Oregon Has The Fewest Abortion Restrictions: Guess Who Has The Most?

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Sunday February 03, 2013 · 10:49 AM PST

2013/02/03 · 10:49

It’s been 40 years since the Supreme Court issued their ruling in Roe v. Wade, making abortion a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Twenty years ago, the SCOTUS ruled in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that states can limit access to abortion as long as it doesn’t place an “undue burden” on women seeking treatment. Well, the states have run with this and plainly, some of them need a dictionary to look up “undue” and “burden” because they have made it damn near impossible.

Puddytat

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Monday January 21, 2013 · 3:56 PM PST

2013/01/21 · 15:56

Almost anyone who's been reading diaries here lately have noticed that there are a lot of fights going on. Brutal, awful, name calling, fierce battles being waged in the comments. They've been getting worse and we've been losing far too many great Kossacks in the process.

We lost good people in the Obama/Hillary fights in 2008 and more to the Rox/Sux wars that still break out from time to time. Now we're in the midst of fierce battles over firearms and it's a good thing that this is the virtual world or there would be a shoot out at the OK Corral every hour or so.

Despite the lack of bloodshed, there are hurt and angry feelings. And call out diaries where fights in the comments of another diary are the main topic and the fights just go on at an even more intense level.

This cannot go on.

It won't resolve itself without intervention and I'm almost afraid to look at the diary list for fear of seeing more TTFN or another diary that I fear to open because of what I might find inside. I'm not alone in this either. Disgust at the current state of our beloved Daily Kos is extensive.

We often forget that there is a real, live human being with feelings behind every post. We also forget that discussion is good even if we disagree, but we can disagree without being disagreeable or hostile. We can disagree without the name calling and insults. We can and should walk away when discussion turns into argument which deteriorates into angry tirades and even more hurt feelings and anger.

Aside from forgetting our manners at times, what we really lack is consistent moderation.

We cannot police ourselves because we don't have the power to do so. There's only so much that a call for civility can accomplish in the midst of a flame war and those comments sometimes gather the dreaded "mind your own business" response. And, while Trusted Users have the ability to Hide Rate comments that step over the line, there's a limit to the power of the HR. While enough HRs can stop comments from being viewed by general viewers, most of us can see those hidden comments. And by the time comments have stepped over the line, it's too late already.

I'm not asking for the Ban Hammer to get dusted off and put into use. In fact, in the past, when it has come out when flames have engulfed the place, it sometimes gets used on the sort of innocent as well as the truly guilty and works a lot of overtime. Bringing it out when things are truly out of control isn't the answer.

We need consistent moderation, the sort that occurs continually.

And I'll drop in my own personal rules below the GOS Squiggle as food for thought. I'm not suggesting that anyone follow them, but me.

lotusmaglite

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Sunday January 20, 2013 · 10:46 AM PST

2013/01/20 · 10:46

It gets old, doesn't it? It gets sooooooo old. We've all been there (and by "we", I mean people with a healthy view of guns) (and by "healthy", I mean we're willing to talk about regulation and don't use bickering over irrelevant minutiae like cartridge power or lack of a threaded barrel to deflect attention from the larger point, which is no more dead children)-- Sorry. I digress. Angrily.

Back to the point: repetitive talking points. It's getting to be like arguing with a forced-birther, especially on social media. The more fixated and fetish-driven of our gun-owning friends (you know who I'm talking about; the hardcore, I'm-gonna-start-killin-people-YouTube-video-making ones) can spit out the same, shop-worn talking points on command, and often do so rapid-fire, leaving you buried in a cross between word salad and half-baked-idea jambalaya. And what the hell do you do with that mess?

Well, if they're just going to be boring and repetitive, you might as well join them. So, as a public service, I've decided to write down some convenient anti-talking-point talking points. All you have to do is memorize a few key phrases, and you can turn back to your regular life with a minimum of commitment to the gun puppy yapping at your feet.

Join me below the fleur de kos. It'll save you precious hours and blood pressure.

CityLightsLover

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Wednesday January 16, 2013 · 8:33 AM PST

2013/01/16 · 08:33

Unlike most corporations that hoard their profits or otherwise have a tendency to make life miserable for their employees while lining their personal pocketbooks, the "corporation" known as Keith Olbermann is helping out his alma mater AND honoring a couple of very important people in his life who helped make him the voice for so many without a voice.

Puddytat

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Wednesday January 16, 2013 · 5:41 AM PST

2013/01/16 · 05:41

Deliciousness!

Sly's coming back on February 4.

For those outside of Madison or Wisconsin, Sly is a 30 year radio veteran and supporter of working people and collective bargaining. He had a talk show on WTDY in Madison during morning drive time and was well known for giving anti-worker, coin-operated politicians hell. Despite that, Republicans like Glenn (the slob) Grothman and even Scott Walker (during his campaign in 2010) would be guests on his show. Conservative callers were welcome and often bumped to the front of the line to put in their 2 cents worth before their arguments were destroyed by Sly.

John Nichols was a regular guest every day at 8 AM and his show was partly sponsored by AFSCME.

John (Sly) Sylvester was out there during the protests and recalls and has remained active supporting and promoting worker rights. He travelled to Bainport (Freeport, Illinois) and other places to support workers in their struggles for safer working conditions, decent pay, and adequate benefits and to stop the rising tide of job outsourcing.

His voice was silenced the day after Thanksgiving when WTDY started playing Christmas music and fired not only Sly, but their entire news department. This month, WTDY became the (unnecessary) THIRD sports only radio station in the relatively small city of Madison.

There have been petitions and phone calls and incredible amounts of activity to get him on the progressive radio station in Madison, The MIC, which features a local progressive program for an hour each evening. Even though I don't hear the MIC in Milwaukee, I can stream the station. And I called. And I wrote. And I signed the petitions.

While I could never hear his show live here in Milwaukee, Sly provided free podcasts on his web site and they were always something I looked forward to every day. From interviews with politicians to segments with labor leaders or simply information on what was happening in Madison and in our state, it was the best source of information in a state filled with RW radio, corporate-owned television stations and corporate controlled newspapers.

About a week ago, the podcasts came down and each day a new word would appear; a clue to a mystery that would be revealed in the Assembly Parlor at our State Capitol on Monday, Feb. 4. Monday came and Sly announced:

He's back!

Not only back, but on a powerful FM station that is still locally owned. The signal reaches a huge portion of southern Wisconsin as well as parts of Iowa and northern Illinois. Sadly, it doesn't reach Milwaukee, however the station will be offering live streaming of Slys new show which will be broadcast during evening drive time from 3 PM - 6:30 PM.

Good news for workers, worker activists and the rest of us.

Bad news for Scott Walker and the rest of those coin operated politicians who serve their donors with vigor at the expense of the rest of us.

Solidarity

Dave in Northridge

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Tuesday January 15, 2013 · 7:23 AM PST

2013/01/15 · 07:23

Yep. Sometimes subscribing to the Equality California mailing list turns up some terrific stuff. It seems that the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco have a major renaming of SFO in the works.

Obligatory photograph here:

kos

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday January 03, 2013 · 10:52 AM PST

2013/01/03 · 10:52

no image description available — Happier times.

Screencap of Keith Olbermann on his old Current show

Happier times.

It's too bad that the two highest-profile explicitly liberal media efforts of the last decade—Air America and Current TV—were so brutally mismanaged.

Air America is old news, but yesterday we learned that Current TV was sold to Al Jazeera, as the Qatar-owned news network seeks greater U.S. penetration. Why they think Current's shitty channel access is attractive beats me. They must be getting a hell of a cheap price.

Problem with Current was that its CEO, Joel Hyatt (from Hyatt Legal Services, also known as the asshole who fired an attorney with AIDS which became the movie Philadelphia), never cared about building a popular network. You could see this with their lack of promotion, with their signing of shitty distribution deals that prohibited them from posting anything of real value on the web, and from their ridiculous firing of their marquee star—Keith Olbermann. A network that had built up an audience of around a quarter million (and growing as people found the hard-to-find network) suddenly saw its prime-time audience plummet to the 40K's with replacement Elliot Spitzer. So Olbermann can be mercurial. So what? It wasn't as if his complaints weren't valid—from shitty and non-improving production values, to lack of web access (his MSNBC special notes were seen by millions online), to lack of promotion.

But Hyatt didn't give a damn because his business wasn't selling advertising. It was collecting carriage fees from cable operators. Why did cable operators pay carriage fees to Current? Beats the crap out of me. They're not very smart either, apparently, though those fees were one of the reasons Current wasn't allowed to post their content online. (And by the way, cable companies are trying to upend that idiotic system, which is why Time Warner Cable took the opportunity to drop Current after the sale. It didn't want to keep paying those carriage fees for programming no one watched or cared about.)

So it was a subscription business, not a ratings one. And if your motivation isn't to increase ratings ... what's the point? You fire your one proven audience draw, you sign contracts that exclude you from the one medium that could promote you for free, and you refuse to advertise your existence. Is it any wonder it failed? That's why I dramatically scaled back my appearances on the network after Olbermann's departure, going from 50 appearances in 2011 to maybe three in 2012. What was the point? I had better things to do with my time.

So yet another "liberal" media operation collapses due to mismanagement, and yet again people will say that progressive media won't work. But MSNBC's prime-time lineup argues otherwise. Too bad no one has made that kind of investment for a truly 100 percent top-to-bottom progressive effort. There's space for it.

Ten Things You Might Not Know About Christmas

Purple Priestess

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Saturday December 22, 2012 · 10:16 AM PST

2012/12/22 · 10:16

There are so many traditions associated with Christmas. Many of them we just take for granted, accepting the “prevailing wisdom” as to their origins. But sometimes things are not what they seem. Here are ten things that you may not have known. Follow me over the orange cruller to learn more....

priceman

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Wednesday November 28, 2012 · 10:22 AM PST

2012/11/28 · 10:22

Cross posted at Voices on the Square and The Stars Hollow Gazette

Yes, it's true. If the White House would like to disavow David Plouffe's words now is the time. Time is running short but it's pretty obvious that he speaks for the White House given that David Plouffe is the President's closest confidante. If you have the stomach to sit through this forum it's right there for you to see, but I'll post the relevant portion that matches up with Loyd Blankfein's mentality that the 99% need to sacrifice Medicare and retire later for the fantasy deficit crisis he, the White House, and Congress are peddling to the American people.

The President's closest adviser is telling his base that additional cuts to pay down the deficit(not the 716 billion to Advantage, fraud, or providers from the 2010 CBO baseline on the effects of the ACA) in Medicare and Medicaid are coming and to be ready for them.

Senior White House advisor David Plouffe warns Republicans and Democrats alike must take political hits in order for deal to be had

"The only way that gets done is for Republicans again to step back and get mercilessly criticized by Grover Norquist and the Right, and it means that Democrats are going to have to do some tough things on spending and entitlements that means that they'll criticized on by their left," Plouffe said at his alma mater in conversation with former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt.
[.........]

Plouffe added that while the White House wants to engage in comprehensive tax reform, they know they must also "carefully" address the "chief drivers of our deficit": Medicare and Medicaid.

Lloyd "Sell them shitty deals with the blessing of the US DOJ" Blankfein whole heartedly agrees with Plouffe. He's also visiting the White House today. I have a feeling whatever good feelings labor and progressive groups had yesterday were perhaps misguided given the statement we just heard from David Pouffe. That and of course basically the priority of making capital whole on the backs of labor as 93% of the "recovery" goes into Lloyd Blankfein's pocket since 2010.

Goldman Sachs CEO: Entitlements must be contained

BLANKFEIN: You're going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people's expectations -- the entitlements and what people think that they're going to get, because it's not going to -- they're not going to get it.

PELLEY: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid?
BLANKFEIN: You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career. ... So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained.

CityLightsLover

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Tuesday November 27, 2012 · 9:17 AM PST

2012/11/27 · 09:17

It is with a bittersweet but proud heart that I inform you of my difficult decision to stop posting diaries for The Rachel Maddow Show here at the “Great Orange Satan.” Let me state explicitly that I’m NOT leaving Daily Kos, you still might catch me as an occasional sub life guard at Cheers & Jeers, I might contribute an occasional diary in the Readers & Booklovers group, especially noteworthy & newsworthy events might warrant a diary of Rachel’s take, and anything that just generally grinds my gears (props to Peter Griffin) might warrant a diary as well.

CityLightsLover

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Monday November 26, 2012 · 7:02 PM PST

2012/11/26 · 19:02

I cannot BEGIN to tell you how good it feels to do this diary again - especially since my "hiatus" sucked donkey droppings 99.999999999999999% of the time. My work caused a few hundred mini nervous breakdowns with at least a couple of the on the border of major sparkin' grievances (props to George Carlin). I brought work home nearly every weekend, so I didn't really have honest - to - goodness weekends, either.

CityLightsLover

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Monday October 15, 2012 · 7:05 PM PDT

2012/10/15 · 19:05

Again, per my "diary schedule blurb" in this past Wednesday's diary, watch here at the Great Orange Satan, Facebook, and/or teh Twitter for future diary posts over the next few weeks. Believe me, I'd MUCH rather be doing this as opposed to what I will be doing.

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Oregon Has The Fewest Abortion Restrictions: Guess Who Has The Most?

Can We Haz Some Moderation? Please? Pretty Please?

Gun "Enthusiast" In Your Life? Here, Let Me Make It Easier. (UPDATED X2)

What's Keith Olbermann Doing These Days?

I Have Bad News ... For Scott Walker (and More X 3)

Harvey Milk International Airport

Killing off Current

Ten Things You Might Not Know About Christmas

WH Advisor David Plouffe and Goldman Sachs CEO Agree That Medicare and Medicaid Must be Cut

Swan Song for The Rachel Maddow Show Diaries Here at Daily Kos

The Rachel Maddow Show - Nov. 26, 2012

The Rachel Maddow Show - Oct. 15, 2012