iemanja
iemanja's JournalPoll Fixed! Choose the Flowers for Nancy and Paul Pelosi /GoFundMe
Sorry for the length of this post. I want to make sure everyone knows what's going on and has a chance to have a say in the flowers we send to the Pelosi's.
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The last poll overwhelmingly voted to send Nancy and Paul Pelosi one lovely bouquet of flowers and then contribute the rest to Senator Warnock's campaign. We are using Omaha Steve's DU for Warnock link to contribute: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/duforwarnock
All contributions through this Thursday will be credited toward the Pelosi fundraising campaign.
I've set up a GoFundMe for donations for the flowers: https://www.gofundme.com/f/flowers-for-nancy-and-paul-pelosi?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1
Please donate when you vote!
The costs of potential flower bouquets range from $89-500 (plus delivery fees and tax). We will send the flowers to her house Thanksgiving week. We got her address from a staffer.
Here are the choices for flower arrangements:
Apples, Peaches, and Pumpkin Pie, Farmgirl Flowers, $89
https://farmgirlflowers.com/apples-peaches-pumpkin-pie
Gram Cracker, Farmgirl Flowers, $110
https://farmgirlflowers.com/gram-cracker
Double the firecracker, Urban Stems, $126.
https://urbanstems.com/products/flowers/double-the-firecracker/FLRL-D-00025.html
Seasons Cheer, Le Bouquet, $150
https://www.le-bouquet.com/deliveries?lightbox=dataItem-l9rnttd5
Sugar and Spice, San Francisco Flowers, $150.
https://www.sanfranciscoflorist.com/floral-arrangements/Autumn/31232/Sugar-Spice
Technicolor deluxe, Acme Floral, $350
https://acmefloral.com/san-francisco-acme-floral-co/technicolor-deluxe.html
Rich and Dramatic, Acme Floral, $500.
https://acmefloral.com/san-francisco-acme-floral-co/dramatic-and-rich-luxe.html
Family Jewels, Le Bouquet, $200
https://www.le-bouquet.com/deliveries?lightbox=dataItem-kx6kfiai
If the vote goes to an arrangement less expensive than the one pictured, we can ask the florist to upgrade it with the extra money and/or donate the rest to the Warnock campaign. Similarly, if we raise less money than the results of the poll, we'll downsize to a less expensive option.
Do you want to donate for Flowers for Nancy and Paul Pelosi?
Donation Link ~~~~~~~~ https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17351334 ~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you remember when DU sent loads of flowers to Barbara Boxer? I believe it had to do with her efforts to oppose the Iraq War.
A bunch of DUers have been talking about doing something similar for Nancy Pelosi. See this thread: https://democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17348022
Vote below on how you think we should approach this.
The overwhelming vote is for 1 bouquet of flowers and donations to Warnock. The Warnock donation link can be found on this thread by Omaha Steve. https://democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=17351334
We'll soon post another thread with donations for flowers, but those donations should be small, with the bulk of your donation going to Warnock, should you so choose.
Three States Banned Slavery on Tuesday. One Voted to Keep It
Rolling Stone via Yahoo
The ballot measures address a caveat in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The loophole was exploited by many former slaveholding states, including Louisiana, to criminalize newly freed former slaves and create involuntarily held workforces during Reconstruction. Louisiana has long been home to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a sprawling prison-farm nicknamed “Angola.” Malcolm Alexander, a former inmate who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for almost four decades and exonerated in 2018, described working at Angola as something “like you see in old pictures of slavery…we even had a quota we had to meet at the end of the day,”
Before Tuesday’s midterms, only four other states had barred slavery as a form of punishment, Colorado, Rhode Island, and as of 2020, Nebraska and Utah. “It is time for all Americans to come together and say that it must be struck from the U.S. Constitution,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) told the Associated Press. “There should be no exceptions to a ban on slavery.”
The votes this week are a major step in establishing labor rights for incarcerated people. “Incarcerated workers are under the complete control of their employers, and they have been stripped of even the most minimal protections against labor exploitation and abuse,” reads an ACLU report published in June. The ACLU has advocated for a total repeal of “federal and state constitutional exception clauses allowing slavery and involuntary servitude to be used as punishment for a criminal conviction.”
https://news.yahoo.com/three-states-banned-slavery-tuesday-162416613.html
Foreign policy experts agree with Biden's opposition to a no-fly zone.
These experts are nearly unanimous in their opposition to the establishment and enforcement of a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Respondents reject a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone because they fear it raises the risk of escalation, including the likelihood of a Russian nuclear attack against Ukraine or NATO countries.
When asked whether the United States should respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine by imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, just 7 percent of respondents agreed. Large majorities supported other U.S. policy responses, including sanctions against the Russian government and its leaders, resettling Ukrainian refugees in the United States, sending military supplies to Ukraine, banning oil and gas purchases from Russia, and deploying more military forces to the region.
The only U.S. policy response less popular than a no-fly zone was a more general military campaign against Russian forces. Support for cyberattacks against Russian forces was also quite low, with just 29 percent of respondents backing the idea. Overall, the message is clear: IR experts are generally unwilling to support U.S. policy responses that Russia may perceive as escalatory.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/16/poll-no-fly-zone-ukraine-zelensky-speech-biden/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Editors%20Picks%20OC&utm_term=40407&tpcc=Editors%20Picks%20OC
Full poll can be viewed here: https://trip.wm.edu/user/pages/03.data/our-surveys/snap-polls/Snap-Poll-17-Report-No-Fly-Zone.pdf
Biden likely formed his view by talking to experts. His position is an informed one.
I was wrong about the Russian oligarchs
I thought the economic sanctions might pressure the oligarchs to get rid of Putin. I didn't fully realize that they are only able to enrich themselves and keep their wealth at Putin's pleasure.
I recently watched the documentary Citizen K on Amazon Prime. It's about the oligarch Mikhail Khordorkovsky. He became extremely wealthy during the immediate post-Soviet years by seizing much of the nation's oil supply. But when he became critical of Putin, he was imprisoned. Released ten years later, he moved to London, where many such oligarchs live, or, more accurately, lived. Putin has had murdered a number of the disgraced oligarchs living in London. We know this from news accounts, but I wasn't fully aware of how important these men had been in Russia. The killings included, for example, Boris Berezovsky, who had big one of the big seven oligarchs of the post-Soviet, early Putin years. Khordorkovsky remains alive, so far.
Putin's major fear seems to be not the oligarchs turning on him but assassination by someone close to him. All the pictures we've seen of him sitting at the far end of an extremely long table in meetings is about not getting close enough to anyone to allow them to kill him. It's not about COVID because when he recently met with a group of flight attendants, he sat near them, as this picture shows.
It's going to be very difficult to get rid of Putin. He's a mean sod who knows how to protect himself, whether through imprisoning critics, murdering them, or keeping himself safe from assassination. He must go down, but how?
