Archive for the ‘Liberals’ Category

Fake News: Liberals Can’t Stop Sharing This False Meme About Trump, Obama, and Church – Townhall

They're pro-science, pro-empiricism guardians of truth and facts in an age of Lyin' Donald, you'll recall, except when they're not. Because 'Literally Hitler' and his band of deplorables deserve it, or whatever. A Democratic pollster posted a tweet on Easter Sunday, comparing and contrasting the supposedchurchgoing records of President Obama and President Trump -- neither of whom is, shall we say, particularlyrenowned for his overt religiosity. It's racked up tens of thousands of retweets and likes, with screenshots and similar memes buzzing around Facebook and Instagram. Obama was a God-fearing Christian, unlike that pagan Trump; these so-called Christian Republican voters are such hypocrites! Problem: It's an inaccurate tweet. But hey,spreading fake news that affirms your partisan biases feels good. And who can resist the sweet, sweet nectar of lots of retweets and new followers?

Conservatives and some mainstream and liberal media figuresswiftly debunked the premise of the tweet. Oops:

The original tweeter has been defending himself and refusing to delete the false post, uncorking a slew of justifications, most of which are some variation of "fake but accurate" or "it's Trump's fault." He also claimed that his facts werecorrect at the time that he fired off the tweet because Trump hadn't gone to church yet, or something. But the premise of the framing was that Obama was a faithful Easter churchgoer, unlike that heathen Trump. Fun fact:Theimage embedded at the top of this postis of Trump...arriving at church on Easter. In fairness, this allcould have started as an honest, hasty mistake,but once it became clear that the message was flat-out wrong, the obviouslycorrect move wasto take it down, not concoct desperateex post facto rationalizations. To err is to be human, butto allow arrogance and expedience to perpetuate the propagation of a knownfalsehood is a deliberate act of dishonesty (a lesson thatthis president would be wiseto heed). And hey, we're all human. Even certainDemocratic pollsters:

See? Deleting content that makes you look silly in retrospect isn't so hard, is it?

Read more here:
Fake News: Liberals Can't Stop Sharing This False Meme About Trump, Obama, and Church - Townhall

Gorsuch will tip Supreme Court on key labor issue, liberals fear – Washington Examiner

Organized labor and its allies in the Democratic Party are bracing for a major hit to union power now that Justice Neil Gorsuch has a seat on the Supreme Court, fearing that he will tip the balance of the court toward overturning key legal precedents that benefit labor.

"This justice is poised to cast the fifth vote to make it next to impossible for public-sector labor unions to organize," said Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former secretary of labor, in a speech Tuesday to the United Steelworkers union.

The two main cases on the court's horizon that unions are worried about are Yohn v. California Teachers Association and Janus v. AFSCME. Both could overturn a 1979 precedent called Abood that said public-sector workers could be forced to join a union or support one financially as a condition of employment.

Such requirements called "security clauses" in union parlance are a common feature of public-sector union contracts. They are a key source of the unions' strength since they boost both membership and dues revenue.

Terry Pell, executive director of the Center for Individual Rights, a legal nonprofit representing the plaintiffs in Yohn, believes they have a good chance of reaching the Supreme Court later this year.

"We are arguing that we are raising concerns that can only be answered by the Supreme Court," Pell told the Washington Examiner. They did it once before in a case the Supreme Court heard last year called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.

Friedrichs' argued that the state's security clause violated the teachers' rights because it forced them to subsidize the union's political activities even when they disagree with the labor group's agenda.

A majority of the justices appeared to be on the verge of overturning Abood, but Justice Antonin Scalia's death just one month after oral arguments meant that they deadlocked 4-4. That meant that the lower court opinion upholding Abood stood.

"But for the death of Justice Scalia that case would already be decided," Perez said.

Because the Supreme Court technically never reached a judgment on the issue, nothing prevents it from taking up the same question again.

"We are currently before the same district court judge we were in the Friedrichs case," Pell said. The issue at question in Yohn is basically the same as in the prior case, so Pell expects a similar ruling that will enable the case to reach Supreme Court.

The Janus v. AFSCME case, which has been in the 7th Court of Appeals, raises similar issues. The National Right to Work Foundation and the Liberty Justice Center, two free-market nonprofit groups, filed the case on behalf of two Illinois health department employees.

"We're at the point now where the next step is to file for cert with the Supreme Court," said foundation spokesman Pat Semmens, referring to the procedure for asking the justices to take up their case.

Unions who believe they caught a break when the court split on Friedrichs are eyeing both cases nervously. They were cited in a resolution passed by NYSUT, a 6000,000-member federation of New York teachers and school employees, after Gorsuch was confirmed April 10.

The resolution warned that the cases could tip the court toward "invalidat[ing] of the collection of fair share fees by public-sector unions." That would "deliver a crippling blow to the labor movement and to public-sector unions in particular."

A spokesman for the Service Employees International Union told the Washington Post Friday that the union had trimmed its budget by as much as 30 percent this year in expectation that it soon will face a much tougher organizing climate.

"These particular budget cuts are our way of enacting financial efficiencies to deal with the realities posed by extremist right-wing labor policy in all branches of the federal government," Sahar Wali told the Post.

SEIU in particular has reason to be worried, as it has a suffered series of defeats at the court in recent years.

In 2014's Harris v. Quinn, the court ruled 5-4 that state-funded Illinois home healthcare workers were not state employees eligible for unionization. That was a blow to the SEIU, which represented them.

In 2012's Knox v. SEIU, a 7-2 majority ruled that the union could not force members to pay a special assessment fee the union imposed on the workers without giving them the opportunity to opt out first. SEIU had made the assessment to raise funds to defeat state ballot initiatives it opposed.

Pell cautioned that it is not clear how Gorsuch, though a conservative, would vote on labor issues since he has little record on the subject. "It's never a good idea to take any [Supreme Court] vote for granted."

Semmens echoed that assessment, saying, "The only thing we know for certain is that he will be the deciding vote."

View original post here:
Gorsuch will tip Supreme Court on key labor issue, liberals fear - Washington Examiner

Supply-Side Economics, but for Liberals – New York Times

Supply-Side Economics, but for Liberals
New York Times
In the emerging liberal version, government programs enable more people to work, and to work in higher-productivity, higher-income jobs. The end result, if the research is correct, is the same: a nation that is capable of growing faster and producing more.

See the article here:
Supply-Side Economics, but for Liberals - New York Times

Liberals: Clever, But Oblivious – Canada Free Press

Liberals belong only on the stage, for the curious, not to be taken seriously. That is common sense

Among the great mysteries of the universe are questions the lucid among mankind have asked for generationssuch as:

Why are liberals so enamored with Islam and so hostile towards Christianity?Islamists, if given the opportunity, would behead every godless liberal they found.

Why do liberals want to protect violent criminals and condemned prisoners, but are willing to kill the unborn right up to the time of birth?

Why do liberals want to apply socialist/communist solutions to problems when socialism has never worked anywhere in the world at any time?

And the question of our time: Why do liberals want to admit unskilled illegal aliens, criminal or otherwise, without extreme vetting, into our country while turning away many would-be legals like scientists and engineers?

No one can deny that most true liberal believers are intelligent. But, something is missing. Liberals are intellect without discipline, without God, flashlights without batteries. As explained in Psychology Today (PT), they are intelligent people that incorrectly apply abstract logical reasoning to social and interpersonal domains.

PT further explains that the ability to think and reason evolved as a means to solve common problems such as parenting, personal relationships and social dealings, referred today as common sense. Everyone is equipped with common sense, but liberals have a tendency to over apply their analytical and logical reasoning abilities, derived from their intelligence, incorrectly.

Liberals feel in situations where they are supposed to think and think in situations where they are supposed to feel. For any given problem, the application of common sense to a liberal is just thatcommon. Many intelligent people, especially liberals, are anything but common. In many cases they refuse to apply common sense when their intellect says there is a better way.

Liberals think they are being clever, when in actuality they are being oblivious to reality. If you disagree with them, they are convinced it is because you do not understand.

Liberals always prefer absurdly complex solutions to common sense solutions, displaying their intellect, their god-like qualities, the more complex the better. So godlike, in fact, that true liberals have a terrible time believing in God, a being infinitely more intelligent than themselves, if that is possible.

Only a liberal would think that spending to prevent bankruptcy is smart. Only a liberal would think a gun free zone would prevent criminals from carrying guns. Only liberals would require safe zones to protect themselves from common sense. Only a liberal would require 20,000 pages to cover a health care law that makes almost everyone unhappy.

What is so infuriating is that the clever but oblivious have completely taken over the Democratic Party, the media and academia. It cannot be stressed strongly enough that we need to prevent liberals from entering government, education, the media and anywhere else they may affect other peoples lives. Liberals belong only on the stage, for the curious, not to be taken seriously. That is common sense.

Read the original post:
Liberals: Clever, But Oblivious - Canada Free Press

Hungary’s liberals find a hero in their battle against Viktor Orbn – The Guardian

A march of the local demonstrators is blocked by riot police officers nearby the headquarter of the governor Fidesz party as students, teachers of the Central European University and their sympathisers protest in Budapest on 9 April. Photograph: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP/Getty

The urbane, intellectual figure of Michael Ignatieff seems an unlikely candidate to play the role of bogeyman in the eyes of Viktor Orbn, Hungarys populist prime minister, as he strives to turn his country into an illiberal state.

Yet it was on him that Orbns official spokesman focused while scrambling to explain recent mass protests supporting Budapests Central European University (CEU) a small elite institution of higher learning of which Ignatieff is rector, and which could, theoretically, be forced to close because of a new higher education law.

Referring to the academics past as a former leader of Canadas Liberal party, the spokesman, Zoltn Kovcs, dismissed Ignatieff in an interview with the Observer as a failed liberal politician from Canada very obviously representing a different political agenda. He also suggested that Ignatieff had publicly misrepresented the law as an attack on educational freedom.

The comments are a departure from the rightwing Fidesz governments usual target of abuse George Soros, the Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist who is the universitys founder and whose Open Society Foundation (OSF) has earned Orbns wrath by helping to fund local civil society groups, some of whom have defended refugees and migrants.

But they also appeared to betray a government caught off guard by the strength of popular opposition to the legislation, which was fast-tracked through parliament in days and signed into law last Monday by President Jnos der.

The university, nestled between popular bistros and Budapests historic St Stephens basilica, has gained an international reputation since its foundation in 1991 in the aftermath of communisms collapse, although it has rarely registered high on Hungarian public consciousness. Yet the capital has been convulsed in the past two weeks by protests over the laws apparent goal of singling out CEU which would be forced to open a campus in its registered country of the United States, in line with 27 other foreign universities operating in Hungary, in order to stay open.

Demonstrators have thronged the citys elegant streets and squares in numbers belying the universitys tiny student body of 1,400, and with an enthusiasm seemingly at odds with the dry principle of academic freedom that Ignatieff and others say is at stake.

An estimated 70,000 attended a rally last Sunday, marching across the Chain Bridge that spans the Danube in scenes with the potential to embarrass a government used to revelling in its popular support. In another mass protest on Wednesday, crowds chanted Russians go home a reference to Orbns perceived intimacy with Russian president Vladimir Putin and shouted Europe, Europe as a young man hoisted the European Union flag in the Oktogon square, in one of the citys busiest thoroughfares. The latter gesture hinted at how the CEU protests have become a focal point for wider discontents while highlighting Hungarys increasing isolation in the EU under Orbns aggressive Brussels-baiting leadership.

The latest confrontation comes amid rising concern over Hungary, which under Orbn has gained a reputation for the draconian and inhumane treatment of migrants, curtailing media freedom and interference in judiciary independence. Orbns government has already drawn widespread condemnation this year by detaining asylum seekers including children of 14 in shipping containers, a practice human rights groups say breaches EU law. Last week Germany citing Hungarys record of ill-treatment became the first member state to declare it would not send migrants back there under the Dublin regulations, which specify that asylum seekers should pursue their claims in the first EU country they arrived in.

Orbn, who has been in power since 2010, has justified the actions by calling migrants a Trojan horse of terrorism and has trumpeted his self-appointed role in defending Christian values.

The new law, dubbed Lex CEU, represents the governments latest front in its declared war on Soros, whom Orbn and his allies have vowed to extrude from Hungary in 2017, encouraged by the belief that they would face little resistance from US president Donald Trump, whose supporters include fierce Soros critics.

The anti-Soros assault gained further momentum last week when Fidesz MPs tabled a bill requiring civil society groups that receive money from abroad to list themselves publicly as foreign-funded organisations or face prosecution. The proposal is widely seen as an attempt at stigmatising groups receiving funding from Soross OSF. Amnesty International has compared the legislation with Russias 2012 foreign agents law, which led to the intimidation and harassment of civil groups.

What is troubling is that they portray civil society organisations that are holding them to account as enemies of the state, said Goran Buldioski, director of the OSFs Budapest-based Europe office. This is how they depict the bigger, well-established groups in Budapest. Imagine the intimidating message it sends to smaller organisations in the provinces. In line with his attacks on Soros, Orbn launched yet another anti-EU salvo this month in the form of a government-backed consultation exercise provocatively titled Lets Stop Brussels! which asked voters to respond to what critics say are six deliberately loaded questions presented as binary choices.

The move was reminiscent of last years ill-fated referendum proposing to reject the EUs quota scheme for resettling refugees, which won an overwhelming majority but was invalidated by a low turnout. Yet there are signs that Orbn may have misread the mood and that the CEU attack has given the EU an opening to act on longstanding misgivings about his increasingly authoritarian leadership.

Last week Frans Timmermans, the European commissions first vice-president, said he would investigate the law targeting CEU which he described as a jewel in the crown over suggestions that it breached European freedom of movement law on educational services. He promised a decision by 26 April. The European parliament is also scheduled to debate the situation in Hungary after the Easter break.

The EU intervention drew a splenetic response from Kovcs a former PhD graduate from CEU who described it as camouflage for pushing an agenda favouring illegal migration. To sum up, basically its all about illegal migration, he said. What they would like to enforce and push through this year is the quota system and [that] Europe should be more receptive to illegal migration.

That, in turn, provoked an astonished reaction from Ignatieff. My mouth falls open, he said. Does he understand what his words imply, which is that the Hungarian government is involved in some political operation because they have some agenda relating to migration? So their idea of a smart move is to attack an institution which has been part of Hungarian life for 25 years. What relevance does that have?

It just makes perfectly clear that this is a political attack serving some political agenda that doesnt concern me.

The law, Ignatieff said, represented a flagrant and discriminatory attack on academic freedom that is unprecedented in the history of Europe since the second world war. The university would not close under any circumstances, he said, adding that a negotiated solution would be found.

Ignatieff, 70 next month, has lobbied western capitals, including Washington, winning support from the Trump administration in an implied rebuff to Orbns hope of improved ties. A US state department spokesman, Mark Toner, last week called on Hungary to suspend the law, which he said threatened an institution that is an important conduit for intellectual and cultural exchanges between Hungary and the United States.

Just as telling is the public support for the CEU. The direction the government is taking makes me frightened for the future of the country and my place in it, said former student Istvn Szcsenyi. I want the democracy that was promised to my parents when communism collapsed.

Read the rest here:
Hungary's liberals find a hero in their battle against Viktor Orbn - The Guardian