December 24, 2015

A little perspective for our Happy Holidays!

POWER RANKINGS: Here's who has the best chance at being our next president

And to the polls: Here's a look at where the candidates stand in their respective parties in a combined average of national, New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Carolina polls.

http://www.businessinsider.com/presidential-candidate-power-rankings-week-6-2015-8

December 23, 2015

This one is for sheshe2 and Cha!!!

See ya soon, she!

December 22, 2015

A Christmas Story from "Smoke"

If you haven't seen "Smoke" (1995) I bet you are just a couple mouse clicks away.

If you like small, indie, slow, slice-of-life movies with great actors, this one is a gem. The following "Christmas Story" ends the movie, but this stands on its own as a small sampling - the movie has many more treats.

For the holiday:

And the magnificent 'not so silent' movie rolling through the end credits.

This is why we love movies!

December 22, 2015

President Obama's Interview With NPR's Steve Inskeep - December 2015

This is our president!

And I'm sleeping well tonight!

December 22, 2015

In case you missed it! (Hillary Group)

December 21, 2015

Blaming the victim. (Hillary Group)

Since we continue to have this ongoing campaign of deflection, distraction and disambiguation regarding what happened, let's get back to what this really means.

Stealing Campaign Data Not a Good Fit for Bernie Sanders’ Brand

Will voters who’ve seen him as the most honest now change their minds?

Source: National Journal, by S.V. Dáte

With a curt “I apo­lo­gize” on na­tion­al tele­vi­sion Sat­urday night, Bernie Sanders tried to put be­hind him his cam­paign’s first real scan­dal of the race, proof that his staff had stud­ied data col­lec­ted by rival Hil­lary Clin­ton.

It may have come too late.

Be­cause un­like many oth­er politi­cians whose state­ments and motives are of­ten viewed with skep­ti­cism by voters, one of Sanders’s key selling points has been his per­son­al brand. At his ral­lies, sup­port­ers nearly al­ways cite his hon­esty and in­cor­rupt­ib­il­ity as one of his strongest at­trib­utes.

While the Sanders cam­paign down­played the level of its snoop­ing, the quer­ies it ran pro­duced lists ex­tremely use­ful to its ef­forts in the early vot­ing states.

With lists of Demo­crats who are strong Clin­ton sup­port­ers, who are not Clin­ton sup­port­ers, and who are most likely to turn out and vote come primary day, the Sanders cam­paign would have been able to save pre­cious time as it sought out its own likely voters, as well as got­ten a strong idea of Clin­ton’s strategy and turnout pro­jec­tions, Clin­ton press sec­ret­ary Bri­an Fal­lon told Na­tion­al Journ­al. In all, the quer­ies pro­duced hun­dreds of thou­sands of names in about a dozen states, in­clud­ing Iowa, New Hamp­shire, South Car­o­lina, and Flor­ida.

“These staffers then saved this in­form­a­tion in their per­son­al folders on the sys­tem, and over the course of the next day, we learned that at least one staffer ap­peared to have gen­er­ated re­ports and ex­por­ted them from the sys­tem,” Dacey wrote. “None of this is in dis­pute. It’s fully doc­u­mented in the sys­tem logs.”

Mean­ing, Fal­lon said, that if Sanders’s staff did not suc­ceed in im­prop­erly grabbing Clin­ton cam­paign data, “it wasn’t for the lack of try­ing.”

http://www.nationaljournal.com/s/126343/stealing-campaign-data-not-good-fit-bernie-sanders-brand?mref=home_top_side_3

December 16, 2015

Most Bernie Sanders voters OK with Hillary Clinton winning (Hillary Group)

Digging into the numbers, more interesting facts!

Who'd a thunk?

Donovan Slack, USA TODAY

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2015/12/16/bernie-sanders-voters-hillary-clinton-poll/77414862/

December 16, 2015

44 men and counting...

3 Foreign Women Visited The U.S. To Assess Gender Equality. They Were Horrified.
The Huffington Post, by Laura Bassett

*****
The most telling moment of the trip, the women told reporters on Friday, was when they visited an abortion clinic in Alabama and experienced the hostile political climate around women's reproductive rights.

"We were harassed. There were two vigilante men waiting to insult us," said Frances Raday, the delegate from the U.K. The men repeatedly shouted, "You're murdering children!" at them as soon as they neared the clinic, even though Raday said they are clearly past childbearing age.

"It's a kind of terrorism," added Eleonora Zielinska, the delegate from Poland. "To us, it was shocking."

In most European countries, she explained, abortions are performed at general doctors' offices and hospitals that offer all kinds of other health services, so there aren't protesters waiting to heckle the women who enter.

*****

"The lack of accommodation in the workplace to women's pregnancy, birth and post-natal needs is shocking," Raday said. "Unthinkable in any society, and certainly one of the richest societies in the world."

Another main area of concern for the delegation is violence against women -- particularly gun violence. Women are 11 times more likely to be killed by a gun in the United States than in other high-income countries, and most of those murders are perpetrated by an intimate partner. While the Obama administration has talked a lot about combatting violence against women, its efforts have been frustrated by Congress' inability to pass new federal gun restrictions.
*****

Read the rest at: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/3-foreign-women-visited-the-us-to-assess-gender-equality-they-were-horrified/ar-BBnBad9?li=BBnb7Kz&OCID=HPDHP

December 12, 2015

Today, December 12, 2015 12-12 OMG!!!

In case you missed it - there's still time!

"Day of the Dozens"

Do you want to live forever?

http://krispykreme.com/

December 12, 2015

Mitch McConnell: Trade deal vote after 2016 elections

(CNN)—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says one of President Barack Obama's top remaining legislative priorities shouldn't be sent to Congress for approval before the 2016 election, putting in doubt whether it can pass before the President leaves office.

In an interview Thursday with The Washington Post, McConnell said the measure in question, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free-trade agreement reached recently between 12 nations including the United States, Mexico, Japan and Australia, "certainly shouldn't come up before the election" because it might not pass.

"I think the President would be making a big mistake to try to have that voted on during the election. There's significant pushback all over the place," said McConnell, who in June voted in favor of providing fast-track congressional approval of trade agreements that would help the TPP pass more easily.

*****

In the Post interview, McConnell noted that the fast-track provision he voted for extends for five years, raising the possibility the next president could try to pass TPP.

"The next president, whoever that is, will have the authority to either revisit this one, if it doesn't pass, or finish the European deal or other deals, and give Congress a chance to weigh in on it," McConnell said.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/11/politics/trade-tpp-mitch-mcconnell/index.html