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Erich Bloodaxe BSN

Erich Bloodaxe BSN's Journal
Erich Bloodaxe BSN's Journal
October 17, 2015

Deray McKesson : Reflections on meeting with Senator Bernie Sanders and Secretary Hillary Clinton

Link to article

I chose GDP for this because it includes two of the candidates. But I don't post it to boost or attack either candidate, simply as a resource for folks. I think it shows both candidates still have quite a bit of work to do on this facet of the dysfunction in our country.

October 17, 2015

Why are people I put on full ignore showing up for me again?

I'm now seeing comments by random folks I put on full ignore some time ago. It's not a 'first in first out' issue - the very first person I put on ignore is still hidden from view, as are a number of the earliest ones.

Is there some hard cap on the number of people I can have on ignore, and once I hide another person behind the cap, it (seemingly randomly) chooses another person to switch back to 'unignore'?

I think I counted 252 people on my ignore list, although with all the page scrolling, I might have miscounted, in which case it could be 250. Is that a cap?

October 14, 2015

Tia Oso nailed it - the Black Lives Matter question was total softball.

From Twitter:

Tia Oso ?@Tia_Oso 5h 5 hours ago

Softball question #DemDebate #BlackLivesMatter . Way to let everyone off on the same old Dem political hook.


For being the burning issue even in our jaded media for most of the last year, that was a totally softball question, with no real follow-ups. 'GUNZ' got what, like 3-5 times as much airtime? Now admittedly, most of the black people being killed by cops (or cop wannabes) are being killed with guns, but that was not the focus of the 'GUNZ' question.

Black Lives Matter needs more substantive debate time in the remaining debates, and more than just a single question that basically lets candidates say 'Black Lives Matter' good or 'Black Lives Matter' bad. The CampaignZero points would be a good starting point for real debate. (The one on police issues, obviously, not the one about medical errors that also pops up on Google searches.)

(And btw, softball or not, Webb didn't even to be swinging at the ball, I wasn't even sure he'd picked up the bat.)
October 11, 2015

Bernie just had the lead 12 minutes or so of PoliticsNation with Rev Sharpton.

It was a great interview, and Sharpton at one point, when bringing up the pushed meme about Bernie being bad with minorities came out with something like 'You, out of all of the candidates have the best record on civil rights by far'. Bernie embraced the 'socialist' label, he didn't run from it. He talked about the need to reform the justice system, to get young minorities into further education and jobs, not jails. He put forth his economic message clearly and civilly, and said 'That's a fair question' a number of times as he led into his answers. And, it just occurred to me, he actually ANSWERED every single question he was asked. He didn't simply pull the usual political BS almost every candidate pulls of essentially ignoring the questions to pivot and simply spit out talking points that they wanted out. What he said was a direct response to what he was asked.

I hope somebody gets the segment up on YouTube soon, and someone here can link it.

(ETA: Ask and you shall receive - see comment #8 for link to video.)

October 2, 2015

Anybody else working on their winter garden?

I've been getting a bed ready to plant my garlic, and am just about ready. Dug the red clover under, expanded the bed and edged it with some of the 6 inch across or so maple logs left over from cutting down the tree last winter. Still going to scatter some fertilizer and maybe mix in some compost, then it's time for the garlic to go in.

Now that the bed's bigger, I'm thinking I'll have space to add some non-garlic, but I'm not sure just what I'll go with.

Who else is working on what?

October 2, 2015

Hillary Clinton's support from black voters plunges in a new poll.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/10/01/hillary-clintons-support-from-black-voters-plunges-in-a-new-poll/?postshare=4081443797590956

Over the course of the still-awfully young Democratic primary season, one demographic split has been repeated over and over again: Non-whites have consistently been more supportive of Hillary Clinton than whites.

That's one reason that Bernie Sanders's strength in Iowa and New Hampshire isn't as worrisome as it might otherwise be for Clinton backers; in states with less-heavily white populations -- a.k.a. most of the rest of the country -- Clinton should conceivably do better.

A new poll from Suffolk University and USA Today, though, suggests a big shift among African Americans that could undermine that confidence. We have to note up front that this is one poll, with large margins of error on black responses. That said, the shift is surprising.


Offered without comment.
September 30, 2015

Lawsuit: Your Candy Bar Was Made By Child Slaves

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/30/lawsuit-your-candy-bar-was-made-by-child-slaves.html

Well worth a read, and a change in plans for Halloween. I was planning to hand out the usual snickers, kitkats, hershey's special dark and the like. I can't in good conscience now, I'd feel like a total ghoul, handing out candy made with child slave labour to other children. I'll have to rethink what I'm handing out.

Thanks to @rodimusprime on twitter for the link.

It is this irony that serves as the motivation behind a class action lawsuit filed Monday against Hershey and two of its competitors, Mars and Nestle. The complaints, filed by three California residents, allege that the companies are guilty of false advertising for failing to disclose the use of child slavery on their packaging. Without it, the plaintiffs claim, the companies are deceiving consumers into “unwittingly” supporting the child slave labor trade.

The boys’ stories are sickeningly graphic. Before beatings, the boys say they were stripped naked and tied up. They were then pummeled with a variety of weapons, from fists and feet to belts and whips. In the film, some of the boys get up and imitate the beatings. Others stand to reveal hundreds of scars lining their backs and torsos—some still bloody and scabbed. They get quiet when the filmmakers ask whether any are beaten today and say some are simply “taken away.”

Asked what he’d say to the billions who eat chocolate worldwide (most of the boys have never tried it), one boy replies: “They enjoy something I suffered to make; I worked hard for them but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh.” Toward the end of the segment, the filmmakers meet with one of the “slave masters,” who admits he purchased the young boys and that some of his men routinely beat them. His reasoning: He is paid a low price for the cocoa and thus needs to harvest as much of it as he possibly can.


ETA: A link to a list of chocolate *probably* not made using exploitative labour. This site points out that most organic cocoa comes from Latin America, which does not have documented issues with slave labour on cocoa plantations.

http://www.foodispower.org/chocolate-list/
September 24, 2015

Rick Perry's latest 'ooops' moment!

This morning on Morning Joe, the hosts were talking to Rick Perry, who was saying sure, he'd support and vote for whoever came out of the Republican primary, because when you look at the other side, whether it's Bernie Sanders, or Joe Biden, or (pauses in thought) some other candidate, ...'

September 19, 2015

GoFundMe campaign for beagle probably hit by a car that needs corrective surgery.

Just sharing a campaign I just contributed to

https://www.gofundme.com/ky3aqfe8

Note that this is NOT one of my beagles, but I'm pro-beagle in general.

Bunny, the beagle in question, appears to have had a pretty tough time, having apparently been hit by a car and then left to heal on her own. It's a wonder she's alive at all, but her new caregivers have spoken to a surgeon who thinks he can get her front legs functional again, if of course, they can raise the money for the surgery. They seem to have gotten a good chunk of it together, but more is needed to get her across the finish line and into surgery. I know DU has plenty of kind hearts, so I thought I'd share this one here.

September 13, 2015

Well, MSNBC continues to play 'Smear the Sanders'.

Up w/ Kornacki on in the background, the last segment had a 'Do the Democrats need a White Knight?' chyron, talking about how Dems might need someone else to enter the race to 'save' them from Bernie Sanders since Hillary was tanking. Then they went on to 'Sanders plans for the high holy days'. To first make sure you knew he was a Jew, and then to have the Jewish guy on panel tell you that he was a 'bad Jew' because instead of spending Rosh Hashanah going to services, Bernie will be delivering a talk at a Christian university.

Nothing like being 'subtle', eh, guys?

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Member since: Sat Mar 15, 2014, 09:23 AM
Number of posts: 14,733

About Erich Bloodaxe BSN

Erich S Bloodaxe, PhD, MS, BS, BA, BSN, ADN, RN. (It took me a while to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life ;) Democratic socialist by nature, if not by registration atm. Spent a lot of of time on Daily Kos, decided I needed to branch out a bit. Currently spending more time at jackpineradicals.org
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