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IS IT OK TO CRITICIZE POLITICIANS FOR THINGS THEY HAVE DONE? 12/29 & 12/30 OT

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Tanden’s idea that we shouldn’t “attack Democrats” when Trump is in the White House is bizarre. We’re supposed to be having a primary here! The whole point is to select a candidate, which means deciding whether a politician is good or bad. Shaun King tries to distinguish between “critiquing records” and “demonization”/ “destructive conversation” but I think that distinction can very easily be used to avoid dealing with legitimate criticism. In fact, that’s exactly what has happened here—instead of actually responding to the strongest version of the case made by the critics, Hamby et. al. suggest that the act of criticism … Continue reading →

Republicans and tyranny. OT 12/08/2018

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Wisconsin’s Senate majority leader, Scott Fitzgerald, also had a moment of honesty, saying Monday: “We trusted Scott Walker and the administration to be able to manage the back and forth with the Legislature. We don’t trust Tony Evers right now in a lot of these areas.” His statement is essentially a slap in the face to Wisconsin voters. He might as well have said, “We don’t trust voters.” The GOP’s Plot to Destroy Our Democracy Is Coming Into View How this is not illegal is beyond me. Turning back the vote, which likely is already a smaller margin than it … Continue reading →

Democrats, Don’t Compromise With Trump and 11/15 OT

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https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/13/democrats-dont-compromise-trump The experience of labor and civil rights in the midcentury is instructive today. Those movements pushed for legislative policy, but their biggest long-term impact came once they had driven a new generation of legislators into office, who gradually shifted the party’s baseline platform. Over time, it became more centrally associated first with labor, and then with civil rights. Today’s liberals should follow this model. If they want to change the country, they should focus on changing the Democratic Party, rather than passing bills that are only going to die in the Senate or get booted off Trump’s desk in … Continue reading →

Stack the Supreme Court by Mehdi Hasan

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

I didn’t want to publish this today. But since it just published when I reloaded, what the heck. If anyone knows how to save a draft and not publish it when you close and reopen, please let me know in the comments. No longer an OT anyway. Enjoy. My new mantra–“No problem!” :O) Skeptical, check. No way, check. Silly, check. Yes, I, too, was taken aback when I saw the headline. Now that I’ve read and reread the article, I’m smitten. I still have some doubts, sure–this is a new love and I don’t want to fall head over heels. … Continue reading →

Juan Cole and Bringing Psychology Into the Mix and Open Thread 9/30

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55% of GOP Say Sexual Assault Not Disqualifying for SCOTUS; What Is Wrong With Them? Juan Cole What in the world is wrong with self-identified Republicans in the United States. I mean, look, I’m a historian and a world traveler. I get that different people have different ways of looking at the world, different norms and customs. It is to be expected. But the blatant amorality of GOP voters, at least as they represent themselves in the polling, baffles me. Morality ought to be equally distributed across parties, like immorality. People are people. But as Newsweek notes, an Economist/YouGov poll has … Continue reading →

Saturday Morning Coffee Shop 09/22/2018

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Good Morning Birdies! Common Dreams take on the Beto/Cruz debate and a place to have a cuppa. As Polls Show Toss-Up Over Texas Senate Seat, Cruz Uses First Debate to Attack O’Rourke’s Increasingly Popular Progressive Proposals. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) caused confusion among progressives Friday night after capping off his debate with Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) by vaguely suggesting his opponent’s passionate condemnation of police brutality and expression of empathy for black communities in light of police shootings like that of Botham Jean earlier this month, somehow reflected negatively on O’Rourke. As mags noted, lots of tweets like this: In … Continue reading →

Saturday at the Cafe Open Thread 09/15

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Benny’s idea about picking someone or some cause to support in some way, even if it’s $3, keeps rolling around in my head. I envisioned posting a bunch of candidates and causes, but I wouldn’t have that done until next week. LD and Benny and some others have more of those candidates at their fingertips and maybe people can post some in here that they like. And it doesn’t hurt to repeat post, daily, if we want, since not only do different people see it on different days, but we may have a little money on different days, too. For … Continue reading →

Saturday Coffee Shop OT 09/01/2018

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Howdy! Just a quick story, on yet another possible progressive win coming up. Is Delaware’s Kerri Evelyn Harris the Next Explosion to Rock the Democrats? Just hours before I spent a half-day tagging along with Harris and her guerrilla-style, low-budget campaign, the once little-known black mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum, shocked the political experts by winning the Democratic nod for governor on Florida on an unabashedly liberal platform that would including Medicare-for-All and abolishing ICE (federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement). That echoed June’s shocking congressional primary win for New York’s 28-year-old democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — who saw some of … Continue reading →

Open Thread 08/21/2018

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

Starting things off with Chris Hedges and climate chaos: “We’re probably not the first time there’s been a civilization in the universe,” Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and the author of “Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth,” told me when we met in New York. “The idea that we’re destroying the planet gives us way too much credit,” he went on. “Certainly, we’re pushing the earth into a new era. If we look at the history of the biosphere, the history of life on earth, in the long … Continue reading →

Hope for the land and Open Thread 04/22/18.

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The Colombia Supreme Court of Justice issued a decision declaring that the Amazon region in Colombia possesses legal rights. <blockquote>Today, the Colombia Supreme Court of Justice issued a decision declaring that the Amazon region in Colombia possesses legal rights. The case was filed on behalf of twenty-five Colombian youth, accompanied by the organization Dejusticia, who sued for their environmental rights against the Colombian government. The Court declared that the “Colombian Amazon is recognized as an entity, a subject of rights” which include the right to “legal protection, preservation, maintenance and restoration.” The Supreme Court’s decision builds on the precedent set in November 2016, when … Continue reading →

Juan Cole, Short and Sweet and March 26 Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

While I believe you can include a whole lot more people in Cole’s assessment, here’s an excerpt from his brief piece today: And since I couldn’t get my cursor to show below the quote, I’ll add it here: This is also my short and sweet open thread. :O) Be back in a while and then gone for a lot of the day. Thanks to all the marchers this weekend! Bolton has assiduously tried to do the same thing he did to Iraq to Iran. Big corporations like wars. Wars mean you have to manufacture more shiny children-murdering weapons and bombs, the … Continue reading →

February 25 Open Thread

The Progressive Wing Posted on by

The other day, I shared an article about how since 9/11, the U.S. has had approximately 200,000 gun deaths. Compare to the 3,000. So why do all of our resources go to the “terrorist” threat? I absolutely believe we can and should be doing things to stay safe, foremost being to change our whole approach to the world around us. Of course, for now, we need some resources to stop attacks, to search out real threats, etc., but not nearly the amount we now use. I also saw where Mad Dog Mattis, our SecDef, spoke about how it was “fun” … Continue reading →

As World Warms, Heartbreaking Video Shows What It Looks Like When a Polar Bear Starves and Open Thread 12/09

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<blockquote>A video of a starving polar bear led to calls for climate change denialists to confront the real-world effects of global warming this week. Taken by a Canadian conservationist and photographer and posted to social media, the video offered a stark visual of the drastic impacts of climate change that have already begun taking root. … Paul Nicklen was traveling with the conservation group Sea Legacy in Canada’s Baffin Islands, located in the Arctic, when he spotted the emaciated animal struggling to walk across the dry land—historically covered with ice in December and home to seals that polar bears rely … Continue reading →