I will be offline for at least two days, while I change computers. The blog will be unattended from now until shortly after midnight on either Thursday or Friday morning. So please don’t worry, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do! 😉
Oct 172011
Oct 162011
Here are the results of the Primary moving poll.
And here are your comments.
From AnnH on October 2, 2011 at 3:15 pm.
I am in the 4% voting "Yes" only because I’m over allowing the uber-right in Iowa and South Carolina decide who the Republican candidate is going to be — remember 2000 S. Carolina, which, thanks to Carl Rove’s dirty trick, anointed G.W. as the official candidate –we’re not over it yet.
From Liisa G. on September 30, 2011 at 11:47 am.
I think it’s just to promote the state for tourism.
The majority of you voted that moving up primaries is a bad idea.
I voted with the majority because, whenever a state moves it up to gain advantage, the states that were earlier just move too to recover their advantage. The only net effect is to make campaign season longer. Longer campaigns cost more money, giving lobbyists and special interests more influence. Longer campaigns also shorten the time when politicians can get something done rather than obstruct to gain advantage, but Republicans have made that a constant tactic in recent years.
I would like to see party conventions held in early August, with states split into three equal (by electoral votes) groups for primaries in early May, June and July. States would rotate months so no state would have an unfair advantage as some do now.
Our new poll is on which Republican you think will win their nomination. Enjoy.
Oct 132011
Yesterday I was quite busy. I located the installation routines for over fifty of the programs I use, downloaded them, and burned them onto a DVD to minimize my down time next week, when I change computers. I tried to log on to the blog to moderate comments and couldn’t get in. I called my HSP and learned the problem was that yesterday’s article on the American Jobs Act went viral and had over 10,000 readers, most before noon. The traffic was so heavy that it overloaded the server. They advised me to install a caching plugin that keeps copies of all the blog’s pages in HTML, updating them when they change to lessen the load on the blog’s database, and therefore, the servers. That should make such problems less likely in the future and improve blog performance. I’m sorry some of you had a database error message, when trying to access PP. I’m current on replies. Today I’ll continue to prepare for changing computers next week.
Jig-Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 5:06 (average 5:20). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Reuters: A strong majority of Americans are aware of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests against U.S. economic inequality and a majority either view them favorably or do not have an opinion about them, a Reuters/Ipsos poll said on Wednesday.
Eighty-two percent of Americans have heard of the protest movement, and 38 percent feel favorably toward it, the poll found. Thirty-five percent are undecided, and about one-fourth — 24 percent — are unfavorable.
What amazes me is that 18% have never heard of it.
From Politico: In a three-page statement released Wednesday afternoon, the New Hampshire secretary of state reiterated his independence and said he’ll move the primary up as far as necessary to maintain first-in-the-nation status and comply with state law.
“If Nevada does not adjust its caucus date to a later time, I cannot rule out the possibility of a December primary,” Gardner wrote.
At this rate, campaign season will be 365 days a year, 24/7.
From Think Progress: The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), an agency whose three commissioners are appointed by climate denier Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), has censored a Texas climate scientist’s attempts to warn the public about the threat of global warming to the state’s residents. Rice University oceanographer John Anderson withdrew his article on the Galveston Bay from a collection commissioned by TCEQ after the agency stripped all mentions of climate change, sea level rise, and other man-made impacts on the environment.
Republicans love gutting scientific evidence and promoting folklore as science.
Cartoon:
Oct 122011
Yesterday I did housework and worked with my computer supplier to design a new custom built system. My old notebook is running hot and has been used so much that many of the letters have worn off the keyboard. Replacing it now will extend its life for use outside my home. Fortunately, I planned for this long ago and have put a few dollars away for it every month since the day I bought the old system. After I post articles in the wee hours of the morning next Monday, there will be no new articles, replies, or moderation until the new system is fully up and running. I’ll take the notebook in Monday morning. They will copy data files from the notebook to the new system and deliver it and the notebook next Tuesday. Then I have to reinstall all the software programs and should finish sometime Wednesday. Barring unforeseen difficulties, I should be posting again in the wee hours of next Thursday morning, so the whole process will probably cause a two day interruption. I’m current on replies. Today I will be making a list of software to replace. and downloading the install programs to a CD.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 3:41 (average 5:21). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Fantasy Football Report:
Here’s the latest from Lefty Blog Friends, our fantasy football league.
Scores:
TomCat Teabag Trashers
Texans Will Rise Again
122.30
96.40
ManOnDogSantorum
Progressive Underdogs
121.84
119.96
hugos renegades
Playing without a helmet
92.86
101.44
Standings:
Points
Rank
Team Name
W-L-T
Pct
Streak
Waiver
For
Against
1 (1)
ManOnDogSantorum
4-1-0
.800
W4
6
645.66
603.56
2 (2)
Progressive Underdogs
4-1-0
.800
L1
5
635.82
547.50
3 (3)
hugos renegades
3-2-0
.600
L1
4
619.26
587.76
4 (4)
TomCat Teabag Trashers
2-3-0
.400
W1
3
626.04
573.54
5 (5)
Playing without a helmet
2-3-0
.400
W1
2
533.34
607.94
6 (6)
Texans Will Rise Again
0-5-0
.000
L5
1
478.04
617.86
Short Takes:
From AP/Google: A coalition of more than 150 Texas school districts said Tuesday it has filed a lawsuit against the state over a school funding system it says is unfair, inefficient and unconstitutional.
The coalition represents more than one in 10 Texas districts. It accuses lawmakers of turning a blind eye to the state’s troubled school financing system for years and exacerbating the flaws this summer when they slashed public school spending by more than $4 billion to close a massive budget gap.
As President, Perry would undoubtedly help education in the US the way he has in Texas.
From AP/Google: The Republican speaker of the Wisconsin otstate Assembly, one of the key backers of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal curbing bargaining rights for public unions, announced Tuesday that he is running for the U.S. Senate.
Jeff Fitzgerald said in an interview with The Associated Press that he believes his role in passing that law is his largest asset heading into the race. The proposal drew protests as large as 100,000 people and made Wisconsin the center of a national fight over union rights.
This is the Fitz in Fitzwalkerstan. Defeating this Koch sucker is imperative.
From Washington Post: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie endorsed former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in New Hampshire today, providing the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination with a boost on the verge of tonight’s New Hampshire debate.
Since they are both Corporocons and Plutocons, I’m not surprised.
Cartoon:
Oct 062011
Yesterday I went bug hunting. While sleuthing the mystery of the missing smileys, I decided to look at other themes as well. I stripped the blog down to a bare bones installation and reinstalled plugins one at a time. I opted not to reinstall wp-social blogroll, because reloading its info every time any page is refreshed was cumbersome. I opted not to reinstall sendlove.to, because nobody was using it. I tried to reinstall the old smiley toolbar, but it still does not work with our graphical comment editor. I tested several different themes, but none met my needs like Suffusion, so I reinstalled and reconfigured that. After all that, smileys still did not work, so I dug deeper and found that one of the smiley toolbars, that I had tested had tested, corrupted the smiley source graphics on the server. I replaced them and smileys are back. 🙂 I missed sleep. I got nothing else done. I’m current on replies. Today I gave three days of tasks to do.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 4:39 (average 5:04). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Wired: Steven Paul Jobs, co-founder, chairman and former chief executive of Apple Inc., passed away Wednesday.
A visionary inventor and entrepreneur, it would be impossible to overstate Steve Jobs’ impact on technology and how we use it. Apple’s mercurial, mysterious leader did more than reshape his entire industry: he completely changed how we interact with technology. He made gadgets easy to use, gorgeous to behold and essential to own. He made things we absolutely wanted, long before we even knew we wanted them. Jobs’ utter dedication to how people think, touch, feel and interact with machines dictated even the smallest detail of the computers Apple built and the software it wrote.
He did help change the face of computing. Condolences to those who loved him.
From Reuters: Labor unions including nurses, and transit workers were set to join the growing anti-Wall Street movement march on Wednesday through New York’s financial district, and some college students walked out of classes in solidarity.
Sadly. I have heard reports of violence, but nothing definitive as yet.
From Washington Post: A House committee vote Wednesday set in motion the final act of the long drama of approving free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama.
The Ways and Means Committee votes for the three agreements set the stage for full House approval next week and Senate votes in the near future.
See today’s cartoon.
Cartoon:
Oct 042011
Yesterday I slept late, because I got to bed late. I puttered most of the day, answered my email backlog, tested several smiley toolbars without finding one compatible with our graphic comment editing plugin, designed a smiley instruction page, and looked for cartoon graphics. Then a good friend, who has suffered some personal difficulties called, we talked for a long time, and that I missed my sleep doesn’t matter. I’m current with replies. Tomorrow is paperwork day.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today it took me 3:14 (average 4:24). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Using Smileys:
I created a new page of instructions for using WordPress smileys today. Look at the top of the left sidebar, right-click the link and open the page in a new tab. It lists the different smileys and the keyboard shortcuts to insert them into a comment. It is also a picture that you can download and print.
Short Takes:
From Boston Globe: Elizabeth Warren holds a commanding lead over her rivals for next year’s Democratic US Senate nomination and would be in a dead heat with Republican Scott Brown in the 2012 general election, according to a poll released last night.
Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who recently left the Obama administration, would get 36 percent of the vote among Democratic primary voters while none of her five opponents would get more than 5 percent, according to the UMass Lowell-Boston Herald Poll.
The poll of 1,000 registered voters reached randomly by landline and cell phone said Brown would lead Warren 41 percent to 38 percent, which is within the margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
She’s doing well, considering that she just entered the race, but not well enough for us to become complacent.
From Reuters: From the traditional "swing" states of Florida and Ohio to a typically Republican-leaning state like Arizona, Democrat Obama’s political supporters are opening offices, engaging voters and rallying volunteers to create a nationwide network, even in areas unfriendly to their candidate’s cause.
The strategy is similar to Obama’s successful 2008 campaign, but it is still unorthodox.
To win the White House, traditional presidential campaigns focus their attention on a handful of states that typically swing between Republican and Democratic candidates, working to earn at least 270 of the states’ 538 "electoral votes" that determine the ultimate winner.
I prefer the 50 state strategy that he is using. Voters in non-swing states will not become engaged, if they believe their votes do not matter enough to warrant attention. Turnout is critical for matters down the ballot other than the Presidential race.
From News Hounds: Fox Nation never wastes an opportunity to showcase what they feel are blacks behaving badly as it appeals to their racist readers who still hold to Jim Crow family values which feature the belief that blacks can’t control themselves. Good Christian Republican whites who transgress are not seen on Fox Nation which, I guess, believes that said transgressions are just good Christian man needs. One of the lede "culture" threads on today’s Fox Nation is a link [Murdoch delinked] to a TMZ article about a sex tape done by the deceased black rapper Tupac. Who cares? Tupac isn’t a political figure like Steve Stevlic, head of the Chicago Tea Party whom right wing radio host Mark Levin referred to as "terrific." Information has surfaced about last Steve Stevlic’s arrest, last year, for soliciting a prostitute. The charges were dropped after Stevlic agreed to go to a rehab program for "johns." As a result of the report, broken by Gawker, family values guy Stevlic didn’t show up at a big Illinois Tea Party conference which he helped organize.
On Faux Noise, peccadillos of a black rapper outweigh scandals of Republican hypocrites every time.
Cartoon:
Oct 022011
In September, Politics Plus performed very well. Uniques and visits were up, the third highest this year. Page views, hits and bandwidth were all time record highs. I consider page views most important, because to generate more than one page view on a visit, someone has to open other articles to actually read your comments.
Here are our basic stats:
In addition we also had 189,927 page views, 268,069 hits and and 8.98 GB of external traffic. These are mainly from people reading articles from our RSS feed instead of coming to the site to do so.
Here is our most recent Clustrmap, last updated on October 1.
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 down from 232 seconds last month:
Number of visits: 45,606 – Average: 211 s
Number of visits
Percent
0s-30s
37,754
82.7 %
30s-2mn
2,111
4.6 %
2mn-5mn
1,170
2.5 %
5mn-15mn
1,433
3.1 %
15mn-30mn
992
2.1 %
30mn-1h
1,369
3 %
1h+
777
1.7 %
That’s normal, because more visitors usually include more pit stops.
Search engine referrals were up, except for Stumbleupon.
22 different referring search engines
Pages
Percent
Hits
Percent
Stumbleupon (Social Bookmark)
5472
48.2 %
6,536
44 %
5088
44.8 %
7,210
48.5 %
286
2.5 %
286
1.9 %
164
1.4 %
258
1.7 %
120
1 %
175
1.1 %
51
0.4 %
51
0.3 %
44
0.3 %
65
0.4 %
42
0.3 %
65
0.4 %
Unknown search engines
41
0.3 %
42
0.2 %
21
0.1 %
21
0.1 %
Yandex
8
0 %
28
0.1 %
4
0 %
10
0 %
Dogpile
2
0 %
3
0 %
2
0 %
3
0 %
Earth Link
1
0 %
1
0 %
MetaCrawler (Metamoteur)
1
0 %
1
0 %
1
0 %
1
0 %
1
0 %
3
0 %
Kvasir
1
0 %
1
0 %
1
0 %
1
0 %
Mamma
30
0.2 %
Go.com
51
0.3 %
Our top five non-blog referrers are:
http://www.reddit.com/ 9,450+
http://www.care2.com/ 4,650+
http://www.buzzflash.net/ 2,500+
Our top 15 blog referrers are:
http://www.randirhodes.com/main.html
http://america-weeps.blogspot.com/
http://parsleyspics.blogspot.com/
http://themanwhowalksalonewalksfaster.blogspot.com/
http://infidel753.blogspot.com/
http://whohijackedourcountry.blogspot.com/
http://annette-justmylittlepieceoftheworld.blogspot.com/
http://jackjodell53.wordpress.com/
http://republic-of-gilead.blogspot.com/
http://reconstitution.us/rcnew/
http://www.oakcreekforum.blogspot.com/
http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/
There are extras, because there was a three way 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 September are not missing this time, because I actually remembered to copy them off in time on the night of the 30th. Here they are:
Lynn Squance (125)
Patty (89)
Phyllis (64)
SoINeedAName (57)
lee (46)
Memphis Johnny (38)
Lisa G. (33)
AnnH (25)
Blue (14)
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. Those who leave their URLs in their comments, get linkey love.
Technorati makes little sense again this month. Our performance was up, but our ratings remained the same, except that they restored our World rating for reasons unknown. We are still B list globally, but A list in both of our intended categories. This site’s authorities across Technorati:
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This site’s authorities across Technorati: |
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We have 471,917 links on other websites, down from 507,580 last month.
We have 2,812 articles and 24,o83 comments, as of midnight 10/1.
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 e mail address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that image will be your avatar.
We have a plug-in called sendlove.to. To vote or give your opinion about any of the famous people in an article, go to the comments page and click the tab for that person. Register using your Google, Facebook or Twitter ID. It’s quite enjoyable, and voting Republicans down is a great stress reliever. Have any of you uses this and how do you like it?
I replaced the standard comment editor with a full featured graphic editor that give you a wide range of ways you can express yourselves, including pictures. Sadly, I learned yesterday that it conflicts with our smiley button. If I cannot find a compatible add-in, I’ll post a separate page listing text shortcuts for smilies that you can keep open in a different tab. Please be patient. I’ll do it as soon as time permits.
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 have even written 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.
Oct 012011
Here are the results of the Should non-voters complain poll.
And here are your comments
From Ryan on September 29, 2011 at 12:04 am.
As Noam Chomsky puts it, "It’s okay to vote if you have a choice."
By not voting you are making your statement of apathy and that "none of the above" are going to solve the problems that affect you day to day.
From Lisa G. on September 28, 2011 at 7:43 pm.
I still think by not voting, your voice is not heard. So yes, I think by not voting, you can’t complain. And that’s to say that you can complain about either side – I voted for Obama and complain about him plenty.
From jon hoy on September 26, 2011 at 4:18 am.
When you get candidates that crawl from out of the wood work no one has seen before, why vote.
From Bill McCoy on September 20, 2011 at 1:01 pm.
I almost always vote, even in relatively unimportant elections. However, not voting because none of the candidates is fit to receive a vote, is also a form of voting. I would really like to see "none of the above" added as a voting choice. After "none…" wins a few races, maybe something would be done.
From John Coleman on September 20, 2011 at 12:48 pm.
I used to think one should vote.
When no candidate represents you, there is nobody to vote for.
Simply voting against the greater evil is an impotent act.
From Bull Slam on September 17, 2011 at 11:54 am.
"The price for not paying attention to politics is to be ruled by inferior men."
Socrates/Plato
No is the winner by an almost three to one margin.
I voted No. The “nobody represents me” argument does not hold water. Such people seem to expect that people who agree with them on every issue ought to magically appear on the ballot, and if they do not, it abrogates their responsibility. There has never been and never will be a perfect candidate, although Bernie and Elizabeth are damn close! Voting involves picking the candidate who is closest to you that has a reasonable chance to win. Voting for a sure loser helps the candidate who is farthest from you. (There are rare situations in locales where Republicans control the local Democratic party and put up a straw candidate. These are exceptions.) In Oregon, we get good candidates from which to choose on the left, because we invest the effort to make it happen. And, if you have done that and failed, vote anyway. Hell, in 1988 I voted for my cat for President. I’m sorry to report that the cat lost. In 2010, many on the left stayed home. Look what happened. The punishment for not voting is Republican rule.
The new poll is on the timing of primaries. Enjoy!