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MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
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A right wing analysis would say that this is the culmination of left wing politics in Seattle. Another analysis would say that this is a situation in which the tech industry and other financial actors basically shook down and broke an eccentric, liberal city to the point that it will be abandoned as a ghost town much like Gold Rush towns.
By Kevin Drum @ Jabberwocking.com, July 3
On Thursday I posted a series of charts that all documented a similar theme: Since roughly the year 2000, according to survey data, Democrats have moved significantly to the left on most hot button social issues while Republicans have moved only slightly right.
This wasn't meant to be a rigorous scholarly analysis. And you can argue about margins of error, question wording, choice of topics, and so forth. Still, the gaps are too big and the trend too consistent to ignore the obvious conclusion that over the past two decades Democrats have moved left far more than Republicans have moved right: [....]
I've made this point many times before, and I want to make it again more loudly and more plainly today. It is not conservatives who have turned American politics into a culture war battle. It is liberals. And this shouldn't come as a surprise: Almost by definition, liberals are the ones pushing for change while conservatives are merely responding to whatever liberals do. More specifically, progressives have been bragging publicly about pushing the Democratic Party leftward since at least 2004—and they've succeeded.
Now, I'm personally happy about most of this. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that "personally happy" means nothing in politics. What matters is what the median voter feels, and Democrats have been moving further and further away from the median voter for years: [....]
Is this the start of the new Afghanistan? (Also, just a reminder: our police need help with armed gangs.)
No, it's not all right-wing media make believe, it's really happening.
interesting because not the same old; this is from someone enamored with Murdoch The Rupert Murdoch I worked for was brilliant, courageous, optimistic, and a gentleman. Which makes his bile-filled network all the more confounding.
Forget market economies - it's personalities, baby!
Who your daddy?
By Derek Willis and Lydia DePillis @ ProPublica.org, May 28, 3:30 a.m. EDT
A House committee has opened a probe into loans by Kabbage and other fintech companies after ProPublica reported that millions had gone to businesses that do not exist.
[....] “The illegitimacy of these purported farms — including potato fields in Florida and orange groves in Minnesota — would have been obvious if even the bare minimum of due diligence had been conducted on the loan applications." [....]
By Meredith McGraw, Tina Nguyen & Cristiano Lima @ Politico.com, 07/01/2021 01:07 PM EDT
Former President Donald Trump’s team quietly launched a new social media platform on Thursday, billing it as an alternative to Big Tech sites.
The platform, called GETTR, advertised its mission statement as “fighting cancel culture, promoting common sense, defending free speech, challenging social media monopolies, and creating a true marketplace of ideas.”
Trump’s former spokesman, Jason Miller, is leading the platform. A person familiar described the site as similar to Twitter.
Trump’s involvement with the project is unclear as is whether or not he will set up an account on GETTR and use it, though his proximity to Miller suggests that this may be the latest attempt to get him back in the churn of social media [....]
By Zoe Tillman @ Buzz Feed News, June 29 at 7:32 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The federal moratorium on evictions will remain in effect after the US Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request to abruptly end it. The order leaves intact — for now — a policy that renters nationwide have relied on to ease financial hardships caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The moratorium adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was set to expire on June 30; near the end of the month, the CDC announced a “final” extension to July 31. In a 5–4 order, the justices refused to intervene in an ongoing legal fight brought by landlord and real estate industry groups that sued over the policy. The Supreme Court’s order means the moratorium will stay in place for now and the case will continue in the lower courts [....]
The decision by Representative James Clyburn to oppose an outspoken ally of Senator Bernie Sanders in a special election in Cleveland highlights the generational and ideological gulf in the Democratic Party.
By Jonathan Wiseman @ NYTimes.com, June 29, Updated 5:24 p.m. ET
[....] On Tuesday, Mr. Clyburn, the No. 3 House Democrat, took aim at one of Mr. Sanders’s most outspoken acolytes, Nina Turner, a hero to the left who is surging in her campaign in Ohio to claim the Cleveland-based congressional seat vacated by the housing secretary, Marcia L. Fudge.
In a rare intervention into a party primary, Mr. Clyburn, a veteran lawmaker and the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed Shontel Brown, Ms. Turner’s leading opponent.
He said his decision to back Ms. Brown, the chairwoman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, was not about Mr. Sanders, or even Ms. Turner, who remains the favorite before the contest on Aug. 3 in the heavily Democratic district. But he took a swipe at what he called the “sloganeering” of the party’s left flank, which has risen to power with calls for “Medicare for all,” and to “abolish ICE” and “defund the police.”
“What I try to do is demonstrate by precept and example how we are to proceed as a party,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview. “When I spoke out against sloganeering, like ‘Burn, baby, burn’ in the 1960s and ‘defund the police,’ which I think is cutting the throats of the party, I know exactly where my constituents are. They are against that, and I’m against that.”
[....] Ms. Brown has the backing of the Democratic establishment, including of not only Mr. Clyburn but also Hillary Clinton; Richard Cordray, a former Ohio attorney general; Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and moderate Democrats like Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and David Trone of Maryland.
Ms. Turner, who has the endorsements of much of the House Progressive Caucus, including the so-called squad — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna S. Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib — would be a strong new voice for the congressional left [....]