Category Archives: Liberal

Liberal Democratic party senator David Leyonhjelm accepted $55,000 in donations from tobacco company Philip Morris. Two tobacco control experts have complained about the logo his party used during the 2016 election campaign. Photograph: Sam Mooy/AAP

The logo used by David Leyonhjelms Liberal Democratic party at the 2016 election failed to meet the Australian Electoral Commissions guidelines and should not have been approved, a review of the decision has found.

The logo, used during the 2016 election campaign, shows the word Liberal in large, bolded capital letters, with the word Democrat in smaller, unbolded letters.

Complaints were made about the logo to the commission in May 2016, but the Australian Electoral Commission found there was insufficient evidence to determine the logo should be refused.

But in June two eminent tobacco control experts and professors of public health, Mike Daube from Curtin University and Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney, called on the commission to review its decision. The professors are interested in Leyonhjelm in part because of his acceptance of $55,000 in donations from big tobacco company Philip Morris.

In their complaint Daube and Chapman asserted that the new logo was deliberately designed to mislead voters and to suggest a relationship or connection to the Liberal party.

But the commission said their decision that the logo was acceptable stood, in part because the reasons why a party chooses a certain logo design, or why a party chooses to change that design, are not relevant for the purposes of assessing a proposed logo under part XI of the Electoral Act.

However, on Thursday the commission sent a document to Daube and Chapman, which has been seen by Guardian Australia, which said a further review of the decision had led them to refuse to enter the Liberal Democratic party logo into the register.

In the opinion of the Electoral Commission the font and prominence of the word Liberal so nearly resembles the Liberal party of Australias logo as it appears on the ballot paper, such that a reasonable person is likely to confuse or mistake the Liberal Democratic party logo for the logo of the Liberal party of Australia.

In its statement of reasons the commission said it had decided to set aside the decision under review.

A media officer with the commission told Guardian Australia it meant that the previous decision to include the logo in the register had been revoked and that the logo would be removed from the register. However it is unclear what the implications of this are given the election was held in August and the logo has already been used.

If this logo has worked to cause a significant number of people to vote for him this is of immense interest and it certainly should be of interest to the Australian parliament, Chapman said.

However, it is a shame that it took the commission about eight months to come up with this finding.

Daube said it raises all kinds of questions about what this means for the election result if he was elected partly on the basis of a dodgy logo.

The decision follows controversy over the name of the party in the 2013 election, when the Liberal Democrats drew first place on the NSW ballot paper. In what has been labelled a fluke, the size of the ballot paper columns saw the name Liberal Democrats split across two lines, and election analysts said voters may have placed a 1next to the Liberal Democrats believing they were voting Liberal. The party won 50 times the vote it received in 2007, before its previous name of the Liberty and Democracy party was scrapped.

A spokesman for Leyonhjelm said the Senator was aware of the finding, but was not immediately available for comment.

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Liberal Democratic party logo failed to meet AEC guidelines - The Guardian

A few stray election observations.

Be honest, after Tuesdays nail-biting drama, didnt you expect the Oilers game seven to go into quadruple overtime?

The Liberals entered the campaign with high hopes of regaining lost ground on Vancouver Island.

They really didnt want a repeat of 2013, when they were reduced to just two of the 14Island seats and were shut out of Greater Victoria, leaving the capital without a government MLA for the first time since 1952. They even tried luring voters back with an Island-specific platform.

The result? The greatest flop since The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Michelle Stilwell hung onto Parksville-Qualicum, but that was all the Liberals got. Their other seat, Courtenay-Comox, went NewDemocrat (at least for now; the spread was only nine votes).

> More election news at timescolonist.com/bcelection

Why did the Island platform fail? Because when you have been in a rocky relationship for 16years, Baby, I can change promises ring hollow. It smacked of opportunism when the Liberals dangled a B.C. Ferries frequent user/loyalty program in front of the same people who have been force-fed big fare increases since the Gordon Campbell days.

The NDP had mixed results in races where its gender-equity policy applied. Party rules say that in ridings where an incumbent female New Democrat MLA doesnt run again, the new candidate must also be female. The NDP went 4-for-4 in such circumstances Tuesday. The rules also say the candidates replacing retiring male MLAs must either be female or a member of an equity-seeking group. The NDP went 0-for-3 in such races Tuesday.

That included Cowichan Valley, where the local party president, claiming discrimination, stomped off and ran as an independent after the contentious policy prevented him from replacing retiring MLA Bill Routley. The NDP also lost in Columbia-Revelstoke, where their candidate, after being challenged to justify his nomination, revealed himself as bisexual, something he had hoped to keep private. In Skeena, a white man who argued his hearing impairment fit the NDP policy lost to a Liberal who happened to be aboriginal.

How diverse are Vancouver Islands MLAs? Seven are male and seven female, an increase of two women from 2013 (though that would change to eight and six if the results flip in Courtenay-Comox).

Two Island MLAs, Mtis Carole James and the Tsartlip-raised Adam Olsen, have aboriginal heritage. Liberal Dallas Smith, former president of the Nanwakolas Council, was defeated in Vancouver Island North.

Conventional wisdom said any Green gains in the popular vote would come at the expense of the NDP. New Democrats groused that by splitting their votes, the Greens would allow the Liberals to hold power. Greens replied that they were just as likely to draw support from those who had backed the Liberals in past votes.

On the Island, at least, it appears the latter argument was right. The CBCs Metchosin-raised data-mining wizard Tara Carman found the Liberals lost 4.1 per cent of the popular vote here relative to 2013, while the NDP lost 3.5. The Greens gained 9.3.

That nine-vote split in Courtenay-Comox might be post-Christmas-trousers tight (there are strata council votes with wider spreads), but its not the closest race in B.C. history. In 1979, New Democrat Al (Landslide) Passarell beat Socred MLA Frank Calder 750 to 749 in a two-horse race in Atlin. Word was that Calder and his wife didnt bother travelling from Victoria to their northern riding to vote.

Can anyone explain why the Greens dont play Gary Wrights Dream Weaver whenever leader Andrew Weaver enters party functions? Great swaying-crowd potential. Just saying.

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Jack Knox: Liberal flub, Island diversity and Dream Weaver - Times Colonist

As the Ontario government prepares to unveil legislation completing its 25 per cent hydro rate cut, the Progressive Conservatives have obtained leaked cabinet documents that suggest electricity prices will go up dramatically after four years. ( Dave Chidley / THE CANADIAN PRESS )

The average hydro bill will jump almost $10 a month in 2022 and soar to $195 by 2027 under the Liberal governments hydro plan, according to a leaked cabinet document obtained by the Progressive Conservatives.

It was provided to the Star as Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault prepares to unveil legislation Thursday to enact a promised 25 per cent cut to skyrocketing electricity costs, keeping increases to 2 per cent annually until 2021.

But thats when the breathing room for ratepayers ends for the better part of a decade, suggests the document.

Average monthly bills will rise 6.5 per cent a year from 2022 to 2027 and are forecast to jump 10.5 per cent the year after when they will hit $195. Thats up from $123 this year with the promised cut, lowering bills from an average $158 in 2016.

Rate increases, however, are minimal after 2028, falling slightly the next year and hovering around the 1 per cent mark from there until they are projected to fall 9.3 per cent in 2048, when the average monthly bill is expected to be $210.

Conservative sources say they obtained the information, called Global Adjustment (GA) Smoothing with the subtitle Confidential Cabinet Document from a whistleblower after Thibeaults rate cut plan was presented to cabinet in early March. There is no date on the document, which has not been verified by the government.

Conservatives charged Thursday that the Liberal plan is all about boosting the Liberals re-election chances in the June 2018 provincial election as Premier Kathleen Wynne struggles in the polls.

Thibeault maintained the Liberal plan is the best option for Ontarians, who have seen hydro bills double in the last decade as the electricity system was upgraded to become more reliable and phase out heavily polluting coal-fired generation stations.

Were worrying about families now. Were worried about small businesses now, Thibeault said in the Legislature as he was peppered with questions by the Conservatives.

The minister, who took over the portfolio last June, slammed PC Leader Patrick Brown for stalling the release of his own plan for hydro rates.

Whats the position of the official opposition when it comes to their plan? Thibeault said, noting it has been 70 days since Brown said he would reveal one soon.

Were still waiting for anything credible.

The Conservatives are holding a policy convention in Toronto in November.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath revealed her hydro policy, which she said would result in rate cuts of up to 30 per cent, several days before the government came out with its 25 per cent plan.

Under the government scheme, 8 per cent came off hydro bills on January 1 with instant rebates of the provincial portion of the HST, with another 17 per cent to come this summer.

That will cost an extra $25 billion in interest charges over the next 30 years, by amortizing the costs of recent electricity system improvements over a longer period of time.

Premier Kathleen Wynne has compared that to a homeowner extending a mortgage term to get lower monthly payments.

The cabinet document also shows financing for the global adjustment portion of hydro bills which covers the fixed costs of running Ontarios power generation fleet and conservation programs structured to fall sharply for the next nine years then reverse to sharp jumps of over 20 per cent from 2028 to 2047.

Conservatives said that amounts to a comeback of the controversial hydro debt retirement charge eliminated in the last couple of years.

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Electricity prices to soar after four years, says secret Liberal cabinet document - Toronto Star

In March, students at Middlebury College disrupted a lecture by the conservative political scientist Charles Murray because they disagreed with some of his writings. Last month, the University of California, Berkeley, canceled a lecture by the conservative commentator Ann Coulter due to concerns for her safetyjust two months after uninviting the conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos due to violent protests. Media outlets on the right have played up the incidents as evidence of rising close-mindedness on the left.

For years, its conservatives who have been branded as intolerant, often for good reason. But conservatives will tell you that liberals demonstrate their own intolerance, using the strictures of political correctness as a weapon of oppression. That became a familiar theme during the 2016 campaign. After the election, Sean McElwee, a policy analyst at the progressive group Demos Action, reported that Donald Trump had received his strongest support among Americans who felt that whites and Christians faced a great deal of discrimination. Spencer Greenberg, a mathematician who runs a website for improving decision-making, found that the biggest predictor of voting for Trump after party affiliation was the rejection of political correctnessTrumps voters felt silenced.

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So whos right? Are conservatives more prejudiced than liberals, or vice versa? Research over the years has shown that in industrialized nations, social conservatives and religious fundamentalists possess psychological traits, such as the valuing of conformity and the desire for certainty, that tend to predispose people toward prejudice. Meanwhile, liberals and the nonreligious tend to be more open to new experiences, a trait associated with lower prejudice. So one might expect that, whatever each groups own ideology, conservatives and Christians should be inherently more discriminatory on the whole.

But more recent psychological research, some of it presented in January at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), shows that its not so simple. These findings confirm that conservatives, liberals, the religious and the nonreligious are each prejudiced against those with opposing views. But surprisingly, each group is about equally prejudiced. While liberals might like to think of themselves as more open-minded, they are no more tolerant of people unlike them than their conservative counterparts are.

Political understanding might finally stand a chance if we could first put aside the argument over who has that bigger problem. The truth is that we all do.

***

When Mark Brandt, an American-trained psychologist now at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, first entered graduate school, he wondered why members of groups that espouse tolerance are so often intolerant. I realized that there was a potential contradiction in the literature, he told me. On the one hand, liberals have a variety of personality traits and moral values that should protect them from expressing prejudice. On the other hand, people tend to express prejudice against people who do not share their values. So, if you value open-mindedness, as liberals claim to do, and you see another group as prejudiced, might their perceived prejudice actually increase your prejudice against them?

Brandt approached this question with Geoffrey Wetherell and Christine Reyna in a 2013 paper published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. They asked a variety of Americans about their political ideologies; how much they valued traditionalism, egalitarianism and self-reliance; and their feelings toward eight groups of people, four of them liberal (feminists, atheists, leftist protesters and pro-choice people) and four of them conservative (supporters of the traditional family, religious fundamentalists, Tea Party protesters and pro-life people). Participants reported how much each group violated their core values and beliefs, and they assessed how much they supported discrimination toward that group, by rating their agreement with statements such as Feminists should not be allowed to make a speech in this city and Prolife people deserve any harassment they receive.

As predicted, conservatives were more discriminatory than liberals toward liberal groups, and liberals were more discriminatory than conservatives toward conservative groups. Conservatives discrimination was driven by their higher traditionalism and by liberal groups apparent violation of their values. Liberals discrimination was driven by their lower traditionalism and by conservative groups apparent violation of their values. Complicating matters, conservatives highly valued self-reliance, which weakened their discrimination toward liberal groups, perhaps because self-reliance is associated with the freedom to believe or do what one wants. And liberals highly valued universalism, which weakened their discrimination toward conservative groups, likely because universalism espouses acceptance of all.

But these differences didnt affect the larger picture: Liberals were as discriminatory toward conservative groups as conservatives were toward liberal groups. And Brandts findings have been echoed elsewhere: Independently and concurrently, the labs of John Chambers at St. Louis University and Jarret Crawford at The College of New Jersey have also found approximately equal prejudice among conservatives and liberals.

Newer research has rounded out the picture of two warring tribes with little tolerance toward one another. Not only are conservatives unfairly maligned as more prejudiced than liberals, but religious fundamentalists are to some degree unfairly maligned as more prejudiced than atheists, according to a paper Brandt and Daryl Van Tongeren published in January in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. To be sure, they found that people high in religious fundamentalism were more cold and dehumanizing toward people low in perceived fundamentalism (atheists, gay men and lesbians, liberals and feminists) than people low in fundamentalism were toward those high in perceived fundamentalism (Catholics, the Tea Party, conservatives and Christians). But this prejudice gap existed only if the strength of the perceivers religious belief was also very high. Otherwise, each end of the fundamentalist spectrum looked equally askance at each other. And while liberals and the nonreligious sometimes defend themselves as being intolerant of intolerance, they cant claim this line as their own. In the study, bias on both ends was largely driven by seeing the opposing groups as limiting ones personal freedom.

Other researchers have come forward with similar findings. Filip Uzarevic, from the Catholic University of Louvain, in Beligium, has reported preliminary data showing that Christians were more biased against Chinese, Muslims and Buddhists than were atheists and agnostics, but they were less biased than atheists and agnostics against Catholics, anti-gay activists and religious fundamentalists (with atheists expressing colder feelings than agnostics). So, again, the religious and nonreligious have their own particular targets of prejudice. Perhaps more surprising, atheists and agnostics were less open to alternative opinions than Christians, and they reported more existential certainty. Uzarevic suggested to me after the SPSP conference that these results might be specific to the studys location, Western Europe, which is highly secularized and where the nonreligious, unlike Christians, do not have so many opportunities and motivations to integrate ideas challenging their own.

If liberalism and secularism dont mute prejudice, you can guess what Brandt found about intelligence. In a study published last year in Social Psychological and Personality Science, he confirmed earlier findings linking low intelligence to prejudice, but showed it was only against particular groups. Low cognitive ability (as measured by a vocabulary test) correlated with bias against Hispanics, Asian Americans, atheists, gay men and lesbians, blacks, Muslims, illegal immigrants, liberals, whites, people on welfare and feminists. High cognitive ability correlated with bias against Christian fundamentalists, big business, Christians (in general), the Tea Party, the military, conservatives, Catholics, working-class people, rich people and middle-class people. But raw brainpower itself doesnt seem to be the deciding factor in who we hate: When Brandt controlled for participants demographics and traditionalism (smart people were more supportive of newer lifestyles and less supportive of traditional family ties), intelligence didnt correlate with overall levels of prejudice.

***

So whats at the root of our equal-opportunity prejudice? Conservatives are prejudiced against feminists and other left-aligned groups and liberals are prejudiced against fundamentalists and other right-aligned groups, but is it really for political reasons? Or is there something about specific social groups beyond their assumed political ideologies that leads liberals and conservatives to dislike them? Feminists and fundamentalists differ on many dimensions beyond pure politics: geography, demographics, social status, taste in music.

In a paper forthcoming in Psychological Science, Brandt sought to answer those questions by building prediction models to estimate not only whether someones political views would increase positive or negative feelings about a target group, but also precisely how much, and which aspects of the group affected those feelings the most.

First, Brandt used surveys of Americans to assess the perceived traits of 42 social groups, including Democrats, Catholics, gays and lesbians and hipsters. How conservative, conventional and high-status were typical members of these groups? And how much choice did they have over their group membership? (Some things are seen as more genetic than othersLady Gagas anthem Born This Way was adopted by homosexuals, not hipsters.) Then he looked at data from a national election survey that asked people their political orientation and how warm or cold their feelings were toward those 42 groups.

Conservative political views were correlated with coldness toward liberals, gays and lesbians, transgender people, feminists, atheists, people on welfare, illegal immigrants, blacks, scientists, Hispanics, labor unions, Buddhists, Muslims, hippies, hipsters, Democrats, goths, immigrants, lower-class people and nerds. Liberal political views, on the other hand, were correlated with coldness toward conservatives, Christian fundamentalists, rich people, the Tea Party, big business, Christians, Mormons, the military, Catholics, the police, men, whites, Republicans, religious people, Christians and upper-class people.

Brandt found that knowing only a target groups perceived political orientation (are goths seen as liberal or conservative?), you can predict fairly accurately whether liberals or conservatives will express more prejudice toward them, and how much. Social status (is the group respected by society?) and choice of group membership (were they born that way?) mattered little. It appears that conflicting political values really are what drive liberal and conservative prejudice toward these groups. Feminists and fundamentalists differ in many ways, but, as far as political prejudice is concerned, only one way really matters.

In another recent paper, in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Crawford, Brandt and colleagues also found that people were especially biased against those who held opposing social, versus economic, political ideologiesperhaps because cultural issues seem more visceral than those that involve spreadsheets.

None of this, of course, explains why liberals open-mindedness doesnt better protect them against prejudice. One theory is that the effects of liberals unique traits and worldviews on prejudice are swamped by a simple fact of humanity: We like people similar to us. Theres a long line of research showing that we prefer members of our own group, even if the group is defined merely by randomly assigned shirt color, as one 2011 study found. Social identity is strongstronger than any inclination to seek or suppress novelty. As Brandt told me, The openness-related traits of liberals are not some sort of prejudice antidote.

Brandt further speculates that ones tendency to be open- or closed-minded affects ones treatment of various groups mostly by acting as a group definition in itselfare you an Open or a Closed? Supporting this idea, he and collaborators reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2015 that, although openness to new experiences correlated with lower prejudice against a wide collection of 16 social groups, it actually increased prejudice against the most closed-minded groups in the bunch. Open-minded people felt colder than closed-minded people toward conventional groups such as evangelical Christians, Republicans and supporters of the traditional family. And, unsurprisingly, closed-minded people were more biased than open-minded people against unconventional groups such as atheists, Democrats, poor people, and gays and lesbians. Research consistently shows that liberals are more open than conservatives, but in many cases what matters is: Open to what?

***

Knowing all this, can we change tolerance levels? You might think that the mind-expanding enterprise of education would reduce prejudice. But according to another presentation at the SPSP meeting, it does not. It does, however, teach people to cover it up. Maxine Najle, a researcher at the University of Kentucky, asked people if they would consider voting for a presidential candidate who was atheist, black, Catholic, gay, Muslim or a woman. When asked directly, participants with an education beyond high school reported a greater willingness to vote for these groups than did less-educated participants. But when asked in a more indirect way, with more anonymity, the two groups showed equal prejudice. So higher education seems to instill an understanding of the appropriate levels of intolerance to express, Najle told me, not necessarily higher tolerance.

Educations suppression of expressed prejudice suggests a culture of political correctness in which people dont feel comfortable sharing their true feelings for fear of reprisaljust the kind of intolerance conservatives complain about. And yet, as a society, weve agreed that certain kinds of speech, such as threats and hate speech, are to be scorned. Theres an argument to be made that conservative intolerance does more harm than liberal intolerance, as it targets more vulnerable people. Consider the earlier list of groups maligned by liberals and conservatives. Rich people, Christians, men, whites and the police would generally seem to have more power today than immigrants, gays, blacks, poor people and goths. According to Brandt, Weve understandably received a variety of pushback when we suggest that prejudice towards Christians and conservatives is prejudice. To many its just standing up to bullies.

Conservatives, however, dont view it that way. Nowadays, as the right sees it, the left has won the culture war and controls the media, the universities, Hollywood and the education of everyones children, says Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at New York University who studies politics and morality. Many of them think that they are the victims, they are fighting back against powerful and oppressive forces, and their animosities are related to that worldview.

Robbie Sutton, a psychologist at the University of Kent in England, presented preliminary findings at SPSP that touch on the issue of which intolerance is more justifiable. He found that people who endorsed denialist conspiracy theories about climate change (e.g., Climate change is a myth promoted by the government as an excuse to raise taxes and curb peoples freedom) were more likely than those who endorsed warmist conspiracy theories (e.g., Politicians and industry lobbyists are pressuring scientists to downplay the dangers of climate change) to want to censor, surveil and punish climate scientists, whereas warmists were more likely than denialists to want to punish and surveil climate change skeptics. But are these sentiments equally harmful? Many people would say thats a subjective question, but its hard to ignore the evidence, for instance, that Exxon has hidden its knowledge of climate change for years, and the fact that that the current Republican administration has placed new restrictions on Environmental Protection Agency scientists. Who is more vulnerable, and backed by scientific evidence: Exxon or environmental researchers?

Regardless of who has the more toxic intolerance, the fact remains that people have trouble getting along. What to do? One of the most consistent ways to increase tolerance is contact with the other side and sharing the experience of working toward a goal, Brandt says. He suggests starting with the person next door. Everyone benefits from safe neighborhoods, a stimulating cultural environment and reliable snow removal, he says. If liberal and conservative neighbors can find ways to work together on the local level to improve their neighborhoods and communities, it might help to increase tolerance in other domains. (If you can find a neighbor of the opposite party, that is.)

Progressives might see the conservatives trailing history as being on its wrong side, but conservatives might feel the same way about the progressives way ahead of the train. Getting everyone onboard simultaneously could well be impossible, but if we share a common vision, even partially, maybe we can at least stay on the tracks.

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Why Liberals Aren't as Tolerant as They Think - POLITICO Magazine

South Korean presidential candidate Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea reacts to exit polls suggesting his victory, in the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images hide caption

South Korean presidential candidate Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea reacts to exit polls suggesting his victory, in the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday.

A liberal human rights lawyer born to North Korean refugees has won South Korea's presidential election with a promise to improve the economy and hold talks with the nuclear-armed North.

Moon Jae-in, 64, of the Democratic Party, is a former student protester, special forces soldier and presidential aide. He has promised to add public sector jobs, engage Pyongyang in dialogue and rethink South Korea's close relations with the United States.

Moon had a strong lead of more than 41 percent of the vote among a field of 13 candidates, according to unofficial exit polls conducted by South Korean media.

His closest contenders a far-right conservative and a centrist have conceded defeat.

The official election results are expected early Wednesday morning local time (Tuesday afternoon ET).

Moon is most closely associated with the left-wing politics of another South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, who served from 2003 to 2008 and committed suicide in 2009 amid a family corruption scandal. Moon was Roh's chief of staff, law partner and best friend and is expected to revive his so-called Sunshine Policy of dialogue and economic aid to North Korea.

But while North Korea's burgeoning nuclear program grabs headlines abroad, many South Koreans said the election issues most important to them are domestic: sluggish economic growth, soaring youth unemployment, corruption and air pollution.

Moon's victory was in a special by-election to replace former President Park Geun-hye, who was impeached late last year and removed from office in March. Last week, she went on trial in Seoul for corruption; if convicted, she could spend life in prison. The head of the country's largest conglomerate, Samsung, has also been indicted.

"I want the next president to make sure Park faces punishment," said accountant Kim Il-young, 26, outside a polling station Tuesday in Seoul. "Politicians, even if they're convicted, sometimes get pardoned easily and are punished much less severely than average citizens."

Once official results confirm his win, Moon is expected to make a victory speech in a central district of Seoul that has been the makeshift base for protesters calling for Park's ouster. Throughout his campaign, Moon has spoken figuratively of moving the base of power out of South Korea's version of the White House and into those squares where protesters gathered.

While campaigning, several presidential candidates said they would consider pardoning Park, but Moon has said he refuses to do so. He lost the 2012 presidential election to Park but got support in this election from her critics, many of them younger voters.

Under Moon, South Korea is expected to reach out to North Korea, but analysts warn not to expect immediate talks.

"He will push for an inter-Korean summit meeting, but this will only come after a meeting with President Trump," says political scientist Kim Hong-guk, a professor at South Korea's Kyonggi University. "At this point, communication between the two Koreas is completely cut off, which is why he would focus on improving the situation and gathering momentum, such as discussing ways to reopen the Kaesong industrial complex."

That's a joint industrial facility where tens of thousands of North and South Koreans work together just north of the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries. It has been closed for more than a year. Moon has proposed reopening it.

North Korea, for its part, called on the eve of the South Korean election for an "end to conflict" between the two Koreas and the start of "a new era of reunification."

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Liberal Wins South Korean Presidency As Opponents Concede - NPR

Close allies of former President Barack Obama quietly launched a new technology startup on Monday to further their ambitions of helping liberal candidates win political races across the country after waves of losses during the Obama years.

The latest move is called Higher Ground Labs and is being launched by a handful of Obama acolytes including the ex-presidents 2012 online organizing director Betsy Hoover and Organizing for Action Executive Director Jon Carson, as well as former executives from Tumblr and Google.

Higher Ground hopes to double down on Democratic reliance on technology to organize activists and track voting trends, by focusing on lower-profile races, from governors to town mayors. The group reportedly already has taken in $1 million in new donations.

OBAMA, DEMOCRATIC 'SUPER GROUP' UNITE TO END GERRYMANDERING, WIN STATE RACES, RECLAIM MAJORITIES

Higher Ground is seeking tech entrepreneurs on its website, Are you building a new tool or product to meet a challenge confronting progressive campaigns? Apply for our accelerator program!

Max Wood, developer of Deck Apps, is one such entrepreneur.According to his website, Deck is a predictive modeling tool used by progressive campaigns and causes to better understand how many votes it will take to win an election and where those votes are most likely to come from. Wood said Higher Ground is helping him change the way we organize so we can find new ways of winning, claiming theres a real risk we could end up losing the thread on this movement.

Theyve got their work cut out for them. Since 2009, Democrats have lost control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, along with 900 state legislative seats. The GOP now holds 32 state houses and 33 governorships more than 60 percent of state-level political power.

"As a lifelong campaigner, it is clear that we could be scaling faster and innovating in smarter ways, said Hoover, a Higher Ground Labs co-founder. As Democrats, our organizing needs to evolve.

THE EXES: OBAMA AVOIDS HITTING TRUMP, HILLARY SKEWERS THE MEDIA

Higher Ground Labs is yet another component in an emerging strategy by ex-President Obama to continue his advocacy, with funding from wealthy scions of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.When laying out his vision for his post-presidential activism, Obama said last October that he wanted to create a platform where young activists can get trained and learn from each other.He also gave an overview last week for his presidential center in Chicago, which he envisions in part as a campus for training future political leaders.

Much of the reported work so far has involved raising large sums of money with long-time Obama bundlers like Marty Nesbitt, founder of Chicago-based Parking Spot who is now raising millions of dollars of donations for the new Obama presidential library in Chicago.

A leftist online publication called Jacobin Mag reported the following reply when it pressed the Barack Obama Foundation for answers on whether the president is getting paid by corporate America to ease off progressive policies:TheObama Foundation will focus on developing the next generation of citizens and what it means to be a good citizen in the 21st century. More than a library, or a museum, the Obama Presidential Center will be a place that brings people together and inspires individuals and communities to take on big challenges.

Meanwhile, Obamas nonprofit community organizing project, Organizing for Action, is bringing in thousands of new people who have never been engaged before, connecting them to a nationwide grassroots network, providing them with cost-free training, and empowering them to apply those skills to make change in their communities," according to OFA communications director Jesse Lehrich.

Originally posted here:

Obama operatives unveil latest plan to boost liberal candidates - Fox News

What's drawn less attention is how Trump's presidency has convinced liberals that every bad thing whispered about any Republican is, by default, true. Consider that in the last week alone, liberal outrage has been sparked on (at least) four occasions by alleged incidents that simply aren't accurate.

Didn't matter! By then, the idea of Republicans cracking beers while voting to take away health care from millions of people was already surging across the Internet. (Look at how many retweets Jaffe's original tweet received versus how many the second tweet got.)

Immediately following the passage of the AHCA last Thursday, a talking point emerged: If this bill became a law, being raped or sexually assaulted would qualify as pre-existing conditions and, therefore, would make it much harder for the victim to get health insurance.

"The notion that AHCA classifies rape or sexual assault as a preexisting condition, or that survivors would be denied coverage, is false...this claim relies on so many factors including unknown decisions by a handful of states and insurance companies that this talking point becomes almost meaningless."

The Federal Communications Commission announced that it was investigating complaints following late-night talk show host Stephen Colbert's controversial comments about President Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin.

In each of these four instances -- and all of these have been in the last week! -- liberals, fueled by Twitter outrage, jumped to conclusions that portrayed Trump and other Republicans in the poorest possible light. And, on each occasion, the fuller story either totally or mostly rebutted the version of the story the left had seized on.

Trump's presidency presents Democrats with lots and lots of legitimate issues on which to push back -- from the travel ban to the ongoing questions about Trump officials' ties to Russia to the president's refusal to release his tax returns.

By embracing every single tweet or whisper as yet another piece of full-proof evidence of just how terrible Republicans are, Democrats run the risk of appearing like the boy who cried wolf to the public -- and in the process taking some steam out of the very legitimate questions they are asking about the Trump administration.

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Donald Trump is turning liberals into conspiracy theorists - CNN

Just a few decades ago, people believed, as is the scientific consensus, that among humans there are only two genders: male and female.

In 2017, however, progressives argue there are dozens of human genders, including being gender-less or even gender-fluid, meaning a persons gender changes periodically based on how hefeels. They argue that gender isnt tied to scientific study and research but instead to how someone identifies.

But a recent scientific study conducted by the Weizmann Institute of Science is tearing holes into the progressive narrative that sex and gender arent tied to science.

The study found that there are more than 6,500 unique genes in the human genome that express different traits depending on a persons gender, either male or female, which explains the huge biological differences between men and women.

That means more than 21 percent of the entire human genome, which is composed of about 30,000 genes, code for gender-specific traits.

Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently uncovered thousands of human genes that are expressed copied out to make proteins differently in the two sexes, according to Weizmann.

Two scientists from the institutes Molecular Genetics Department professor Shmuel Pietrokovski and Dr. Moran Gershoni looked closely at around 20,000 protein-coding genes, sorting them by sex and searching for differences in expression in each tissue. They eventually identified around 6,500 genes with activity that was biased toward one sex or the other in at least one tissue, the institute reported.

For example, they found genes that were highly expressed in the skin of men relative to that in womens skin, and they realized that these were related to the growth of body hair. Gene expression for muscle building was higher in men; that for fat storage was higher in women, the reportexplained.

The researchers also discovered that harmful sex-specific genes, such as those that make a person infertile, are less likely to be weeded out of the gene pool especially in men.

The more a gene was specific to one sex, the less selection we saw on the gene. And one more difference: This selection was even weaker with men, Gershoni said.

More from the Weizmann:

Aside from the sexual organs, the researchers discovered quite a few sex-linked genes in the mammary glands not so surprising, except that about half of these genes were expressed in men. Because men have fully fitted but basically nonfunctional mammary equipment, the scientists made an educated guess that some of these genes might suppress lactation.

Less obvious locations included genes that were found to be expressed only in the left ventricle of the heart in women. One of these genes, which is also related to calcium uptake, showed very high expression levels in younger women that sharply decreased with age; the scientists think that they are active in women up to menopause, protecting their hearts, but leading to heart disease and osteoporosis in later years when the gene expression is shut down.

Yet another gene that was mainly expressed in women was active in the brain, and though its exact function is unknown, the scientists think it may protect the neurons from Parkinsons a disease that has a higher prevalence and earlier onset in men. The researchers also identified gene expression in the liver in women that regulates drug metabolism, providing molecular evidence for the known difference in drug processing between women and men.

In the end, Pietrokovski said his research proves the genetic differences between men and women and why evolution between men and women should be seen as co-evolution.

Paradoxically, sex-linked genes are those in which harmful mutations are more likely to be passed down, including those that impair fertility. From this vantage point, men and women undergo different selection pressures and, at least to some extent, human evolution should be viewed as co-evolution, Pietrokovski said.

However, the study did not conclude that there are more than two human genders.

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A super PAC aligned with the House Republican leadership and Speaker Paul RyanPaul RyanDem vows to storm Ryans district to protest health bill Crowd chants 'shame' as Ryan enters Harlem charter school GOP rep: ObamaCare repeal isnt something to celebrate MORE (R-Wis.) released a new adTuesdayattacking Democrat Jon Ossoff for raising most of his campaign cash from out-of-state donors in the runoff to fill an open U.S. House seat in Georgia.

The Congressional Leadership Funds (CLF) first ad in the runoff period ahead of OssoffsJune 20 race against Republican Karen Handel casts the Democrat as an ally of San Francisco liberals such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

The CLF ad features an array of young liberals thanking Georgians for supporting Ossoff.

We already have Nancy Pelosi as our congresswoman, now youre going to give us Jon Ossoff as our congressman, says a man with pigtail braids.

Were proud that California is the leading funder of the Jon Ossoff campaign, says another. Were really excited that Jon Ossoff likes paying higher taxes.

They go on to accuse Ossoff and Pelosi of seeking to weaken the military and failing to take ISIS seriously.

"ISIS?" says a woman wearing a floppy hat and a "Cut the military now!" button. "They're overrated."

San Francisco loves them some Jon Ossoff, a man in the ad concludes.

Federal Election Commission reports show that about 95 percent of Ossoffs campaign contributions have come from outside of Georgia.

The race to replace Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price in Georgias sixth district has attracted national attention. Money is pouring in from outside groups on both sides in a race that is viewed as an early referendum on President Trump.

Republicans look to beat back the challenge from Ossoff in a traditionally red district, where the outcome will be seen as a bellwether for the 2018 midterm battle over control of the House.

Those factors have contributed to making it one of the most expensive House races in history.

The CLF alone spent more than $3 million against Ossoff before the special election in mid-April, and will invest another $3.5 million during the run-off period.

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GOP group casts Ossoff as West Coast liberal in new ad - The Hill

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Keith Olbermann Was Once Cable News's Liberal Standard-Bearer ... - New York Times