truedelphi
truedelphi's JournalQuestions for those Dems who think Nader and Third Party Voters are
The big reason that we lost in 2000 and 2004.
First of all, some 6 to 18% of all voters are voters who consider themselves allied to progressive causes. Even at 6%, that is a lot for a party to lose to Nader or some other third party progressive candidate.
So here's my questions -
1) Since the republican efforts to secure new gerrymandered districts have indeed thrown more than 6% of elected offices to the Republicans why aren't the Democrat Party Leaders on this issue like white on rice?
Here's the citation for damage being done to the Democratic Party via Republican gerrymandering in a recent Rolling Stone magazine article:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-republicans-rig-the-game-20131111
2) Why aren't there any damn bones, even little ones, thrown to those of us on the progressive side? If the Party needs that 6% of us, then why not concede a little bit here and there?
Almost everything that Congress and the President have refused to do on major items, including socking tough regulations at the Banking Crowd, and refusal in honoring promises not to target medical marijuana clinics and users in California, somehow does get done for the Things The Dem Leaders Hold Sacred.
Example: Obama refused to hold forth on a bully pulpit on the issue of public option, during the health care reform debate months, but totally held forth on the bully pulpit when it came to Syria. Senator Reid refused to go nuclear option on the issue of the majority vote and the filibuster when it came to the public option (Which would have easily passed if 51 was a majority!) but suddenly is inspired to do this with regards to allowing Obama to have Federal Appointments be made.
We were promised by Obama in 2008 that he would somehow see to it that there was transparency. However, there is nothing at all transparent about a Heath Care Reform piece of legislation that comes in at over 2,000 pages.
Maybe there is no way that an American President could actually bring us around to transparency, but isn't there someone somewhere who can do this?
Worse still, in the good old days of the 1980's, a person could call their Senator or Congressional rep's office and usually a staffer could explain the meaning of any piece of legislation.
Now if you call for help in understanding a bill, the staffer will immediately give you the dot gov URl for that piece of legislation.
And that is where understanding ends. You are royally screwed. Once at the URL, there is little way to know what the bill means, as usually by paragraph three, you are reading legalese like this:
"In this section, HR 25677 Section Eighteen included in sub section 42 will be amended to divert those funds from that program to the program represented by HR 21222 Section Five Subsection 31, but reduced by 10%."
Unless you are somehow able to "crack the code" on this, you have little better understanding of what a bill means than before you went and visited the appropriate URL. Of course, in the matter of the ACA, we can visit different web sites and get different points of view, but in less important pieces of legislation, we will never know much more than the Title of the new piece of enacted legislation and what it says in forty pages of legalese over at the dot gov URL.
I am in "google hell" and need to get out.
there are two computers inside my household.
Often I use one or the other.
Just a while ago, my husband used "my computer." In order to check his email account at gmail, he got everything switched over to his userid.
So for several weeks, I couldn't utilize my YouTube account, as the google interface believed I was him. I finally found where I could sign out from his account and then sign in using my userid.
I admit this means I am extremely computer challenged, in terms of figuring out the website design of these big companies. Thsi whole thing ws rather readily available. I now know where the "sign out" and "sign in" tabs are to be found on Youtube.
But now that I am me, I occasionally get asked by him to check his email. Often this means he is in the middle of web design and he wants his computer.
So today I can't get to be him in terms of his email account at gmail. (Unless I am able to use his computer.) Please understand, I have his userid, with his permission, I have his passwords, I just can't find anywhere in gmail menu bar that will let me sign out as me and sign in as him.
That seems weird. Where is this sign out sign in function at? It seems weird to not have it more visibly available.
Michael Hastings, 2011, "Military Employing Psy Ops on US Senators" Re: Afghanistan
This is another reminder of what a terrible loop we are in right now. We have an immense Defense Budget, greater than the war budgets of the next 25 nations combined. So massive that part of that budget is used to have illegal Psy Ops used against US Senators. (Hastings mentions Senator Franken, in this interview.)
This is also a reminder of what we lost in terms of decent journalism when the Mercedes Benz that Hastings was driving accelerated, went out of control, hit a tree, and then blew up.
Not only was Hastings killed in the "accident," but the car's engine went flying some 200 feet beyond the place of impact. (With Mercedes Benz engineers saying the car is specifically designed to NOT explode like that should an accident occur.)
Catch-a 422, regarding cannabis, even in Legalized States.
Great posting of an article by John Dvorak, in LadyBug Magazine:
http://www.ladybud.com/2013/11/25/catch-422/
The graphic alone is worth a trip to the above link.
Expose at DailyKos about how Change.org is morphing into RW Organization.
Very important to understand what is happening over at Change.org
Like "terminal2" is explaining, this website has build up its equity on the web on account of us activists.
But now that we progressives have made the website a popular one, there is "change" a-coming down the pike, and it is not good for those in the progressive activist community.
Yes, now they want to, and plan to, sell out, in order to attract the Big Money from t he RW folks whose deep pockets will be bursting open, in order to finance the election of Republicans and more conservative Dems come 2014, and 29016.
Read this excellent piece by folowing this link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/23/1149092/-Change-org-sells-out-progressive-movement
But follow the money - the rogue agency is expanding moment by moment. Its spending will
Overshadow every aspect of our lives.
And if it takes our Social Security surplus to pay for it, so be it.
And remember, a lot of what happens in defense and surveillance programs falls into the black op category.
If Diane Feinstein, who heads the Senate Committee on Surveillance, can see to it that the paperwork concerning the bidding process by which her husband's real estate company, CBRE, became the sole Real Estate authority over each and every single transaction relating to US Post Office properties and buildings remains classified as part of a National Security measure, anyone can see the writing on the wall.
Mark my words, the "Surveillance Society" means that the American people will never again have to witness, read about, hear about or even smell the stink of corruption tainting our governmental "leaders," and bankrupting our country.
Sen Di Feinstein's Crooked Post Office Deals -
This one San Francisco Bay Area reporter, Peter Byrne, has done so much ground- breaking works on the behind the scenes back room deals of Senator Diane Feinstein.
Post Office officials have allowed a scandalous situation to go down, in which Diane Feinstein has helped secure for her husband, Richard Blum, and his firm CBRE, the sole authority and power to handle any and all Real Estate Deals, involving the Post Office buildings. So of the 85 billions worth of buildings (estimated worth,) only Richard Blum and his associates will handle any deals.
Details of the contracts expose that not only does CBRE handle the deals on the part of the seller, that is, The USPS, but the Blum-pire can also serve as the business handler of the buyers end of things as well. This traditionally has been frowned on by the RE industry, and is considered to be "conflict of interest."
Already Byrne has uncovered the sale of some 235 millions of dollars of USPS Buildings at a loss of close to or over 50 millions of dollars.
Byrne was not able to examine the bidding situation, which resulted in Richard Blum securing the overall authority over the sales and management of all USPS Buildings, as those documents were deemed to be "necessary to be kept secret due to National Security."
Entire interview is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_958408169&feature=iv&src_vid=4HXfxaqH2Us&v=OiecZLeSZ5U
Hey Hey NSA! Activists & communities build their own internets
Highly rec this article from Mother Jones. Only comment I will add of my own is that in some states here in the USA, it is illegal to create an additional internet or even ISP! I think one of the Carolinas has that law in place and there are fines and other punishments for people that set out to do so.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-privacy-nsa-isp
On the "Mesh" - Activists & communities build their own internets
JOSEPH BONICIOLI mostly uses the same internet you and I do. He pays a service provider a monthly fee to get him online. But to talk to his friends and neighbors in Athens, Greece, he's also got something much weirder and more interesting: a private, parallel internet.
He and his fellow Athenians built it. They did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a "mesh," a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It's actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline I get at home. Bonicioli and the others can send messages, video chat, and trade huge files without ever appearing on the regular internet. And it's a pretty big group of people: Their Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network has more than 1,000 members, from Athens proper to nearby islands. Anyone can join for free by installing some equipment. "It's like a whole other web," Bonicioli told me recently. "It's our network, but it's also a playground."
Indeed, the mesh has become a major social hub. There are blogs, discussion forums, a Craigslist knockoff; they've held movie nights where one member streams a flick and hundreds tune in to watch. There's so much local culture that they even programmed their own mini-Google to help meshers find stuff. "It changes attitudes," Bonicioli says. "People start sharing a lot. They start getting to know someone next door—they find the same interests; they find someone to go out and talk with." People have fallen in love after meeting on the mesh.
The Athenians aren't alone. Scores of communities worldwide have been building these roll-your-own networks—often because a mesh can also be used as a cheap way to access the regular internet. But along the way people are discovering an intriguing upside: Their new digital spaces are autonomous and relatively safe from outside meddling.
Most Honest Three Minutes in TV History
At least that is how the title of this video segment from the TV show "The Newsroom" reads. There might be comparable footage out there, in terms of honesty, but this is still worth watching::
Does anyone here know what this piece of legislation did in 2012?
Bill Text
112th Congress (2011-2012)
H.R.3606.ENR
It is called something like "Capital for JumpStarting Company Startups"
Can an average small business owner benefit from it?
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