Statbag

From Blue Ollie

I’m trying out Textpattern plugins bot_image_upload and abl_droploader. I had no problems uploading the images and adding them to the article image section. Both are very cool.

Edit: I may want to use an image editor plug-in on sites maintained by others.

Apparently some think not.

You can argue all you want about whether it’s better for women to have access to health care, child care, maternity leave, equal pay, and preventive medicine. But when you base those arguments on rickety old Elizabethan stereotypes about deceitful women and their lying ways, it becomes harder to call yourself the party of women.

Read the rest

Politician Wolfgang Zöller, a member of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union party, argues that Christian principles support a national healthcare system and both are compatible with capitalism.

“The question of health insurance is a humane question,” he says. “I want every person — independent of age, independent of income or pre-existing conditions — to have the possibility to be helped when he is sick.”

Read the rest

Big losses at JP Morgan

[T]he carving up of Philadelphia public schools IS a national story. It’s just one that corporate media won’t tell. Not in Philly, not in LA, not in Kansas City or anywhere, for fear that ordinary people might try to write themselves into a leading role.

Read the rest.

Obama evolves on marriage

Here are some quotes from a recent op-ed piece by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann. So, the Republican’s are the problem? Nah. The anti-democratic system is the problem. Exhorting politicians, the press and voters to shape up isn’t fixing anything.

Referring to press coverage of Congress . . .

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Locating the political football

“While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.” This is just plain wrong. The Democrats have moved to the Republican’s 25.

Healthcare’s John Kerry

“As one (ex-)co-sponsor (of bipartisan health care reform bill), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), told The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein: ‘I liked it because it was bipartisan. I wouldn’t have voted for it.’”

A cult

“Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. ‘The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,’ he wrote on the Truthout Web site.”

Austerity for all (if any).

I’m still working on getting comments running. I have no timetable and I do things as I feel like it.