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appal_jack
appal_jack's Journal
Profile Information
Gender: Male
Hometown: North Carolina
Member since: Wed Aug 11, 2004, 06:57 PM
Number of posts: 3,813
Hometown: North Carolina
Member since: Wed Aug 11, 2004, 06:57 PM
Number of posts: 3,813
Journal Archives
Upset? No. Very surprised? Yes?
Look, I am sure that HRC will be at least slightly less odious than her Republican opponent. And that's been the Turd Way campaign for the past twenty years, hasn't it? Vote for us, cuz otherwise an even shittier Republican will get in. How inspiring! ![]() I'll say it now, and bookmark it for later. HRC will not be president of these United States. She is far too corporatist and hawkish for the Democratic base (myself included). I sincerely hope that she crashes and burns in the Primary, as she already seems inclined to do. But she certainly is campaigning, though I'm not sure what she hopes to gain by tilting rightward. The right wing views her as the shrill, scolding, nanny-stater, ultra-liberal-bogeywoman of nightmares, and they will all be voting Repub if Hilary is the Dem. Hillary Clinton genuinely seems to be triangulating herself to a place where she is hated by virtually everybody. As for the Second Amendment, it has been a core part of our Bill of Rights for more than 230 years, and I will stand by it (and the rest of the BoR) as long as I live. ![]() -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Sun Aug 31, 2014, 04:14 PM (0 replies)
IIRC, we had a Democratic President in 1997.
IIRC, we had a Democratic President in 1997.
We have a Democratic President now. The FDA functions under the Executive Branch of government (though in fairness, it depends on Congress for funding, as does everyone else). It's about 17 years too late in this case, but removing that 'expedited' approval process sounds like a good move for our Democratic President Obama and his appointee Michael Taylor in order to undo the 'business-friendly' mistake made by former Democratic President Clinton... ...or y'know, we could just blame Republicans and then rally unquestioningly around the next President Clinton, and then wonder why so little changes for the better, ever. -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Thu Aug 21, 2014, 05:01 PM (0 replies)
I agree that corporate power is the gigantic blindspot of most libertarians.
I agree that corporate power is the gigantic blindspot of most libertarians.
I (a libertarian Democrat of sorts) resist government power when it is used on behalf of the elites, and corporate power at every chance I get. Whether the oppression is public or private, I believe in resistance. But your point is well-taken. Too many readers of 'Reason' see no problem in corporate dictatorship even though they are up in arms about Obama or 'socialism' in general. ![]() -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Tue Aug 19, 2014, 11:00 PM (0 replies)
USDA Illegally stacking the Deck at Organic Standards Board?
http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/08/nosb-voting-scorecard-released-lobbyistsinfluence-peddlers-eroding-organic-standards
On-edit: I just realized that the excerpted quote does not explain the acronym. NOSB = National Organic Standards Board - a volunteer panel created by the Organic Foods Production Act to create Organic policy in conjunction with the USDA and its paid staff. The Cornucopia Institute is doing a good job of watch-dogging both the NOSB and the USDA itself. “In recent years, just as with the polarized U.S. Supreme Court, many critical issues were decided by one-vote margins,” said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector and Senior Farm Policy Analyst at Cornucopia. “Almost universally, the NOSB is split along ideological lines (corporate agribusiness versus farmers and consumers) on whether to allow controversial synthetic and non-organic additives in organic food or weak animal husbandry standards utilizing the ‘factory farm’ production model of organic meat, eggs and dairy products.” Much more at the link. Certified-organic agriculture needs to maintain its threshold of integrity in order to retain any legitimacy. There will always be more innovative, sustainable, and/or 'fringe-ier' systems of farming out there (Permaculture, biodynamics, etc.) but Organic is both big enough to be recognizable by the average American, yet holistic and sustainable enough to really make a difference with respect to the land, farmworker health, and the quality of the food itself. Our Democratic Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, needs to quit eroding Organic's integrity. Congress set up a good system with the NOSB, and the USDA needs to respect it. -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Tue Aug 19, 2014, 12:38 PM (3 replies)
Rise of the 'Unholy Alliance' of Libertarians and Leftists
Rise of the 'Unholy Alliance' of Libertarians and Leftists Source: http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/16/rise-of-the-unholy-alliance Ron Paul, Edward Snowden, & Ralph Nader together?!? This should be fun at DU... ![]() ![]() ![]() The author, Thaddeus Russell, also covers the Snowden leaks, the aversion of US military action in Syria, Greenwald's reporting on such issues, etc. The whole article is worth a read, though I feel like I posted the four best paragraphs above. I think that Russell enjoys being a gadfly to both establishment Republicans and Democrats. In so doing, he certainly glosses-over the very real threats to New Deal Programs (especially Social Security and SNAP) and other important government regulations (environmental laws, etc.) posed by Koch-funded wolves in libertarian clothing. Nonetheless, until mainstream Democrats return to the democratic progressivism that made the Party great in the past, there is a very real vacuum that libertarians can and will fill. I would prefer that Democrats stand-up for core principles of freedom and justice, but will still cheer the principles whether the actions are led by people wearing the "L" jersey or the "D" (or "S," etc.). -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Sun Aug 17, 2014, 11:57 AM (65 replies)
A good campaign would have beaten B*sh by hundreds of thousands.
A good campaign would have beaten B*sh by hundreds of thousands. We're talking Shrubya, the dimwit son of a truly criminal one-term president. Had Gore run anything resembling a populist, progressive, decent campaign, Nader would not have had a leg to stand-on. Even if Nader had still gotten 34,000 votes in FL, that should have been a drop in the bucket compared to Gore's margin.
Plus, Gore lost his home state of TN. Can't blame Nader there. But had Gore's campaign been popular enough to even win his OWN (*&^$$%##** STATE, Florida would not have mattered. I refuse to believe that the Gore/Loserman campaign of 2000 was the best the Democrats could do. It was DLC-driven, tepid, corporatist crap. If the Dems decide to learn no lessons from 2000 and again run a tepid, widely-disliked, polarizing candidate with a wooden campaign that tilts toward a right wing that will NEVER vote for the candidate in question, then they deserve to lose. I myself would prefer to learn the lessons of the past, embrace the populism and progressivism that the nation craves today, and elect a viable, liberal, truly Democratic president in 2016. The Democrats can and should do better than Hillary Clinton in 2016. -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Wed Aug 13, 2014, 12:07 AM (0 replies)
Hillary distancing herself from Obama is as stupid as Gore's 2000 distancing from her husband.
Hillary distancing herself from Obama is as stupid as Gore's 2000 distancing from her husband, former president Bill Clinton. Now don't get me wrong, I am not an unabashed fan of either Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, but they each deserve credit where it is due.
During the 2000 campaign, the economy was doing pretty well, the world was relatively at peace, and and WJ Clinton was quite well liked even after the impeachment hearings, blue dress, etc. Why Gore chose to hold that legacy at arms' length is completely beyond me. Some Party apparatchiks around here love to hate on Nader (rather unjustifiably) and/or the Supeme Court's awful Bush v. Gore decision (entirely deserving of hate and contempt), but above and beyond all that, Gore ran a truly awful campaign, and (I hate to say it) pretty much deserved to lose. I hate to say this too, but I predict that if Hillary gets the nomination, she too will run an awful campaign (if 2008 and the present is any reasonable foreshadowing) and then will lose. She is already squandering her legacy and the resources available to her. A former Secretary of State has no good reason to run against her former boss, especially given that he will not be on the ballot ever again. -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Mon Aug 11, 2014, 11:23 PM (0 replies)
Evidence Mounts that Neonicotinoid Insecticides Harm Bees and Beneficial Insects
http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/07/debunking-latest-attempt-defend-agrichemicals-cost-greater-good-evidence-mounts-neonicotinoid-insecticides-harm-bees-beneficial-insects
Debunking the Latest Attempt to Defend Agrichemicals at the Cost of the Greater Good: Evidence Mounts that Neonicotinoid Insecticides Harm Bees and Beneficial Insects I've said it before here at DU, and now I'll say it again: unchecked continued use of neonicotinoid pesticides will create a modern Silent Spring. They harm bees, insectivorous birds, bats, soil life, aquatic life, and very possibly also us humans. -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Sun Aug 10, 2014, 11:48 PM (2 replies)
Modified & improved, but never abandoned.
I was an Antioch student during the early 1990's, and I can say with confidence that the sexual offense policy that gained nationwide notoriety was not set-aside during my time on campus (through 1994), nor to my knowledge any time thereafter (I am not sure what has happened since the 'old' Antioch closed its doors ~2005, and then reopened as a 'non-successor institution' in 2008 or so).
Though the policy was deemed radical by the mainstream media during 1991-1992, most of us on campus were not shocked or horrified that our college asked us to discuss sexual boundaries with our partners before and during sexual activity. The policy came about after a quarter when three rapes were reported on campus. This was a college of 600, where only 300-400 students were on-campus at a time (their co-op program had about 1/3 of the students working jobs off-campus at any given time). So imagine that: 1% of the on-campus population reported a rape. Of course something needed to be done. The originally-proposed policy was modified and improved through a community and administrative process, which thankfully added necessary due process protections for the accused. But the core of the policy remained the same: if you are going to engage in sex, you have a responsibility to talk about what's OK and mutually desirable with your partner. This was a good step for the Antioch community back then, and I hope it is also a good step for California campuses now. K&R, -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Sun Aug 10, 2014, 11:05 PM (0 replies)
I must confess to missing the importance of the web when I first saw it.
By 1991, I had an e-mail account and a Mac Plus with 4 megs of RAM and an 80 mb hard drive. I was an active Usenet user, and got a lot of my news from the misc.activism.progressive group.
But even though Apple was pushing hypertext at the time, I didn't quite get it. I didn't encounter the actual web until around 1993 I think. When a programmer friend showed me an early site, complete with hyperlinks, I was like, "so?" What's the difference between scrolling your favorite Usenet group vs. clicking from one link to another? How wrong I was... -app |
Posted by appal_jack | Thu Aug 7, 2014, 12:05 AM (0 replies)
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