Behold! Democratic ‘centrism’ at work

[UPDATE: Akela Lacy has another article about how the Democratic party establishment is fighting hard to keep progressives off the Philadelphia city council.]

Ryan Grim writes that the ‘centrist’ wing of the Democratic party (i.e., Republican-light and right leaning people) represented by the DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) is advocating a strategy in which the party sells out its labor and environmentalist supporters.

REP. CHERI BUSTOS, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is advocating internally for Democrats to wave through the House President Donald Trump’s renegotiated NAFTA, without any of the revisions demanded by labor unions and environmentalists — and despite concerns that it locks in high prescription drug prices.
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The argument goes that those vulnerable Democrats would be able to demonstrate to constituents that while they may be pursuing impeachment, they are also willing to work across party lines with the president.

As Grim writes, this ‘strategy’ rests on questionable logic.
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Samantha Bee on Trump’s enablers

While Bee is correct that the Donald Trump’s framing of why Joe Biden tried to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired is wrong, the fact does remain that the hiring of Biden’s son Hunter to the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma and paying him $50,000 a month when he had no qualifications or experience in the gas business was definitely an attempt at using the Biden name to gain influence. It is part of the entire sleazy business of family members of major political figures cashing in on their connections. It is not necessary for the company to use Hunter Biden to get his father to do illegal things that are favorable for the company. They know that just having him on the board and on their letterhead gets them access to high levels in the US government. They can also use the name to get favorable treatment from other entities by showing that they have friends in high places.

The Bidens are not alone in this kind of sleazy practice. The Trump children have done this and are still doing it, as has Chelsea Clinton, Abby Huntsman, Meghan McCain, Liz Cheney, and Rand Paul, all of whom are the children of famous politicians.

So you are an atheist. Now what?

Over at stderr, Marcus Ranum has a great piece explaining why ‘movement atheism’ was inherently limiting and now appeals only to those (like Richard Dawkins) who have either no broader social justice goals and hence have nothing useful to say outside of condemning religion or (like Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and the late Christopher Hitchens) are actively opposed to many of those goals.

Richard Dawkins has not had any thoughts about politics that are important enough to make him a footnote to a Cliffs’ Notes version of Plato, so he’s doing well sticking to the well-hoed field of atheism, where he can make arguments that would have elicited a yawn from Hume and an eye-roll from Voltaire.
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Religion is a huge system of bullshit, and there are many sub-fields within religion, and anyone who wishes to can have a busy and productive life just attacking any one or maybe two of those sub-fields – in fact, I owe my perspective on movement atheism to Sam Harris and his shit-show posting about “Why don’t I criticize Israel?” [stderr] that made me realize that movement atheists simply do not have the chops to go after anything bigger and tougher than refuting religion.

What I’m saying is that folks like Harris, Dawkins, Shermer, Carrier, et. al., have found the place where they are as effective as they want to be, and they’re comfortable there. Oh, you want to argue about whether or not there’s evidence for the biblical jesus? That’s nice. Over in the deep end of the pool, they are arguing about whether there’s evidence that supply-side economics works and they’re trying to model what reparations for slavery might look like over the size of an economy like the United States’ and 400 years. Next up: what about the Indigenous Peoples? As far as I am concerned, the atheist movement hit its peak effort when a bunch of its stars stepped forward and then immediately fell all over themselves when they tried to express thoughtful opinions about politics.

You should read the whole thing.

The mainstream media’s efforts to ignore Sanders are getting ever more ridiculous

The New York Times recently ran a story that said: “Elizabeth Warren is leading a tight Iowa caucus race, according to our new poll, while Pete Buttigieg is surging and Joe Biden is fading.”

A casual reader could be excused for thinking that these three were the top contenders. But what did the poll results actually say?


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Rugby World Cup: South Africa emerge champions

They defeated England in the final by a comfortable margin of 32-12. Up to the 66th minute of regular time, the points were entirely made up of penalty goals with South Africa leading by 18-12. Then in the last 15 minutes, they scored two tries and converted them to put the game out of England’s reach.

In the other match on Friday, New Zealand easily beat Wales 40-17 to take third place. This game was far more open and attacking than the final.

A ‘witch hunt’ is not a trial conducted by witches

I have mentioned before how the wrong use of metaphors suggests that the speaker is either not interested in what they are saying or is trying to obfuscate. Jonathan Chait writes that when it comes to the impeachment hearings currently underway, Republicans are struggling to defend the indefensible and their confusion over what metaphors to use to describe the process a symptom that fact.
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Say it, AOC!

She lays out clearly what the real issues are and exposes the bogus concerns about paying for progressive policies.

A Democratic primary to watch

Rachel M. Cohen updates us on an interesting development in a Texas congressional district that is solidly Democratic but where the incumbent Henry Cuellar seems more like a Republican.

While Cuellar is more commonly known for voting to support a 20-week abortion ban and funding a Mexican border wall in his own southern Texas district, his record on labor issues has driven worker advocates crazy for years.

In May, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott introduced the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill that would eliminate right-to-work laws, impose new penalties on employers who retaliate against union organizing, crack down on worker misclassification, and establish new rules so employers cannot delay negotiating collective bargaining contracts.

The bill has 214 Democratic co-sponsors, and Cuellar is not among them.
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He was one of the few Democrats not to co-sponsor the $15 minimum wage bill the House passed this summer, and while he ultimately voted for its passage, he also voted for an unsuccessful amendment that would have exempted millions of workers from the law.

Cuellar has also criticized many of the signature labor reforms of the Obama era — including expanding overtime pay to 4 million workers and holding corporations liable for the violations of their franchisees. He’s one of just three Democrats to co-sponsor legislation restricting the definition of a joint employer, which would make it harder for workers at franchised companies to unionize and hold large corporations accountable.

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British general elections and Brexit

One of the big questions will be to what extent the election to be held on December 12 will be a proxy referendum on Brexit, the deadline for which has been pushed back yet again to January 31, 2020. There is clearly a lot more at stake on the outcome of a general election than what will happen with Brexit but it will undoubtedly loom large. Those for whom it is a major issue and want to leave the EU will mostly vote for the Conservatives while those who want to remain in the EU will mostly vote for the Liberals and Labour.
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Why are there contradictions in the Bible?

There are a large number of Christians who think that the Bible is inerrant and infallible because it was inspired by their god, similar to the way that Muslims think that the Koran must be 100% correct because their god directly dictated it to their prophet.

This of course poses some problems because there seem to be some clear contradictions between different parts of the Bible. When I was an undergraduate, I was a believing Christian but not a biblical literalist and some of us used to have a little fun at the expense of a local evangelical preacher by asking him to explain certain obvious contradictions in the four different versions of Jesus’s life told in the four Gospels and then watching him twist himself up in knots to try and show how they were all in fact consistent when the plain words showed otherwise.
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