It’s difficult to say that the prosperity gospel itself led to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Again, only 17 percent of American Christians identify with it explicitly. It’s far more true, however, to say that the same cultural forces that led to the prosperity gospel’s proliferation in America — individualism, an affinity for ostentatious and charismatic leaders, the Protestant work ethic, and a cultural obsession with the power of “positive thinking” — shape how we, as a nation, approach politics.

One previously unreported example: Since Trump’s election in 2016, critical “voter scores” — sophisticated polling-based analytics that the RNC provides to party committees and candidates — have conspicuously omitted an essential detail for any down-ballot race: how voters in specific states and congressional districts feel about Trump. Republican insiders believe these analytics are being withheld to try and prevent GOP candidates from publicly distancing themselves from the president or leaking unfavorable results that embarrass Trump.

More conspicuously, since Trump’s election, the RNC — at his campaign’s direction — has excluded critical “voter scores” on the president from the analytics it routinely provides to GOP candidates and committees nationwide, with the aim of electing down-ballot Republicans. Republican consultants say the Trump information is being withheld for two reasons: to discourage candidates from distancing themselves from the president, and to avoid embarrassing him with poor results that might leak. But they say its concealment harms other Republicans, forcing them to campaign without it or pay to get the information elsewhere.

Firms should not be owned and managed by people who survive because of their connections to government or their privileged birth: Capitalism is dynamic when owners or managers succeed because they are good at delivering high-quality goods and services at a competitive price. This is more likely to be a failure when the other two factors above are not working well.

In February, a friend pointed out to me that years ago Donald Trump lied about the size of Trump Towers, claiming he lived on the 66th to 68th floors. Here’s the thing: Trump Tower has only 58 floors, according to New York City documents. So Trump lied about even this, as he lies about virtually everything else. (In fact, Trump has lied about the height of several of his buildings, including Trump World Tower, which he claimed has 90 floors. In fact, it has 70.)If Biden were to use this story at the beginning of a debate, perhaps even before Trump’s first lie, the former vice president, when hearing a lie, could simply say, “Donald, we’re at the 66th floor again.” This response would certainly be more effective than repeatedly calling Trump a liar and serving as a fact-checker for the entire debate. Biden has to find a way to quickly name what’s happening and move on.

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Critics, including Sarah Posner and Joe Conason, maintain that prosperity teachers cultivate authoritarian organizations. They argue that leaders attempt to control the lives of adherents by claiming divinely-bestowed authority.[63] Jenkins contends that prosperity theology is used as a tool to justify the high salaries of pastors.

When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

We can’t get into Trump’s head here. He may be feigning numbness to the nuances of racist as a power ploy. Or he may genuinely not perceive the racism in his current rhetoric. I suspect he may not, for the simple reason that to imagine how he would feel about a straight-talking Finn in Congress would require a thought experiment, and nothing the man has ever said or done suggests the remotest inclination or ability to process layers, hypotheticals, or subtlety. A man clueless enough to accidentally give away to a national television reporter that he fired James Comey to detract from the investigation of his ties to Russia doesn’t do intersectionality.

Gradually, we begin to conflate visibility with value. If something is being talked about and seen, we assume that it must be important in some way. – An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’

Abandoning democracy and social solidarity, the Californian Ideology dreams of a digital nirvana inhabited solely by liberal psychopaths.

Dow swings 600 points after Trump rejects stimulus plan

Whom exactly were we trusting with our care? Why did we decide to trust them in the first place? Who says that only certain kinds of people are allowed to give us the answers?

I take your point, but I wonder if Trump is just kryptonite for a liberal democratic system built on a free press.

In case you wanted to be even more skeptical of Mark Zuckerberg and his cohorts, Facebook has now changed its advertising policies to make it easier for politicians to lie in paid ads. Donald Trump is taking full advantage of this policy change, as popular info reports.

The claim in this ad was ruled false by those Facebook-approved third-party fact-checkers, but it is still up and running. Why? Because Facebook changed its policy on what constitutes misinformation in advertising. Prior to last week, Facebook’s rule against “false and misleading content” didn’t leave room for gray areas: “Ads landing pages, and business practices must not contain deceptive, false, or misleading content, including deceptive claims, offers, or methods.”

Project Alamo

Noam Chomsky: One of the most appropriate comments I’ve seen on Trump’s foreign policy appeared in an article in The New Republic written by David Roth, the editor of a sports blog: “The spectacle of expert analysts and thought leaders parsing the actions of a man with no expertise or capacity for analysis is the purest acid satire — but less because of how badly that expert analysis has failed than because of how sincerely misplaced it is … there is nothing here to parse, no hidden meanings or tactical elisions or slow-rolled strategic campaign.” That seems generally accurate. This is a man, after all, who dismisses the information and analyses of his massive intelligence system in favor of what was said this morning on “Fox and Friends,” where everyone tells him how much they love him. With all due skepticism about the quality of intelligence, this is sheer madness considering the stakes.

Trump didn’t obstruct justice because interfering inherently cannot be obstruction when done by the head of the executive branch

“diversity outreach,”

An ESPN anchor who called President Trump a white supremacist should be fired, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.

Taiwanese identity grew more distinct from Mainland China

female president

As a result, President Trump almost certainly began violating the Constitution the moment he took the oath of office.

For too long, a small group in our nation's capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost.

Today's ceremony, however, has very special meaning because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.

won in an electoral landslide

But Sean Spicer, the RNC’s chief strategist and communications director, admonished the Times for what he said was simply false reporting and insisted the RNC had not been hacked. “The intelligence is wrong,” he said in a CNN interview Saturday morning. “It didn’t happen. We offered The New York Times conclusive proof that it didn’t happen. They refused to look at that. They ignored it because it didn’t fit the narrative.” He then accused intelligence officials of pushing the story for political purposes. “I believe that there are people within these agencies that are upset with the election and are pushing a personal agenda,” Spicer said.

The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history.

Western sanctions against Russia prohibiting the nation from certain energy development activities have slowed Exxon Mobil’s investments, particularly a joint venture with Rosneft that was supposed to start drilling for oil in the Kara Sea in 2014. Mr. Tillerson has spoken out against sanctions, in part because Exxon Mobil is unable to collect revenues from an investment in an oil and gas consortium it belongs to that operates off Sakhalin Island.

A crude, quick and flippant assessment is what he deserves. He is semi-fascist: more fascist than any successful American politician yet, and the most dangerous threat to pluralist democracy in this country in more than a century, but — thank our stars — an amateurish imitation of the real thing.

I’m looking for people who fully understand the meaning of service and who are committed to advancing the common good,

“By the way, are you glad I ran for president?,”

It seemed reasonable to Posobiec that Podesta might have organized a sex ring in cahoots with Brock.

Citing high cost, Trump says Boeing’s contract to build Air Force One should be canceled

a multi-ethnic social democracy

the president-elect encouraged chants of “Lock her up” by invoking Hillary Clinton’s name

Clinton says Trump has called the election ‘rigged’, while Trump says he won’t necessarily accept the election results All available evidence shows that in-person voter fraud is exceedingly rare: you are more likely to be struck by lightning in the next year (a one in 1,042,000 chance, according to Noaa) than to find a case of voter fraud by impersonation (31 possible cases in more than a billion ballots cast from 2000 to 2014, according to a study by Loyola Law School). The man who cried rigged: the problem with Trump’s election claims Whenever Donald Trump is cornered, he accuses his opponents of fighting dirty. This time, he might be right to say there’s voter fraud – but for the wrong reasons Read more Voter fraud would have to happen on an enormous scale to sway elections, because the electoral college system decentralizes authority: each of the 50 states has its own rules and local officials, not federal ones, run the polls and count the ballots. This complexity makes the notion of a “rigged” national election, at least in the US, logistically daunting to the point of practical impossibility. Thirty-one states have Republican governors, including the swing states of Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Nevada and Ohio; Pennsylvania only elected a Democratic governor in 2015. Polls show Trump losing even in some states where governors have strongly supported him. In Maine, for instance, the Real Clear Politics average shows him down five points. About 75% of the ballots cast in federal elections have paper backups, and most electronic voting machines are not connected to the internet – though they have other flaws and may be vulnerable to tampering. But voter fraud to swing a major election, whether by tampering, buying votes or official wrongdoing, would quickly attract attention by its necessarily large scale. AdvertisementIf Trump loses the presidential election, it will be because American voters do not want him in the White House, not because of a conspiracy involving Republicans and Democrats alike at state and city levels around the nation – a conspiracy for which Trump has provided no evidence.

Trump was looking to convince voters still on the fence that he has the temperament and knowledge to be President