again, maybe its where he lives that makes him exciting.

With its growing Hispanic population, Democrats have long believed that Texas would eventually belong to them just not imminently. But the 2016 election has scrambled the way people think about these things.

I wouldnt have said it last year, but I think he has a chance, said Anne Caprara, of the Priorities USA super PAC, who is advising ORourke on his 2018 potential.

Naturally, others see opportunities as well. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat deemed a rising star, is considering the race, too.

You wont have a problem raising money. Cruz will basically fundraise for you, said Castros twin brother, Julin, the former housing and urban development secretary who recently ruled out a 2018 bid for governor of Texas.

The Cruz camp maintains that it isnt worried about either but sees Castro as slightly more of a threat than ORourke. But while the Castros have the fundraising prowess and name recognition, their pragmatism and caution could keep both from seeking higher office so soon.

[Julin Castro is ready for whatever comes next]

In El Paso, regarded by many as more Mexican than Texan, ORourke is far removed from the Democratic megadonors of Houston or Austin, and he has decided not to take PAC money if he runs. Still, he hopes to turn a necessity into a virtue with a Bernie Sanders-style approach excite the grass roots and rake in smaller donations.

ORourke may be suffering from the bug thats going around the one causing mass delusions that the old rules of politics no longer apply. Can a Democrat really win in this deeply red state against Cruz, who will be running one of the best-financed campaigns in the country? And can he do so on a positive message about Mexicans in an era when calling them rapists helped make a man president?

The timing might not be right for ORourke, but that hasnt stopped him in the past.

Growing up in El Paso, Robert Francis ORourke (the childhood nickname that stuck is a diminutive of Roberto) wanted nothing more than to get out of town. The son of the county judge, he formed a punk band, Foss, with the hopes of traveling the world.

In 1994, Foss needed exposure, and someone suggested a local public-access show called Get Real With Bill Lowrey.

There was only one hitch. It was an evangelical broadcast. We told them we were a new gospel band, said ORourke.

[WATCH: Foss on Get Real With Bill Lowrey. ORourke is the guy in orange]

Oh yeah, they kind of pulled a fast one on me, recalled Lowrey, the televangelist host. But we enjoyed it. Mostly I cant believe he grew up to be a functioning member of society.

Foss toured the United States and Canada, but greater success would go to ORourkes drummer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, who moved on to the cult-favorite bands At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta. ORourke, meanwhile, realized he couldnt be a musician forever.

I wasnt that good at it, he admitted. And his dad was pressuring him to grow up. He wont say it, but the expectation is: We didnt take out loans for you to go to Columbia and then [play] in a punk band your whole life.

With his Ivy League degree, ORourke moved back to El Paso and started a technology company and an online arts and culture magazine. Even in his 20s, ORourke found it easy to assume a leadership position in the community.

He ran for and won his first race for city council at 32, with a focus on downtown development and border issues, seeing the two as inextricably linked. He wrote a book about the drug war and offered legislation calling for an honest, open national debate on ending the prohibition on narcotics.

In 2009 ORourke heard his congressman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, at a Chamber of Commerce meeting described drug-related violence in Juarez like a stick-em-up movie full of cretins who were better off dead, as it sounded to ORourke. The councilman was troubled by what seemed like a lack of empathy for El Pasos twin city. A fellow council member, Steve Ortega, urged him to challenge Reyes. And so, in 2012, he took on the 16-year House veteran in the Democratic primary.

[Have liberals found their combative new leader in Keith Olbermann?]

Reyes, a former Border Patrol chief, had the support of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. ORourke had an arrest record: In 1995, he was arrested for breaking and entering, a prank gone awry, he says, when some friends bet each other they could get past a fence surrounding the local college. Then there was the 1998 drunken driving arrest, an incident he says was stupid and regrets.

Reyes used ORourkes mug shot in attack ads and criticized him for supporting marijuana legalization. Few people thought ORourke had a chance. But with the help of an anti-incumbent sentiment and an anti-incumbent super PAC that poured $240,000 into the race he won.

Five years later, ORourke sees another opportunity to sneak himself in.

It cost 25 cents to walk across the Paso Del Norte bridge back into the United States after lunch at the Kentucky Club. A gaggle of shoppers marched in front of the congressman women off to buy shoes, clothes and groceries that are cheaper in El Paso. A few weeks earlier, Border Patrol had allowed separated families to wade into the stagnant, ankle-deep water below and hug where the two countries meet.

On the one hand, its really pitiful that this is what they had to do... just to see each other, said ORourke. In another way, its really amazing that El Paso and Juarez could figure out a way, and under President Trump no less, to at least do this for families.

[As the GOPs anti-Trump, Ben Sasse picked a big fight. What would it mean to win?]

At a time when Democrats and Republicans alike talk about securing the border, ORourke maintains that the border has never been more secure. The number of immigrants living illegally in the United States has not increased in years. With 32 million documented border crossings a year, Mexicans are a crucial driver of the El Paso economy. And El Paso ranks as one of the safest cities in the country.

But while ORourke points to El Pasos good health as proof that a semi-porous border works well for both sides, proponents of tougher border security argue that credit goes to the rigorous Border Patrol presence and extensive fencing between Juarez and El Paso.

Thats part of what ORourke was up against when he ran against Reyes, who once spearheaded an effort called Operation Hold the Line. If he runs for Senate, hell face Cruz, who promised in his 2016 presidential bid to triple border security and build a wall that works a slogan that certainly worked for the man who won that race.

I just wish more people could see what I see, ORourke said.

To do that requires an early start.

That morning, he woke before dawn for a hike in the Franklin Mountains, leaving his wife and three children sleeping in their home that a century ago sat above a secret tunnel to Mexico.

With his old city council pal Ortega, he snaked up the trail under a full moon, passing the spiky silhouettes of cypress trees and clumps of greasewood plants that smell like tar when it rains.They perched on a rocky point near the summit where they peeled oranges and shared a thermos of coffee, looking out at the twin cities glittering in the dark.

It was nearly impossible to tell what was Mexico and what was Texas, and that, of course, was his point.

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Beto O'Rourke is a Mexico-loving liberal in Texas. Can he really ... - Washington Post

As Jimmy Kimmel prepares to host the Oscars on Sunday, he got candid on whether audiences can expect politically-fueledspeeches this year.

It depends on the speech, you know? he told The Hollywood Reporter. I think that youve got a group of people who are largely very liberal, although I will say, the first time I hosted the Emmys, I had a joke about there being no Republicans in the room, and a surprisingly big group of people clapped when I asked if there were Republicans, and I was a little bit thrown by it.

JUDD APATOW SAYS TRUMP GETTING ELECTED IS LIKE BEING RAPED

So I dont think the audience in its entirety is as liberal as people in Middle America imagine it is, added the 49-year-old TV host. But the celebrities, most of them are pretty liberal.

However, Kimmel said that Democrats in Hollywood may have a hard time outshining one leading lady with their speeches.

If I was nominated and I was going to stand on that stage, I think Id be intimidated by how good Meryl Streeps [Golden Globes] speech was, so Id probably keep my mouth shut when it comes down to it, he said.

COUNTRY STARS READ 'MEAN TWEETS' ON 'JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE'

The 67-year-old actress is nominated for her 20th Oscar.

The Academy Awards will be televised Feb. 26.

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Jimmy Kimmel says not everyone in Hollywood is 'very liberal' - Fox News

The federal Liberals have defeated a Conservative anti-racism motion so they can pass their own version, which condemns Islamophobia.

Conservative MP David Andersons motion to condemn all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination failed in a vote of 165-126 in the House of Commons, after Liberal MPs, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, voted against it.

The Tories introduced their own anti-racism motion in response to Liberal MP Iqra Khalids M-103, which calls on the government to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination and to study the issue at the heritage committee and make recommendations. For procedural reasons, the Liberal motion will not be voted on until April.

Heritage Minister Mlanie Joly said Tuesday that hate crimes against Muslims have more than doubled since 2012 and reiterated the governments support for Ms. Khalids motion.

The term Islamophobia is extremely important as it is discrimination against the Muslim community, Ms. Joly told reporters after the vote.

The Conservatives have expressed concerns that Islamophobia is not defined in Ms. Khalids motion and said it could stifle freedom of speech, including criticisms of Islam. They also say its more inclusive to treat all religions equally, despite the fact that the House of Commons already unanimously condemned all forms of Islamophobia in an NDP motion last fall, although it wasnt a recorded vote.

Mr. Andersons motion, which mirrors in large part that of the Liberals, condemns all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and other religious communities, but does not specifically mention Islamophobia.

It also states that Canadian society is not immune to the climate of hate and fear exemplified by the recent and senseless violent acts at a Quebec City mosque, referring to last months deadly attack on a Quebec City mosque that left six men dead.

Liberal MP Frank Baylis, who introduced an e-petition last year on which Ms. Khalids motion is based, said if the Conservative version passed, the Liberal one would be considered moot. Both motions make similar recommendations, including that the heritage committee study the issue and develop a whole-of-government approach to reducing or eliminating discrimination, collect data to contextualize hate-crime reports and report back to the Commons within eight months.

The NDP, Bloc Qubcois and the Green Partys Elizabeth May supported the Conservative motion, although the New Democrats say theyll also support the Liberal one. Of the nine sitting Conservative MPs running for leader, only Michael Chong has said he will support M-103.

Representatives from the Canadian Muslim Forum, a non-profit organization established in 1993 to represent the Muslim community on public policy issues, urged parliamentarians to pass the Liberal version of the motion, calling it very courageous.

We are a community under siege, said Samer Majzoub, the forums president.

He said the Conservatives reaction has, directly or indirectly, created waves of Islamophobia all over the country.

This motion, unfortunately came as trying to delegitimize the M-103, and trying really to degrade this motion, Mr. Majzoub told reporters Tuesday before the vote.

Conservative MP Grard Deltell said he disagrees with the characterization that the Conservative motion would have delegitimized M-103.

But, he said, We respect their liberty of speaking, and we respect also the liberty of religion. This is what our motion was all about. And unfortunately, the Liberals decided to vote against.

On Thursday, the Ontario legislature will vote on Liberal MPP Nathalie Des Rosierss motion, which denounces attacks, threats of violence and hate crimes against Muslims and condemns all forms of Islamophobia.

Ontario Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Browns office said he will vote in favour of the motion and has instructed his caucus to do the same.

With a report from Les Perreaux

Follow Laura Stone on Twitter: @l_stone

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Liberals vote down Conservative anti-racism motion - The Globe and Mail