She is so talented. I can't believe we didn't use this talent more effectively in the past. Watching this, I think Bernie and Warren should sit down and let Pelosi lead the revolution.#I want a network that works for organizing.#
Iolaire McFadden has created a sort of mutual fund for donations to all the Democratic candidates for Senate in the 2020 election. Your donations are divided between them. I just gave $100. It's a good idea, good for the country.#
Tony Haile, the founder of Scroll and Chartbeat, had a really good idea. When the Senate votes on something consequential, such as whether to remove the president, let's have a readout that shows the number of people the Yes votes represent, by state, and the number of people the No votes represent. It would measure how far our government is from being a democracy. I would love to see this as a website.#
Randall Neff did an Excel spreadsheet for the impeachment trial. It wasn't as lopsided as I imagined. Roughly 52% to convict, 48% to acquit. The reps of a majority of Americans thought he was guilty, but not nearly enough to convict him. Here's the spreadsheet in PDF.#
When I first reviewed Chartbeat it was called Firefly. I may have been the first user outside of Betaworks. I loved it, it was one of those "You can't really do this can you?" ideas. #
Why is Trump's approval rating going up? This question came up on Brian Lehrer's fantastic WNYC radio show this morning. Here's my theory. During the trial, Trump wasn't controlling the public conversation. So we didn't always hear about Trump's latest outrage every minute of every day. If he were to tone it down permanently, only spoke when a president would normally speak, he might be more popular. #
Amy Klobuchar still meets my requirements for a good Democratic candidate for the plan I outlined yesterday. My only concern was her confidence, but she's really good in this interview. I would definitely vote and work for her, without reservations. #
It's been a while since we had an Occam's News report. Here's the latest. In the impeachment trial, if the jury could have been sure there would be no retribution for a vote of guilty, a lot more would have voted that way. A bunch of them would have voted to acquit even if there would be no retribution, because they think the US is going to privatize massive parts of the government, and they want to be in position to get some of that. Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz.#
This is a test of xref node types in Old School. Following the example from 7/13/2018, this node has an xref attribute whose value is this. When you expand this item you should see the contents of the post. It's a type of inclusion. Today I'm moving the folder on the server where the linkages exist as static objects. This post let me test to see if the move worked, when I did it. #