Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates
Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges
Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate
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Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate |
Blowing |
I finished up by 9 PM and was happy to get home and tired. There was only a few precincts that had lines here when the polls closed in my county and they moved along so we were able to get everyone picked up by 8 PM to go home. We kept hearing stories come out of Miami/Dade area with many hours wait. I was so thrilled that the President said "we are going to fix that." It is time for congress to add a law against making people stand in line for hours to vote to the Voters Rights Act. Enough is enough. We have to start holding officials accountable for targeting urban areas and just plain incompetency. I hope he follows through.
Those people who stayed in line are my heroes in this election. They made it possible to defeat the worst of the amendments and help pick up 4 house seats. They showed that they would not be pushed around by voter suppression. This was personal for them and will be back to defeat Rick Scott in 2 years.
The volunteers who worked hard for the last year to reelect Obama also are heroes too. They never lost faith and knew they would bring the votes in. The media did not have much faith in Florida but we knew.
Even by the standards of the TED conference, Henry Markram’s 2009 TEDGlobal talk was a mind-bender. He took the stage of the Oxford Playhouse, clad in the requisite dress shirt and blue jeans, and announced a plan that—if it panned out—would deliver a fully sentient hologram within a decade. He dedicated himself to wiping out all mental disorders and creating a self-aware artificial intelligence. And the South African–born neuroscientist pronounced that he would accomplish all this through an insanely ambitious attempt to build a complete model of a human brain—from synapses to hemispheres—and simulate it on a supercomputer. Markram was proposing a project that has bedeviled AI researchers for decades, that most had presumed was impossible. He wanted...
This has to be David Bowie's proudest moment, pending the manned Mars expedition.
By Aamer Madhani, USA Today, May 19, 2013
President Obama on Sunday told the graduating class at Morehouse College, the country's pre-eminent historically black college, there is "no time for excuses" for this generation of African-American men and that it was time for their generation to step up professionally and in their personal lives.
[....] The president connected his own path to the White House to the work of King and other African-American leaders of that generation. But Obama also conceded that at times as a young man he wrongly blamed his own failings "as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down."
"We've got no time for excuses — not because the bitter legacies...
Prompted by Peggy Noonan's claim in The Wall Street Journal that "we are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate," Andrew Sullivan steps forward to defend Pres. Obama's honor. "Can she actually believe this?," he asks incredulously.
You are one of Florida's heroes, momoe. You are.
We have it so very easy here in Minnesota.
You folks in Florida and Ohio and other states have to face long lines, conflicting ID laws and some offal officiating saved this election.
We are not going to let you vote. We will make it so very difficult to vote you will go home.
WE YOU DID NOT GO HOME, YOU HUNG IN THERE AND WE WON!
I am in awe of all of you in Florida. You kept your eyes on the long game and displayed amazing grit under pressure. Incredible.
Florida voters turned out in mass with the same determination as OWS only quieter. It just wasn't minorities, but all voters including Republicans. Gov. Scott handed the state to the democrats the day after he took office when he rejected the money for the I-4 High Speed Rail. It was in the planning for 10 years, shovel ready and needed for Florida to bid on the summer Olympics. The I-4 corridor is going to stay blue and South Florida is only going to get bluer. Sen. Nelson did everything he could to save the High Speed Rail stimulus package and the voters rewarded him including the republican voters. He was never in danger of losing his seat no matter what the national GOP had to say. Voter suppression was a big mistake on the republican held legislator, it pushed people to vote. Everyone I have talked to since the election feels really good and are ready to kick Rick Scott out of office in the next election. If the democrats want to continue to hold on to their voters they need to fix this kind of voter suppression on the national level.
Thanks for the complements. If you lived here I know all of you would have helped too.
Scott looks like toast next election - Cubans were <1/3 the Hispanic vote this time & non-Cuban Hispanics went for Obama 2/3-1/3. Obama increased his Hispanic pull from 57 to 60%. Which will only get stronger by 2014, as Miami just elected its first Cuban-American Democrat and Obama won 47% of the Miami vote
(this was a surprise, as polls showed Romney heavily winning the Cuban vote - seems Cubans are still reluctant to publicly break from Batistas but do it while voting, but public allegiance is changing quickly, especially among youth). Also, more liberal Puerto Ricans taking over as majority of the Florida Hispanic vote.
Any chance of a recall vote for Scott before 2014?
(Scott blew I-4, turning down a half billion dollars for children's healthcare, completely incompetent or evil in providing voting machines for the election, wants a profit on university education...)
As for Puerto Rican statehood, anyone support Puerto Rico joining Florida? The chance anyone's going to give them 2 Senators is slim, but bumping Florida over New York seems doable.
(at the same time could make Washington DC part of Maryland while giving all of Delmarva peninsula to Delaware. Could then add another 15 representatives to Congress, 6 for P.R./Florida, 1 for DC, and the other 8 to bring up total to 450, as 435 is insufficient - 460 might even be a better target. Big issue here is whether to do such an apportionment with a 40-seat advantage Republican House)