Playinghardball

Playinghardball's Journal

November 7, 2014

Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a bill to designate "Democracy Day

Make Election Day a National Holiday

Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a bill to designate "Democracy Day" as a national election holiday to make it easier for Americans to vote.

Nationwide, preliminary indications are that the total turnout for the 2014 elections was only 36.6 percent, according to the United States Elections Project at the University of Florida.

In America, we should be celebrating our democracy and doing everything possible to make it easier for people to participate in the political process. Election Day should be a national holiday so that everyone has the time and opportunity to vote. While this would not be a cure-all, it would indicate a national commitment to create a more vibrant democracy.

We should not be satisfied with a "democracy" in which more than 60 percent of our people don't vote and some 80 percent of young people and low-income Americans fail to vote. We can and must do better than that. While we must also focus on campaign finance reform and public funding of elections, establishing an Election Day holiday would be an important step forward.

http://www.sanders.senate.gov/democracyday

November 7, 2014

Luckovich toon: Disengaged

November 7, 2014

Elixabeth Warren quote

Quote here: http://elizabethwarren.com/blog/no-matter-what-we-fight

November 7, 2014

Reaction Test

Driving Reaction Time for Older People

I know all of you are very good drivers, so here is a fun test to see how good your speed is!

The automobile driving manual says the average driver’s reaction time is .75 seconds or 1 car length for every 10 mph.

Test your average reaction time. Be careful, this can be addictive! You will be surprised at how slow you really are.

JUST CLICK ON THE DART WHEN THE SHEEP STARTS TO RUN ….. THERE ARE 5 SHEEP

Click here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sleep/sheep/reaction_version5.swf

November 6, 2014

South Carolina exit polls ask voters whether blacks are getting too uppity about equality

n exit poll in South Carolina being criticized after voters in Charleston, Columbia, Greenville, and Spartanburg were asked a series of questions about race and slavery, WSPA reports.

Voters were asked whether “blacks are getting too demanding in their push for equal rights”:

The poll was conducted by a political scientist from Clemson University, David Woodard, who insisted that it was not meant to be provocative.

“It was designed to take advantage of a political moment of Senator Tim Scott’s election as the first African-American from a southern state since reconstruction,” he told WSPA.

But many voters were, in fact, provoked by questions that asked them to “agree” or “disagree” with statements like, “it’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder, they could be as well as whites.”

The political scientist who asked them to do so said the questions have been used by pollsters for decades — and they are taken, word-for-word, from the Modern Racism Scale, an analytic tool used to gauge an individual’s non-conscious biases.

This exit poll is not, however, the first time Woodard has stirred up a racially based controversy.

>snip<

Watch a report on the exit polls via WSPA below.

]More here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/south-carolina-exit-polls-asks-voters-whether-blacks-are-getting-too-uppity-about-equality/

November 6, 2014

B. Sanders tells our new GOP overlords: Work for the middle class, not just the rich who control you

ndependent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday advised Republicans not to use their newly-won control of Congress to only serve the wealthy donors that had financed their campaigns.

“The American people are extremely dissatisfied for good reasons at the state of the economy,” Sanders told CNN host Wolf Blitzer. “The middle class continues to collapse. That’s been a 30-year collapse. The gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider. Real unemployment is close to 12 percent.”

According to the self-described socialist, the Republicans won big in Tuesday’s midterms because they were able to blame President Barack Obama for the country’s problems.

“What they also managed to do — and a brilliant political strategy — is not tell us what their agenda is,” he explained. “All over the country in conservative states, people said let’s raise the minimum wage to, at least, a living wage. What’s the Republican position on that? They’re against that.”

“Is the Republican Party going to do what the American people want?” Sanders asked. “The American people do not want more tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations. Is the Republican Party going to poison the well by going forward at a time of massive wealth and income inequality, giving more tax breaks to people who don’t need it?”

The senator agreed that bipartisan legislation on things like immigration reform was the “preferable route” to executive action if Republicans were willing to work with the president.

“But let’s not turn our backs on the middle class of this country and ignore the enormous economic problems they’re facing,” he said. “Let’s not simply work for the rich and the big campaign contributors who control the United States Congress. If we can do that, and respond to the needs and the pain of the American people, you know what, I think you’ll suddenly find Congress is regarded a lot more favorably.”

Sanders said that he was seriously thinking about a 2016 presidential run, but he wanted to be sure that his supporters were ready to take on powerful conservative donors like the Koch brothers.

More here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/bernie-sanders-tells-our-new-gop-overlords-work-for-the-middle-class-not-just-the-rich-who-control-you/

November 6, 2014