Blog News – Page 65 – Politics Plus

Poll Results – 10/2/2009

Posted by TomCat at 1:59 am Blog News

Oct 022009

Here are the results of out most recent poll.

87 of you (50%) want ton reject any bill that does not contain a public option. 46 (26%) want a bill with no public option. By way of explanation, two of our articles were prominently placed in the Google News listings, prompting several comments from GOP spin-mavens under blank profiles. Tracking their visits revealed that a couple of them cleaned their cookies and voted several times to skew the results. To combat that, I changed polling applications. 30 (17%) of you want a public option, but think that less is better than nothing. 8 (5%) of you are still undecided. 4 (2%) of you don’t care. I fail to understand how anyone doesn’t care about this issue.

My heart is clearly with the plurality in this poll, but my vote went to “better than nothing”. I desperately want a public option to pass. However, it may be that too many Democratic Senators are in the pockets of greedy corporations to get it through. If, and only if that happens, I would accept a lesser bill that contained strict regulation over insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and absolutely no welfare for those companies. That would mean removing the mandate (requirement to buy insurance) and removing all the funding, except funding to states to expand Medicaid to cover the working poor.

How did you vote and why?

There is now a new poll up. It is the first in a series of short polls (7 – 10 days) intended establish a priority ranking of progressive concerns. I know I have left out several, because I brain-farted when putting it up, so if something else is your first choice, please choose other, and comment (in the poll itself) to identify the option. Thanks!

Monthly Report: 10/1/2009

Posted by TomCat at 2:21 am Blog News, Monthly Report

Oct 012009

Politics Plus returned to the Internet on September 5 as a brand new blog. I feel quite happy about our initial month.

We had 4,042 visitors and 5, 117 page views, averaging 135 visits and 171 views per day. That’s great from a standing start. Here’s a graph of visits and views.

Unfortunately, far too many of our visits were “pit stops”, but I hope that will change. Here’s a graph breaking down the last 500 visitors.

Our visitors come from all over the world. Here’s our ClustrMap.

Our 1,000th visitor was Mauigirl, 2,000th Stimson, 3,000th Annette, and 4,000th Mark. You’ll find a special section in our sidebar honoring them and linking to their blogs.

I have no idea how we’re ranked on Technorati. I’ve pinged them several times and emailed their support department. They have me on file as the owner of Politics Plus, but they still fail to recognize our existence.

You may wonder why I use the terms “we” and “our” while referring to Politics Plus, since this is a one-person blog. I assure you, I’m not doing so in the regal sense. The we in Politics Plus includes you. Without your readership and comments, this blog would be pointless. Whatever success this blog does and will enjoy is because of you, so please congratulate yourself.

Today there are three more articles for you. Enjoy!

Open Thread – Saturday 9/19/2009

Posted by TomCat at 4:02 am Blog News, Open Thread, Personal

Sep 192009

On a personal note, I’ll be a little bust today with real-life chores to do.

Following up yesterday’s article on Corporate Campaign Cash as Speech, yesterday the US Court of Appeals in Washington ruled that current laws violated the free speech rights of Emily’s list, a nonprofit corporation that backs women who are Democratic candidates and supports pro-choice issues. While I am all for what they do, I’m not going to act like a Republican and switch sides on issues depending on political context. Even a progressive nonprofit corporation is still a corporation, and corporations ought not have the same rights as humans. Like Judge Sotomayor said, SCOTUS needs to reexamine the notion that corporations have human rights without human responsibilities. To read AP article, Click Here.

I notices something interesting yesterday when examining our counter stats. We had a visit from the US Senate Sergeant At Arms office that lasted for six hours and forty five minutes, viewing mostly the article and comments on corporate cash as speech. It gratifies me to know that our opinions have reached the halls of power.

Yesterdays Jig-Zone puzzle was most appropriate for me. It took me 5:36 to complete. To try it, Click Here. Then comment and let us know how you liked it and how you did.

This is an open thread, so what would you like to discuss?

Have a great weekend!

Blog Changes

Posted by TomCat at 1:28 am Blog News, Personal

Sep 182009

I’m going to change the way I tried combining several stories under “In the News”, because those posts have been getting almost no views. I guess folks prefer to see what a story is about. So I’m going back to the old format of more posts, each with it’s own subject. The bottom post for the day will be things of personal interest.

I get a daily jigsaw puzzle from Jig-Zone. I’ll post them, at least for a few days to see if anyone enjoys it. I completed this one in 6:18. Feel free to comment with your time. To try it, click HERE.

Have a great day!

Newer Entries

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.