Algernon Moncrieff

Algernon Moncrieff's Journal

December 4, 2016

Hypothetically speaking, if you wanted to get supplies to #nodapl, how would you do it?

I'm certainly not advocating that anyone do anything illegal, or that would add to the burden of the already overtaxed law enforcement officials at the scene.

November 16, 2016

Donald Trump should be afforded every courtesy and cooperation as President...

...that President Barack Obama was afforded by his "loyal opposition":

Disrespect
Refusal to negotiate in good faith
Refusal to allow his judiciary candidates to come up for a vote

...oh yeah....hearings. I want Democrats to hold lots and lots of damn hearings.

November 8, 2016

You would describe your mood today as.......

To quote the Grateful Dead, "What a long, strange trip it's been." But we got here. Some of started as Hillary supporters; others supported Bernie; others supported O'Malley; and there might even be the odd Republican here that couldn't bring themselves to support Donald Trump.

How are you feeling about the election today?

November 8, 2016

Don't Be Fooled By All the Dumb Election Myths Going Around the Internet

Mother Jones

Myth: Lines will be long on Tuesday, so wait a day to vote

The lines may indeed be long, but you can't vote after polls close on Tuesday. No exceptions.

Myth: The voting machines are controlled by George Soros

More than 3,000 Redditors have upvoted "Operation Stop Soros," alleging that 16 states are using machines owned by billionaire George Soros to sway the vote for Clinton. It's popped up on conservative news sites too, including the Daily Caller. There's no substance to back this up; this BuzzFeed article debunks the Soros-controlled voting machines conspiracy.

November 8, 2016

Text “GUNSDOWN” To 91990 To Report “Poll Watchers” Who Use Firearms And Other Means To Intimidate

Media Matters for America: “Guns Down” Project To Fight Back Against Firearm-Related Voter Intimidation On Election Day

Under federal law it is illegal to intimidate people trying to vote with guns or by other means.

Yet the Post reports that “state laws about guns and voter intimidation are a patchwork of wildly varying regulations,” and determinations of violations of voter intimidation laws can be difficult to ascertain because each one is “a fact-sensitive, context-based decision,” according to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler.(Further complicating determinations are discordant federal appeals courts rulings on what behavior constitutes voter intimidation).

This state of affairs has created an opening for individuals who wish to intimidate voters with guns at the polls while retaining some semblance of plausible deniability concerning the legality of their actions.

Voters who text “GUNSDOWN” to 91990 will receive information on a national voter protection hotline (866-OUR-VOTE) operated by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Appropriate reports will be passed on to law enforcement and election officials, and voters will have the opportunity, if they feel safe doing so, to share photos of voter intimidation on social media.

November 7, 2016

Al Jazeera: Life on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation

Life on the Pine Ridge Native American reservation

Donald, 60, has lived on his family's land his whole life. Time passes slowly in his corner of the Pine Ridge Reservation, and at no point in his six decades have local authorities connected his family's miniature community of shacks and trailers to the reservation's electricity grid or provided them with running water.

Against this backdrop of poverty and joblessness, public health has suffered, according to Re-Member. More than 80 percent of residents suffer from alcoholism. A quarter of children are born with fetal alcohol syndrome or similar conditions. Life expectancy - 48 years for men, 52 for women - is the second-lowest in the western hemisphere, behind only the Caribbean country Haiti.

Only able to move with the help of a walker, Roland, who wears a dirt-covered jacket and repeatedly pulls up his oversized jeans as they sag from his waist, says he will never be able to pay the $2,000 in medical bills through the small amounts of cash he gets doing odd jobs for neighbors and ranchers. "I can't work until the spring now," he says.

In 2010, Jerome and his wife Theresa retired and moved back to Pine Ridge. Within two years, they founded Families Working Together, a local charity to help impoverished residents of the reservation. "I asked, 'What can I do to make it better?'" he says.

October 27, 2016

Election Update: The Polls Disagree, And That’s OK

Nate Silver: Five Thirty Eight

Pretty much everyone has an incentive to push the narrative that the presidential race is tightening. The television networks would like for you to keep tuning in to their horse-race coverage. Hillary Clinton’s campaign would like for you to turn out to vote, instead of getting complacent. Donald Trump’s campaign would like you to know that its candidate still has a chance.

But what do the polls say? The race probably is tightening — but perhaps not as much as the hype on the cable networks would imply. In our polls-only forecast, Trump has narrowed Clinton’s lead in the popular vote to roughly 6 percentage points from 7 points a week ago, and his chances of winning have ticked up to 17 percent from 13 percent. In our polls-plus forecast, Trump’s chances are up to 19 percent from 16 percent. Because of the high level of uncertainty in the race, we can’t say the door is closed on a narrow Trump victory. And we’re certainly a week or two removed from the period when every poll brought good news for Clinton: Plenty of polls now show negative trend lines for her (in addition to others that show a positive trend). But the race hasn’t fundamentally changed all that much, and Clinton remains in a strong position.

The data, however, offers a lot of opportunities for cherry-picking, both because there are a lot of polls and because they don’t agree all that much with one another. That’s especially true of national polls.1

Recent national surveys show everything from a 14-percentage-point Clinton lead to a 1-point lead for Trump. On average, that works out to a Clinton lead of 5 to 6 points — but there’s a lot of variation.

October 27, 2016

Just Sent Mail to Find Out About Distant Relatives

I've been researching my family for about three years now (and just found this group). So Hi!!

There are different styles and goals in family research. Some want to find links to George Washington, join the DAR, find a Mayflower passenger. Some want to see how far back they can get. My style has been to find closet doors; throw the doors of the closets open; and to study the skeletons within. This makes for good story telling and is interesting, but does not always make one popular ("why would you tell people about that?&quot .

So a distant cousin murdered his wife in 1908. I'm reaching out to people who would have been her grand nieces/nephews to learn if they heard any stories over the years that weren't in the papers. The couple had an infant son at the time of the murder. He died in the early 90s. The son accidentally killed someone sixty years after his parent's murder. So I'm also reaching out to a survivor of the accident by mail to see what he can tell me, as the newspaper accounts lack detail.

I'm not certain that I will get answers, but I won't know if I don't ask. I've learned from another investigations into the past that a person can get pretty hacked off about events that took place over 100 years ago, and it was useful to remember, and to remind that person to remember, that neither one of us had anything to do with those events. History is what it is.

Have any of you dealt with finding a previously unknown marriage, or finding distant relatives involved in crimes? How did that make you feel, and how did relatives react when you revealed this information.

October 24, 2016

Robert Reich on Facebook

This election isn't over until it's over. Today's Investor’s Business Daily tracking poll -- which predicted the outcome of the 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections more closely than rival surveys -- gives Donald Trump a 2-point lead over Hillary Clinton when Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are thrown into the mix. The same poll gives Trump a 1-point edge in a head-to-head contest with Hillary. The Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California daily tracking poll has the two major candidates tied a 44 percent apiece for the week. As of today, they're separated by just 0.3 point, with Trump retaining the edge.

ABC, on the other hand, gives Hillary a 12-point lead.

Take nothing for granted. Vote, and get others to as well. Our fates depend on it.

What do you think?

October 20, 2016

Dust off your crystal balls, DU: What will Reince Priebus be doing on November 9th?

My uneducated guess is filing for unemployment and sending out resumes.

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