Fastest growing student debt demographic is 35-49. What job prospects to people pushing middle age have that will outweigh their crippling student debt? (Speaking as one among their ranks, woefully under-employed and in default because of it... as my debt increases at a 28% interest rate. )

If rec'ing is a form of voting - and it is - why not just extend this line of thought to actual elections? Why have private ballots? If you have nothing to hide, you can't fear any kind of retribution by the majority. Right? Right?!



Added for the sarcasm-impaired.

Most recently, this week, listening to Michael Moore's new autobiography on cd. Right before that, it was during the OWS rousting in Zuccatti Park. Right before that (maybe 3 weeks ago now), reading Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot, where she actually writes (paraphrase) that in these dark days of rising fascism, we have to be careful of what we say and how we act publicly. That Mortos thread reminds me: Fuck. That. Shit. Silence = Death.

He was reviled and threatened for trying to break the color barrier, but it wasn't until he started speaking up for labor and against Vietnam that he was killed. Because that was a much worse threat to the 1%.

You've never heard of the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965? There was a brutal little incident on the Pettus Bridge that helped shape public opinion in favor of the civil rights activists. It's the non-violent resistance to the status quo coupled with the constant interruption to business going on as usual that will win this for Th People.

BTW, controlling egress in and out of a city is such a successful tactic, it is employed by the military during foreign occupations. It's not like the idea came out of nowhere.

is a short-term proposition. The idea is to put so much pressure on the institutions that they must negotiate with The People to make new laws and regulations. This has happened many times in our history, but most notably with The People's action to shut down the Birmingham bus lines lead by Rosa Parks and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The Birmingham Bus line didn't go out of business, they just had to lose enough money that they'd listen to their customers before business could resume.

There are so many threads swirling around I'm having a hard time keeping track of what's happening. Here's what I think has happened over the last 24 hours:

1) Riot police raid OWS in Zucotti Park, trashing thousands of dollars of private property, arresting about 200 people, while blocking off entrance and egress to/from the park especially press and including restricting air traffic over the park.

2) Judge Lucy Billings rules that action was bullshit and protesters need to be allowed back in the park, tents and all.

3) Bloomberg takes Billings off the case and puts a new judge on it.

4) New judge says protesters can come back. Sans tents.

5) NYPD says all the stuff they trashed, including the library, is safe in police custody and can be picked up on Wednesday. (Although the photos I saw sure didn't look like anything was safely handled, many items were broken, and who can prove ownership of a tent to pick it up, anyway?)


My questions are:

Is this a good summation of the time-line and events thus far?

Have I missed or misunderstood any part?

Thanks in advance!

Non-profits use volunteers but DU is not now, nor has ever been, a non-profit, although it has been running on a non-profit model. The reason the mods were volunteers was that they were devoted to the scrappy little underdog site. Now that DU is obviously prospering, it's time for the admins to pony up and pay the mods.

OTOH, Upton Sinclair noted that "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it." So paying the mods may result in more of an admin echo chamber than is currently the case. (Speaking as a former mod.) Still, given the two options, I'd prefer paid labor to slave labor, which is what the mods will become in essence, if not in spirit.

*On edit: Of course, businesses do use volunteer labor in the form of Boards of Trustees. So maybe the moderators should be called Board members now.

Was 12 and baby sitting for a really rich family. The parents invited me to play with the computer after I put the kids to bed. I don't remember what I did on it - word processing? Maybe played something like Pong? In retrospect, I'm amazed I got to play with an Apple computer the very first year they were launched.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is from there:

You don't have to pay shit for your public library card, if you in fact live in Lexington, MI, as your profile claims.



Please stop lying about having to pay to use your public library.

No one else knows your trauma. You can't measure one person's painful experiences against another. Pain and trauma are subjective.

I learned this working in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. The people on the Mississippi Coast were traumatized by their entire coastline being scoured and devastated in 8 hours. But when I would go up north in Mississippi and talk with people up there about the devastation and trauma the people in Biloxi and Gulfport were experiencing, they were quick to point out that the most people who died in Katrina in Mississippi were up-state, from the tornados that had spun out. Northern Mississippians were as traumatized by the tornados (which left little physical damage compared to the Coast) as the Coastal residents were by having no familiar landmarks left for 150 miles.

So let me get this straight:

According to the Obama administration, each state has the right to discriminate against GLBTs but individual states don't have the right to allow sick people to buy marijuana.

Does that strike anyone else as ass-backward?




*Edited for grammar.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/massachusetts-roc...

I grew up out there. My hometown of Monson, MA, sounds like downtown was very hard hit. Still haven't heard from my best friend in Westfield (where there were at least two fatalities), but my son checked in and said it was just windy and rainy in his part of Springfield. Scary but so glad he was safe!

More videos:

Brimfield looks like Joplin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSPMOoAEys8...

Funnel cloud as seen from the intersection of Parker and Wilbraham Rds. in Springfield (about two miles from where my son was): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4oilWFohUc...

The historic First Church of Monson lost it's beautiful steeple. Heartbreaking! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBZ06eCCJSg

This one shows a house moved from it's foundation in Monson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkJnumg_BTM

Out of all the data they've analyzed thus far, one of the first pieces of data to emerge publicly is about OBL's porn? Why even release that info, but to further vilify the evilest of men? It does nothing to reassure or inform the American public about anything substantive. It's a diversion, salacious celebrity gossip, the E! of politics.