December 2011 – Page 8 – Politics Plus

Open Thread–12/4/2011

Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 042011

Yesterday I did not feel much better, but had to make a trip out to the corner store. It felt like a major expedition, and I had to stop twice to rest, although it’s less than 1/2 mile. I’m current with replies. Tomorrow is a holy day in the Church of the Ellipsoid Orb. I am blessed, because the worship between my Broncos and the Vikings will be televised here. I plan to rest after the meditation.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:52 (average 5:08). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From You Tube: 75 Years in Prison For Videotaping Police (H/T: Phyllis)

This injustice must end everywhere!

From CNN: But according to the conservative website Newsmax.com, they really have asked Trump to be the moderator of a real GOP presidential debate, hoping the men and women who desire to be commander-in-chief will show up to be quizzed by a reality TV show star.

If this "debate" is real, it will represent one of the stupidest ideas in the history of presidential politics, and if the Republican National Committee has any decency, they would quickly denounce this madness and say none of its candidates will bother even responding to this stunt.

The way Trumps runs off at the mouth, it will be a miracle if any of the other goose-steppers can get in a word edgewise.

From Think Progress: Police officers in Springfield, Missouri, arriving to arrest protesters there, ran into a bit of trouble last month when they locked themselves out of their van. “Mic Check! The police seem to have locked themselves out of their van!” said protesters.

LMAO!

Cartoon:

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Republicans Blocked Payroll Tax Cuts

Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am Politics

Dec 032011

Republicans proved in no uncertain terms that they want to raise YOUR taxes, when they blocked the Democrats’ version of the payroll tax extension that paid for it with a tiny surtax on income over $1 million, and even blocked their own smaller extension that paid for it by firing thousands of federal workers and freezing federal salaries. Less than half the Republicans voted for their own alternative.

The Senate held two votes on extending a payroll tax cut for more than 160 million Americans, most of whom are middle class. As expected, Republicans killed them both. What was unexpected, though, was the vote totals on the proposals.

First up was the Democratic plan, which would have kept the payroll break in place for another year, and pay for it with a slight surtax on millionaires and billionaires. A 51-member Senate majority supported the bill, but that was far short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster.

It’s worth noting that one Republican, Sen. Susan Collins (R) of Maine, broke ranks and supported the Dems’ proposal. Since the economic push began in earnest in early September, Collins is the first Republican senator to vote for any Democratic jobs proposal. It didn’t affect the outcome, but given the current climate, this is what constitutes progress in 2011.

Of course, the fact that nearly every Republican senator would rather raise taxes on 160 million people, than ask millionaires and billionaires to pay a little more isn’t progress at all.

What was just as interesting was the next vote, when the Senate considered the GOP alternative, which would also keep the payroll break in place, but pay for it largely through a pay freeze on federal workers.

A Republican alternative, which would have extended the current more modest tax cut and slashed the federal payroll to pay for it, was rejected 78 to 20, with more than half of Republicans opposed.

Yep, most Republican senators opposed their own party’s legislation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters the other day there is now “a majority sentiment” within his caucus for continuing the payroll break, but that claim is now very much in doubt… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Monthly>

On the Democratic Bill, Joe Manchin (DINO-WV) and Jon Tester (DINO-MT) betrayed workers, their party and America by goose stepping with Republicans to protect billionaires. Bernie Sanders also voted No. Apparently Bernie is concerned about taking the money from Social Security and Medicare, but I thought this version replaced the money. Maybe there’s something going on below my radar, here.

Only 20 Republicans voted for the Republican bill to cut payroll taxes by firing federal workers and freezing federal salaries.

Ed Schultz covered the story, interviewing Bernie Sanders [ID-VT].

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As an interesting sidelight Grover Norquist, the high holy man of the Republican Party, issued a divine proclamation that Republicans can raise YOUR taxes, because “calling not continuing a temporary tax cut a tax increase is inaccurate”. But wait a minute! The Bush tax cut for the super rich was a temporary tax cut, and Democrats wanted to not continue it for the top 2%. Am I the only one who remembers Republicans, including his holiness, screaming bloody murder that this was a tax increase. What’s the difference? The difference is obvious, isn’t it?

Sadly this isn’t the story. In an reply to a comment, I told Patty that I wasn’t expecting blackmail, just obstruction. When I’m wrong, I say so. It turns out that John Boehner, aka Agent Orange, intends to hold payroll tax cuts hostage in another act of blackmail. They want approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline! You should remember that Obama pulled the plug on it, until 2013 at the earliest. Republican economic terrorism is back!

Open Thread–12/3/2011

Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 032011

Yesterday I continued to feel pretty rank, but I’m trying to blog on a limited basis. I’m current on today’s and yesterday’s replies. Tomorrow is touch and go.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today it took me 3:44 (average 4:54). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn.org: 300 Economists Who Stand With #OccupyWallStreet

Occupy Economics from Softbox on Vimeo.

Once again, truth has a liberal bias.

From Houston Chronicle: Small businesses and startups that were skittish about the economy this summer started hiring in bigger numbers this fall, helping drive the unemployment rate down to 8.6 percent in November, the lowest in two and a half years.

This is such a disaster for Republicans that the Republican Ministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, lied about it. When they announced it, they displayed “Unemployment 9%” prominently.

From Washington Post: The White House is accusing the Democratic-controlled Senate of “political micromanagement” at the expense of national security. The comments come with a renewed threat to veto the defense bill in dispute.

The Senate passed the massive $662 billion bill Thursday night on a 93-7 vote. The measure would require military custody of suspected terrorists, even those captured within the U.S., and indefinitely detain some without trial.

Unless these items are removed in conference, it is imperative that Obama veto the defense budget, as he has said he would.

Cartoon:

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Monthly Report for November 2011

Posted by TomCat at 12:01 am Blog News, Monthly Report

Dec 022011

In November, Politics Plus dropped in all categories. The reason is quite simple. I was gone for 1/3 of the month, out sick Therefore the poor showing does not concern me.

Here are our basic stats:

Unique visitors

Number of visits

Pages

Hits

Bandwidth

Viewed traffic

18,181

36,779

(2.02 visits/visitor)

152,145

(4.13 Pages/Visit)

1,077,743

(29.3 Hits/Visit)

20.41 GB

(582.03 KB/Visit)

Not viewed traffic

285,140

356,876

5.69 GB

Not viewed traffic is people who read our blog without coming here, using RSS Readers, such as Feed Demon, and Aggregation sites, such as Google Reader and MyWeb.

vv11-11

Here is our most recent ClustrMap, last updated on December 1.

ClustrMap11-11

Our ClustrMap reset the morning of 2/28/2011, starting over from scratch. This map counts only visits since then. The largest circles represent over 1,000 visits. The tiniest represent one to ten.

Our average durations were up from 209 seconds last month:

Number of visits: 36,779 – Average: 279 s

Number of visits

Percent

0s-30s

28,922

78.6 %

30s-2mn

2,224

6 %

2mn-5mn

1,205

3.2 %

5mn-15mn

1,128

3 %

15mn-30mn

842

2.2 %

30mn-1h

1,384

3.7 %

1h+

1,074

2.9 %

Considering that 78% of our visits are pit stops, that’s great..

Search engine referrals were down, except for Stumbleupon.

21 different referring search engines

Pages

Percent

Hits

Percent

Google

5813

51.8 %

8,167

19.3 %

Stumbleupon (Social Bookmark)

4726

42.1 %

33,178

78.4 %

Microsoft MSN Search

223

1.9 %

223

0.5 %

Microsoft Bing

150

1.3 %

239

0.5 %

Yahoo!

97

0.8 %

159

0.3 %

Google (Images)

51

0.4 %

78

0.1 %

Unknown search engines

37

0.3 %

38

0 %

Ask

32

0.2 %

32

0 %

Microsoft Windows Live

29

0.2 %

59

0.1 %

AOL

24

0.2 %

24

0 %

Yandex

9

0 %

16

0 %

MyWebSearch

7

0 %

7

0 %

T-Online

2

0 %

2

0 %

Scroogle

2

0 %

2

0 %

Digg (Social Bookmark)

1

0 %

2

0 %

Dogpile

1

0 %

1

0 %

Virgilio

1

0 %

2

0 %

InfoSpace

1

0 %

1

0 %

Mamma

4

0 %

Excite

1

0 %

Go.com

36

0 %

Our top five non-blog referrers are:

Care2                     4,786

Reddit                    3,687

Facebook                1,051

Jabberwonk               728

Tumblr                      256

Our top 15 blog referrers are:

http://jbm479.wordpress.com/

http://america-weeps.blogspot.com/

http://jackjodell53.wordpress.com/

http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/

http://parsleyspics.blogspot.com/

http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.barackobama.com/

http://annette-justmylittlepieceoftheworld.blogspot.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

http://republic-of-gilead.blogspot.com/

http://katieschwartz.com/

http://whohijackedourcountry.blogspot.com/

http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/

http://reconstitution.us/rcnew/

http://themoderatevoice.com/

http://crooksandliars.com/

There is an extra, because there was a tie for 15th place.

Here’s some linkey-love in return The best ways you can spread the message to others is to use the share button at the bottom of each article to list our articles on the the networking sites where you belong. Quote PP articles on your own blogs also helps. The operative commandment here is “thou shalt steal.” We’re on the same side here, and I encourage it. Even if you want to repost a whole article, that’s OK. Just link back, please. Also, feel free to swipe my graphics in the articles. If they are labeled with our Politics Plus URL, they are my work.

The top fifteen commenters for November are not missing this time, because I actually remembered to copy them off in time on the night of the 30th. Here they are. The widget is in the right column. I don’t count, as I’m the resident big mouth, and I try to reply to every comment, except replies directed at someone else. Those who leave their URLs in their comments, get linkey-love here.

Lynn Squance (106)
Patty (58)
Phyllis (47)
Lee (36)
SoINeedAName (29)
Terrie W. (24)
TWM (24)
Jack Jodell (23)
Lisa G. (14)
Tom (12)
Leslie Parsley (10)
Jerry Critter (9)
Blue (8)
anon paranoid (7)
Ahab (5)
Jolly Roger (5)

Technorati ratings are falling off, and will continue to do so, due to the demise of Buzzflash.net. We are now at 420, high on the B list. They only count links from blogs they recognize as “influential.” BF was the one influential site that regularly promoted our stories.

We have 656,839 links on other websites, up from 894,291 last month.

We have 2,988 articles and 26,248 comments, as of midnight 12/1.

I recommend using your own avatar. Go to Gravatar. Sign up using the email address you use to post comments here and upload the image you want to use. Whenever you comment under that email address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that image will be your avatar.

Your participation remains a major part of what makes this blog worth reading, not to mention worth writing. Many people who visit here have told me that they come here to read your comments in addition to my articles, and people continue to write comments about your comments on other sites. Politics Plus exists to help end right-wing insanity and send the Republican Party the way of the Whigs. Thank you all for all you do, here and elsewhere, to help make that happen. Together we can make a difference.

Open Thread–12/2

Posted by TomCat at 12:00 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 022011

Yesterday I felt pretty horrid and limited myself to preparing our Monthly Report and this Open Thread. I am not current on replies. Today we’ll see how I am as the day progresses.

Jig Zone Puzzles:

Yesterday it took me 4:06 (average 4:51). To do it, click here. Today it took me 4:47 (average 5:29). To do it, click here. How did you do?

Short Takes: all video.

From MoveOn.org: Why we’ll miss Barney Frank.

From MoveOn.org: Why #Occupy

From MoveOn.org: Two Lesbians Raised A Baby And This Is What They Got

Cartoon:

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Poll Results–12/1/2011

Posted by TomCat at 12:02 am Uncategorized

Dec 012011

Here are the results of the ‘What’s for dinner’ poll.

Poll1201

And here are your comments.

From catherine turley on November 27, 2011 at 3:02 pm.

gardein!

From Lee on November 23, 2011 at 2:21 pm.

From a naturally grass fed pig – who needs "Goebbles"!

From TWM on November 23, 2011 at 6:20 am.

The Wife…and then she will cook something or other.

All thing’s considered, I think Mark had the tastiest meal, although my turkey was delicious.

This will be today’s only article, because I’m ill. I’ll keep you posted.

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PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.