You know, if I click on one of these links, I can’t click back… What’s with that?
The Twitter links? No idea; I’m an IT Luddite.
Open in a new tab as a temporary workaround?
Fresh footage from Charlottesville:
Incidentally, on the political compass left/right thing:
The main Australian right-wing party is the Liberal Party of Australia. Again, that isn’t just a quirk of linguistic diversity. Liberals are right wing.
Although the party as a whole has shifted right in recent years, the more traditional members of the LP (their current left wing, led by Turnbull) are roughly ideologically equivalent to US establishment Democrats. They aren’t overt bigots, but they’re happy to neglect racism and economically exploit the poor in the pursuit of capitalist goals.
This has some effect on my perspective of Boing Boing. To most of the folks there, it probably seems like a fairly leftish sort of place.
To me, it’s always been politically polite but ideologically neutral. Some leftists, but majority centre-right.
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Target #2:
Lawrence Tribe has spent the last week on Twitter desperately trying to avoid acknowledging that there is no constitutional solution to Trump.
This isn’t really about healthcare; the bill almost certainly won’t pass.
But if Bernie marshals enough support, he may get the Democrats into a position where they aid the fight against fascism rather than hinder it.
Cenk in full rant mode:
Shouty. He’s basically correct on the facts, though [1].
Notice how the worst of the book snippet stories are coming from the Trump-aligned NYT? The Trumpists think that sabotaging the Dems is helping them.
They’re shooting themselves in the foot, though. The corporate Dem leadership were never going to be anything other than quislings. Killing them off is the best thing that could happen for the left.
.
[1] Although he does one dickish thing where he talks about the weather to avoid mentioning patriarchy, and the choice of imagery is obviously hostile.
I would not be surprised to learn that a Trumpeter was responsible for Cruzpornghazi, BTW.
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I only just now understood some of the jokes I’ve seen online.
Does that mean I’m going to the right sites or the wrong ones?
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Nicely done. 
In Canada we class them as Centrists federally, because we have the Conservatives for the right (and drifting ever rightward) and the NDP to the left. The NDP has never held power federally, so there’s no track record of how they’d actually govern.
In my province, they are the right after the SoCred collapse. Provincial NDP claim to be on the left but tend to govern from a centrist position. Part of the problem is that we’re bounded by Red-washington* to the South and Alberta to the East (aka Texas North) so when people call us leftist tree-hugging hippies, those are usually the people talking. It’s only true by comparison.
So I think it’s less hard for Canadians in general to wrap our heads around the idea that Liberals are centre-right, in many cases, they are like the US Democrats: the only viable option anywhere left of Conservative. Wheregoes USA, so tags along Canada.†
*Washington, Oregon and California get their “left-coast” rep because the population is centered in the cities, but even those cities are “left by comparison” only.
† Tommy Douglas is responsible for Canada having the healthcare system it does, and I doubt he’d have been able to get it through, today, despite the fact that Canadians now generally cling to it with both hands.
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Traditional Libs are definitely towards the centrist part of the spectrum; they ain’t fascists, or even conservatives.
Things are scrambled now, but in the traditional Oz context, the centre is occupied by social democrats (the pretty much extinct Australian Democrats [1] previously held that position, now it’s occupied by Xenophon’s independent grouping).
The ALP is next to the left, running a spectrum from social democrat to democratic socialist. Left of that is the Australian Greens, who range from democratic socialist to mildly revolutionary hippies.
There’s also a handful of perennially hopeful far-left microparties with no parliamentary representation, mostly consisting of old tankies. The younger radical lefties typically reject electoral politics and focus on direct action protest.
[1] Originally formed from a schism within the Liberal Party.
Dick Gaughan certainly knows how to build an argument in a song:
Ye olde “opium of the people” argument, very well delivered. A touch of the Transendence vs Immanence tension between Christianity and pantheistic spirituality, too.
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If I had to define the difference between those two, it’d be:
Social democrats are capitalists with guilty consciences. Democratic socialists are communists with weak stomachs. 
Just a bit either side of the capitalist/socialist split.
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Digging through old folk songs.
This is George Papapveris’ It takes a soldier; I heard Martin Pearson perform it once at the Woodford Folk Festival, but I’ve never been able to find a recording online.
Shame; it’s a catchy song.
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