October 10, 2014

Examples? Are You Nuts?

Look people: there can be no doubt that an active effort exists on "Progressive" sites to discourage voting.

Some are clamoring for "evidence" that this is occurring, claiming it happens no more often than voter fraud by ACORN, or than Manny getting a post in DU's The Left Column. Let's be clear: These whining fact-niks are no more than accomplices to Democratic voter suppression, trying to drive traffic to posts that discourage voting. That's why we cannot, sadly, provide evidence. It would just make things worse.

Greenwald's probably behind the whole thing. I think he invented psoriasis too, but I can't prove it - yet.

Regards,

You'll-Vote-For-The-Third-Way-And-Love-It Manny

October 9, 2014

When you read "deficit reduction", think "austerity"

They are, by and large, the same thing.

Now I absolutely understand that there is some political capital to be gained by telling the unlearned that we're reducing deficits.

But I think that the preferred situation is to help folks understand that deficit reduction austerity during a depression (for the 99%) helps only the wealthiest, and is a large part of why most Americans continue to struggle six years after the not-guilty-of-anything-whatsoever bankers crashed the world economy while getting the biggest bonuses ever.

Austerity not only inherently starves the economy at the time when it most needs the help, it also reduces the demand for workers at the time when demand is already at its lowest. It all results in the vulnerable becoming roadkill.

October 9, 2014

seems like the federal government needs to step into

St. Louis County and deal with the police. They are unrepentant, and seem to have just killed another unarmed black teenager.

The Law is lawless.

October 9, 2014

Michelle endorses Wendy Davis... will Barack follow?

The President doesn't always endorse Democratic candidates, for example Chris Christie's opponent

Wouldn't be bipartisan and above the fray, I suppose.

Hopefully he'll endorse Davis.

October 6, 2014

Yeah, another scary doggy thread

I'm still trying to make sense of this dog stuff. For the record, I've owned a number of dogs, medium to large ones (the largest a Lab/Shepard mix was 80+ lbs of pure raccoon-dispatching muscle that wouldn't dream of biting, or even barking at, any sort of human).

So here's the deal: last year I was in a rough-around-the edges part of a major city in the US, and I saw two enormous and scary-looking dogs chained in someone's front yard. They had to have been 100+ lbs each, and their dead eyes followed my every move. Dead eyes. Like the eyes of my friend's Malamute when I was in high school, who was always kept on a chain/lead because it really didn't like non-family members.

Huge scary dogs with dead eyes.

I described the scary doggies I saw on my trip to a veterinarian friend of ours who works with domestic and farm animals, and she told me that they were Presa Canarios, and that their only purpose in a populated area was to terrify and kill. These fellas:

And they do kill:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Diane_Whipple
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2006-08-22/news/0608210508_1_pit-bull-shawna-willey-presa-canarios

In the rare instance when one of these doggies shows up in her practice, she won't go near it - fortunately her partner will deal with them. God bless him!

So here's my question: would you want one of these pooches living next to you?

If I had one living next to me, particularly if I had a young child, I'd do whatever I could to get the thing out of the neighborhood, and failing that I'd move. I think that there needs to be a limit on what's allowed to live in a populated area.

I believe in gun control because all people have bad days, and some have mental illness, and adding a gun makes things infinitely worse. Likewise I believe in banning any dog that has a reasonable potential of inflicting lethal mayhem if it's having a bad day, if a three-year-old wanders into its yard, or if the silicon chip inside its head gets switched to overload.

Am I nuts here?

October 5, 2014

It's Official: Number of Homeless Students Hits Record

From the Christian Science Monitor, a couple of weeks ago:

Yay! It'll build character in the little urchins, you'll see.

The US Economy is making a nice comeback. Just not for the 99%.

October 4, 2014

If you were writing new laws around dog ownership...

If you were writing new laws around dog ownership, what would they be?

Ban certain breeds? All dogs on leashes? Must be under a certain weight?

October 3, 2014

Why don't Dem candidates want to campaign with Obama?

After all, Obama gave America Obamacare. So shouldn't he be popular?

The problem is math.

Obamacare insured about ten million people who weren't previously insured. That's a good thing! It's a wonderful thing!

On the other hand, it insures those ten million largely by having taxpayers foot the bill, the vast majority of whom already had health insurance. It's costing them money, but not obviously helping them. Personally, I'm much happier about the ten million getting insurance than I'm unhappy about the extra taxes I'll end up paying. But there are likely tens of millions, at least, who are pissed about paying higher taxes to to insure more people in a way that permits docs, pharma, and insurers to make obscene money. Two-thirds of Americans want Medicare for All, which would insure everyone and cost less.

And then there's the big one: most Americans have seen there fortunes cumble with Obama at the helm. They've seen the wealthy get coddled, e.g. the dramatic actions taken to save banker bonuses, 82% of the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and the rest, while their futures, and their children's futures, circle ever closer to the drain. Whether it can rightly be blamed on Obama's actions, or it's a result of the Presidency being a powerless position (as some claim), it's certainly happened under Obama's leadership and hundreds of millions of Americans identify him with the mauling they've received.

Ten million helped by Obamacare vs. hundreds of millions mauled by the economy.

That's the math.

October 2, 2014

Yo, Fellow Nerds: MIT Mini Maker Faire This Saturday

More than 130 Makers and Maker Groups will be exhibiting at the MIT Mini Maker Faire this Saturday, Oct. 4th.

http://makerfaire.mit.edu/

Nerd-vana.

Should be wikkid fun.

October 1, 2014

Worse than Khorasan? Could this be true?

I read that there's another terror group that will almost certainly kill tens of thousands of Americans within the next few months. It goes by the name INFLUENZA.

Apparently we know how to fire shots of some sort to stop it?

This sounds way worse than Khorasan. Could it be true? Anyone know if it's true, or BS?

If this is true, we should be unimaginably afraid.