Want a closer look at the Obama portraits? Found these high-quality images on the CNN website.

Other works by the artists who painted the portraits of Michelle and Barack Obama

I just watched the Obamas' portrait unveiling, and I was curious to see some of the other works by the artists who painted the portraits. Might provide some interesting context to the portraits unveiled today...

Amy Sherald
Painted Michelle Obama's portrait

Website: http://www.amysherald.com










Kehinde Wiley
Painted Barack Obama's portrait

http://kehindewiley.com/

Want to help Democrats flip another Republican-held seat in 2017? *CLICK HERE NOW*

A few days ago a close friend invited me to a meet-and-greet at his home with David Reid, the Democratic challenger in District 32 of the Virginia House of Delegates. Virginia is one of the very few states in the country that holds their state-level elections during odd-numbered years. So THIS YEAR is an election year in Virginia.

Virginia is classic purple state where both parties are closely matched. Democrats won the last three presidential races there, and we currently hold the top three statewide offices (governor and 2 US Senators). But Republicans have successfully gerrymandered the state so they hold both houses of the state legislature. The Virginia House of Delegates is only one vote away from a Republican super-majority. So any seats we can pick-up will make a huge difference.

Virginia District 32 is currently held by a conservative Republican, but it is a politically moderate suburb of Washington, DC, that supported Hillary Clinton by 9 points in the 2016 presidential election. David Reid is an inspiring, progressive candidate who is in a strong position to win the election this November, and flip the seat from red to blue.



I had the privilege to meet David and I was really impressed by this life story and his campaign.

He was born in Appalachia, and spent much of his childhood in foster care. As an adult he was the first person in his family to graduate from college. After college he joined the US Navy Reserve, and served as a Naval Intelligence Officer for 23 years. He volunteers as a youth soccer coach, and volunteers at a local food pantry.

His priorities include investing in K-12 education, expanding Medicaid in Virginia, making college more affordable, protecting the environment, protecting the right to choose, supporting diversity, and reducing gun violence.

We all know that there are many worthy Democratic candidates, and you can't possibly support all of them with your donations. Where can your donation make the greatest impact? I believe that David Reid is worthy of your support. I donated to his campaign and I think you should too.

1) He is a highly qualified candidate with an inspiring life story.
2) He cares about the issues I care about.
3) His district leans Democratic but has a Republican incumbent, so we have a real shot at a pick-up.
4) A good showing in Virginia in 2017 will set the stage for more Democratic gains in 2018.

David's campaign has a fundraising deadline this Saturday, and his finance director says they are short of their goal. They will need lots of resources to compete in a very expensive district.

Please take a moment to donate to David Reid right now. Whether you can spare $5 or $2,500 you can help make a difference:

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/reid4delegate



And even if you can't donate, please kick and recommend this thread so more people can see it.

Thank you.

David Allen
DU Administrator

Democratic Underground was vandalized by a script attack on Wednesday afternoon 5/17

Earlier this evening we suffered a script attack that vandalized some of our members' posts with a video message about a right-wing fringe conspiracy theory.

Our software detected the issue and automatically banned the accounts (and reset the passwords) of those members whose posts were vandalized. This is a safety precaution we built into our software to limit damage from attacks like this. We apologize for the inconvenience. Those accounts have all been reinstated. ***See edit below***

The hacker did not gain access to any of your personal data. The hacker did not gain access to any of our website's administrative functions or data.

The vast majority of DU accounts were not affected. Most of you should be able to log back onto the site using the same password you had before. If our software does not accept your password then you will need to use our Lost Password function to get a temporary password assigned to you in order to log in.

We have temporarily turned off the ability to include HTML code in your posts. This is a short-term measure to make the site more secure while we work on a more permanent fix.

If you have any questions or comments about the hack, please post them in this thread.

As always, thank you for your patience and understanding. You all are the best.

Skinner, EarlG, Elad
DU Administrators

*** EDIT: It has come to our attention that some banned accounts have not been reinstated. We are trying to figure out which ones we missed. If you were revoked last evening and have not been reinstated send us an email so we can get you back: admin@democraticunderground.com

Tillerson: "I would have no way to know" if Russians bugged Oval Office

Source: The Hill

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday acknowledged that he would have "no way to know" if the Russian government had bugged the Oval Office during President Trump's meeting with Russia's foreign minister and ambassador last week.

"I would have no way to know that," Tillerson said when asked by NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell about the possibility of Kremlin surveillance of the meeting.

The admission from Tillerson followed Russian President Vladimir Putin's offer to provide to members of Congress a transcript of Trump's meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump had divulged highly classified intelligence to the Russian officials during the meeting. Reports on Tuesday revealed that Israel was the source of that intelligence.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/333824-tillerson-i-would-have-no-way-to-know-if-russians-bugged-oval-office

Trump photo ops today are Russian Foreign Minister, Russian Ambassador AND Henry Kissinger.

The Dog Breed Family Tree

Cell: Genomic Analyses Reveal the Influence of Geographic Origin, Migration, and Hybridization on Modern Dog Breed Development
http://bit.ly/2qbaPk7

NYT: Some Surprising Dog Breeds Have Ancient American Heritage
https://nyti.ms/2q1plM5

NYT is tracking how all 100 senators vote on Gorsuch Nomination and Nuclear Option

Updating live with all the votes:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/06/us/politics/gorsuch-supreme-court-vote.html

Trump freaks out before Comey testimoney: Accuses Clinton campaign of contact with Russia

Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
What about all of the contact with the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Also, is it true that the DNC would not let the FBI in to look?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/843813078076719107

DU had unexpected downtime this afternoon (March 6)

The Democratic Underground website had unexpected downtime this afternoon from approximately 4:30PM to 5:30PM ET. This downtime was an unintended consequence of a minor configuration change we made to our database server earlier today. This configuration change caused us to run out of hard disk space for some of our server logs, which in turn caused the site to crash. The problem has now been fixed.

The site has not been compromised in any way. We were not hacked. No data was lost.

We apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Skinner
DU Administrator