I know there are a handful of critical threads about the Democratic party, but any thread critical of the political left is probably berried on page 7 or 8 (I did not search). If mods want to merge it with another one (maybe the middle class is blameless thread, but that one is more economical criticism of the left).
Here is the story. Mr. Maajid Nawaz is the founder of The Quilliam Foundation, a think tank that he claims is to ["counter-extremism", specifically Islamism] He is a member of the Liberal Democratic party. He is mostly embraced by the anti religious crowd (like me) atheist and secularists. He is a very liberal secular Muslim. Some Muslims would disagree and say he is not really a Muslim, some would say he is a sale out or uncle Tom. Recently he went against the Guardian, a liberal British magazine (the one that claims we Americans killed over a million Iraqis). Quilliam (Mr. Nawaz) I guess advised PM Cameron on his anti-terror speech/police or something, The guardian is claiming that Cameron is using Nawaz as a toke to claim "Look I am not racist, I know a Muslim", That is something that Religious Muslims criticize Nawaz for a lot, providing cover for what they would call Islamophobia. Here is the Guardian Article. And when you see Nawaz talk, you do get this part is probably his personality. http://www.theguardian.com/politics...-became-david-camerons-anti-extremism-adviser Here is his response in the Daily Beast (a conservative website). http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...-left-s-hypocritical-embrace-of-islamism.html BTW the last thing I quoted reminds me of the hash tag. #Muslimrage and how some Muslims had fun with it after the Times magazine cover. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...odes-on-twitter-but-in-a-funny-way-yes-really This one is really funny for the contradictions. 247743877258293248 is not a valid tweet id
And this is a bit older, and I know there is a science thread out there, but still. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-liberals-war-on-science/ A response to Mr. Shermer. http://www.skepticink.com/nocrossno...t-at-war-with-science-unlike-political-right/
Are we talking about the American Left, or including "Left" establishments in the UK, France, etc.? The Nawaz/Guardian beef highlights a phenomenon somewhat specific to Western Europe, but I suppose it's relevant to the US on some level, e.g. the tension between various progressive factions highlighted by the BLM/Bernie Sanders confrontation.
International left, yes I know that is a big camp that do not match across cultures or continents. I will probably bump this with Latin American stories of the left when this thread drops to page 5 or so.
Rent Controls. From the messiah of the left. (yes I know it is old). http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-affair.html You know how we in the left make fun of global warming deniers with the 97% of Scientist agree thing, well we should also make fun of people that argue in favor of rent controls with 93% of economist agree. http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/08/economist-explains-19 Usually the argument is to help the poor or minorities stay in their current apartments and not get priced out due to gentrification. But the usual winners are middle class people with good jobs and good resumes that are preferred by landlords. So rent controls is another of those policies that the left argues to help the poor (big share of minorities) but in reality it ends up helping the more connected wealthier urbanites (tend to be more white). @American Brummie ok, why is urbanites a misspelled word? help.
OK,I'll take the bait. Bernie Sanders is nothing more than a typical, pandering bullshit politician. He is promising to increase SS benefits, make college free, and provide universal health care. Great. How is he going to pay for this? Raise taxes on the rich. Sorry, Bernie, I ain't buying it. You can't raise taxes on "the rich" enough to pay for all of this, even if democrats controlled congress. So, for campaigning on the Santa Claus platform, I call bullshit. I may agree with some of the ideas (not increasing SS benefits, that is a terrible idea), but Sanders is either out of touch with reality or just another cynical politician promising stuff he will never be able to deliver.
Also, by running in the Democratic Party primary, with almost zero ties to the Democratic Party, his plans to get a Democratic Congress to work with him are...what, again? Bernie Sanders people just don't want Hillary, and will ignore any and all facts needed to get there.
While I have some sympathy for Sanders, he will be the latest of NE Democratic politicians that that do well early especially in the New Hampshire primary, then fade away.
That's a wild card but in general voters memories are not long enough. New Hampshire is 5 months away & obviously the other primaries are further out.
That's harsh. While no doubt Bernie seems to me to be a savvy politician, I don't think he's cynical or a bullshit artist. I don't think he's out of touch with reality. He does seem to be a bit out of touch with the science of economics. When he talks economics he sounds like a mixture of Noam Chomsky, Author David Korten and Pope Francis. This is great if you want to inspire human beings to think and change their behavior. Not so great if you want to run the United States of America.
No sir. There are a lot of valid reasons to be opposed to Hillary Clinton. I'm just positive that turning to someone who has one of the lowest effectiveness records in Congress isn't the answer. Maybe if we turned to someone who was an effective Senator for decades you could convince me.
Bernie's constituents must have thought he was effective. He got 71% of the vote last time around (while Obama only managed 66% in Vermont). Kerry '16!
Correct - liberal racist. I've got some BLM people on my front lawn who are about to get the garden hose and my 2 dogs sicced on them. After that Ill serve some snacks and we'll all sing We Shall Overcome.
There are lots of reasons he got such a high vote share, but effectiveness is not one of them. https://www.opencongress.org/people/bills/400357_Bernie_Sanders Now I know that this is for the current Congress, which is at record lows, but dude's got a batting average of .000 and he has sponsored only 21 bills? Most of which, if you read, stand a snowball's chance in hell of passing. Here's a more comprehensive pass/fail rate. By contrast, check out Joe's pass/fail record.
Keynesian Economic Policy, Latin American style. Basically stimulus spending in Latin America style means spend more money than what you have (usually on dumb shit or corruption) borrow more money when you run out, and eventually default on your debts. Repeat all over. We know Venezuela has being doing it recently, Argentina sis it a few years ago, but now it looks like Brazil may be in danger of going down the same old rabbit hole. http://www.economist.com/news/leade...gging-brazil-prepares-make-grave-fiscal-error