Poll Results–8/1/2012

 Posted by at 11:52 am  Blog News, Politics
Aug 012012
 

Here are the results of the Campaign Ethics Poll.

Poll0801

And here are your comments.

Posted by Angelica on July 25, 2012 at 8:27 am. 

 

Romney? Ethical? If you believe that I have a bridge with a lovely ocean view in Kansas that I want to sell you.

 

Posted by Patty on July 24, 2012 at 7:19 am. 

 

Does Rmoney even know the definition of ethical?

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Posted by Rixar13 on July 20, 2012 at 5:48 pm. 

 

Obama –

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Posted by Obbop on July 20, 2012 at 10:40 am. 

 

All multi-millionaires and billionaires must vote for the beloved Mr. Romney in order to be truly represented atop the socio-economic hierarchy.

Mere vermin commoners who exist to serve the ruling masters… well, it does not matter who you vote for since voting at the federal level is a farce.

The federal government was designed and intended to be owned and operated by a ruling elite.

(The Irony of Democracy… suggested reading)

Voting will never make any meaningful change(s) in the federal government.

Have a wonderful week folks.

[SPAM Removed]

 

Posted by Infidel753 on July 20, 2012 at 9:58 am. 

 

Good grief, is this question a joke?

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Posted by Lynn Squance on July 19, 2012 at 1:01 am. 

 

First, I should declare my bias for Mr Obama. What I have seen of Rmoney is an evasive and vague person on his policies such that it is hard to pin him down. The tax returns are a real issue and his intransigence will not help him —just makes people think he is hiding something, even if he isn’t. He is making comments about other people and other times that are totally irrelevant (Mrs Kerry). There is just too much deceit.

Mr Obama is not perfect but from what I have seen, he is hitting at the issues and hitting Rmoney in areas where he is

I think the results reflect reality.  While some Obama adds have stated Romney positions that he claims he does not have, there are few position on all issue that Romney has not claimed at some point.  On the other hand, virtually all Romney ads have been blatant lies.

In the next poll (now up), you get to rate Willard’s competence in foreign policy.  Enjoy!

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Poll Results–7/17/2012

 Posted by at 10:08 am  Blog News
Jul 172012
 

Here are the results of the Better Health Plan Poll.

Poll0717

And here are your comments.

Posted by Lynn Squance on July 10, 2012 at 2:06 am.   

 

Who the hell likes the Republican plan of "Don’t get sick, but if you do, die quickly"?

Personally, I like my Canadian universal healthcare, but if I were American, I would definitely go with Obamacare. And it will only get better as time goes by, assuming the lame assed Republican/Teabaggers don’t screw it up.

 

Posted by Angelica on July 8, 2012 at 12:46 pm. 

 

Who in the world are the masochistic 10% who said otherwise? I notice none of them left a comment.

 

Posted by Fred Lemon on July 7, 2012 at 3:55 am. 

 

This is like an Ed Schultz question where you know what the results will be.

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Posted by Rixar13 on July 2, 2012 at 7:11 pm. 

 

Obamacare –

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Posted by Jerry Critter on July 2, 2012 at 12:25 pm. 

 

Is this a serious question? Of course ObamaCare is better than the "Don’t get sick. If you do, die quickly" republicare plan.

 

Posted by Marva on July 1, 2012 at 5:21 pm. 

 

Duh. That’s hardly even a question.

 

Posted by Rixar13 on July 1, 2012 at 2:12 pm. 

 

Which of these two is better for the US?

 

Obamacare

I voted Obamacare.  No brainer.

Enjoy the new poll!

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Patty STILL has a BIG Mouth! ;-)

 Posted by at 11:10 am  Blog News
Jul 092012
 

33-Patty

Patty is a regular, and you’ll find her excellent comments on virtually every article, almost every day.  She comes to us from Care2.  This is her third Big Mouth Award, having also posted the 28,000th comment in January and the 31,000th comment in May.  Patty’s is still a MAJOR Jig Zone predator.  Once upon a time, she used to complain that she would never be good enough to beat the average. But she goes after those puzzles with all the zeal of a Republican politician trying to steal a baby’s candy.  Now she beats my tail with even more exasperating regularity!

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Monthly Report for June 2012

 Posted by at 11:45 am  Blog News, Monthly Report
Jul 022012
 

In June, traffic here at Politics Plus started to improve, being up in all major categories, except hits are down slightly.  However, we are still well short of where we once were.

Reported period

Month Jun 2012

 

 

 

 

First visit

01 Jun 2012 – 00:00

 

 

 

 

Last visit

30 Jun 2012 – 23:59

 

 

 

 

 

Unique visitors

Number of visits

Pages

Hits

Bandwidth

Viewed traffic *

12,762

32,528

(2.54 visits/visitor)

409,139

(12.57 Pages/Visit)

891,155

(27.39 Hits/Visit)

14.57 GB

(469.52 KB/Visit)

Not viewed traffic *

 

 

298,970

359,617

7.99 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.

Here are our 2011 stats.

Stats12-2011

And here are our 2012 stats so you can compare them.

stats6-2012

Here is our most recent ClustrMap, last updated on July 1.  Note that our map reset on February 28.  The largest circles represent over 1,000 visits. The tiniest represent one to ten.

map6-2012

Our average durations were well up.

Number of visits: 32,528 – Average: 339 s

Number of visits

Percent

0s-30s

25,365

77.9 %

30s-2mn

1,214

3.7 %

2mn-5mn

858

2.6 %

5mn-15mn

1,331

4 %

15mn-30mn

1,092

3.3 %

30mn-1h

1,644

5 %

1h+

1,024

3.1 %

That’s expected.  There has been more here to see.

Here are our top five articles for May.

E.P.A. Moves to Curtail Greenhouse Gas Emissions 10/01/2009  16,653 views

Republican ‘Expert’ Embarrassed on Voter Fraud      6/05/2012   4,351  views

Republican Economic Sabotage                                      6/12/2012    1,562   views

Proof That Alan Grayson Was Right                                6/18/2012       986    views

Republican Economy Prevails                                          6/19/2012       670    views

That’s much weaker than I would like.

Search engine referrals were down.

20 different referring search engines

Pages

Percent

Hits

Percent

Google

4439

60.7 %

8,250

70.5 %

Stumbleupon (Social Bookmark)

2349

32.1 %

2,769

23.6 %

Yahoo!

151

2 %

190

1.6 %

Microsoft Bing

148

2 %

210

1.7 %

Digg (Social Bookmark)

83

1.1 %

86

0.7 %

AOL

43

0.5 %

44

0.3 %

Unknown search engines

34

0.4 %

37

0.3 %

Google (Images)

19

0.2 %

53

0.4 %

Ask

10

0.1 %

10

0 %

Microsoft Windows Live

10

0.1 %

15

0.1 %

Microsoft MSN Search

7

0 %

7

0 %

Dogpile

3

0 %

4

0 %

MyWebSearch

2

0 %

2

0 %

Netscape

2

0 %

2

0 %

Earth Link

1

0 %

1

0 %

Searchalot

1

0 %

1

0 %

My Search

1

0 %

1

0 %

Excite

1

0 %

1

0 %

Yandex

1

0 %

9

0 %

Mamma

 

 

1

0 %

Stumbleupon continues to disappoint, since they changed their format.

Our top five non-blog referrers are:

http://www.care2.com/      2,745

http://www.reddit.com/        833

http://jabberwonk.com/        739

http://www.tumblr.com         251

http://www.facebook.com/    154

Care2 is up, but everything else is down.

Our top 15 blog/news referrers are:

http://crooksandliars.com/

http://synapticstew.com/

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

http://theleftinme.blogspot.com/

http://frieddogleg.blogspot.com/

http://www.roseanneworld.com/

http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/

http://reconstitution.us/rcnew/

http://themoderatevoice.com/

http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

http://jackjodell53.wordpress.com/

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

http://progressiveerupts.blogspot.com/

http://parsleyspics.blogspot.com/

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.

Here are the top fifteen commenters for June.  I  copied them off in time. 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, also get linkey-love here.

Lynn Squance (128)

Patty (71)

SoINeedAName (66)

Rixar13 (48)

Phyllis (46)

Jerry Critter (38)

Edith Belcher (25)

mamabear (21)

Angelica (19)

Steve (14)

Jolly Roger (12)

John Dasef (8)

Lisa G. (8)

Marva (7)

Infidel753 (5)

We have 566,589 links on other websites.

Our Technorati.rating is up to 426, high on the B list.  I have no idea why.  Despite over half a million links, Technorati only recognizes links on sites that have registered at Technorati.  Because we had so much traffic on Buzzflash.net, a registered site, we used to be an A list blog.  Buzzflash.net is gone and with the slowdown, we’re back to B list.  If Care2 were to register with Technorati, we’d be in fat city.

We have 3,505 articles and 32,7472 comments, as of midnight 7/1.

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.  Thank you all for all you do, here and elsewhere, to support progressive solutions.  Together we will make a difference.

Although we have improved, we are still sitting at under half the traffic we had a year ago.  That’s only partially because I’m posting a little less than I did then to take better care of myself.  I believe that I’m still writing good articles that are worth reading.  The big reason we’re down is that many of the tools I use to use to publicize our articles are no longer available. That makes your help that much more important.  There lots of right-wing insanity for us to overcome.

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Poll Results–7/1/2012

 Posted by at 11:15 am  Blog News, Politics
Jul 012012
 

Here are the results of the Republican War On Poll.

Poll0701

And here are your comments.

Showing comments 1–11 of 11.

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Posted by SoINeedAName on June 21, 2012 at 7:10 pm. 

 

You know, it’s kinda sad – but I do NOT remember if I answered this poll earlier. I’m not even sure if you can "stuff" the ballot box w/ multiple votes (a la Repubican mode).

I’d be curious if I changed my mind.

[Kinda like what psychiatrists think about walking down the street talking to yourself. In and of itself, that’s not bad. Even answering yourself is not a problem. But when you start going, "Uh? What did you say?" … be very, VERY concerned!]

 

Posted by Robert B. on June 19, 2012 at 7:16 am. 

 

All of the above!

 

Posted by Ellen McCabe on June 17, 2012 at 1:10 am. 

 

A no brainer…Truth.

If they knew what it was and used it they would have no supporters and we would have a better shot at making things better for the whole planet, not just here in the US.

 

Posted by Tom on June 13, 2012 at 8:20 am. 

 

I chose "Truth" since Repugs don’t seem to understand the concept.

 

Posted by Angelica14 on June 8, 2012 at 4:26 pm. 

 

So hard to pick just one, when they have done so much damage in all categories.

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Posted by Terry Delgado on June 8, 2012 at 2:22 pm. 

 

Science encompasses all the others in one way or another.

 

Posted by Patty on June 8, 2012 at 7:51 am. 

 

I voted for "other" because if available, I would have chosen "all of the above".

clip_image003

 

 

Posted by Edith Belcher on June 6, 2012 at 10:07 pm. 

 

I chose "truth" because they lie all the time.

 

Posted by Lynn Squance on June 6, 2012 at 3:32 pm. 

 

It is hard to choose just one! I finally chose ‘voting rights’ because the right to vote transcends gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and economic status. If people do not have the right to vote, the only ‘truth’ is what those in control dictate. If people do not have the right to vote, what we do to and with our earth will be up to those in control without input from others. If people do not have the right to vote, there will be no science other than that dictated by those in control.

But we must work in all areas to keep freedom and democracy alive!

 

Posted by Marva on June 6, 2012 at 2:23 pm. 

 

I chose Earth since all Republican malfeasance and criminality will affect the entire planet, not just the US.

 

Posted by Marva on June 6, 2012 at 2:20 pm. 

 

I chose Earth since all Republican malfeasance and criminality will affect the entire planet, not just the US.

Truth barely edged out Voting Rights with the Middle Class and the Earth following close behind.  My choice was Voting Rights, because Republicans will win all their unholy wars, if they get control over who is allowed to vote and who is not.  However, there is no single right answer.

I did not include All of the Above, because such an obvious choice would have deprived many of the opportunity to think about ALL the Republican wars and consider the damage they ALL do.

The next poll is a no-brainer.

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Open Thread–6/16/2012

 Posted by at 11:36 am  Blog News, Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 162012
 

Yesterday was a crazy day.  In addition to the hours I spent trying to resolve the editor problem (no response from the author yet), I spent three more in chat with my ISP, because their DNS servers were not connecting to my HSP email accounts.  To make matters worse, the temperature at my desk reached 94°, and today will be worse.  I’m current on replies.  Tomorrow I have a monthly grocery delivery, and my bad shoulder will make unpacking and storing them more difficult than normal.  Still I plan to blog normally.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:46 (average 4:35).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: Here’s The Sad Story Of A Guy Who Believed The Bush Tax Cuts Were Going To Lead To Jobs

16bushtaxcut

People who think so will look just like that before "Trickle Down" stops gushing up.

From Washington Post: Sen. John McCain said in an interview posted online Friday that “foreign money” was helping fellow Republican Mitt Romney’s presidential hopes and singled out one of his ally’s most generous supporters.

McCain, the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee, suggested casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s $10 million contribution to a pro-Romney super PAC was a conduit for Adelson to use profits from properties in Macau to shape American elections. McCain also criticized the Supreme Court ruling that allows individuals and corporations to make such unlimited donations to nominally independent political action committees.

Republicans are honest so infrequently, that it’s noteworthy when one tells the truth. Kudos.

From AP/Google: A Republican Wisconsin state senator asked Friday for a recount in the election that could hand Democrats their only victory in this month’s six recalls, and at least a temporary majority in the state Senate.

An official canvass this week showed incumbent Racine Republican Van Wanggaard trailing Democratic challenger John Lehman by 834 votes, or 1.2 percent of the nearly 72,000 votes cast.

Democrats had called on Wanggaard to concede, saying a recount would only waste taxpayer money and delay the inevitable. But Wanggaard’s campaign said it was concerned about reports of voting irregularities and wanted to ensure the outcome was accurate.

The law does not require a recount unless the difference is less than 1%.  If the totals were reversed, and the Democrat was asking, it would not happen.

Cartoon:

16Cartoon

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Open Thread–6/15/2012

 Posted by at 10:44 am  Blog News, Open Thread, Personal, Politics
Jun 152012
 

Since 6:00 this morning I’ve been looking for a solution to our comment editor problem.  I finally figured out that the editor will allow me (administrator) to embed a graphic, but when anyone else does it, the graphic shows in the editor, but does not pass through to the comment.  I’ve checked with my HSP, and the problem is with the plugin, not the blog.  I have a bug report posted in the author’s forum.  Nameless, if you need a graphic embedded, post the comment, email me the link to it, and tell me to which comment you want it added.  Hopefully it will be fixed soon .  Because I had to put so much into that effort, I shall post a couple articles today, but will not distribute them to sties like Care2 and SU until tomorrow.  I’m current on replies.  We’ll see about tomorrow tomorrow.

Jig Zone Puzzles: Yesterday’s took me 3:32 (average 4:30).  To do it click here.  Today’s took me 4:25 (average 5:35).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Short Takes:

From MoveOn: What Do Australians Understand 110,000 Times Better Than Americans Do?

15Australians

We still need to move forward to Single Payer, such as Medicare for all, but Obamacare is a start.

From NY Times: Conservatives love to pretend that there are vast armies of government bureaucrats doing who knows what; in reality, a majority of government workers are employed providing either education (teachers) or public protection (police officers and firefighters).

So would getting rid of teachers, police officers, and firefighters help the American people? Well, some Republicans would prefer to see Americans get less education; remember Rick Santorum’s description of colleges as “indoctrination mills”? Still, neither less education nor worse protection are issues the G.O.P. wants to run on.

And that’s why we need to keep pinning the truth onto them.  Click through for the rest of this excellent editorial by Paul Krugman.

From MSNBC: Female legislators silenced after speaking out against Michigan abortion bill.

 

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

Kudos to some very feisty Democrats. The Republican War on Women is clearly alive and well in the Totalitarian Managed Plutocracy of Snyderstan. The 1st Amendment does not apply in Republican dominated legislatures.

Cartoon:

15Cartoon

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Personal Update and Comment Editing–6/14

 Posted by at 7:31 am  Blog News
Jun 142012
 

TCCCThis will be today’s only article.  In a couple hours I leave for the doctor’s and will not return until mid afternoon.

A couple days ago, Nameless informed me that the upload file feature  in our comment editor was not working.  I had just installed a WordPress upgrade, and glitches with plugins do happen occasionally, so I followed my normal course to fix it.  I deactivated and reactivated the plugin, but that did not fix the problem.  So I deleted the plugin, intending to reinstall it.  What I did not know is that the old plugin had a security flaw that could have allowed a hacker to get into the back end files and trash the blog.  Rather than fix the plugin, the author abandoned it, pulled the download, and no longer supports it.  Therefore I could not reinstall that plugin, even if I wanted to do so, which I obviously do not.

I searched for replacements for three hours yesterday and three hours today.  I have only found one other plugin that allows users to edit comments, but it has a lot of compatibility issues and will not work with a rich text editor.  I found a pretty full featured rich text editor, which is currently in use.  It offers several editing features that are even more advanced than the old plugin.  You can still embed pictures, but to do it, you will need to first upload it to a photo directory and embed it here using a link.  I found nothing that allows people to delete their own comments, so that’s gone.

I’m inclined to keep it as is, but if you guys prefer, I can replace it with the plugin where you get to edit your own comments, but none of the advanced features.

What do you think?

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