I'm with you, it's like going from a flourishing tropical garden, bursting and bulging with information,
to the surface of the moon. Or at least a landscape as bleak and spare as a frozen polar ice cap.

There are a few scattered shoots and leaflets poking their heads through the snow, giving you a
smattering of "news of the day," but it's no comparison.

I think all the extra white space has to do with making the site attractive to mobile phone users.

On another thread, I said:

"There really should be two versions, a slimmed-down mobile app interface,
along with a full-screen option for the rest of us.

I don't see why a minority of high-rent, latest-Droid or iPhone hipsters
should dictate the look and feel of DU. Unless their votes count more,
because that demographic is more attractive to advertisers, or something
like that.

My first impression was really bad. I got out right away. But a second
look suggests that's what's going on."

From out here in Wisconsin, the one thing I've learned is that voting is correctly described when it's referred to as a "process."

That means ALL of the duties and actions of the county clerk of elections, or whoever is in charge of the vote, have to be transparent.

And more important than what shows up at the end of the process -- whatever number of paper ballots -- is the chain of custody of those ballots, and the verifiable security on how the ballot bags were handled.

In last spring's supreme court election, we had bags and bags of ballots that were ripped, not sealed, that had all the appearance of having been 'stuffed.'

They had to be counted, because the presumption was made that "while there were 'irregularities,' no criminal or fraudulent activity could be proven.

In other words, nobody was watching the watchers, the counters, the people responsible for the integrity of the election process. Whose supervisor used to work for the 'winning' candidate, and can only be described as a Republican stalwart.

...That's not even starting to get in to the whole "electronic ballot" issue, sub-contracting the right to count votes to private firms' whose software is more important than the public's right to a fair, clean and verifiable election.

Voting in this country is a mess, and this initiative is definitely a step in the right direction, but it's only that.

Thanks for posting the link. I did link in and cast a vote. (I'm not telling how I voted. But who would care anyway? The right to have the ballot counted accurately is more important than protecting secrecy, if you ask me.)

Eight years ago, Thanksgiving week 2003, I remember there was a JFK-fest on cable TV.

I think I watched 5 or 6 hour-long documentaries in a row. The same block of programs
were repeated the next day. I caught the highlights of a couple of shows I'd watched
the night before.

It was all new to me, because until then I just hadn't given any thought, or paid much
attention to any of that kind of speculation. (It wasn't that I didn't want to know, but
I had serious doubts that anybody could even begin to find out what the truth was.)

Some of that investigative reporting actually featured theories that were sympathetic,
or at least even-handed, towards Oswald, the patsy. Accounts of the autopsy and
discussion of the forensic evidence that didn't support the Warren report were included.
The father of The Chimp's press secretary, "Barr McClellan," a former Texas Democratic
party law firm partner, had just released a book, and one of the programs explored his
theories, and reminiscences:

"Blood, Money & Power, How LBJ Killed Kennedy"

A s*itstorm of criticism followed. The History Channel had to convene a 3-member panel
of historians, who issued the obligatory declaration, "the claim of LBJ's complicity 'is entirely
unfounded and does not hold up to scrutiny. ... {the show} fell short of the high standards
that the network sets for itself. The History Channel apologizes to its viewers and to
Mrs. {Lady Bird} Johnson and her family for airing the show.'"

...Anyway, to make a long story short, since that time, I haven't seen one documentary
on the subject that wasn't a total whitewash for the Warren report. Or I'm back to my
original attitude on the topic, so I have to admit I haven't watched any documentaries
on the subject. But I've seen the Oliver Stone film 3 or 4 times now.

Fiction has become much more interesting than "factual, investigative programming" on most
of those cable channels. With the notable exception of the whole series of shows on
modern physics, and the universe, and quantum theory and all that, cable documentary
programming has become a swamp. Soooo many bad reality shows, on top of the same old
WWII history, filling the gaps between one cheap-to-produce but brain dead novelty
program and the next. (Punkin Chunkin, Hillbilly Handfishin, Home Hobbyist Wank-Off,
Navy Seal Survival Camp. It's all a complete waste of time.)

Back in the day, a hundred years ago, when the miners were striking or workers were trying to organize,
the mine owners and the money bags knew that local police were the neighbors, and sometimes the friends
or relatives of some of the protesters.

So they imported goons from the Pinkerton Agency.

Some of the Pinkerton agents did double duty as infiltrators (James McParlan wormed his way in with the
Molly McGuires), acting as spies and sometimes agents provacateurs.

It's impossible to say for sure, but some of these guys could be putting on cop uniforms for part of their
clock time, then going 'black op,' pretending to be storefront-smashing "anarchists," to get much more
lucrative remuneration.


In a digital age, with so many phones also doing double duty as cameras, we can only hope the bums get their
payback.

"Who's overseeing these mercenaries?" We all are, but no one is in charge. That's part of what these protests
are about. There are 'good guys' among the cops, working at some of the Federal agencies, and maybe -- one
can only dream -- even at places like DHS and the Justice Dept. But there are also opportunists, and bald-faced,
self-serving tools everywhere.

"....Goldman Sachs is about to take over Europe, but you wouldn’t know it by reading the papers.

On Tuesday, G-Sax alum, Mario Draghi, will take the helm at the European Central Bank replacing retiring ECB president Jean-Claude Trichet. The appointment has slipped by the media virtually unnoticed even though the ECB is the most powerful institution in the EU and is likely to play a critical role in solving the debt crisis...."

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/31/is-...

...According to the right wing Gospel of Wealth, we'd all be much richer if the Wall Street Banksters
were to have an unlimited carte blanche to immediately cancel all social security and medicare
benefits, and deposit the money directly into their own professionally managed investment accounts.

After the appropriate payments had been made to the leaderships of both parties (all of the
éminences grises who rotate from elected office to lobbying firms -- and back -- who become
members of the board and partners of the investment firms, and a flat fifteen -- or 30 -- percent has been
deducted straightaway from the sum that would have been simply wasted on seniors and the
sick and disabled), the search for opportune, convenient and felicitous victims can begin.

What would the game plan be?

Ask the retiree's and pension funds who had investments in oil, and other manipulated
commodities, in 2008. (When Brent spot prices for a barrel of oil dropped from above 140
dollars, to below 40 dollars, in just a couple of months.)

http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/02/18/... /

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/...

Recruiting only the most brilliant and imaginative of the investment managers to direct
only the most profitable and lucrative money management funds -- the widows' and orphans'
life savings, the money that might otherwise have been poured into the financial sewer holes
of Medicare and Social Security accounts payable -- men like Dick Fuld, ex- Lehman Brothers
head, or Joe Cossano, the "Financial Products" division manager at A.I.G., who made nearly
500 billion in derivative bets in order to destroy the world's largest insurance company --
if only that kind of pecuniary prestidigitation can be brought to bear, surely some of the
expected windfall profits will "trickle down" to a lucky few among the elderly, the lame,
and the crippled. The "Horatio Alger's" of the Tiny Tim class.

To whatever extent the bets don't work out, and it turns out that the streets and sidewalks of
our cities suddenly begin to pile up with the emaciated corpses of the former beneficiaries
of the investment funds, you can rest assured that extreme poverty will become a crime
punishable by death.

And a new investment company will emerge to export "Soyrent Gleen" to hungry consumers
in Asia and elsewhere. Reinforcing the axiom that the Free Hand of the Market can always
be counted on to spread the effects of the Market's negative reinforcement and collateral
damage as widely as possible, while the benefits, rewards and asset accrual continue to
flow upwards, in a steadier and stronger stream, to an ever-narrower hierarchy at the
very pinnacle. (It's not fair to call it "class warfare," it's really just the Invisible
Hand of the Marketplace, bringing efficiencies and advantages to the "job creators.")

But when you're flipping channels between Monday Night Football, and the cool
graphics in this space documentary on the Science Channel, still thinking
about what you'd heard during the interview an hour earlier with Michael Moore
on "Democracy Now," while wondering what else there is to do before calling it a
night -- oh, yeah: log in to D.U. and see what's new -- it's hard to be absolutely
precise with all of the numbers.

But whatever the actual figure (to however far the decimal place needs to be
carried), the point is.......

the significance of the continued slow growth of new jobs in Wisconsin is
going to be obscured by the amount of P.R. that routinely overwhelms actual
news reported by real, working journalists. P.R. is ready-made, paid-for,
"fake news" that benefits the P.R. firms' clients.

The ratio is now above 3 to 1, with mercenary, hired-gun P.R. pro's out numbering
actual 'independent,' investigative news reporters. Since some of the latter are
reporting on weather, local stories of interest, sports and 'entertainment/TV/
movies/local fine dining and where-to-go-this-weekend type information, the
real ratio's much higher.

It's no contest whose message is going to be heard the loudest.

http://www.propublica.org/article/pr-indus...

You saw it when the Tea Party was being born/hatched. There were all the
colorfully painted buses (with big flags and eagles), huge jumbotron outdoor
TV's, and wave after wave of relentlessly on-message news coverage of exactly
what it was the organizers of those events wanted people to know.

("The rich aren't rich enough. Americans for Prosperity!" ...With the
coded-for-the-deaf-dumb-and-blind unmistakeable messages that 'The President's
a n-----,' or whatever that word was that the Gabby Hayes character used for
Sheriff Bart (Cleavon Little), at the beginning of Blazing Saddles.")

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08...

Put that up against what we've been seeing since the OWS movement began,
when instead of porta-johns and plentifully available, catered refreshment
carts, and all the rousing, sympathetic news coverage there are.....


...what?

What's been goin' on?

We watch the news, flipping from channel to channel to try and get a clue,
but what are we seeing there?

...skills of the voter base in the entire state of Wisconsin.

Same thing they're trying to do with public education, on the local elementary and high school level.

They don't want an educational system that might dare to introduce concepts like "community good," or
"making informed choices," or "public good."

A vocational / technical skill set should be more than enough for anyone. (I mean, Marquette didn't
offer a degree program in Posturing, Grandstanding, Cheating & Dirty Tricks, so Snotty Scotty could
only climb so far, in his academic career, and look at how far he's gotten....)

Bunch of Know Nothings:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing#...

In the decade before the U.S. Civil War, the "Know Nothings" stood for



They want to take us back before the turn of the century, to before
anyone had even thought of having any "Progressive" ideas.

"Gub-mint BAD, Bid-ness GOOD," en espanol?

That's all they ever say, no matter what the language.

Is it even wishful thinking to wonder if some free-thinking sub-Vizier
or Viceroy (the Vast Machine's Iberian man-in-charge) has had the authority,
or the temerity, to impart some regional flavor, a little local color,
through which the Orwellian imprint will be more indelibly stamped?

Our sluggish and fragile, flimsy human awareness is
no match for it, on either side of the Atlantic,
whatever the actual words spoken.

Here's the story...

...and the back story.

On the one hand, Republican leaders have been pushing a "legislative compromise" list, looking for bi-partisan support, that includes much stiffer penalties for
first-time drunken driver offenders:

http://www.superiortelegram.com/event/arti...

On the other hand, by getting Democrats to go along with "criminalization... sobriety checkpoints... and stiffer penalties" (with minimal resources set aside
for medical treatment and non-criminalized options?) the Republicans look like they've got a win-win for themselves.


This is going to come down like a ton of bricks on the poorest neighborhoods,
the most vulnerable, those with the fewest resources.

And it will dovetail so nicely with the Republican Agenda that's
mostly about larding the profit line of Republican contributors and supporters.

No matter what the cost, to the rest of us.


These bills in the legislature (both the Assembly and the Senate) to allow expanded hours for liquor sales have also been marching steadily forward, in the
State Legislature, since they were introduced last spring:






http://vcyhomefront.blogspot.com /


Also: not as current:

http://www.mygov365.com/legislation/view/i... /



....The bottom line being, here's how the political contributions from the Wisconsin Grocer's Association have gone (2010):

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/Sta...

Contributions to Republicans, by percentage, for 2010:


• 96.68 %
  
  

Contributions to Democrats, by percentage, for 2010:


• 3.32 %
  
  

The amounts contributed aren't huge, but it's the disproportionate balance in the percentages that warrants attention,
given the financial resources of the organization as a whole. Add up the combined assets of the individual members,
as well as the businesses that belong to this group, and you're probably looking at the purse strings that control
the bread basket that feeds the state.

According to this Michelle Malkin column, it sounds like the Wisconsin Grocer's Association has been actively supporting Der Wanker:

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/04/29/may-d... /



The bottom line being, now the grocers association (I wonder what percentage of their membership includes "corner store" owners who sell all the large single-serving sizes of malt liquor?) will
be making more money on the retail side, while on the wholesale side, the industries that depend on cheap prison labor will have an expanded crop of recruits (some of them with job skills!), to feed their balance sheets.


...That's class warfare for you. Never miss any opportunity to exploit the poorest of the poor, while making sure that you "take care of" the fat cats that depend on your ability to allocate state resources to
best serve their interests.

This is going to come down like a ton of bricks on the poorest neighborhoods,
the most vulnerable, those with the fewest resources.

And it will dovetail so nicely with the larger plan to
lard the profit line of Republican contributors and supporters.

No matter what the cost, to the rest of us.


These bills in the legislature (both the Assembly and the Senate) to allow expanded hours for liquor sales have been marching steadily forward:






Also: not as current:

http://www.mygov365.com/legislation/view/i... /

The bottom line being, here's how the political contributions from the Wisconsin Grocer's Association have gone (2010):

http://www.followthemoney.org/database/Sta...

Contributions to Republicans, by percentage, for 2010:


• 96.68 %
  
  

Contributions to Democrats, by percentage, for 2010:


• 3.32 %
  
  

According to this Michelle Malkin column, it sounds like the Wisconsin Grocer's Association has been actively supporting Der Wanker:

http://michellemalkin.com/2011/04/29/may-d... /



The bottom line being, now the grocers association (I wonder what percentage of their membership includes "corner store" owners who sell all the large single-serving sizes of malt liquor?) will
be making more money on the retail side, while on the wholesale side, the industries that depend on cheap prison labor will have an expanded crop of recruits (some of them with job skills!), to feed their balance sheets.

....Self-sufficient, independent resistance to...

whatever you want to call it, the ...global oligarchy,
...the New World Order (?), "business as usual" (???)

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/06/nat... /

From today's Counterpunch

September 12, 2011

Big Brothers Buy in at Big Media
The Koch Whisperers

by PAM MARTENS

A CounterPunch Special Report

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/12/the... /




It's not just the Kochtopi. There are other names, other astro-turf groups, and other funding sources one would have to trace.

Just before the recall elections here in Wisconsin, about a month ago, an investigative reporter at The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel wrote a detailed look at just one of these "news bureaus." It's called, "Media Trackers." Their activities go beyond just issuing press releases and serving as a mouthpiece for conservative outlets like the Bradley Foundation. These agencies also perform "political advocacy work, such as filing complaints with regulators."

Full article:

http://www.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter...

...the homeless veteran living under the bridge.

The “Defense” Department is very effective when it comes to “paying” for all of our military expenses, for all of our undeclared wars...

...and somehow they just miss being able to meet their responsibilities, when it comes to the once-fresh-faced 18 and 19 and 20 year olds,
who couldn't get jobs, so they signed up for the military. Then couldn't get jobs coming out -- with the added burden of having to lug
around all those private memories from their military "careers"...