Civil War on the Left, Ch. 70: Warren Agonistes

What’s a “progressive” to do when you have two credible candidates for the Democratic nomination (Sanders and Warren) trying to outbid each other in the Socialist Clearinghouse Giveaway Sweepstakes? (This is the contest where Comrade McMahonsky comes to your door to dispossess you of your house.) Well, for The Guardian, you attack Elizabeth Warren!

From the beginning, there were good reasons for progressive leftists not to trust that Elizabeth Warren was on their side. For one thing, she had spent much of her career as a Republican, and only recently become a champion of progressive causes. Warren worked at Harvard Law School training generations of elite corporate lawyers; did legal work for big corporations accused of wrongdoing; collected donations from billionaires; held secret meetings with investment bankers and major Democratic party donors; and stood up and applauded when Donald Trump vowed that America would “never become a socialist country”. . .

Warren has finally begun to make her true feelings clear, and progressives no longer need to wonder whether she’s with us or not. She’s not. Warren released a Medicare for All plan that called it a “long-term” plan, which leftwing political analyst Ben Studebaker pointed out is “code to rich people for ‘this is all pretend’”. . .

There’s also this billboard popping up out west sponsored by something called “The Really Online Lefty League” (or TROLL—get it?):

Meanwhile, remember how the left demanded that all police start wearing body cameras, because this would reveal the massive amounts of police brutality? Well, now some lefties are having second thoughts, probably because the expected results aren’t coming in. In fact, the opposite may be the case. So naturally now there are complaints that police body cams are “racist.” Newsweek (a former magazine), for example:

Police Body Cameras Threaten the Civil Rights of Black and Brown People, New Report Says

The number of U.S. police departments outfitting their officers with body cameras increases each year, but the cameras can pose a threat to civil rights if the departments fail to set rules that govern when officers review footage from their cameras, according to a new report.

The vast majority of the nation’s biggest police departments allow officers to watch footage from body cameras whenever they want, including before they write their incident reports or make statements, said the report, which was released Tuesday by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

“Unrestricted footage review places civil rights at risk and undermines the goals of transparency and accountability,” said Vanita Gupta, former head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and current head of the Leadership Conference, in the report’s introduction.

Because an officer’s memory of an event may be altered by watching body camera footage, doing so will likely alter what officers write in their reports. That, in turn, can make it more difficult for investigators or courts to assess whether the officer’s actions were reasonable based on what he or she perceived at the time of the incident, states the report, “The Illusion of Accuracy: How Body-Worn Camera Footage Can Distort Evidence.”

I suggest we use the NFL’s instant replay review team in New York to look over all body cam footage.

Chaser: I mentioned on a recent podcast that some folks on the left don’t like the meat-substitute “impossible burger,” because GMOs or something. But we’re also told that cows are destroying the planet. Or something. Then there’s this:

So are we for cows now or not?  I can’t keep up. “Lab meat doesn’t sequester carbon; eat a real burger today!” I want this for a bumper sticker.