Oct 012016
 

Here are the results of our “Despicable Trump Supporters” poll.  Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories.   Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population.  Nevertheless, our polls are usually factually accurate, and more often than not, they reflect thinking or will of the national majority.

1001Poll

Since our polling site no longer enables us to copy and paste your poll comments, you may read them here.

When I wrote the poll, I used synonym for deplorable, and felt that using that word might influence the poll.  I voted 60 – 70 percent.  Although the rabid Republican base are overwhelmingly racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic, I think that there are millions of rank and file Republicans who are decent people, who pay absolutely no attention to politics, seldom, if ever, watch the news, watch Faux Noise when they do, and have no inkling of the evil Trump represents.  Many vote Republican out of family tradition.

There is a new poll up.  Please vote in it.

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Sep 232016
 

I’m still trying to establish a sleeping schedule without success, so please forgive me for being brief.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:53 (average 4:38).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Staff Notice:

Raw Story has also started using the Republish/Reprint © widget, so we can on longer use Creative Commons Attribution with their articles.

Short Takes:

From MSN (H/T Squatch): Donald Trump’s campaign chair in a prominent Ohio county has claimed there was “no racism” during the 1960s and said black people who have not succeeded over the past half-century only have themselves to blame.

Kathy Miller, chair of the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County, who is white, made the remarks during a taped interview with the Guardian’s Anywhere but Washington series of election videos.

“If you’re black and you haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault. You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you,” she said.

I found video that can be embedded.  Barf Bag Alert!!

There was no racism, the Pope was never Catholic, and bears never, ever shit in the woods.

From Daily Kos: A couple of weeks ago, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $185 million in penalties for perpetrating a massive fraud on customers. Wells Fargo executives boasted that they had fired 5,300 workers involved in improprieties, but not a single executive was punished. In fact, executives that literally oversaw the departments where the gargantuan fraud was committed were very well compensated, and lauded. Yesterday, Wells Fargo CEO—and blame-game champion—John Stumpf went in front of a Senate Banking Committee where he was rightfully castigated by Senator Elizabeth Warren for his “gutless leadership.” Part of Stumpf’s “apology” was to say that Wells Fargo didn’t do this as much as bad apples did it. It’s a similar defense used by people who murder citizens. Well, lookie here:

Now CNNMoney is hearing from former Wells Fargo (WFC) workers around the country who tried to put a stop to these illegal tactics. Almost half a dozen workers who spoke with us say they paid dearly for trying to do the right thing: they were fired.

"They ruined my life," Bill Bado, a former Wells Fargo banker in Pennsylvania, told CNNMoney.

Bado not only refused orders to open phony bank and credit accounts. The New Jersey man called an ethics hotline and sent an email to human resources in September 2013, flagging unethical sales activities he was being instructed to do.

According to Badu, he was fired for “tardiness” eight days after sending his email to the Wells Fargo “hotline.”

It’s good that Bado and others like him were fired for noncompliance with the Banksters’ crimes. Otherwise they would have fired anyway as scapegoats. At least they get to keep their integrity.

From NY Times: The white police officer who fatally shot an unarmed black driver here last week as he stood outside his vehicle overreacted during a confrontation captured on video and was charged on Thursday with first-degree manslaughter, the authorities said.

According to court documents, the officer, Betty Jo Shelby, 42, was overcome with fear that the man, Terence Crutcher, 40, who was not responding to her commands and was walking away from her with his hands up, was going to kill her.

Charging her was necessary, because the case is so obvious. I expect we will see an intentionally botched prosecution and/or intentionally tainted evidence.

Cartoon:

0923Cartoon

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Sep 212016
 

I’m starting late again, but today it’s intentional.  I napped this morning, because I sleep best when it’s chilly, and because I have to stay up all afternoon.  It’s a grocery delivery day, and I have to stow them.  Later Wendy is coming to ruffle and rinse the stinky TomCat.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 4:18 (average 6:17).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Staff Notice:

Both AlterNet and Crooks and Liars have returned to insisting blogs embed their entire article using their embed widget, that includes their advertising, or pay even for a short excerpt, so we may no longer use Creative Commons Attribution.  Either use their free method or paraphrase with a link back.

Short Takes:

From The New Yorker: If Chris Christie faces prosecution for an alleged role in the so-called Bridgegate scandal, his endorsement of Donald Trump could play a crucial role in an insanity defense, legal experts believe.

Harland Dorrinson, a defense attorney who has represented many politicians in high-profile criminal cases, believes that Christie’s endorsement of Trump earlier this year could persuade a jury that the New Jersey Governor is “completely incapable of rational thought.”

“An insanity defense is always a long shot, because the bar for insanity is set very high,” Dorrinson said. “Having said that, I believe that Christie’s endorsement of Trump easily meets that standard.”

If Christie is prosecuted, his defense team is likely to show the jury footage of Trump routinely humiliating the New Jersey Governor on the campaign trail. “It will become abundantly clear that Christie endorsed Trump and received absolutely no conceivable benefit for doing so,” Dorrinson said. “Legally speaking, the only word for that is insane.”

Andy has returned to reporting again, but how about an InsaniTEA defense?

From NY Times: The Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson and his wife are giving more than $40 million to groups backing Republican congressional candidates, according to campaign filings and interviews with Republican strategists, disregarding repeated entreaties for support from allies of Donald J. Trump and dealing a major setback to Mr. Trump’s efforts to rally the deepest-pocketed Republican givers.

The contributions will again make Mr. Adelson and his family among the largest known donors in American politics, after several years in which they played a more subdued role in national Republican fund-raising. But Mr. Adelson’s decision to deploy his wealth down ballot, less than two months before Election Day, also reflects the reluctance of most of the biggest Republican donors to invest in their party’s standard-bearer.

Adelson’s biggest hot buttons are more welfare for the super-rich, and unqualified support for and unlimited spending on Butcher Bibi’s criminal one-state solution in Palestine. We can’t compete with his money, but we must do all we can to defeat Republicans in down-ballot races.

From TPM: Despite Donald Trump’s admission that President Obama was born in the United States, Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, on Tuesday pledged to continue pushing birtherism.

“I don’t care where he’s from,” Arpaio said while speaking to the Surprise Tea Party, according to the Arizona Republic. “We are looking at a forged document. Period.”

I’m so glad I left Phoenix in 1979!

Cartoon:

0921Cartoon

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Sep 192016
 

I’m sorry about yesterday.  This med still has me pretty wiped out.  I slept all morning, and could go right back to bed, if I would let myself.  On the plus side, the nerve pain is greatly improved.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:36 (average 4:43).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Religious Ecstasy:

0918Broncos34-Colts20

Staff Notice:

It appears that Alternet and Crooks and Liars have dropped the plug-in they were using to request embedded articles contain their banner, so until they put it back, we can go back to Creative Commons Attribution.

Since I started compressing graphics we have a new media library to which administrators (and hopefully authors too) can upload graphics.  It’s high in the left hand column of the Dashboard.  Please leave all graphics compression to me.

Short Takes:

From Daily Kos: Elizabeth Warren was in Columbus, Ohio campaigning with Ted Strickland.  If you only have time for a snippet of the speech, you can find one at The New Civil Rights Movement.  But the full speech is really worth the 25 [28] minutes.

 

I’ve said it before. Liz is a national treasure!

From Crooks and Liars: Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson stated over the weekend that he was "just grateful that nobody got hurt" by an explosion that injured 29 people in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.

During a Sunday interview on CNN, host Brian Stelter asked the candidate to respond to the explosion that left 29 people injured Saturday night.

Barf Bag Alert!!

 

Duh! He proved with Aleppo that he’s unfit to be President from a foreign policy perspective. This proves the same from a domestic perspective.

From Alternet:  …Here’s 11 areas where the differences between Clinton and Trump are poised to take the country in starkly different directions.

1. Will there be a revival of American racism against non-whites? There has not been as openly bigoted, racist and pro-white major party presidential candidate in decades. Trump has modeled a catalogue of racist rants and stereotypes and opened the door to a new era of race-based grievance politics. This is not just about immigration, but start there. He wants to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. He wants to build a wall along the Mexican border. He doesn’t want millions of “dreamer” children of the migrants, born here, to have a clear path to citizenship. He wants all Muslims to face extra immigration hurdles and encourages racial profiling. In sharp contrast, Clinton opposes all those stances, and wants the opposite—comprehensive immigration reform and embraces multi-cultural America. Yet Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Tim Pence, have dropped the pretense of dog-whistle politics, where white supremacists mouth neutral-sounding platitudes, like embracing ‘state’s rights,’ code for unequal treatment of minorities. They have coddled a spectrum of white supremacists, from klansman David Duke to Trump national convention delegates to far right-wing radio hosts, all of whom feel white America should not adapt to the nation’s growing multiculturalism. Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign slogan, reflected in her policies, is “Stronger Together.” Which way will the country go?…

I shared one, his extreme racism. Click through for the other ten.

Cartoon:

0919Cartoon

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Sep 172016
 

Here are the results of our “What will Democrats Win?” poll.  Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories.   Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population.  Nevertheless, our polls are usually factually accurate, and more often than not, they reflect thinking or will of the national majority.

0917Poll

Since our polling site no longer enables us to copy and paste your poll comments, you may read them here.

I voted that I expect Democrats to win the Presidency and the Senate, but not the House.  I’d love to be wrong on the House, as long as I’m right on the other two.

The new poll is up, so please get out your deplorability meters and vote.

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Sep 032016
 

82-MitchD

Mitch had been following Politics Plus and commenting for quite some time on Care2, where he has been active since 2010, when he started commenting here at the site a few months ago and won his first Big Mouth Award on June 5.  Now, less than three months later, he’s back for his second.  He comes from the state, where I grew up, NJ, so he lives with the constant danger that PIGnocchio will end his life by sitting on him. His comments are sharp and dry.  His pet peeves are people, who use their religion to promote hatred, bigotry and ethnocentrism. He’s an advocate for human rights of all kinds, and animal welfare.

His daily participation here makes live more interesting for us all.  Please be excessive with praise and  kudos.  He has earned them.

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Sep 022016
 

Last month, all categories were up from July, except for Visits.  The massive increase in Bandwidth occurred, because I optimized thousands of previously uploaded photos, so that aberration won’t repeat.

Here is our latest summary:

Stats08-2016

Reported period

Month Aug 2016

 

 

 

 

First visit

01 Aug 2016 – 00:01

 

 

 

 

Last visit

31 Aug 2016 – 23:59

 

 

 

 

 

Unique visitors

Number of visits

Pages

Hits

Bandwidth

Viewed traffic *

9,252

 

28,152

(3.04 visits/visitor)

124,044

(4.4 Pages/Visit)

362,365

(12.87 Hits/Visit)

24.57 GB

(915.07 KB/Visit)

Not viewed traffic *

 

 

 

564,196

642,486

13.25 GB

 

Reported period

Month Aug 2015

 

 

 

 

First visit

01 Aug 2015 – 00:00

 

 

 

 

Last visit

31 Aug 2015 – 23:59

 

 

 

 

 

Unique visitors

Number of visits

Pages

Hits

Bandwidth

Viewed traffic *

9,612

 

32,079

(3.33 visits/visitor)

91,883

(2.86 Pages/Visit)

245,973

(7.66 Hits/Visit)

3.09 GB

(100.86 KB/Visit)

Not viewed traffic *

 

 

 

339,768

390,747

5.84 GB

 

Year over year, 2016 Uniques and visits are marginally lower than those from 2015.  Pages, Hits and Bandwidth are higher.

Here is our latest demographic data from Quantcast:

QUS08-2016

They miss a ton of raw data, but among those they can identify they are a valuable source of information.  We are still mostly older, well educated, poor, Democrats, and politically active.  We are  about 45% male and 55% female. 

Here is our archived ClustrMap for August only.

ClustrMap08-2016

ClustrMap misses a lot of visits, because many visits can’t be easily traced to a location.  They have changed their format.  When you click the map in the left column, it shows the current month only, no longer the year to date.  You can sure tell the difference in Lona!

Here are our top five articles:

Jane Smiley: Capitalist Pigs 1/17/2010 2,100
Why You Cannot Reason with Trump Supporters 8/19/2016 460
Unquestioning Support for Cops 7/18/2015 384
It’s Not Just the South 8/18/2016 383
Another Appropriate Trump Advisor 8/23/2016 377

The count represents only the people who followed an external link to that specific article.  Two were from earlier years.  The other three were from August.  I sincerely hope our other authors crack the top five next month.

Here are our top non-blog/news referrers (100 referral minimum):

Care2 3,297
Google 1,717
Stumbleupon 176
Google (Images) 139

Care2 up by almost 1000,  Google  is up over 250, Stumbleupon is up 40, and Google (Images) is up 36 from July.

Here are our top  blog/news referrers:

http://infidel753.blogspot.com/
http://bildungblog.blogspot.com/
http://hamsandwich66.blogspot.com/
http://scaredstiff-tim.blogspot.com/
http://oakcreekforum.blogspot.mx/
http://www.badgirlchats.com/
http://disaffectedanditfeelssogood.blogspot.com/
http://www.dailynewsbin.com/
http://okjimmseggrollemporium.blogspot.ca/
http://www.addictinginfo.org/
http://marketwatch666.blogspot.co.uk/

We had 11 sites  with 2 or more referrals, up three from July.  Putting blogs’ links here increases the ratings of their sites, so this “linkey love” is our thank you for their support.

While optimizing the site for better performance, I discovered that our Top Commentators plugin was such a resource hog that it was increasing the time it took to load our pages by 33%, so I discontinued it.

We have 258,156 links on other websites, up considerably from July.  I expect that to decrease, because thousands of our links are over five years old, dating back to a time, when we consistently averaged over a million hits a month.  I used to have the time and energy for 7-8 articles per day. Major sites (like Care2), where I used to post links are no longer available, I’ve stopped posting links at other major sites, and I no longer visit 20 – 30 blogs per day, because I just can’t do everything I used to do.  However, as quantity has gone down, quality has gone up.

As of Midnight on September 1, we have 6,793 articles and 81,968 comments.

Nobody won a Big Mouth Award in August, but one for the 82,000th comment will be awarded tomorrow.

I recommend using your own avatar. Go to Gravatar.  Sign up using the email address you use to post comments here and upload the image you want to use as your avatar.  Whenever you comment under that email address here or on any WordPress blog (several others too), that image will become your avatar.

Your Administrators are Lynn Squance, aka Sasquatch or Squatch, SoINeedAName, aka Nameless, and I, aka TomCat, the Founder.  Your Authors are Joanne Dixon, aka JD the Erynator and Lona Goudswaard, aka Lona the Napster.

This is our policy on links.  We do not embed links to extreme Republican websites, like Faux Noise, Breitfart or World Nut Daily.  However I leave notes in square brackets when I delete such links, (example: [faux noise delinked]) so readers, who wish to follow them can click through to the source article.  I also remove topical links.  Finally, I blank the target on all links, so they open in a new tab or window.  Please do so, or if you commonly leave links and don’t know how to blank the target, please say so.

Given our expanded talent, I expect to continue our overall upward trend, although my cancer surgeries and resulting problems are still interfering with my writing.  One way you can help is to share our articles, not only with your family and friends, but also, on other sites, linking back to the article here.  The more exposure we get, the better we shall do at fulfilling our stated purpose, “Overcoming Right Wing Insanity One Day at a Time!”

Thank you for all that you do, here and elsewhere.  You are why we succeed!  You are the reason America can survive!!

Now lets keep kicking Baaa Baaa Bagger butt!! Black Sheep Winking smile

Remember . . .

Vote Blue for Dawg Catcher and UP!!!

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Sep 012016
 

Here are the results of our “Trump Assassination” poll.  Politics Plus Polls are not scientific, because those who respond are not balanced according to demographic categories.   Therefore, we do not accurately reflect the makeup of the US population.  Nevertheless, our polls are usually factually accurate, and more often than not, they reflect thinking or will of the national majority.

0901Poll

Since our polling site no longer enables us to copy and paste your poll comments, you may read them here.

I am not the lone idiot who voted they want Rump Dump to be President.

Since Republicans are Ammosexual, and several have called for assassination of Obama and Clinton, I voted that assassination is a Republican tactic.  I voted that Pence is just as bad.  And I voted for the nonviolent solution, impeachment.

I did not vote for expatriation to Canada, because, if Trump is elected, Canada will build a border wall and make Trump pay for it. Winking smile

The new poll is ready for your votes.

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