Mediaboss Marketing

ATLANTA Sen. Elizabeth Warren used a speech to a grass-roots conference Saturday to take direct aim at Democrats diminished moderate wing, ridiculing Clinton-era policies and jubilantly proclaiming that liberals had taken control of the party.

While not invoking former President Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton by name, Warren sent an unambiguous message that she believes the Clinton effort to push Democrats toward the political center should be relegated to history.

Advertisement

The Democratic Party isnt going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill, she said, highlighting measures Bill Clinton signed into law as president that are reviled by much of the left. It is not going to happen.

Yet Warren, D-Mass., who is widely thought to be considering running for president in 2020, noted to about 1,000 activists here for the yearly Netroots Nation meeting that they hardly needed to worry about the party shifting to the middle as it did in the 1990s. Liberals, she said, have taken charge.

Get Political Happy Hour in your inbox:

Your afternoon shot of politics, sent straight from the desk of Joshua Miller.

We are not the gate-crashers of todays Democratic Party, Warren said, invoking a term first used to describe the liberal blogosphere that emerged a decade ago. We are not a wing of todays Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of todays Democratic Party.

Warrens five-day trip started in Poland, where she met with US and Polish officials and had dinner with a unit of Army reservists from Brockton.

Despite Warrens words, deep divisions remain in the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential campaign. There is the familiar center-versus-liberal divide as well as an increasingly animated clash between economic-focused activists on the far left and liberals driven more by issues of race, gender and identity.

While Warren first rose to stardom on the left because of her populist jeremiads against concentrated economic power, she sought to use her remarks in Atlanta to broaden her indictment against what she calls a rigged system. Expanding her signature attacks on Wall Street and its political influence, she said women, African-Americans, undocumented immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were all suffering from fundamental inequities.

Advertisement

Warren lampooned a recent New York Times opinion article, Back to the Center, Democrats, by Mark Penn, a onetime Clinton strategist, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president. The path forward is to go back to locking up nonviolent drug offenders and ripping more holes in our economic safety net, she said of their argument.

Still, Warren implored the crowd not to push others out of the movement.

If were going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness and lead our country out of this dark time, then we cant waste energy arguing about whose issue matters more or who in our alliance should be voted off the island, she said, drawing applause.

The annual Netroots gathering began in 2006 when it was called YearlyKos and sponsored by the Daily Kos blog. But it has grown in scale, mirroring the rise of liberals in the party.

The conference has also become a proving ground for would-be Democratic presidential candidates. Warren did little to dissuade a friendly crowd from thinking she, too, was eyeing a White House run.

Recalling the moment this year when Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, rebuked her for not following Senate rules and said, nevertheless she persisted Warren repeated the line that has become a rallying cry for her. When she vowed to the crowd in Atlanta that she would persist, chants of Warren 2020 rose up.

Read the original:
Liberals are the 'heart and soul' of Democratic Party, Warren says - The Boston Globe

Three people are dead and at least 34 injured after Unite the Right brought frenetic scenes and deadly violence to Charlottesville, Virginia. An estimated 500 white supremacists joined the rally, which supposedly was organized to protest the removal of Confederate monuments across Southern states. The rhetoric employed by the organizers clearly indicates that the gathering had other ambitions as well.

Its about white genocide. Its about the replacement of our people, culturally and ethnically, Jason Kessler told his followers on Periscope before the rally. Speaking at Unite the Right, David Duke stated: We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. Thats what we believed in, thats why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said hes going to take our country back, and thats what we gotta do.

At the rally itself, racist chants and sieg heils abounded. By most reports, the most popular incantation was blood and soil (from the German blut und boden). Originating in late 19th century Germany as an evocation of ultranationalist sentiment, it became incorporated into Nazi propaganda, where it was utilized to glorify pure German countryfolk who had a unique kinship with the land.

At the Friday evening tiki torch-bearing congregation at the Lee monument, the theme was the Richard Spencer shibboleth we will not be replaced.

No, the poison is not very hard to put together. Unite the Right was the official pitch of American fascists of all shades to become part of mainstream politics. It was the affirmation of the American far-right that they are no longer willing to be small fry content with furtive cross burnings and Nazi salutes. They want to be recognized as a national movement. They want political legitimacy.

Neither is it any coincidence that this moment has come during the presidency of Donald Trump. Even though they gained momentum by riding the tide of racist backlash during the tenure of Americas first black President, it was not until Trump entered the White House that they dared to stake their claim. Not only was Donald Trumps campaign rife with thinly veiled white nationalist rhetoric, his cabinet contains at least two men who belong firmly in the far right. Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka are two of the primary architects of the alt-right narrative since their days together at the Breitbart News Network.

It is not just that white supremacists see in the Trump administrations xenophobia and ultranationalism a coded affirmation of their fascist dreams. The fact is that Breitbart, Trump and many Republicans have themselves inspired new white supremacy among Americans. Their demonization of minorities, their denial of systemic racism and their blaming of immigrants and liberals for the misery of the working class amount to nothing less than soft-core white supremacy.

Today is a moment of reckoning for America. Fascism has reared its vile head, and prejudices that many had thought were either extinct or dormant are being shouted with pride and gusto. Right-wing militancy and violence continue to be on the rise. There is an administration in charge that shows zero motivation to frankly condemn or sever itself cleanly from white supremacy. Either because that would interfere with its raison dtre of liberal-hating or perhaps because it contains sympathizers with this ideology.

Most poignantly, though, this is a moment of reckoning for that cohort of liberals who choose to sit on the moral fence, looking down their noses at both left and right. That navel-gazing legion that prides itself for defending the free speech rights of neo-Nazis and equates the regressive left with the alt-right. That hypocritical, cowardly, egocentric nonsense will no longer stand.

Enough of the tripe about the left being more antisemitic than the right, of the sniveling, intellectually dishonest refrains of the lefts soft bigotry of low expectations. It is high time that it was clearly and loudly pointed out that there is no longer any daylight between the rhetoric of the alt-right and left-hating liberals. From regressive left to hard left and from SJW to PC police, this confusion of tongues with the alt-right is a testament to the neurosis of freeze peach liberals.

The fact is, economic ideology and the scandalous Democratic primaries have already created much distance between centrist liberals and the left. The fact is that whether it is fighting immigration bans, police brutality or fascism, the left has shown it is able and willing. It is fence-sitting liberals that must prove their moral integrity and distinguish themselves from the right.

Follow this link:
Charlottesville Is A Moment Of Reckoning Especially For Fence-Sitting Liberals - HuffPost

Psychology professor Jordan Peterson said that liberals excelled in openness and conservatives excelled in conscientiousness while speaking with Rob Shimshock on The Shimshock Show.

WATCH:

The University of Toronto professor argued that liberals display the personality trait of openness, which he linked to an affinity for abstraction and aesthetics. Meanwhile, he posited that conservatives demonstrate conscientiousness, which makes them good at administrating but not creating.

Alot of what determines your political orientation is biological temperament, said Peterson, outlining liberal openness and conservative conscientiousness. Each of those different temperamental types needs the other type so economically speaking, for example, we need liberals to start businesses, and we need conservatives to run them.

The whole point of a democracy is to continue the dialogue between people of different temperamental types so that we dont move so far to the right that everything becomes encapsulated in stone and doesnt move, or so far to the left that everything dissolves in [a] kind of mealy-mouthed chaos, said the professor. The only way that you can navigate between those two shoals is through discussion, which is why free speech is such an important value.

Peterson also discussed the political trajectory of Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, arguing that the political spectrum in the country is shifted to the left, relative to that of the U.S.(RELATED: Dr. Jordan Peterson Talks New Website To Detect Neo-Marxist Courses)

The Liberal party in Canada has tilted very strongly to the left, which isnt what the electorate expected because they wouldve voted for the NDP the socialist party if they wanted the left-leaning party, said Peterson. So they got a wolf in sheeps clothing.

The full interview can be viewed here.

Follow Rob Shimshock on Twitter

Connect with Rob Shimshock on Facebook

Send tips to [emailprotected].

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [emailprotected].

Read the rest here:
Dr. Jordan Peterson Talks Personality Differences Between Liberals And Conservatives [VIDEO] - The Daily Caller

OTTAWA The federal government has spent a lot of time in the U.S. of late, making Canada's case in advance of this week's long-awaited NAFTA talks. Back home, though, industry groups have been working hard to make sure they deliver the right message.

Andrea van Vugt, the vice-president of policy for North America at the Business Council of Canada, said her organization was bracing for a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement even beforeDonald Trump's election win.

"It was clear that NAFTA was going to become a discussion, regardless of who was elected, given the role that it played in the election," van Vugt said.

John Manley, a former Liberal cabinet minister who is president and CEO ofthe Business Council of Canada, is registered to lobby the federal government on any changes to the 23-year-old trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.

The monthly communication reports filed to the federal lobbying commissioner do not single out NAFTA, but they do show Manleyhas had six meetingsin the last six months alone where international trade has been one of the subjects, including in April with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Business Council of Canada is not alone in these efforts.

The Canadian Press found 45 activeentriesin the federal lobbyist registry, representing 24 organizations who have signed up to make their case to the Liberal government or hired lobbyists to do it for them ahead of the first round of talks, which get underway Wednesdayin Washington, D.C.

There were also 1,458 active registrations where the subjects included international trade. Anumber of those included organizations, such as the Dairy Farmers of Canada, that didn't specifically mention NAFTA, but whose priorities are clearly linked to the trade talks.

Any activity that followed the release of the U.S. government's summary of objectives last month would not be reflected in the registry; the reports for any meetings that took place in July are not due to be filed until next week.

They represent a wide range of interests, from agricultural producers and auto manufacturers to pharmaceutical companies and unions.

"Canadian business is really well engaged with the government and the government's doing a really good job at staying close to industry to make sure that they know what's on our agenda for the talks," said van Vugt.

The Liberals are aiming for a unified message, but that does not mean the groups lobbying them are all on the same page.

Jerry Dias, the national president of Unifor, Canada's largest labour union, has a vastly different perspective than those Canadian business intereststhat want to see the trade deal improved, but not necessarily overhauled.

"You have no idea how much I am looking forward to participating in fixing this colossal disaster," said Dias, whose union is calling for higher wage and labour standards, especially in Mexico.

The International Cheese Council of Canada, meanwhile,is setting its sights on the often-controversial supply management system, which protects the domestic dairy industry by placing sky-high tariffs on imports.

"We want to see more cheese coming into Canada and we want the right to import that cheese," said their lobbyist, James McIlroy.

The Canadian Sugar Institute, meanwhile, wants the new NAFTA to ease some American protectionist measures, such as quotarestrictions on sugar and some sugar-containing products,in addition to preserving what access they do have to the U.S. market.

"The problem for us is that trade for Mexico was liberalized, but trade for Canada was not," said Sandra Marsden, president of the institute.

The Liberal government has been holding consultations, but Carl Rodrigues, CEO of Soti Inc., a technology firm based in Mississauga, Ont., registered to lobby the government on NAFTA, said he wishes there was more of a back-and-forth conversation.

"There is going to be a bunch of negotiators at the table for the Canadian government and they are going to be determining and guiding the policies that, in the end, would affect us," he said.

"There is kind of a void."

And there are others, like the Chicken Farmers of Canada, who registered to lobby on NAFTA talks, but have so far not felt the need to do so, even though the poultry sector here is also under supply management.

Lisa Bishop-Spencer, a spokeswoman for the association, said they checked with theirAmerican partners and found they were not agitating for change.

"Let's just not mess with a good thing," she said.

Follow @smithjoanna on Twitter

Joanna Smith, The Canadian Press

Read the original:
As Liberals lobby on NAFTA talks, industry associations lobby the Liberals - rdnewsnow.com

The Free Democratic Party (FDP) could be the comeback storyof the upcoming German election. The party is seen as the preferred coalition partner of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, but it could also play kingmaker to a center-left government by pairing up with the Social Democrats and the Greens. Polls suggest the party will return to the Bundestag this election. Just four years ago, many commentators had pronounced the FDP dead when it was unable to collect the 5 percent of the vote necessary to enter Germany's parliament.

But when Germans have to explain to foreigners what the party stands for, they often face a conundrum: How to translate the German "liberal" into English.

German liberals lean right

In German, the term "liberal" is unambiguously tied to the FDP's pro-business, pro-civil liberties tenets. "Liberals in Germany want the state be confined to providing safety for the people and a stable environment, but not meddle around with people with overabundant regulation," explained German political scientist Michael Dreyer. The FDP, led by 38-year old former business consultant Christian Lindner, espouses progressive stances on social issues such as gay marriage, but these issues often take a backseat to the party's "pro-business" economic platform, which is why the partyand German liberals in generalare often perceived as right of center.

Chancellor Merkel would reportedly prefer to form a coalition with the FDP, led by Christian Lindner

US liberals lean left

Especially in the United States -whose media tends to dominate international political coverage - "liberal" is often considered synonymous with left-leaning members of the Democratic Party:pro welfare state, pro minority rights, pro economic regulation.

Part of the problem is that "liberal" does not fit nicely on one side of the political spectrum. While, for example, the British and Canadian liberal parties are both moderate leftist parties, the Australian liberal party is staunchly conservative.

"Since 'liberal' is one of the oldest political terms in the Western repertoire, it has a whole variety of meanings, and it also encompasses a lot of different wings," Dreyer pointed out.

The Free Democrats are hoping to re-enter the German Bundestag in the September election

Liberalism as a political philosophy emerged and gained popularity in Europe during the Age of the Enlightenment in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. British philosopher John Locke is often credited as its founding father, going back to his "Two Treatises of Government," published in 1689, in which he argued that the state should protect every citizen's right to life, liberty and property.

What unites liberals today is the quest for individual freedom, says Professor Karl-Heinz Paque, co-chairman of the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Neumann Foundation. "Being liberal means that the individual must be at the foreground of politics. So liberals do everything to enhance individual freedom and responsibility."

Where different schools of liberalism differis in which circumstances they believe state intervention can enhance - or curtail - people's freedom.

Shaped by other parties

Liberal parties have been shaped largely through the strength or weakness of the left- and right-wing parties in their respective countries.

"One of the reasons why liberal has become synonymous with left of center politics in the United States is the fact that there has never been a development of a successful workers' party," says political scientist Dreyer. Liberals were considered the most progressive political group before the surge of socialist and communist movements in the late 19th century -and have remained the strongest progressive force in the US by incorporating some of the left's central demands.

In the US, progressive politicians such as Elizabeth Warren are referred to as 'liberals'

Germany, meanwhile, has a long tradition of a strong Social Democratic Party, one of the oldest political parties inthe world, on the left, and has had socialist andcommunistparties for nearly a century. According to Karl-Heinz Paque, Germany's Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Greens have pushed liberals to see themselves primarily as the protectors of citizens and companies from an overreaching welfare state.

So is the FDP libertarian?

Presumably to avoid the ambiguity of "liberal,"some English-language mediause "libertarian" to describe the FDP. Employed primarily in the US, the term refers to an ideology that favors a laissez-faire approach to the economy and endorses "whatever floats your boat" social policies .

German FDP politicians have very little in common with US libertarians like one-time presidential candidate Gary Johnson

While both German liberals and US libertarians want a smaller state, most FDP members reject the notion they are libertarians because the term is often associated with radically anti-government views. "I don't bend down to American terminology, it is not historically adequate," Paque said. "Just like I don't call football 'soccer'just because Americans call it that."

Germans generally favor a much stronger welfare state than most Americans, which is why even the platforms of Germany's moderatelyright-wing parties - the FDP and the conservative CDU/CSU -overlap more with those of the Democratic Party than with the Republican Party, which has a strong libertarian wing, or the Libertarian Party itself. FDP members point to the example of health care to illustrate the difference between German liberals and US libertarians: While the FDP is in favor of state-sponsored health care, US libertarians want to see "Obamacare" abolished.

View post:
What sets Germany's 'liberal' FDP apart - Deutsche Welle