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Google is reeling over a memo that leaked over the weekend, which described the tech giants diversity initiatives as an ideological echo chamber.

Social media was lit up with commentary over the 10-page document, penned by a senior Google engineer, with many progressives in tech calling for his termination.

The tech giants new VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance, Danielle Brown, released a statement to Motherboard supporting the document at least in part to say that a diversity of political views was important for the company.

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions, Brown said. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

Theres little to disagree with, or so one would think, but feminists and social justice activists in tech a few of whom are current and former Google employees were unhappy with the statement and called on Google to fire the engineer.

Jaana B. Dogan, a programmer at the company, stated in a series of deleted tweets that she was considering leaving the company unless HR does something about him.

Software engineer Kelly Ellis claims that she experienced discrimination while working for Google. She called for the author to be fired over his remarks.

Former Google privacy engineer Yonatan Zunger published a post on Medium to state that had he still worked at the company, the memos author wouldve lost his job without question.

You would have heard part (3) in a much smaller meeting, including you, me, your manager, your HRBP, and someone from legal. And it would have ended with you being escorted from the building by security and told that your personal items will be mailed to you, he wrote.

Outsiders looking in, like self-proclaimed software engineer and Democratic candidate for congress Brianna Wu condemned Google for not firing him fast enough.

Responding to the memo, Joshua McKenty, a VP for Cloudfoundry and Pivotal suggested the creation of a blacklist for known misogynists and racists.

A proud Antifa-supporter and vocal trans activist in tech, Emily Gorcenski, described the memo as a form of violence and harassment. In a series of tweets, one of which was deleted, Gorcenski called for harm to be done to its author.

Google is currently embroiled in a dispute with Obamas Department of Labor over a wage gap issue, and this latest controversy is unlikely to do any favors for the companys PR.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

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Progressives Want Google's 'Ideological Echo Chamber' Memo Author Fired, Industry Blacklists - The Daily Caller

The proposal seemed modest in today's polarized political climate: The head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee suggested his group might help fund candidates who didn't share the party's support for abortion rights.

The backlash from abortion-rights activists and organizations was quick and harsh. The basic message: Don't go there.

A coalition of progressive groups, including Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, issued a "statement of principles " challenging the party to be unwavering in its support for abortion rights.

Scores of women who have had abortions made the same point in an open letter to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, a staunch abortion-rights supporter who nonetheless says there's room in the party for opposing views.

"The DCCC should not be supporting any politician who does not respect a woman's right to control her body," said Karin Roland, of the women's rights group Ultraviolet. "There is no future of the Democratic Party without women -- so stop betraying them for a misguided idea of what's needed to win elections."

The latest brush fires were sparked this week by the DCCC chairman, Rep. Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, when he told The Hill newspaper that the committee is willing to aid candidates who oppose abortion rights.

His core argument: Democrats -- after a series of dismaying losses in national and state elections -- will only reclaim power by winning in GOP-leaning districts and states where the liberal base can't deliver victories on its own.

A DCCC official, Meredith Kelly, said Lujan isn't looking specifically for abortion-rights opponents, even in conservative districts. But, she added, "We are working right now to recruit candidates who represent Democratic values and who also fit the districts they are running in."

The current Congress is almost monolithic when it comes to abortion. Only a small handful of Republicans vote in favor of abortion rights; a similarly small number of Democrats support restrictions on abortion.

Some Democratic officials suggest the argument over Lujan's remarks is overblown -- a handful of outliers won't change the agenda if Democrats reclaim congressional majorities.

Abortion-rights leaders have a different view.

"Every time the Democrats lose an election, they start casting about in ways that are deeply damaging to the base," NARAL president Ilyse Hogue said. "If they go out and start recruiting anti-choice candidates under the Democratic brand, the message is, `We're willing to sell out women to win,' and politically that's just suicide."

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood, said politicians who personally object to abortion should be welcome in the Democratic Party -- as long as they don't vote to impose that view on others.

Supporting candidates who voted that way, said Laguens, would be comparable to supporting candidates who voted against LGBT-rights.

"These are fundamental issues that Democrats have staked their world view around," she said.

Stephen Schneck, a longtime political science professor at Catholic University and board member with Democrats for Life of America, contends that the Democratic leadership would benefit from more diverse views on abortion.

"Internal tensions are really good for a party," he said, citing polls showing that more than 20 percent of Democratic voters oppose abortion in most cases.

However, Schneck acknowledged that it's hard to find common ground on any abortion-related policies, with the possible exception of boosting support for women who carry babies to term.

Advocacy groups on each side of the abortion debate tend to scorn the concept of compromise and to base their fundraising campaigns on vows to be unyielding.

A prominent anti-abortion leader, Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports anti-abortion candidates, said she and her allies were proud of working to weaken the influence of abortion-rights supporters in Republican ranks.

"When the roles were reversed 10 years ago, and some within the Republican Party were advocating for a `big tent' on abortion, we worked very hard at the time to keep the GOP pro-life from the top down," she said in an email.

In some respects, Lujan's remarks don't represent a new stance for the Democrats' campaign apparatus. The Democratic Governors Association in 2015 helped John Bel Edwards, an anti-abortion Catholic, win the Louisiana governors' race, an upset in a Republican-dominated state.

The governors' group is now eyeing the 2018 race for governor in Kansas. The Democratic field includes former legislator and agriculture commissioner Joshua Svaty, who had an anti-abortion record in the Kansas House.

Laura McQuade, who runs Planned Parenthood Great Plains, warns that anti-abortion governors play a very different role from rank-and-file members of Congress -- getting a chance to weigh in on bills that would restrict abortion access.

McQuade, who is critical of Svaty's candidacy, notes that Kansas' last two-term Democratic governor, Kathleen Sebelius, supported abortion rights and went on to serve as President Barack Obama's health secretary. Democrats don't have to abandon support for "full gender equity" to win, she said.

Svaty has not made his abortion stance a feature of his campaign, telling journalists it wouldn't be a defining issue of his administration.

Kansas Democratic Chairman Josh Gibson has avoided taking a side, saying, "It's up to primary voters to decide where they want to place their emphasis."

In Louisiana, Democrats embraced Edwards' candidacy, even as he featured his abortion opposition in campaign ads. The heavily Catholic state is accustomed to Democrats who oppose abortion rights, and the Democratic Governors Association had no qualms embracing Edwards over his GOP opponent, then-Sen. David Vitter.

As governor, Edwards has left it to the Republican attorney general to defend previously adopted abortion restrictions in court. He has signed new abortion regulations, though he did not champion the proposals. Among them: a three-day waiting period for women seeking abortions.

"The issue is personal for him," explains Edwards aide Richard Carbo. Edwards and his wife rejected medical advice to abort a baby of theirs who'd been diagnosed with spina bifida. She's now a healthy adult.

Carbo said Edwards called Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez earlier this year when Perez declared it is "not negotiable" that "every Democrat ... should support a woman's right" to abortion services.

"He wants this to be a big tent party on this issue," Carbo said.

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Progressives clash with Washington Dems over candidates' abortion stance - Fox News

Well, Im not a fan of remakes, though Evil Dead was rather good, but it appears Bruce Willis and director Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) have decided to do a modern take on Death Wish, which starred the late Charles Bronson. Its quite simple. Thugs brutalize a law-abiding mans family, the cops cant do much, and so the man take matters into his own hands and declares war on criminality. Its a plot device thats been done over and over again for years: revenge. Yet, that was before the progressive hordes of Mordor decided to infest everything with political correctness. Now, this remake is nothing more than something to cater to the apocalypse fetishists over at NRATV. Oh, and its alt-right, or something. Justen Charters at Independent Journal Review captured the progressive outrage:

Again, its a movie. Its a remake. Its nothing new and the protagonist kills bad people. Everyone, relaxtheres no propaganda going on here. It's only a movie, which I will now definitely see.

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The New Death Wish Trailer Triggers Progressives, Say It's Alt-Right Propaganda - Townhall

There has always been a section of the left, which I call the whiny party the party that doesnt really wanna win, they just wanna be pure, and if they go down swinging purely, then thats fine, Dean told MSNBCs Joy Reid on AM Joy.

Well, the problem with that is it leaves behind the people who really need their help, he continued. If were gonna have a single-payer or Medicare for all or whatever were gonna have in healthcare that covers every American, as every other industrialized country has, then we all have to pull together.

Deans response comes after several media outlets such asMicand theWeekran stories about why some progressives, especially those who backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president in 2016, criticized potential 2020 candidates including Harris, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D).

Dean said those who criticized Harris and other candidates were doing the Democratic party a disservice.

And people who sit out or crank on some candidate because they did this or that that wasnt to their purity test are basically turning their back on the very people they pretend to represent, Dean said. So I dont have a lot of patience with this wing of the progressive party.

Despite Deans claim that the Democratic Party needs to come together to support Democratic candidates, he tweeted Tuesday that he would not support the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) if they backedpro-life candidates.

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Howard Dean: 'Whiny' Progressives Don't Want to Win, They Just Want to Be 'Pure' - Breitbart News

As the Democratic Partyleadership attemptsto rebrand the party as populist with itsBetter Deal agenda,establishmentDemocratshave already startedtoconsider whichcandidateto getbehind for the2020 electionand, perhaps unsurprisingly, the top picks arentexactly populists.

According to a Politicoreporton Tuesday,former President Barack Obama and his allies have begun to encourage former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, who is currently a managing director at Bain Capital (thats Mitt Romneys old firm), to run for the nominationin three years. Other wings of the Democraticestablishmentseem to be leaning toward Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who will be 77 years old in 2020.

Not surprisingly, progressives have notgreeted theseprospectivecandidates with open arms. Harris, for example, who is undeniably becoming a star in the Democratic Party, has beencriticizedby activists who were connected tothe Bernie Sanders campaign. She is the preferred candidate of extremely wealthy and out-of-touch Democratic party donors,saidWinnie Wong, co-founder of People for Bernie, toMic. Her recent anointing is extremely telling. These donors will line her coffers ahead of 2020 and she will have the next two years to craft a message of broad appeal to a rapidly changing electorate.

There are a number of legitimatecriticisms made against Harris for her recordas California attorney general, includingherfailure to prosecutecurrent Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchins bank for foreclosure violations. But the overall problem progressives seem to have with her is that Harris appears politically inconsistent, and shifts positions wheneverit is convenient. Thats equally true of Cory Booker, a longtime Hillary Clinton ally who hasclose ties to Wall Streetand a history ofsupportingconservative-friendly policies like school privatization. Booker was formerly close to Betsy DeVos, now Trumps secretary of education, andsat on the board of her school choiceadvocacy group.

In response to the left-wing criticisms of thesepotentialcandidates, liberals have adopteda familiarline of attack,rehashingthe 2016 BernieBro narrative, which maintainedthat leftist opposition to Clinton was rooted in sexismrather than politics or ideology. Clinton ally Neera Tanden responded to the aforementioned Mic article this way:

So odd, no, that these folks have if in for Kamala Harris and Cory Booker.... hhhhmmm.

— Neera Tanden?? (@neeratanden) July 31, 2017

In a similar vein, feminist author AndiZeisler sarcasticallytweeted this:

The following day,Zeislerclarifiedher position,tweetingthat she had not been sufficiently up on Harris record as attorney general; by then, however, her previous tweet which implied there was no legitimate political basis for opposing Harris had been liked by over 25,000 people.

There seem to be two possible explanations for this line of attack on progressives: Either certain liberals have made the cynical decision to smear their opponents instead of engaging in honest debate, or there is genuine confusion about why politicians like Booker and Harris and Clinton, for that matter are distrustedby people on the left. One suspects that a large percentage of Clinton loyalistsare indeed acting in bad faith, and would rather try todiscredittheir critics many of whom are women and people of color than engage in adebate. But theres no doubt that some are genuinely bewildered by progressive criticismsof the Democratic Party. The Democratic leadership is, after all, starting take on more of a populist tone, while prominent elected Democrats like Booker and Harris have embraced more progressive policies since last years election.

In a recent Jacobinarticlecritiquing the Better Deal platform introduced by the Democrats last month,historian Matt Karp expounded onthe fundamental difference between the populist rhetoric we are currently hearing from neoliberal Democratslike Booker and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and the authentic populism that was conveyedby the Bernie Sanders campaign last year:

What distinguished the Bernie Sanders campaign more than any other issue including his support for free college or Medicare for All was that he named his enemy. Among his other objectives, Sanderss attacks on the 1 percent were an attempt to reorder American politics around class lines: not with a stale disquisition on stratification, but by tapping into Americans anti-billionaire sentiment, religiously excluded from mainstream politics by both parties but thrumming powerfully just below the surface.

For Democrats, Bad Billionaires like Trump or the Koch brothers represent an existential threat to democracy, but Good Billionaires are vital campaign allies (Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Mark Cuban), crucial donors and policy shapers (George Soros, Haim Saban), or even possible secretaries of labor (Howard Schultz).

This distinctionreveals the underlyingconflictbetween leftists and liberals. While the former reject the status quoandbelieve that a system that produces billionaires and historic levels of inequalitymust be completelyrestructured, the latter generallyaccept the status quo as fixed, and advocatepiecemeal reform. If to be a radical is to grasp things by the root, as Karl Marx once put it, then to be a liberal, one might say, is to look only at the surface of things.

Needless to say, a neoliberallike Cory Booker, who is beloved byWall Street donorsandpharmaceutical companies, is not likely to challenge the economic status quo, since he is a product of it. One can expectleftists tocontinue criticizing prospectivecandidateswho embody the status quo, irrespectiveof their ethnicity or gender.

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First Democratic contenders for 2020 are unveiled: For progressives, it's not an inspiring batch - Salon