n2doc
n2doc's Journal
Since When Are Democrats Afraid of Debates?
The Democratic National Committee needs to adapt to the new politics of 2016. Instead of constraining debate, as it has so far, the DNC should change course and encourage an open and freewheeling discourse. This is not just the right choice; it’s the politically practical thing to do.
Like it or not, the 2016 campaign is in full swing, and Americans are engaging with it. A record-breaking 24 million viewers tuned in to watch the August 6 GOP debate—more Americans than voted in all of the Republican primaries and caucuses of 2012 combined. It’s easy to dismiss these debates as “clown car” spectacles, considering the atrocious statements coming from Donald Trump and his apprentices. Yet since that first debate, Trump and other Republicans have seen their numbers spike in polls pairing them against anticipated Democratic opponents in 2016.
Democrats are making a serious mistake if they imagine that they’ll somehow benefit by letting the Republicans claim center stage as summer gives way to fall. And activists who want to hear serious discussions of issues too frequently neglected by Republicans—from mass incarceration to climate change to nuclear disarmament to expanding Social Security and saving the Postal Service—should be outraged by the prospect that Democrats will not have enough debates, or enough flexibility, to fully explore these vital issues.
It’s not enough that Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb are campaigning (or that Joe Biden is pondering). The Republican candidates are debating—and far more Americans tune in to debates than attend events on the campaign trail.
As it stands now, the Democrats have scheduled just six debates, as opposed to the dozen proposed by the GOP. Even more absurd is the fact that the first Democratic debate is set for mid-October, more than two months after the Republicans
got started.
more
http://www.thenation.com/article/since-when-are-democrats-afraid-of-debates/
Scott Walker’s hostile waters: The destruction of Wisconsin’s universities
If you’re from Wisconsin, the Friday night fish fry is a big deal, and the fish you want on your plate is a yellow perch you caught yourself. But for years, the population of yellow perch has been in serious decline. Now on the verge of collapse, the future of this iconic fish is looking grim. Kind of like what is happening right now with the faculty at the University of Wisconsin, under siege from a legislative agenda that has been steadily decimating its numbers while pretending that the loss doesn’t matter and hey, maybe it’s even a good thing! Why do you care, anyways? It’s just stupid fish. There are always more of them.
Anti-intellectuals may yell “good riddance!” at the exodus of top-tier talent, but it’s the yellow perch paying the ultimate price for Gov. Scott Walker’s political actions. Ever since Walker began gutting the university system—cutting $250 million in funding from the UW system (while mysteriously finding $250 million in state funds to pay for a new stadium for the Milwaukee Bucks); weakening a once-prized system of shared governance; and passing a new law effectively turning tenure into a tool of a Board of Regents consisting almost entirely of political appointees — the star faculty found itself being poached, starting with senior professors such as the fish guy, Rick Goetz. He was a lead researcher at what is now called the School of Freshwater Sciences at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he studied the yellow perch. He left for NOAA, taking his grant money with him.
Just like that, the wild fish lost the top guy working on their behalf. Fish night will never be the same.
Stop whining. One fish is just as good as another. Who cares about the “ancient mating habits of whatever”? (The words in quotes were actually spoken by an Wisconsin assemblyman dismissively waving away faculty protesting against budget cuts.) The Yellow Perch doesn’t appear on the 2015 Wisconsin fishing calendar from Game and Fish magazine. Try walleye, or smallies! There are loads of other fish to fry! But the Yellow Perch was the “fish of the people” because it was abundant and delicious. It also used to generate annual state revenues in the millions. Its loss isn’t just symbolic, it’s economic.
At the School of Freshwater Sciences, professor and senior scientist Sandra McLellan routinely pulls in half a million dollars annually in outside funding. Despite the constant political framing of professors as bloviating liberal leeches, the reality is far more complex. On the flagship campus at Madison, for example, 30 percent of the total university budget is covered by outside funding brought in by the faculty. In 2009, Madison faculty brought in one billion dollars of external funding, even as the university community contributed billions more to the annual state economy. (In 2015, it was $15.4 billion.)
more
http://www.salon.com/2015/08/27/scott_walkers_hostile_waters_the_destruction_of_wisconsins_universities_damages_more_than_the_liberal_academic_elite/
Bernie Sanders’s Small-Beer Donors in the Big Money Casino
As a measure of democracy, one of the more encouraging statistics of the 2016 presidential race is the fact that the average contribution to the long-shot campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders is $31.30. It would be hard to buy any politician for $31.30. That is exactly the message Mr. Sanders intends, in renouncing fat-cat, super PAC campaigning that is turning American politics into an exercise in plutocracy.
Americans of ordinary means have made 400,000 donations — about 80 percent of them were $200 or less — to Mr. Sanders. Contrast that with the appalling fact that fewer than 400 of the nation’s most affluent families, writing six- and seven-figure checks, account for almost half the money raised so far by both parties in the campaign, according to an analysis by The Times.
The Sanders campaign, whatever its fate, has at least established that small-beer donors are alive and well and enthusiastic in America. What they and democracy need as a quid pro quo is a revival of the public financing system that protected politics after the corruption of the Watergate scandals.
As things stand now, the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision has grossly boosted the buying power of corporate and special interest donors and made a casino frenzy of the race. The Koch brothers have proudly organized more than 400 of their wealthy allies to create a super war chest of $889 million for Republican candidates. The Jeb Bush campaign, pretending to remain at arm’s length from its supposedly independent super PACs, raised over $100 million so far in big-check donations. Hillary Rodham Clinton, aiming to stay competitive, has raised more than $20 million in super PAC money, much of it from millionaires, even as she pursues small-dollar donations and vows to do something about campaign reform.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/opinion/bernie-sanderss-small-beer-donors-in-the-big-money-casino.html
Ex-Florida state senator, a former Republican, likes Bernie Sanders in 2016
We caught up with former Republican Public Service Commissioner and state Sen. Nancy Argenziano, the Citrus County populist who was never shy about criticizing Florida's utility companies and her own party leaders if she thought they were hurting consumers. And ....well...let's just say she hasn't made much progress in mastering the art of soft-spoken diplomacy.
"If you don't agree with Jeb on something you're sh-- out of luck. If you don't agree with him on something, there is no making it better. It's my way or hit the highway," said Argenziano when asked about Bush's constant talk on the campaign trail about his record of forging consensus and finding common ground with people who might disagree.
Argenziano quit the GOP in 2011, saying her lifelong party had been hijacked by extremists and special interests, and ran unsuccessfully for the state House in 2012 as an independent candidate. Her preferred presidential candidate? Bernie Sanders, because he's talking about tackling the influence of big money in politics. If Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, Argenziano will support her rather than any of the Republicans, even though Bush is the smartest of the bunch as "the cream of the crop."
"But he's still part of a party that does not care about science, that does not care about the environment, that does not care about women's rights," Argenziano said. "And if any damn Republican tells me there's not a war on women, then come and talk and sit and debate with me because there certainly is, and I can tell you as a woman who was inside the Republican party, they are not very friendly to women. And the women that they do have probably are just puppet heads with two brain cells."
Once a shrinking violet, always a shrinking violet.
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2015/08/ex-florida-state-senator-a-former-republican-likes-bernie-sanders-in-2016.html
Ricky Martin: It’s time for Latinos to unite against Donald Trump
by Ricky Martin |
The fact that a person like Donald Trump, a candidate for the U.S. presidency for the Republican Party, has the gall to continue to freely harass the Latino community day after day makes my blood boil.
Why would he assume he has the right to make absurd, incoherent, and ignorant comments about us? From the beginning, his intent has been clear: To basically tell lies and offend us to stay in the public spotlight.
Yesterday’s episode involved one of the most admired and respected journalists in Hispanic media, Jorge Ramos, and it went too far.
Jorge Ramos was doing his job as a journalist in a press conference, which he attended representing one of the world’s most important television networks for Hispanics and exercising his right of freedom of the press. Yet, Trump verbally assaulted and removed Jorge from the event without any apparent reason.
I am not surprised Trump would aim so low. I am surprised that we Hispanics continue to accept these aggressions and accusations by individuals like Trump who continue to attack our dignity.
more
http://fusion.net/story/189517/ricky-martin-its-time-for-latinos-to-unite-against-donald-trump/
Kansas' Kris Kobach Exceeded His Election Authority, Rules Judge
Source: Tribune News Services
A Topeka judge has denied a move by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to quash a lawsuit challenging the state's two-tier voter registration system and said Kobach has exceeded his authority with the way he runs elections.
Micah Kubic, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Kansas and Missouri, called the ruling a "great day for voting rights and a great day for Kansas."
The ACLU filed the lawsuit on behalf of voters who have been frozen out of state and local elections because they registered to vote using federal registration forms and didn't provide proof-of-citizenship documents required by Kansas law.
Kubic said now that Kobach's motion for summary judgment has failed, the ACLU will file a motion seeking summary judgment in its favor. If the judge rejects that as well, the case will go to trial at a yet-to-be-scheduled date, Kubic said.
Read more: http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/tns-kansas-kris-kobach-judge.html
A beautiful, ethereal installation of 100,000 balloons comes to London’s Covent Garden
Take a walk through London’s historic Covent Garden market and the ceiling will be an ethereal cloud of shifting white light. As you shop, Charles Pétillon’s installation “Heartbeats,” which opens today (Aug. 27), will softly pulse above you.
The sculpture is 177 ft long, 40 ft wide, and made from 100,000 white balloons. It’s part of a larger series by Pétillon, who tells Dezeen that the sculpture is about fragility—”represented by contrasting materials and also the whiteness of the balloons that move and pulse, appearing as alive and vibrant as the area itself,” he says.
more
http://qz.com/489660/photos-a-beautiful-ethereal-installation-of-100000-balloons-comes-to-londons-covent-garden/
Secretive fusion company claims reactor breakthrough
By Daniel Clery 24 August 2015 8:15 pm 79 Comments
FOOTHILL RANCH, CALIFORNIA—In a suburban industrial park south of Los Angeles, researchers have taken a significant step toward mastering nuclear fusion—a process that could provide abundant, cheap, and clean energy. A privately funded company called Tri Alpha Energy has built a machine that forms a ball of superheated gas—at about 10 million degrees Celsius—and holds it steady for 5 milliseconds without decaying away. That may seem a mere blink of an eye, but it is far longer than other efforts with the technique and shows for the first time that it is possible to hold the gas in a steady state—the researchers stopped only when their machine ran out of juice.
“They’ve succeeded finally in achieving a lifetime limited only by the power available to the system,” says particle physicist Burton Richter of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who sits on a board of advisers to Tri Alpha. If the company’s scientists can scale the technique up to longer times and higher temperatures, they will reach a stage at which atomic nuclei in the gas collide forcefully enough to fuse together, releasing energy.
“Until you learn to control and tame [the hot gas], it’s never going to work. In that regard, it’s a big deal. They seem to have found a way to tame it,” says Jaeyoung Park, head of the rival fusion startup Energy/Matter Conversion Corporation in San Diego. “The next question is how well can you confine [heat in the gas]. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I want to watch them for the next 2 or 3 years.”
Although other startup companies are also trying to achieve fusion using similar methods, the main efforts in this field are huge government-funded projects such as the $20 billion International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), under construction in France by an international collaboration, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s $4 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, California. But the burgeoning cost and complexity of such projects are causing many to doubt they will ever produce plants that can generate energy at an affordable cost.
more
http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2015/08/secretive-fusion-company-makes-reactor-breakthrough
Profile Information
Gender: Do not displayMember since: Tue Feb 10, 2004, 01:08 PM
Number of posts: 47,953
