yallerdawg

yallerdawg's Journal

November 20, 2016

America is about to become one big Alabama

TexasTowelie!

Source: Alabama Political Reporter, by Josh Moon

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That’s right, prepare for America to be a gigantic version of Alabama when this whole thing is over.

Already, president-elect Trump has begun staffing his White House team with some of the biggest racists, misogynists and bigots working in politics today.

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Because here in Alabama, we’ve been governed by people just like that since the day the state was founded. And since that first day, those people have set about turning Alabama into a state our own governor described as last in everything good, first in everything bad.

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Let me give you an example: Alabama’s former Speaker of the House once complained in an email about ethics laws he had helped pass, as he was also discussing ways to subvert those laws legally, as he was also subverting those laws illegally. All because he simply couldn’t afford to live on the measly $200,000-plus annual salary he was earning.

This is the level of stupid that’s about to go national.

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In Alabama, we have seen all sorts of stupid bills presented and passed simply to ward off the newest urban legend in Crazy Conservative Town.

We’ve stopped the U.N. gun ban, which wasn’t a thing. We stopped President Obama from passing gun laws that he had never proposed. This past election we actually voted on a constitutional amendment making the state “right to work,” even though it already is. And we’ve ensured more Christian rights that were never in danger than I can count.

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They won’t create a better economy, because conservative policies that move higher tax burdens to the middle class and poor have never – not once in the entire history of this country – produced a better economy.

They won’t make the water or air cleaner. They won’t do anything about the very real issue of climate change. They won’t protect anyone different from them from anything, and will routinely classify discrimination complaints as “whining.” And they won’t do anything to address the long-term issues affecting education.

So, buckle up, America, it’s gonna be bumpy.

*****

Read it all at: http://www.alreporter.com/america-is-about-to-become-one-big-alabama/

November 19, 2016

Another DU attack - on Wiki?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Underground

November 19, 2016

Obama loyalists plot Trump resistance

Alumni of the Obama White House spent days mourning Trump's win. Now they're ready to fight.

Source: Politico, by Sarah Wheaton

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. There’d be a wave election to sweep away Trump’s divisive rhetoric and Republican obstruction all at once. The people who have spent the last decade sweating it out for Obama – in many cases most of their adult lives – could finally lead normal lives, his legacy safely in the hands of the first woman president.

The talks are all early, but a few broad themes have emerged. One is protecting the people most targeted by Trump’s policies and rhetoric. How to block a deportation force, for example? Could Vice President Joe Biden leads an anti-domestic violence campaign? Then there are the Obama policies that are most at-risk: the health law, his climate regulation. Finally, with Democratic ranks decimated not only at the federal level, but in statehouses as well, there’s a significant new emphasis on supporting alumni who are considering running for office.

Over the past 10 years, Obama alumni have spread throughout the government, the advocacy world, and influential parts of the private sector, including at Google and Facebook. That means there’s a lot diverse talent to harness.

“The president is committed to staying in touch with this group with some regularity in the months and years ahead,” Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe told OFA members on the call. In fact, Plouffe added, after the disastrous election results, “We’ll have to do it a little more frequently.”

Obama is still a powerful force for the generation that grew up working for him.

“He’s our Jesus Christ. We’re crazy,” said Jaff, not without self-awareness. “It’s 10 years later, and we’re still obsessed.”

Read it at: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/obama-loyalists-trump-resistance-231642

November 18, 2016

Now, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?

AP's No. 2, 3, 4, 5 all got beat.

There are only two unbeaten teams in the Top 25 now, and one of them is Western Michigan.

No. 25 Troy University (my wife's alma mater and son's present school) took a loss Thursday night, so I guess there is only one Alabama team left in the hunt for a National Championship.

I don't know.

National Championship last year. Half that team drafted into the NFL. Freshman quarterback?

Sure looks like a rebuilding year! Saban is an adequate recruiter.

Watch out 2017-2018!!!!

November 18, 2016

The white, middle class worker the Democrats need to chase.

Cars!

Steel!

More cars!

Ships!

Planes!

Even more cars!

One tiny problem.

This is Alabama.

Mercedes-Benz, ThyssenKrupp, Hyundai, Austal, Airbus and Honda.

We do make it here! In solid, 100% Trump country.

November 17, 2016

Why Democrats need to fight Donald Trump from the moment he takes office

Source: Washington Post, by Paul Waldman

"To be clear, I’m not advocating anything with genuine practical consequences, such as shutting down the government or threatening to default on our debt. What I’m talking about is how you oppose the administration and the congressional majority when they have all the power."

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...You may remember that literally on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated, Republican leaders got together for dinner and decided on a strategy of total opposition: Don’t work with him on anything, fight to make every initiative fail, and generally make his life miserable in the hope they could take back Congress and keep him from winning reelection. Though Obama got reelected, otherwise the strategy was a tremendous success.

It grew from some critical insights Mitch McConnell in particular had about the way the public interprets what goes on in Washington, beginning with the understanding that the overwhelming majority of voters have only a superficial sense of what’s going on and only pay attention sporadically. That means that things that might seem important in the capital — like whether you got condemned by the Times and the Post editorial pages this morning for some act of obstruction — have very little practical impact, and you can endure the criticism if you’re getting something you want. In fact, obstruction is generally something you’re unlikely to pay a price for, because most voters will decide that “Washington” isn’t working, and put blame on the party that holds the White House, even if the fact that it isn’t working is completely the other party’s fault.

McConnell also understood that as part of that strategy, it’s important for the opposition to remain unified. As he told the Times in 2010 while discussing the Affordable Care Act, “It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out.”

For Republicans, it wasn’t all that hard to keep to a strategy of unified opposition. They despised Obama with a burning passion and were quite happy to grind government to a halt when they had the chance. Democrats, on the other hand, are going to be harder to keep together. They’re possessed by an impulse to be, and to be seen to be, responsible and reasonable, eager to get things done and make things work.

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Read it at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/17/why-democrats-need-to-fight-donald-trump-from-the-moment-he-takes-office/?utm_term=.b9d622d1e7b1

November 16, 2016

Hillary Clinton's Twitter Chart of Doom

Source: Bloomberg, by Adam Tiouririne

Polls had her winning. Prediction models had her winning. Financial markets had her winning. But Twitter had Hillary Clinton losing, with a steady downtrend in sentiment that foreshadowed her stunning defeat to Donald Trump on Election Day.

Of the hundreds of millions of tweets mentioning either candidate’s name, about 20 percent passed through Brandwatch’s filter to be coded as positive or negative, while the rest are marked neutral. The trends in those positive and negative mentions are what corporate clients like Wal-Mart and Dell use to gauge the mood of their customers—and what can help reveal the mood of voters toward Clinton and Trump.

Overall, 17 of the 19 fateful days between the final Oct. 19 debate and the Nov. 8 election were net-positive for Trump on Twitter. For Clinton, only five of those 19 days were net-positive, as last-minute revelations about the investigation into her private e-mail server buffeted the Democrat’s campaign.

Pollsters fear that their historic miss in the 2016 election was because some voters refused to admit their allegiance to Trump. For those voters, Twitter may have served as their confessional.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-16/hillary-clinton-s-twitter-chart-of-doom

November 16, 2016

What if you got 1,000 a month, just for being alive? I decided to find out.

Unconditional basic income. The future.

Source: Vox, by Scott Santens

Basic income is money an individual receives regardless of whether he or she works or not, sufficient to meet our most basic human needs for necessities like food, water, shelter, and clothing. It’s an amount sufficient to keep us above the poverty line, not living lavishly, but basically. And most importantly, it’s a stream of income independent of all other income that functions as a baseline. It enables, and never in any way prevents, additional income.

Basic income for all people is also a government policy idea being increasingly discussed worldwide, where it’s primarily seen as the way to make unemployment brought on by self-driving vehicles and machine learning algorithms work for us all instead of the few. By simply cutting every citizen a monthly check and getting rid of most of the welfare state and tax code complexities we use today, everyone could be better off tomorrow, rich and poor alike. If machines are laboring in our stead, and aren’t buying any of the fruits of that labor, should we not receive the paychecks that aren’t going to them or us, so as to buy those fruits?

Why should only the lucky few have any choice but to do paid work? What is our infatuation with work, and why is it only paid work that seems to matter so much? What about unpaid work? Why is it considered valuable work worthy of pay when two people are paying each other to watch each other’s kids, but not valuable work when they’re each raising their own kids? If one concern is that people given basic incomes will work less, and another concern is that there will be half as many jobs due to automation, then everyone working half as much is exactly what we want so as to better share the available employment, isn’t it? Plus productivity tends to increase as hours worked decrease, so we’d accomplish more with less as well.

If human civilization is a skyscraper we’ve been building together for thousands of years, unconditional basic income is the foundation we neglected to place underneath it all. Our lives require a minimum amount of security. Our bodies require a minimum amount of access to food and shelter. Our minds require a minimum amount of access to knowledge, and to each other. We’ve created a system where money provides the most efficient access to all of these needs, and yet our system is missing the crucial component to accomplish it all — a minimum provision of money.

Read it all at: http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfund

November 16, 2016

Voter Suppression Laws Cost Americans Their Voices at the Polls

Source: Center for American Progress, by Liz Kennedy

The integrity of U.S. elections depends on every eligible American being able to cast a vote that is counted. Yet this year, the first presidential election in 50 years without the full protection of the Voting Rights Act, many Americans across the country were blocked from having their voices heard in the democratic process.

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Restrictive photo ID requirements

In 2014, Wisconsin passed a strict photo ID law requiring voters to show specific, restrictive forms of identification at the polls. It is significant that only 27,000 votes currently separate President-elect Donald Trump and Secretary Hillary Clinton when 300,000 registered voters in the state lacked the strict forms of voter ID required. Wisconsin’s voter turnout was at its lowest level in two decades. Voter turnout in Milwaukee, where 70 percent of the state’s African American population lives, decreased by 13 percent; this meant 41,000 fewer votes. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht reports that the voter ID restrictions depressed turnout, saying “We saw some of the greatest declines in districts we projected would have most trouble with voter ID requirements.”

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Poll workers in Michigan incorrectly told voters that they needed to show identification to vote. While Michigan does have a voter ID law, it does not require an ID to vote; instead, voters have the option of filling out an affidavit swearing to their identity. There are no hard data on how many Michigan voters were improperly turned away for lacking an ID. There were also reports in Pennsylvania of people trying to vote but being told incorrectly that they needed to show identification. Alabama also had its first presidential election with a new voter ID law; at the same time, the state made it much more difficult for some people to obtain a state-issued ID when it closed 31 of its state driver’s license offices last year. Many of those offices were located in low-income neighborhoods of color.

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Problems with early voting, polling places, and voter registration

North Carolina was one of the states most affected by these closures. There were 158 fewer early polling places in 40 counties with large black communities, and African American voter participation was down 16 percent. One study conducted by The Atlantic found that in counties with polling place closures and reductions in voting hours, black voter turnout during the first week of early voting reached only 60 percent of the cumulative turnout at the same point in 2012. And while black voter turnout increased in the weeks leading up to the election, turnout never reached beyond 90 percent of the cumulative turnout at the same time in 2012. White voter turnout, on the other hand, surpassed white turnout in the affected counties at the same time in 2012. The North Carolina GOP sent out a press release celebrating the fact that “African American Early Voting is down 8.5% from this time in 2012” and cheered the rise in white voters compared to 2012. It is difficult to ascribe causation for lower black voter turnout in these communities, which could reflect less enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton compared to Barack Obama in 2012. But it is well-documented that poll closures and limited voting hours disproportionately affect black voters, particularly when targeted at black communities.

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Much more at: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2016/11/11/292322/voter-suppression-laws-cost-americans-their-voices-at-the-polls/

November 16, 2016

42 States Shifted to the Right in 2016

If we'd have just nominated a self-described "socialist..."

From: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/09/us/elections/states-shift.html?utm_source=huffingtonpost.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pubexchange&_r=1

The Majority of Battleground States Went for Trump

Donald J. Trump secured his victory by winning seven out of 13 battleground states that President Obama won at least once...

Many Republican-Leaning States Became Even More So

Thirteen Republican strongholds increased their margins for Mr. Trump by more than five percentage points over what Mitt Romney secured in 2012, reinforcing the country’s swing to the right.

Some Democratic States Shifted Toward the Center

Eight reliably Democratic states, primarily in the Northeast, shifted more than five percentage points toward the center, reflecting Mr. Trump’s strength with white, working-class voters.

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