Liberal Forum

larryc12 » 06 Feb 2015 9:01 am » wrote: Good!

LOL!

There was a time--long before 'Bridgegate'--that I liked this guy.

I hate it when we discover our political leaders are just as vulnerable and human as we are...

GailyBee » 06 Feb 2015 9:04 am » wrote:
LOL!

There was a time--long before 'Bridgegate'--that I liked this guy.

I hate it when we discover our political leaders are just as vulnerable and human as we are...

"Bridgegate" has nothing to do with my disdain for him.

larryc12 » 06 Feb 2015 9:06 am » wrote: "Bridgegate" has nothing to do with my disdain for him.

You were way ahead of me...It took me a while...

Confessions Of A Congressman
9 Secrets From The Inside by A Member of Congress
February 5, 2015

I am a member of Congress. I'm not going to tell you from where, or from which party. But I serve, and I am honored to serve. I serve with good people (and some less good ones), and we try to do our best.

It's a frustrating, even disillusioning job. The public pretty much hates us. Congress polls lower than Richard Nixon during Watergate, traffic jams, or the Canadian alt-rock band Nickelback. So the public knows something is wrong. But they often don't know exactly what is wrong. And sometimes, the things they think will fix Congress — like making us come home every weekend — actually break it further.

So here are some things I wish the voters knew about the people elected to represent them.

1) Congress is not out of touch with folks back home
Congress is only a part-time job in Washington, DC. An hour after the last vote, almost everyone is on the airplane home. Congress votes fewer than 100 days a year, spending the rest of the time back home where we pander to their constituents' short-term interests, not the long-term good of the nation. Anyone who is closer to your district than you are will replace you. Incumbents stick to their districts like Velcro.

2) Congress listens best to money
It is more lucrative to pander to big donors than to regular citizens. Campaigns are so expensive that the average member needs a million-dollar war chest every two years and spends 50 percent to 75 percent of their term in office raising money. Think about that. You're paying us to do a job, and we're spending that time you're paying us asking rich people and corporations to give us money so we can run ads convincing you to keep paying us to do this job. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that money is speech and corporations are people, the mega-rich have been handed free loudspeakers. Their voices, even out-of-state voices, are drowning out the desperate whispers of ordinary Americans.

3) Almost everyone in Congress loves gerrymandering
Without crooked districts, most members of Congress probably would not have been elected. According to the Cook Political Report, only about 90 of the 435 seats in Congress are "swing" seats that can be won by either political party. In other words, 345 seats are safe Republican or Democratic seats. Both parties like it that way. So that's what elections are like today: rather than the voters choosing us, we choose the voters. The only threat a lot of us incumbents face is in the primaries, where someone even more extreme than we are can turn out the vote among an even smaller, more self-selected group of partisans.

4) You have no secret ballot anymore
The only way political parties can successfully gerrymander is by knowing how you vote. Both parties have destroyed your privacy at the polling booth. Thanks to election rolls, we don't know exactly whom you voted for, but we get pretty damn close. We know exactly which primaries and general elections you have voted in, and since there are so few realistic candidates in most elections, down or up ballot, we might as well know exactly who you voted for. Marry that data with magazine subscriptions, the kind of car you drive, and all sorts of other easily available consumer information that we've figured out how to use to map your political preferences, and we can gerrymander and target subdivisions, houses — even double beds. Republicans want the male vote; Democrats the female vote.

5) We don't have a Congress but a parliament
Over the last several decades, party loyalty has increased to near-unanimity. If a member of Congress doesn't vote with his or her party 99 percent of the time, he's considered unreliable and excluded from party decision-making. Gone are the days when you were expected to vote your conscience and your district, the true job of a congressperson. Parliaments only work because they have a prime minister who can get things done. We have a parliament without any ability to take executive action. We should not be surprised we are gridlocked.

6) Congressional committees are a waste of time
With parliamentary voting, control is centralized in each party's leadership. Almost every major decision is made by the Speaker or Minority Leader, not by committees. They feel it is vital to party success to have a national "message" that is usually poll-driven, not substantive. So why develop any expertise as a committee member if your decisions will only be overridden by party leadership? Why try to get on a good committee if you have already ceded authority to your unelected, unaccountable party leaders? The result is members routinely don't show up at committee hearings, or if they do show up, it's only to ask a few questions and leave. A lot of members fight for committees that will help them raise money or get a sweet lobbying job later (more on that in a minute). The result is that the engine for informed lawmaking is broken.

7) Congress is a stepping-stone to lobbying
Congress is no longer a destination but a journey. Committee assignments are mainly valuable as part of the interview process for a far more lucrative job as a K Street lobbyist. You are considered naïve if you are not currying favor with wealthy corporations under your jurisdiction. It's become routine to see members of Congress drop their seat in Congress like a hot rock when a particularly lush vacancy opens up. The revolving door is spinning every day. Special interests deplete Congress of its best talent.

8) The best people don't run for Congress
Smart people figured this out years ago and decided to pursue careers other than running for Congress. The thought of living in a fishbowl with 30-second attack ads has made Congress repulsive to spouses and families. The idea of spending half your life begging rich people you don't know for money turns off all reasonable, self-respecting people. That, plus lower pay than a first-year graduate of a top law school, means that Congress, like most federal agencies, is not attracting the best and the brightest in America.

9) Congress is still necessary to save America, and cynics aren't helping
Discouragement is for wimps. We aren't going to change the Constitution, so we need to make the system we have work. We are still, despite our shortcomings, the most successful experiment in self-government in history. Our greatest strength is our ability to bounce back from mistakes like we are making today. Get over your nostalgia: Congress has never been more than a sausage factory. The point here isn't to make us something we're not. The point is to get us to make sausage again. But for that to happen, the people have to rise up and demand better.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7978823/congress-secrets

I saw one thread about how the Justice Dept. cleared Officer Wilson in the Michael Brown shooting, but I don't see any on this.
I wonder why?

Justice Department report rips Ferguson police: why that's not whole story.

A Department of Justice report finding that the Ferguson, Mo., Police Department was rife with racial bias highlights broader problems in American policing.
[....]
Broadly speaking, American policing is at a difficult juncture. Under Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice has written scathing critiques of police culture in cities like Cleveland and Albuquerque, where high-profile shootings have garnered national attention.
[....]
The Justice Department's Ferguson findings, which allege that a mostly white police force made racist jokes and gave black suspects far less leeway and discretion than white ones, still defines many places.

GOP Leadership Won't Attend 50-Year Selma Commemoration

Scores of U.S. lawmakers are converging on tiny Selma, Alabama, for a large commemoration of a civil rights anniversary. But their ranks don’t include a single member of House Republican leadership — a point that isn’t lost on congressional black leaders.

None of the top leaders — House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy or Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was once thought likely to attend to atone for reports that he once spoke before a white supremacist group — will be in Selma for the three-day event that commemorates the 1965 march and the violence that protesters faced at the hands of white police officers. A number of rank-and-file Republicans have been aggressively lobbying their colleagues to attend, and several black lawmakers concurred.

It is very disappointing that not a single Republican leader sees the value in participating in this 50th commemoration of the signing of the Voting Rights Act. I had hoped that some of the leadership would attend, but apparently none of them will,” said Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina. “The Republicans always talk about trying to change their brand and be more appealing to minority folks and be in touch with the interests of African-Americans. This is very disappointing.”

Former CBC Chair Marsha Fudge (D-Ohio) agreed.

“Not only do they have an opportunity to participate in something that is historic in this country, but certainly they’ve lost an opportunity to show the American people that they care,” she said. “Their loss.”

Shame on them.
They keep saying they want to be more inclusive, but their actions belie their words.

Farewell to my Windows Vista PC.
I am about to wipe out her hard drive and shut her down for the last time.
She has served me well since July of 2009, but has shown me lately through a variety of weird error messages, blue screens, freeze ups, and her unwillingness to update Windows any longer, that her time has come.

I am now graduating to Windows 8.1 so I have quite a steep learning curve ahead of me.
I have watched a few tutorials on YouTube, and I am thoroughly confused.
It may be a while till I can figure it all out and get back online.

larryc12 » 06 Feb 2015 9:06 am » wrote:
"Bridgegate" has nothing to do with my disdain for him.

We know... Even with his support for busting unions and his anti legal pot stance he's still too much a lefty for you.

Or are you like millions of tea baggers who renounced Christie after he touched Potus?

Reasonable » 07 Mar 2015 4:23 pm » wrote: We know... Even with his support for busting unions and his anti legal pot stance he's still too much a lefty for you.

Or are you like millions of tea baggers who renounced Christie after he touched Potus?

You figured out what statutes and laws are yet?

Huey » 07 Mar 2015 4:51 pm » wrote:
You figured out what statutes and laws are yet?

Are you officially renouncing Fox News and their legal team?
Be careful... Once you do that.... The right wing mafia will put a horses head in your bed with you and your gay lover.

Reasonable » 07 Mar 2015 4:54 pm » wrote: Are you officially renouncing Fox News and their legal team?
Be careful... Once you do that.... The right wing mafia will put a horses head in your bed with you and your gay lover.

I posted the definitions for you. Are you renouncing the obama administration? It is there web site. Oh, wait, website developement ain't their strong point.

Stubborn Pay Gap Is Found in Nursing

Male nurses make $5,100 more on average per year than female colleagues in similar positions, researchers reported on Tuesday.

The new analysis, which included data on more than 290,000 registered nurses, also found that the pay gap had not narrowed within workplace settings and specialties from 1988 to 2013.

The new study is the first to have measured gender disparities in pay among nurses over time.

“We now have pretty compelling evidence that there are pay inequalities between men and women in nursing over the past 25 years,” said Debra J. Barksdale, the director of the doctor of nursing practice program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who was not involved with the new study.

Because most nurses are women, “you may think women have caught up or even might be ahead of men, but we find that’s not the case,” said Ulrike Muench, the lead author of the new study, which was published in JAMA, and an assistant professor of social behavioral sciences at the School of Nursing of the University of California, San Francisco.

(Read more at link in title.)

Misty » 25 Mar 2015 6:13 pm » wrote:

Wife is a nurse. Like women in any other profession nurses tend to take a lot of time off to raise their families, to give birth etc. Male nurses are more likely to work in higher paying positions in the field like emergency rooms. There are more women in lower paying nursing fields like home health care, nursing homes, and Hospice. Like most other allegations of gender pay gaps there are non discriminatory reasons for the difference.

NeoConvict » 26 Mar 2015 8:24 am » wrote:Wife is a nurse. Like women in any other profession nurses tend to take a lot of time off to raise their families, to give birth etc. Male nurses are more likely to work in higher paying positions in the field like emergency rooms. There are more women in lower paying nursing fields like home health care, nursing homes, and Hospice. Like most other allegations of gender pay gaps there are non discriminatory reasons for the difference.

So how do you account for these differences in nurses that work in the same specialties?

The gap varied across specialties, Dr. Muench and her colleagues found.
Male cardiology nurses were paid more per year than female colleagues by roughly $6,000 on average.
By contrast, male nurses in chronic care — focused on managing conditions like diabetes or asthma — made roughly $3,800 more than women in those specialties.
This new analysis found the pay disparity greatest among nurse anesthetists.
About 40 percent are men, and they were paid $17,290 more on average per year than female nurse anesthetists.

Seasonal affective disorder is screwing with my head.
I feel like I'm being sucked into a big black hole.
If I don't see some sun soon, I might just go crazy.

They say you don't know what you got 'til it's gone.
They say that your darkest hour come before your dawn.
But there was something that I should've asked all along.
I'mma ask on the song.
Do you ever think of me, when you lie?
Lie down in your bed, your bed of lies.

Misty » 26 Mar 2015 6:39 pm » wrote:Seasonal affective disorder is screwing with my head.
I feel like I'm being sucked into a big black hole.
If I don't see some sun soon, I might just go crazy.

As the late great Sam Kinison said...............................................................MOVE.

Misty » 25 Mar 2015 6:13 pm » wrote:

Men are more assertive, so they're more likely to get raises. Duh.

Reasonable » 07 Mar 2015 4:23 pm » wrote: We know... Even with his support for busting unions and his anti legal pot stance he's still too much a lefty for you.

Or are you like millions of tea baggers who renounced Christie after he touched Potus?

None of that has anything to do with it either. I'd try to explain it to you, but you'd never understand anyway.

RichClem » 27 Mar 2015 9:13 am » wrote: Men are more assertive, so they're more likely to get raises. Duh.

And in your little pinheaded mind I guess that makes it right.
Duh!