The New York Times recently ran a story that said: “Elizabeth Warren is leading a tight Iowa caucus race, according to our new poll, while Pete Buttigieg is surging and Joe Biden is fading.”
A casual reader could be excused for thinking that these three were the top contenders. But what did the poll results actually say?
Breaking news alert from the @nytimes. Forgetting to mention someone? pic.twitter.com/MHuS73ycxf
— Brent Welder (@BrentWelder) November 1, 2019
They defeated England in the final by a comfortable margin of 32-12. Up to the 66th minute of regular time, the points were entirely made up of penalty goals with South Africa leading by 18-12. Then in the last 15 minutes, they scored two tries and converted them to put the game out of England’s reach.
In the other match on Friday, New Zealand easily beat Wales 40-17 to take third place. This game was far more open and attacking than the final.
I have mentioned before how the wrong use of metaphors suggests that the speaker is either not interested in what they are saying or is trying to obfuscate. Jonathan Chait writes that when it comes to the impeachment hearings currently underway, Republicans are struggling to defend the indefensible and their confusion over what metaphors to use to describe the process a symptom that fact.
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She lays out clearly what the real issues are and exposes the bogus concerns about paying for progressive policies.
#HappyHalloween #Bernie2020 fam. Here’s a tip for all phonebankers & canvassers & everyone who agrees it’s #NotMeUs
When someone asks ‘How are we gonna pay for #MedicareForAll?’ here’s what you say: pic.twitter.com/Mz3sNWrQEg
— Silicon Valley People 4 Bernie (@2020svp4b) October 31, 2019
Rachel M. Cohen updates us on an interesting development in a Texas congressional district that is solidly Democratic but where the incumbent Henry Cuellar seems more like a Republican.
While Cuellar is more commonly known for voting to support a 20-week abortion ban and funding a Mexican border wall in his own southern Texas district, his record on labor issues has driven worker advocates crazy for years.
In May, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott introduced the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill that would eliminate right-to-work laws, impose new penalties on employers who retaliate against union organizing, crack down on worker misclassification, and establish new rules so employers cannot delay negotiating collective bargaining contracts.
The bill has 214 Democratic co-sponsors, and Cuellar is not among them.
…He was one of the few Democrats not to co-sponsor the $15 minimum wage bill the House passed this summer, and while he ultimately voted for its passage, he also voted for an unsuccessful amendment that would have exempted millions of workers from the law.
Cuellar has also criticized many of the signature labor reforms of the Obama era — including expanding overtime pay to 4 million workers and holding corporations liable for the violations of their franchisees. He’s one of just three Democrats to co-sponsor legislation restricting the definition of a joint employer, which would make it harder for workers at franchised companies to unionize and hold large corporations accountable.
One of the big questions will be to what extent the election to be held on December 12 will be a proxy referendum on Brexit, the deadline for which has been pushed back yet again to January 31, 2020. There is clearly a lot more at stake on the outcome of a general election than what will happen with Brexit but it will undoubtedly loom large. Those for whom it is a major issue and want to leave the EU will mostly vote for the Conservatives while those who want to remain in the EU will mostly vote for the Liberals and Labour.
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There are a large number of Christians who think that the Bible is inerrant and infallible because it was inspired by their god, similar to the way that Muslims think that the Koran must be 100% correct because their god directly dictated it to their prophet.
This of course poses some problems because there seem to be some clear contradictions between different parts of the Bible. When I was an undergraduate, I was a believing Christian but not a biblical literalist and some of us used to have a little fun at the expense of a local evangelical preacher by asking him to explain certain obvious contradictions in the four different versions of Jesus’s life told in the four Gospels and then watching him twist himself up in knots to try and show how they were all in fact consistent when the plain words showed otherwise.
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