The Rout

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Monday August 31, 2015 · 5:44 PM PDT

2015/08/31 · 17:44

A new model is predicting a Democratic landslide victory in 2016.

This may be like the brave soldier who picks up the fallen flag and rallys beleaguered troops to victory despite overwhelming odds. This the rally. But there will only be victory if we make it a rout... a landslide. (Remember that the other side is counting the votes.)

To succeed, we must find words that open the eyes of those paying little attention. I fear that many of them do not understand that the beliefs and objectives of our two parties have reversed from what they were 40 years ago.

( continue reading below... )

Poll

40 votes Show Results

Do you trust that your vote will be counted correctly in 2016?

40 votes Vote Now!

Do you trust that your vote will be counted correctly in 2016?

Yes

23 votes

17 votes

What if we (the U.S.) Were Greece?

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday June 24, 2015 · 9:28 AM PDT

2015/06/24 · 09:28

Matt O'Brien writes in a June 23, 2015 WonkBlog, "Europe is destroying Greece’s economy for no reason at all"

What if, riding a wave of steady economic improvement, U.S. Democrats won overwhelming victories in 2016 at all levels, taking back not just both houses of congress and the presidency, but most state houses and governorships as well?

Then what if the Koch Brothers, Jimmy Diamond and the rest of the Republican ultra-rich money-lenders who now own a lot of the government debt convinced Japan, China and other countries that they'd better get their money back fast? "Everyone knows those tax and spend Democrats are about to drive the economy into bankruptcy with all of their giveaways." they'd whisper.

So what if then these foreign governments, who themselves hold about a third of U.S. debt, started telling us, "No. We will not accept you increasing taxes on business and the rich to pay back our loans. You must impoverish your citizens, let the sick go ahead and die without healthcare and allow widespread indentured servitude so that your citizens learn the value of keeping their word to pay back their debts."?

How would the people of this country react to such demands?

Poll

27 votes Show Results

Does the EU and other creditor countries have the right to determine how Greece manages their economy?

27 votes Vote Now!

Does the EU and other creditor countries have the right to determine how Greece manages their economy?

Yes

15 votes

12 votes

Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are… Conservative

DocSalvage

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Sunday March 22, 2015 · 10:39 PM PDT

2015/03/22 · 22:39

... this story comes from BillMoyers.com ...

President Obama needs to read this. He's been preaching to the choir. And we've become a very small and fairly powerless part of the congregation.

If he does, and it changes his approach to one more conservatives understand, we who are more comfortable with ambiguity must be content to hold our tongues.

We must suppress our frustration with the (to our minds) unjustified certainties he will express.

We must not condemn him for pursuing clear visions of purpose with little or no apparent consideration for the alternatives.

I don't know if I can do it. It is so foreign to my nature.

But if we are to remain one country, I know I must try.

Poll

57 votes Show Results

Would you support, by word and deed, a more certain but less considerate President Obama?

57 votes Vote Now!

Would you support, by word and deed, a more certain but less considerate President Obama?

Yes

44 votes

13 votes

Bye-bye Etsy?

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday March 06, 2015 · 2:53 AM PST

2015/03/06 · 02:53

per Pando.com...
Etsy looks to mix community and capitalism as IPO looms. What changed?

So much for Etsy. My deepest condolences to my many arts and crafts friends and family who now will have no hope of earning a bit from their labors of love.

No doubt the new "Etsy" will make a lot of economic parasites obscenely wealthy. But it won't be Etsy. The community will have no place there except as pure consumers.

Community (living, breathing, thinking and feeling, people) can never compete with the massive accumulation of wealth on hand to capitalism (artificial, anaerobic, thinking without feeling, entities).

( did I just have an epiphany writing that sentence?... see below divider... )

Poll

52 votes Show Results

Would you like the new, wall street owned Etsy as well as you like the current, privately owned Etsy?

52 votes Vote Now!

Would you like the new, wall street owned Etsy as well as you like the current, privately owned Etsy?

Yes

4 votes

48 votes

The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree

DocSalvage

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Friday February 06, 2015 · 6:23 AM PST

2015/02/06 · 06:23

The following is reposted at the encouragement of its author, Bill Moyers...

The Fiery Cage and the Lynching Tree, Brutality’s Never Far Away

February 5, 2015 by Bill Moyers

This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com.

They burned him alive in an iron cage, and as he screamed and writhed in the agony of hell they made a sport of his death.

After listening to one newscast after another rightly condemn the barbaric killing of that Jordanian air force pilot at the bloody hands of ISIS, I couldn't sleep. My mind kept roaming the past trying to retrieve a vaguely remembered photograph that I had seen long ago in the archives of a college library in Texas.

(continued below the fold...)

Poll

37 votes Show Results

Could this kind of thing happen in this country (the U.S.) today?

37 votes Vote Now!

Could this kind of thing happen in this country (the U.S.) today?

Yes

32 votes

5 votes

Dear Mr. Tom Wheeler, Chairman, FCC

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 09, 2015 · 1:21 AM PST

2015/01/09 · 01:21

"For $XXX dollars, you can drive as fast as you want."

What would be the results of such a free-market solution to highway traffic control?

The Internet is to the 21st Century what the interstate highway system was to the 20th.

In the next few years, a new economy based on communication will supplant transportation...

Poll

7 votes Show Results

Given appropriate equipment, services and other resources, could your job be done at least as well from home or a neighborhood office?

7 votes Vote Now!

Given appropriate equipment, services and other resources, could your job be done at least as well from home or a neighborhood office?

Yes

5 votes

2 votes

Police Protection

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 27, 2014 · 11:12 AM PST

2014/11/27 · 11:12

The Denver Police tried to destroy video of them beating and man and tripping a very pregnant woman.

Years ago, I had many friends in law enforcement. I hope many of those officers and others will begin speaking out to express their outrage at this kind of loss of control by their brethren.

The officers on this video, like the officers in Fergusson, are clearly terrified of non-whites. These are not the acts of someone dispassionately enforcing the law... which is what they have been given the authority and duty to do.

Responsible officers must break the "code of silence"... for their own protection and success, if for no other.

Responsible officers and law enforcement administrators must speak out and take action to remove those people lacking the courage and self-control to be police.

At this time, it is apparently in their sole discretion to decide who suffers... who lives... and who dies.

We are at your mercy.

Poll

34 votes Show Results

Do you fear for your safety when pulled over by a police officer?

34 votes Vote Now!

Do you fear for your safety when pulled over by a police officer?

Yes

25 votes

9 votes

Unregulated Censorship

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday October 26, 2014 · 10:44 PM PDT

2014/10/26 · 22:44

Mother Jones: Social Networking Employs More People Than We Think

The goal of some education, and some educational institutions is not to inform or enlighten, but rather to censor through learning.

Sites like Facebook do a lot of censorship... and we all benefit from it.

But unregulated censorship has always been problematic. Despite whatever instructions and policies these employees are given, there must of necessity be a great deal of personal judgement involved.

At this scale, there must also be a lot of pressure to be fast.

Many deletes are surely made largely on impulse. Censors quickly develop "muscle memory" that instantly decides a message's fate based on split-second perception.

In such an environment, racial, political and social prejudices quite naturally flourish.

I'm not such a purest to proclaim that all censorship should be prohibited. But I do think that it should be the default in the absence of societally agreed upon standards. In other words... regulation.

For example: Young children should not be exposed to explicit or horrific images. But there needs to be some majority agreement over what meets those definitions.

Given the rabidly anti-regulatory philosophy of the last 30 years however, over-aggressive censorship has become inevitable. In the absence of regulations, companies have no choice but to act on their own.

When the companies themselves finally demand regulation, it will come. And then they will no longer be held responsible for these decisions.

Until then... bring on the lawsuits!

Poll

10 votes Show Results

Which is the best solution here?

10 votes Vote Now!

Which is the best solution here?

Do nothing. Every site is free to censor its user's messages as it wishes.

6 votes

Apply current protected-speech standards to the censoring of messages.

3 votes

Develop new voluntary standards just for online postings.

0 votes

Pass additional laws to enforce online decency standards.

1 vote

Robert Reich: Why I'm Worried About America

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday October 22, 2014 · 5:48 PM PDT

2014/10/22 · 17:48

re...
Robert Reich: Why I'm Worried About America

We have become highly "risk-averse." The uncharitable would say, "cowardly."

I've been one of those. But I may be coming out the other side now.

We are afraid. We are overwhelmingly afraid.

We have a lot to be afraid of. More than most of us can rationally handle.

Poll

45 votes Show Results

This election, will you vote...

45 votes Vote Now!

This election, will you vote...

... to attack our adversaries regardless of the risk or cost

20 votes

... to turn adversaries into allies

20 votes

... to close our borders and try to hide from the world

1 vote

... to not vote and accept whatever fate befalls us

4 votes

Shellshocked?

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday September 28, 2014 · 11:29 PM PDT

2014/09/28 · 23:29

The impact of the Unix/Linux/OS-X Bash "shellshock" vulnerability could be greater than anything since Y2K.

That said, the panic over "shellshock," and the rush to alter Bash without extensive planning and testing, may create far greater problems.

For Y2K, we learned that the date code fixes were the easy part.

The massively more complex, error-prone, and unscheduled-downtime-producing part was discovering and correcting or mitigating the failures in other software caused by the fixes. Some of these weren't discovered until the new systems had been in production for months. A few even resulted in organizational policy changes because they were just too disruptive to actually fix at that point.

Why, after 22 years, must a great many routers, access points and computing devices on the Internet require new, largely untested, software?

_{... more below ...}

Poll

14 votes Show Results

Is there a safer way to mitigate the risk instead of immediately replacing all bash software?

14 votes Vote Now!

Is there a safer way to mitigate the risk instead of immediately replacing all bash software?

Yes

1 vote

I don't know... but we should slow down and try

4 votes

I don't know... and don't care

3 votes

6 votes

Who are the Yazidis?

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday August 08, 2014 · 12:09 PM PDT

2014/08/08 · 12:09

"Among the many victims of the advance of The Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East are a group of up to 50,000 Yazidis, who are trapped in the mountains in northwest Iraq without food or water. Author Diana Darke explains who these mysterious religious adherents are."

BBC News: Who, What, Why: Who are the Yazidis?

Poll

76 votes Show Results

Should we try to save the Yazidis from genocide to the extent we can without ground forces?

76 votes Vote Now!

Should we try to save the Yazidis from genocide to the extent we can without ground forces?

Yes

74 votes

1 vote

Climate Change is Greatest Business Opportunity

DocSalvage

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday July 26, 2014 · 4:39 AM PDT

2014/07/26 · 04:39

Climate-change is the greatest business opportunity since the American westward expansion of the 1800s.

American unbridled imagination could lead the world in adapting to it.

That is, if government stopped coddling businesses already making more profits than they know what to do with on financially safe, but dirty and wasteful, old technologies.

Poll

15 votes Show Results

Should government switch energy production tax breaks and other business incentives from old technologies like oil and gas to new technologies like renewables

15 votes Vote Now!

Should government switch energy production tax breaks and other business incentives from old technologies like oil and gas to new technologies like renewables

Yes

13 votes

2 votes

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