#but that’s the system and it isn’t changing anytime soon. you’re not voting for the president alone. you’re voting the head of the epa.

[gendernewtral]

tumblr needs a high school civics class jfc

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Does anyone think the United States will exist as it does today in 2026?

That's the semiquincentennial, our 250th anniversary, and I honestly do not know if the country will make it there in one piece. 2024 is going to be a DISASTROUS presidential election, with multiple state governments already promising to interfere with any results they don't like, and I just KNOW the military is gonna tie itself up in some new overseas bullshit we don't belong in because America doesn't "do" the whole peacetime thing. Our economy is built on war, half the population base their entire political identity on war, so the absence of war will leave those nutjobs itching for a fix, like addicts in withdrawal. Things have only gotten worse in the last year, when everyone was expecting it to magically get better once Trump was gone, and no matter how dee we plunge I just don't see rock bottom coming anytime soon.

The judiciary has shown itself to no longer be independent and impartial. We knew this was coming, but the fact that the Republican Party now openly runs on a platform of packing the courts to het favorable rulings is despicable. And they PROJECT, every single horrible thing they do or plan on doing, they project it onto their opponents. They will admonish the Democrats for something they don't plan on doing, then turn around and do exactly that thing; they call all their shots, they're an open book, they have no poker face and yet we're powerless to stop them. It's an ego thing, they get off on being cruel and rubbing our noses in it. I WISH the Democrats were as radical as the Republicans claim they are. If the Democrats did half the things they were accused of, the Republicans would never win another election.

I'm surprised there haven't been more assassination attempts from either side. Tensions are so high, politicians are so divisive, our culture is so polarized, I'm amazed we don't hear of crazed gunmen going after senators and judges every day. It's a powder keg waiting to go off; once one gets taken out, all hell will break loose as both sides race to take out the other before the powers that be can step in to stop it. If someone killed a right wing politician, do you honestly believe there would be no retaliation? I could see a left winger getting shot and no one giving a shit, but a right winger getting shot would lead to all out war, I'm sure of it. Double standard. Establishment Democrats would trust the justice system to work it out through long protracted legal channels, while Republicans would take matters into their own hands and start picking off opponents one at a time. Tit for tat.

I wouldn't doubt it if 2026 saw a rise in right wing extremism. All the nationalists would be empowered by the anniversary, especially if they took back power in 2024 and appointed a couple extra Supreme Court justices (let's be honest; Breyer is gonna end up being Ginsburg 2.0, retiring or dying with a Republican in office. Thomas claims to be in for life, he's got a good 15 or 20 more years left in him, but I have a feeling he'll retire like Kennedy once the Republicans get back in power, replaced by some rising Nazi starlet who is even more conservative and less impartial than he is).

We need judicial term limits. Not mandatory retirement ages, actual set term limits, because if you require justices to retire at age 70, all you're gonna end up doing is incentivize the parties to start nominating younger and younger justices. If they HAVE to retire at 70, why would you ever nominate someone over the age of 60? We'd start seeing justices in their 40s, maybe even their 30s, newly barred lawyers who've never heard a case but promise to vote however the party wants them to for help rest of their lives. No, what we need is to stagger the seats so that one retires every two or three years, ensuring that there's always fresh blood being injected into the justice system, new voices who know they can't just sit pretty forever.

We need Congressional term limits too; maybe 2 or 3 for senators, and like 5 or 6 for the house.

We need a whole slew of new amendments. Hell, at this point I'd say we need a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the whole document from the ground up. Fresh start. The old way isn't working. Other countries change their constitutions all the time, so why do Americans fetishize theirs as though it's somehow special? It's built on the will of the people, and people's wills change over the centuries. 27 updates in 250 years is far too few.

[valleydean]

hi there. i’m not sure what post you’re referring to specifically, so excuse me if my answer is on the vague side. if i came across as shaming people for not being able to vote, that wasn’t my intention. of COURSE there are people out there who are unable to vote for a number of different factors, which is why i believe, if you are able to vote, you should do so for the people who can’t. ya know, if you’re privileged enough to make your voice heard, it’s my belief that you shouldn’t take that lightly and to use it for people who don’t have that same privilege.

[i’m putting the rest under the cut because this got long.]

as for the people who choose not to vote even if they are able.... like, obviously people have their reasons, and maybe they’re good reasons! i don’t know. but broadly speaking - and to address what you said about being let down by the establishment - i get that. personally, i really do understand that. i’m not a huge cheerleader for our government or our two party system or for capitalism and imperialism and etc. none of these things are my first choice. but the fact of the matter is - it’s what we’ve got. i personally don’t see much value in saying “in a perfect world, i’d do this or that.” because we have to work within the system we have in order to strive for a better one. and by choosing not to participate in that - it’s a choice in and of itself. like, yeah it’s tough to know you’re a drop in the bucket and you can’t change much - but imo, it’s worse if you don’t try. because by not trying, you’re allowing this system that let you down to keep going at the same pace. so, even if your voice is tiny and you don’t fully believe in what you’re saying, or you feel as if you’re compromising no matter what you do, it’s still important to at least use what you have to get yourself in the ballpark.

i saw something a few months ago that said politics isn’t a taxi, it’s a bus. by voting, you may not be going to the exact destination you want, but at least you’re headed in the right direction.

and yeah, maybe it’s all a bunch of bullshit to vote for the “let’s make the country not actively on fire again” party rather than the “let’s let fuel the flames” party. i honestly do not disagree with you at this point in time. like, look - i’m 28. in my conscious political years, i have never seen a truly functional government, so i’m also extremely disenchanted by politics and our system. and i was also brought up in the age of tech, which allowed capitalism to infiltrate every facet of life - so i, too, am tired. i hear you. i agree!

but again, this is the world we live in. and hopefully, in time, if we get on the right bus, it’ll help the next generation get closer to where they need to go, and then allow the generation after to get even closer. and i think it’s important to do that for the people who can’t speak for themselves.

and like - i just wanna note that, yeah, i am a white person. so, if i’m gonna “shame” anyone into voting, it’s gonna other white people. because it’s no secret that our voices are listened to the most in this country, and we really need to fuckin use them. and, as a white person, choosing to be apathetic about that is choosing to oppress other groups, imo.

but for other groups who have, of course, been let down by the system time and time again... obviously i can’t tell them what’s right or wrong. like i said, it’s a good reason! and i’m not gonna be like “oh, speak up for yourselves” because that’s demeaning. but, as an individual, you have a responsibility to do what’s best for yourself and for your family and - in this heinous system that’s unfortunately not gonna be torn down anytime soon, the one we’re all trapped in - i think voting and encouraging others to vote is the best way to do that. because unfortunately we gotta work with what we’ve got.

is it right? no. is it fair? no. but it’s the only game in town.

so like, that’s my two cents. kinda just a broad “we didn’t have to do things this way but we did, so let’s try to fix it over time.” so, thank you for your ask. i’ll be more conscious of my language from now on, but i respectfully have to disagree and continue to err on the side of action, no matter how seemingly insignificant.

[infinitycircuit]

don't threaten me with a good time ⭐ MERCEDES ⭐ Trial 1.2 ⭐ RE: Hellraiser, Bigfoot, Monet, everyone’s proposals

Though she listens intently to each and everyone who speaks up, Mercy is entirely unphased by the sharp words sent her way. Hell, Clarion's scolding just makes her grin— and it stays on her face for a while, still leaned back in her chair and tapping at her watch, like she's at a boring club meeting.

Tomie’s the one to finally catch his full interest, and it's with a genuine laugh.

"You and I are on the same page there, babe! Believe me, I've been trying to vote for myself."

He sits up a little and holds his wrist out to prove it— more an oratory device than anything, and now an unnecessary one at that, but those sitting closest can see it's indeed been opened to the button labeled MERCEDES for a while, tragically unusable.

"I agree, for sure, but looks like the powers-that-be say you're stuck with me for now."

She lowers her shades just to wink. Ugh. It’s another while in-between others speaking until she takes a turn again.

"...Seriously, though."

For once, she actually looks serious to match; her smile lessened more and more as others spoke, until the group collectively managed to make her actually frown.

"You see?" She points straight at Monet with one strong, ring-covered finger. "There’s no way to choose this shit. Everyone wants to live, everyone’s got reasons to— I agree Hima's kid needs her mom, obviously, but that doesn't make it okay to put the others on the spot in her place.

Everyone's got people that would miss them. People that need them. You can't weigh them against each other, like it's a fuckin' math equation with a right answer. That's not how it works."

…Mercy crosses her arms and leans back again, blowing a stray bit of hair out of her face.

"Personally, I'm a fan of the splitting-votes-equally idea, even if I can't totally dismiss Lady Horrorshow's theory yet— A for effort, Kazu, but everyone abstaining wouldn't work even if we could convince those who already made up their minds. That would drop the 1-pointers under 0, and who knows if the punishment for that isn't just the same."

Mercedes levels her head to look across the table now— mainly at the couple most divisive participants— and somehow, even behind sunglasses, something about it makes it clear: her gaze is piercing.

"I won't choose who lives and who dies. No one should get to do that. I'm a musician, not an executioner, and I don't plan on a career change anytime soon.

If you all can decide on a way to game the system and actually organize well enough to go through with it— then I'll assist. Otherwise, I'm abstaining. End of story."

But it's just a game, of course. Like he said earlier.

Yeah. For sure.

[wsmith215]

Tennis is back in strictly controlled, socially distanced conditions

Tennis fans celebrated the resumption of live action last week, becoming one of the first major sports to stage and broadcast live competition since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. But what the game will look like in the weeks and months to come is not at all clear.

Two exhibition events featuring round-robin play among a limited number of players under strictly controlled, socially distanced conditions have already happened, with more on tap. The highlight of the coming weekend is the UTR Pro Match Series, which lost ATP No. 8-ranked Matteo Berrettini to an ankle injury on Monday and Australian Open quarterfinalist Tennys Sandgren to a knee injury on Wednesday. The men’s event still features Americans Reilly Opelka and Tommy Paul. A four-player women’s event follows May 22-24 and includes Americans Alison Riske and Amanda Anisimova. The competitions will be streamed from a private court in the West Palm Beach, Florida, area.

This isn’t your familiar ATP or WTA tennis, featuring draws of at least 32 players in single elimination play. The matches at last weekend’s Tennis Point Exhibition in Germany used the Fast Four streamlined scoring format in addition to adopting numerous virus-related precautions: There were no spectators, ball kids or linespersons (just one chair umpire). The players had individual changing rooms, and the support staff was obliged to wear masks and gloves. The restrictions and ambience at the venue, a tennis academy, created a sometimes murky, weird, lab-like viewing experience. But it was sports. It was tennis. It was live.

“As it turns out, everybody has realized that they would rather watch tennis with no fans than no tennis at all,” Sandgren told ESPN.com. “And it seems sponsors are willing to pay for it.”

2 Related

The ongoing experiments have made one thing clear: Tennis events can be staged in strictly controlled environments and broadcast to fans under the variable, often stringent demands of the general lockdown.

“These matches remind you of a classic Western,” said Jamie Reynolds, ESPN’s vice president of production. “Just two gunslingers, and they go out into the desert somewhere to have it out, mano a mano.”

That has always been the bedrock appeal of tennis, but the sport has also discovered that it can’t and needn’t be that stark. Not in normal times, and perhaps not even at a time of crisis. Individual matches can easily be swaddled in various technological tricks, from cutaways to interviews with coaches and other players to ambient sound, even computer-generated images.

Tempting as employing those bells and whistles may be, Reynolds and others are leery of going overboard to compensate for the lack of spectators. Bob Whyley, longtime head of production for Tennis Channel (which will stream the upcoming UTR event), said in an interview: “My vote is to keep it live and intimate. We should never think we’re more important than the tennis itself. Once play starts, we want to get out of the way and let the players dominate.”

Tennis events are currently being be staged in controlled environments and broadcast under social distancing guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic. Alex Grimm/Getty Images

According to Reynolds, golf and tennis are the sports where it’s easiest to get away without having fans — and with social distancing rules in effect. “You may not be as rocked by the absence of fans in tennis as you would be looking at Foxborough and seeing nobody in the stands,” he said. “At the ATP Finals, they make the entire 02 arena go dark during play. If you’re watching on television, you don’t even know there are people there.”

The ATP Finals is an eight-man round-robin event, similar to the ones created thus far during the lockdown. Of course, the season-ending tour championships are of a different order of magnitude, featuring the top players and massive stakes. Just how many fans will tune in and how much money sponsors are willing to offer for modest exhibitions relying mostly on pros ranked well outside the top 10, remains to be seen.

“No doubt we can stage live tennis matches now,” ESPN analyst Patrick McEnroe said. “But will sports fans be happy watching Taylor Fritz play Tommy Paul? [both Americans] How do you do something that means something?”

The main obstacle to bringing together elite players in an all-star exhibition is the web of restrictions on international travel, prohibitions that have hit tennis harder than most other sports. “Tennis is based on the premise that we all go where we want, when we want,” Kelly Wolf, a vice president at management firm Octagon, said in an interview. “That’s not the case for us anymore.”

The situation confirms that tennis is caught on the horns of a dilemma.

The kind of tennis that can be played and broadcast at the moment, while entirely legitimate, is very different from the stuff that forms the superstructure of the game and provides employment to a few hundred players on each tour. Even as restrictions are lifted piecemeal, tournaments will not count in any official way unless all eligible players are free, as the system has always demanded, to enter based on ranking or qualification. The prospects of returning to that degree of normalcy anytime soon, with or without spectators, are grim.

“I’m not very positive, to be honest,” Madrid Open tournament director Feliciano Lopez, a former ATP star, told a Eurosport podcast. “The fact that some countries have different restrictions than others is going to make things very, very difficult. The tour is going to be open when the world is completely open, and everybody can travel freely.”

Lopez’s friend and compatriot Rafael Nadal shares his sentiments. On Tuesday, Nadal told Spanish media: “I’m more concerned with the Australian Open (of 2021) than with what happens later this year. I think 2020 has been practically lost. I’m hopeful of being able to start next year.”

Benjamin Hassan of Germany wears a face mask as he warms up during the Tennis Point Exhibition Series. Alex Grimm/Getty Images

But players want to play. John Isner, still the top-ranked U.S. player at No. 21, has not been approached about playing in any of the recent or planned livestreamed events. He’s wary of expecting too much of such events.

“I’d love to play again,” Isner said. “Everybody would. But I’d like for us to get back to what we’ve been accustomed to, and that looks like it will take time. We could lag behind a little.”

“The tournament game is our bread and butter,” Micky Lawler, president of the WTA, told ESPN.com. “At the same time, we can’t ask our players not to take advantage of opportunities to play.”

The ATP, in a similar bind, wrote in a statement via email: “The ATP’s priority is the health and safety of its players, tournaments, staff, fans and general public. Players are self-employed independent contractors and, as such, are free to make decisions concerning their own activities during the time the Tour is suspended.”

The tours will not resume until, at the very earliest, July 13. But the WTA has already canceled the Rogers Cup, slated to start in Montreal on Aug. 10, due to the Quebec provincial government’s decision to extend the lockdown on large gatherings to at least Aug. 31. The ATP’s own Rogers Cup, scheduled to begin Aug. 10 in Toronto (the tours take turn each year hosting in those two cities) still has a green light.

Some see the disruptions caused by COVID-19 as a time when entrepreneurs can create new events, or new ways to present the sport.

“If we find out that there will be no tennis this summer, more of these things (like the round-robins that have been livestreamed) can be put together,” Wolf said. She added that the pandemic has stimulated stakeholders to look for different business models. “Things like regional events offering prize money but not rankings (because such tournaments would not be open to all qualified players) are just one possibility.”

The four Grand Slam tournaments are the gold standard in tennis. When they come back online, they’re certain to command attention, perhaps more than ever before. But the lifeblood of the week-to-week tour are those ATP 250 and WTA International events, and they’re the ones most at risk because of the pandemic.

“I think the game will be drastically different when it resumes,” John Tobias, who represents Sloane Stephens, Eugenie Bouchard and others on behalf of GSE, told ESPN.com. Tobias wondered how ATP 250s and other small events can survive without attendance revenue and with reduced revenues from sponsors.

Isner, a member of the ATP player council, said: “The 250s are already the most challenging tier of tournaments. They desperately rely on the ticket and sponsor revenue.”

Most of those low-grade tour events depend heavily on recruiting two or three bigger-name stars in order to create buzz and ticket sales. Tobias predicted that with lower prize money and less appearance money on offer, elite players may decide that traveling to and playing smaller events just isn’t worth the effort.

Lower-ranked players are clearly endangered, as they need to play week to week in those smaller events. Doubles has always supplemented their singles income, but social distancing rules threaten that form of the game. Prize money distribution was a sizzling hot topic in tennis at the time the pandemic hit. Now, players who just months ago were hoping to make a better living may be looking at no living at all.

“There will be a shakeout,” Wolf predicted. “A lot of events will be filtered out, and many of those players in that group ranked from No. 250 to 700 won’t be around when all this is said and done.”

The conviction that tennis needs significant structural changes was another lively issue in the days leading up to the outbreak. The public and the players were in lockstep on one major theme, the desire to create team events, like the Laver Cup, on a calendar chock-full of those regular, often struggling, small tournaments of which Tobias and Isner spoke. Those events have mostly been muddling along, but a review of the economics might force them to contemplate different business models.

“The bigger-picture issue to me is the question of whether this is the time to make significant changes in the game,” said McEnroe, who is a fan of team events and also is outspoken on the need for more equitable prize money distribution. “You have to start thinking of alternatives if you have no business, and nobody is getting paid.”

It would be difficult to affect wholesale structural change, though, as the tours are wedded inextricably to the tournament structure.

“We [the WTA] have agreements with broadcasters, tournaments and sponsors,” Lawler said. “We can’t take our eyes off that ball and suddenly start looking at things like regional events.”

One thing most everyone seems to agree upon is that when the tours return full swing, things will not be as they were, at least not for long. There’s a lot of long-view planning going on as officials try to dig out of the current disaster.

“We never had time to look at what else can work because we’ve been too busy going week to week to keep the whole system going,” Wolf said. “Some people are trying to hold on to the past. Maybe they think they can save it, but you can’t save it. We’re going to have to come up with something new.”

Tennis matches livestreamed without ball kids, spectators or coaches scheming in the courtside boxes is not what Wolf has in mind, but it’s a start.

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[entergamingxp]

Blue Protocol Closed Beta Test Feedback Report, Upcoming Changes

June 18, 2020 11:39 PM EST

All the upcoming changes and players feedback following the Closed Beta Test of Blue Protocol, the new anime stylized, PC Online Action RPG by Bandai Namco.

Bandai Namco held on June 18 the fourth live stream for Blue Protocol, debriefing on the game’s Closed Beta Test from late April. The core staff of the game appeared on stream as usual, and most notably explained how no announcements or schedule reveals would be happening on the stream, or anytime soon for that matter. No new gameplay or features were revealed either.

Instead, the Blue Protocol core staff explained how the development team carefully went through feedback received from Closed Beta Test players, and are focusing on improving the game. They explained how nowadays many online games do their Closed Beta Tests right before the Open Beta Tests, and the game’s actual launch. As such, some might be expecting an OBT and release date to be announced soon, but it won’t be the case. They will take the time the game needs. As such, Blue Protocol’s schedule isn’t finalized yet, hence why no schedule was announced. It’s possible Blue Protocol will get another Closed Beta Test before the Open Beta Test as well.

Along with these explanations, the staff also revealed multiple graphs and data from the Closed Beta Test. The development team received around 50,000 entries of feedback for the closed beta. They got a lot of positive feedback, but also received many negative opinions. They read everything and will take everything into account going forward. The staff noted there was a particularly important amount of negative feedback on certain aspects of the game, so they stressed out they strive to improve the game even more.

Blue Protocol Closed Beta Test Report Stream

The players’ feedback was very diverse. Data shared included how 59.6% CBT players had the game on the highest graphics configuration. Or how 71.9% CBT players finished the story content.

You can tell there are very varied players, and each player tried out all the classes. The amount of time each of the four Classes was played is nearly even.

However, there is a majority of negative opinions when it comes to certain gameplay aspects. Such as how much time it took players to gather materials for crafting and upgrading equipment and Imagine. 30.8% of players thought the time it took was normal,  However, 40% of players thought it took a bit too much time, and 24.7% of players thought it took too much time. Basically, most players said the CBT was too grindy.

As for the overall gameplay during action battles: 11% found it very good, 24.9% found it so-so good, 25.6 % found it normal, 31.3% found it so-so hard, and 7.2% said it was very hard. The staff explained how overall, the people who voted positively mentioned in the feedback they got used to the game’s action battles quickly, while those who voted negatively said they had a lot of trouble adapting to the game’s battles. Which makes sense as not every player is particularly good at action games.

Blue Protocol: 42 Frequently Asked Questions and Upcoming Changes

Following that, the stream switched to Frequently Asked Questions. The staff answered 42 questions in total. Most of these were answered in the past and we covered that in our summaries of the previous three streams here, here, and here.

We heard again how the character creation will be improved, and the staff again stressed they will add even more costume parts, accessories, voices, etc later on.

The staff also specified they will implement underwear to choose from too, so those who enjoy that shouldn’t be worried.

The lockon system will be improved.

Battles can become too flashy and confusing when there are many players, so they will make it so you can only display specific effects.

Multiple players noted how it’s stressful that enemies get knocked back all the time when you attack them at close range. It makes combos and the attacks from long-ranged players easier to miss. The staff will adjust that.

They will improve the UI such as adding the time limit of buffs and debuffs.

Certain buttons in certain menus were also too small and hard to click on. This element of the UI will be improved as well.

Bosses and raid bosses will be improved, so the battles are more strategical.

They’ll keep working on the Skills and the Classes’ Skill Trees too.

The Imagine system will be improved too. For example, Mount Imagine will stop loosing energy when you’re staying still. They’ll also add methods to recover a Mount’s Energy besides going back to a town.

They’ll keep improving the Coliseum and Time Attack too, and try to fix exploits so there are less players cheesing through the ranking.

We’ll be able to display our equipped weapon even inside towns.

The loading times for entering towns will be reduced in the future.

The map and mini-map will be improved.

Many players also asked for a mini-map inside dungeons. The developers explained they purposefully didn’t put one because it doesn’t fit their conception of a dungeon. However, they will consider adding one now.

The staff acknowledged the Matching system in the Closed Beta Test was very unstable, so it will be improved.

They’ll improve the experience of players playing with controllers, and add better button mapping options.

The Follow and Followers system, basically the friendslist system, will be improved.

A wishlist-like system will be added so it’s easy to tell what you are hunting for and which equips do you currently aim to craft or upgrade.

The Ability system will be reworked and improved too. Crafting difficulty will change too. In the CBT Crafting was hard from the start. Now, It’ll be easier at first, and gradually get harder.

Last but not least, the Blue Protocol core staff also acknowledged bag space is pretty small, and how annoying it is to go back to town all the time because you can’t carry any more loot. They received a massive amount of negative feedback on that aspect of the game alone. So they are trying to find ways to make it less stressful for players, while analyzing the CBT data. One idea they have in mind is being able to send specific items to storage without going back to town.

They aren’t certain yet if they’ll increase the bag’s capacity, but if they do, it’ll be via unlockables in gameplay. They stressed out players won’t be able to buy bag space with real money, and they will never add this sort of pay-to-win stuff. They also stressed out they knew the bag size was probably too small, but purposefully didn’t talk about it before the Closed Beta, as if they did, players wouldn’t have sent as much feedback regarding that.

「ブルプロ通信」 #4 のライブ配信が終了しました。長時間のご視聴、本当にありがとうございました。 配信内でご案内した内容含めて、明日夕方頃、CBTのフィードバックレポートを公開します。 公開後、改めて公式Twitterでもご案内いたします。#ブルプロ #BlueProtocol

— BLUE PROTOCOL (@BLUEPROTOCOL_JP) June 18, 2020

As explained in the tweet above, a more detailed report of the Closed Beta Test will be published later on June 19 on the game’s official site. If time permits, I’ll be there to translate additional details we learn from it.

As the stream ended, the Blue Protocol staff said to keep your eyes on the game’s Twitter, that the game’s development is still going well, and that they’ll have new announcements coming when they’re ready. They acknowledged certain players are disappointed we still haven’t heard of an Open Beta Test, but they will only announce it when it’s ready.  The team wishes to make the best game possible.

Blue Protocol was only announced on PC for now. However, guessing from job listings, it’s also possible Blue Protocol will come to PS5 and Xbox Series X.  The staff also alreayd mentioned they are thinking about releasing the game outside Japan, but for now are focusing on development and the Beta Tests.

June 18, 2020 11:39 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/blue-protocol-closed-beta-test-feedback-report-upcoming-changes/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blue-protocol-closed-beta-test-feedback-report-upcoming-changes

[itswallstreetpr]

Gearing Up for the Pot Stock Election Run (MJNA, CRLBF, MCTC, CURLF)

The 2016 general election November vote was one of the biggest catalysts for the cannabis space. 2020 is shaping as potentially another similar situation, with 4 states already on the ballot for legalization (2 for recreational) and another 6 states pushing to get on the ballot (5 for recreational), making it potentially even more explosive for the overall legalization movement than we saw in the historic 2016 process. The rationalization for this last claim is about percentage change: the ultimate shift would be to get cannabis legalized on a recreational basis in the majority of the US, thereby putting pressure on the federal government to accept the verdict by states and start removing federal statutes around cannabis, which would likely accelerate the dominoes as a “tipping point” phenomenon. In percentage terms, if all states seeking to get on the ballot for recreational “adult use” legalization are successful in doing so, then 2020 will be a bigger shift (provided they all pass) than the movement in 2016. In other words, start getting your pot stock portfolio picks together ASAP. Below you will find our thoughts and analysis on some of the more widely discussed names in the space, including: Medical Marijuana Inc (OTCMKTS:MJNA), CRLBF, MCTC Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:MCTC) aka Cannabis Global Inc. (OTCMKTS:MCTC), and CURLF   Medical Marijuana Inc (OTCMKTS:MJNA) isn’t what we would consider a “prime investment pick” in this space. The company has remained on the pink sheets, offering up unaudited financials only for all of its tenure as a publicly traded stock (and we’re talking about years here), despite claiming tens of millions in revenues. In case you’re wondering, this is not remotely typical. As far as we can tell, MJNA is the only stock in the history of the world that fits this description. And it’s certainly not a reassuring idea. Why would you hide on the pink sheets and avoid producing audited financial reports if you are seeing such success? To underscore this, the stock has done nothing but slide lower despite the company’s proclamations of ever-growing revenues. Smoke equals fire. We would simply be careful with any company that seems to overpromise and overhype, and then claim the opaque lack of transparency afforded to companies trading on the pink sheets. While we have seen a recent spike following news that Aurora bought out a CBD name (CBD is the main focus of MJNA), we would remain skeptical that the long history here of underperformance in MJNA is likely to change on a sustained basis anytime soon. Medical Marijuana Inc (OTCMKTS:MJNA) bills itself as an investment holding company that operates in the medical marijuana and industrial hemp markets. Its products range from patented and proprietary based cannabinoid products to seed and stalk or isolated high value extracts manufactured and formulated for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and cosmeceutical industries. The company licenses its proprietary testing, genetics, labeling and packaging, tracking, production, and standardization methods for the medicinal cannabinoid industry. It engages in the research and development of cannabinoid-based pharmaceuticals; and marketing and distribution of cannabidiol hemp oil-based products. In addition, the company provides management support and services to cooperatives, collectives, health and wellness facilities, and medical clinics; and consulting and securities services to businesses and individuals in the legal cannabis industry. It’s subsidiary, Kannaway, is a network sales and marketing company specializing in the sales and marketing of hemp-based botanical products. Kannaway currently hosts weekly online sales meetings and conferences across the United States, offering unique insight and opportunity to sales professionals who are desirous of becoming successful leaders in the sale and marketing of hemp-based botanical products. MJNA has been acting well over recent days, up something like 30% in that time. Shares of the stock have powered higher over the past month, rallying roughly 75% in that time on strong overall action. Medical Marijuana Inc (OTCMKTS:MJNA) managed to rope in revenues totaling $16.9M in overall sales during the company's most recently reported quarterly financial data -- a figure that represents a rate of top line growth of -4.2%, as compared to year-ago data in comparable terms. In addition, the company is battling some balance sheet hurdles, with cash levels struggling to keep up with current liabilities ($6.2M against $11M, respectively).   Cresco Labs Inc (OTCMKTS:CRLBF) continues to act like a new leader in the making, with an expanding footprint in terms of market density and geographic range. Moreover, this is a company very much tied to the process of gradual legalization in the US marketplace, with a widely known brand and a growing scale in terms of distribution relationships. Cresco Labs Inc (OTCMKTS:CRLBF) trumpets itself as a company that manufactures and sells medical cannabis products in the United States. It offers cannabis dry flower; vaporizer forms of cannabis; cannabis oil in capsule, oral and sublingual solutions; cannabis in topical; and other cannabis products. The company also provides cannabis infused edibles, including chocolate and toffee confections, fruit-forward gummies, and hard sweet and chews. Cresco Labs Inc. sells its products under the Cresco brand. In addition, it operators a Hope Heal Health dispensary in Fall River, Bristol County, Massachusetts. If you're long this stock, then you're liking how the stock has responded to the announcement. CRLBF shares have been moving higher over the past week overall, pushing about 8% to the upside on above average trading volume. Shares of the stock have powered higher over the past month, rallying roughly 24% in that time on strong overall action. Cresco Labs Inc (OTCMKTS:CRLBF) generated sales of $54.6M, according to information released in the company's most recent quarterly financial report. That adds up to a sequential quarter-over-quarter growth rate of 14.2% on the top line. In addition, the company is battling some balance sheet hurdles, with cash levels struggling to keep up with current liabilities ($70.2M against $194.7M, respectively).   MCTC Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:MCTC), now doing business as Cannabis Global, Inc. (MCTC), has started to emerge as a new focus point for cannabis stock traders in the past few weeks. The company has been an IP leader, with a number of major patents related primarily to infusion technology for CBD, THC, CBG, and THC-V in the works. It’s rare to see substantive IP as a factor in the pot stock space – most of these names are basically commodity plays – but MCTC appears to be the genuine item on that note. To help reinforce that idea, the company just announced it has completed product development and has begun distribution of its unique tetrahydrocannabivarin (THC-V) coffee and tea products to product beta testers. This comes on the heels of news that the company has been approved as an Amazon.com platform seller for its Hemp You Can Feel branded line of CBD products. According to the release, “Cannabis Global has integrated three internally developed technologies into the unique manufacturing process for the industry's first THC-V beverages. The first of these is the process developed by the Company to produce 70%+ loaded THC-V, controlled release, nanoparticles utilizing laboratory-based, pharmaceutical-grade production equipment. The Company is also utilizing both its internally developed powerization and one step dosing system, ensuring precise dosing and significantly faster production. The Company has filed provisional patents on all three technologies.” As noted, Cannabis Global (OTCMKTS:MCTC) has recently filed six patents on cannabinoid extraction technologies and delivery systems. Management is currently working with patent counsel to protect various other technologies it has developed or is currently developing, including its programs pertaining to cannabinoid glycosides, polymeric cannabinoid nanoparticles and nanofibers, and its hemp extract-based alcohol replacement technologies. "Our unique infusion and production technologies provide Cannabis Global with a product purity advantage as well as a clear path to low cost leadership," commented CEO Arman Tabatabaei. "The THC-V cannabinoids are synthesized and entirely free of impurities. While there were some upfront technology development and intellectual property protection costs, we expect our ongoing variable production costs to be less than half of any potential competitor. Via our technologies, we turn one of the cannabis industry's most expensive items – pure THC-V cannabinoids – into a cost-effective solution that sets a new standard for product purity in the cannabinoid-based products marketplace." MCTC Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:MCTC) had no reported sales in its last quarterly financial data. In addition, the company is battling some balance sheet hurdles, with cash levels struggling to keep up with current liabilities ($157K against $1.5M, respectively).   Curaleaf Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:CURLF) shares have been moving steadily higher as the company continues to expand and solidify itself as one of the primary leaders in the space, particularly in the US market. CURLF shares pushed above their key 200-day simple moving average line two weeks ago, and have held up above that key technical marker on a closing basis since, with two critical tests, both passed nicely thus far. At this point, all of the stock’s major MA’s are curving into a bullish posture on a long-term basis. Curaleaf Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:CURLF) promulgates itself as a company that operates as an integrated medical and wellness cannabis operator in the United States. The Company is the parent of Curaleaf, Inc., a leading vertically integrated cannabis operator in the United States. Headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, Curaleaf, Inc. has a presence in 12 states. Curaleaf, Inc. operates 30 dispensaries, 12 cultivation sites and 9 processing sites with a focus on highly populated, limited license states, including Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. Curaleaf, Inc. leverages its extensive research and development capabilities to distribute cannabis products in multiple formats with the highest standard for safety, effectiveness, consistent quality and customer care. Curaleaf is committed to being the industry's leading resource in education and advancement through research and advocacy. Curaleaf Inc.'s Florida operations were the first in the cannabis industry to receive the Safe Quality Food certification under the Global Food Safety Initiative, setting a new standard of excellence. It cultivates, processes, markets, and/or dispenses a range of cannabis products in various operating markets, including flower, pre-rolls and flower pods, dry-herb vaporizer cartridges, concentrates for vaporizing, concentrates for dabbing, tinctures, lozenges, capsules, and edibles. Shares of the stock have powered higher over the past month, rallying roughly 26% in that time on strong overall action. Curaleaf Holdings Inc (OTCMKTS:CURLF) generated sales of $129.8M, according to information released in the company's most recent quarterly financial report. That adds up to a sequential quarter-over-quarter growth rate of 30.3% on the top line. In addition, the company has a strong balance sheet, with cash levels far exceeding current liabilities ($251M against $177.1M). Read the full article

[dinosaurpolitician]

Friendly reminder that good activism:

1: Actually involves communities, asks what they think is broken and how they think it can be fixed, and takes this into account, rather than coming in and assuming you know all the answers. Your solution to a problem may not be the best for the community you’re trying to convince, and the problems you’re advocating for may not be the problems that the community cares about.

2: Involves politicians. You may hate the current political system, but it’s not going away anytime soon. Contact your politicians. Collect a group of like-minded people. Never STOP contacting your politicians. Invite them to meetings. You need to force them to listen to you because they are the ones who actually vote on bills.

3: It is humble. The last thing that anyone wants is to be condescended to. Don’t belittle people who don’t understand the issues, try to educate them. If they’re a lost cause, ignore them, don’t insult them. It’s a bad look, and if you’re trying to convince people of something, the last thing you want is to strengthen your bubble by pandering to people who already agree with you. Oh, and a personal pet peeve: don’t block traffic. Does it raise awareness? Yes. Does it make people give a shit? No. Does it make people want to root for you and take up your cause? Absolutely fucking not. You are forever “those jackasses who made me late for work” and have successfully made someone an opponent to your cause. This seems like it should be common sense, but isn’t for some reason.

4: It respects the system. Regardless of how hard you shout at the current political system, it’s not going away anytime soon. The easiest way to win at anything is to play the game. Destroy the system from the inside out. It’s also easier to convince people to change if you do it slowly. People naturally tend to hate change, and working within the system to an extent can convince them that nothing’s really changing. It’d be nice to solve the entire problem in one fell swoop, but you’re far more likely to succeed if you take it one step at a time. It’s slower and less bombastic and flashy, but you shouldn’t be going for bombastic and flashy. You should be going for societal change. And societal change doesn’t happen overnight. (And think about it, isn’t it way cooler to fucking demolish corruption from the inside than fruitlessly trying to destroy it from outside? It’s like you’re a movie protagonist. Maybe that’s just me.)

TL;DR: If you want to get something done, make sure that it’s something that people want, don’t act like you know all the answers, and don’t shout at politicians from a distance. Instead, make eye contact and talk to them face to face. That way, they can’t ignore you.

[thisdaynews]

Democrats in dissension over all-white 2020 frontrunners

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/democrats-in-dissension-over-all-white-2020-frontrunners/

Democrats in dissension over all-white 2020 frontrunners

Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker. | Nati Harnik/AP Photo

When Kamala Harris dropped out two weeks ago, it hit Cory Booker hard.

She may have been his rival in the race for the Democratic nomination, but her exit represented something bigger. If Harris — a friend of Booker’s and the only black woman in the race, who began her campaign with such promise — couldn’t make it to Iowa, what did it mean for him, a black man still in the fight but unable to qualify for the Democratic debate?

At the heart of Booker’s dilemma is a larger question about the Democratic Party and American politics: What if Barack Obama was not just the first, but the only person who is not a white man to occupy the White House for decades to come?

“That’s a very real fear,” said Bakari Sellers, a prominent South Carolina Democrat who supported Harris’ bid. It feels like the country has taken a giant step backward, he said. “It’s hard to answer the question of, how did you go from Barack Obama to Donald Trump?”

Harris’ downfall, Booker’s struggles and Julián Castro’s single-digit polling have caused Democrats across the party, and especially people of color, to ask what’s led the party to this juncture, where all the frontrunners are white, and most of them are male and in their 70s. In July, Democrats had the most diverse debate stage in history. Five months later, all the participants are white except for Andrew Yang, who made it onto the debate stage just two days before the deadline, thanks to the very last poll that was part of the qualifying criteria.

The blame game goes into overdrive

There was great hope heading into the 2020 election cycle that the Democratic Party’s large field would reflect the country’s rapid shift toward a majority-minority population. Interviews with nearly two dozen Democrats — including political operatives, senior advisers to current Democratic candidates, and members of Congress — reveal deep frustration over the party’s current predicament and pessimism about nominating a nonwhite presidential nominee anytime soon.

Some candidates have blamed the continued preeminence of Iowa and New Hampshire — a pair of states where nine of 10 people are white — in choosing the Democratic nominee. Others point fingers at the Democratic National Committee, accusing the party of setting debate qualifications that unfairly narrowed the field too early.

“It didn’t just happen,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a Harris supporter and past chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“There has to be structural change,” Lee said of the Democratic nominating system. “Systemic racism permeates everything in this country. I think Democrats are doing some soul-searching right now. … I don’t know if white Democrats are really stepping up and looking at how the system is biased and prevents others from coming through.”

That’s not to say that Harris’ collapse was dictated by outside forces, or that the DNC’s debate thresholds were responsible for Castro and Booker’s failure to break through. Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, the only other black candidate in the race now besides Booker, entered late and is struggling to gain attention.

“The question is whether the issues of concern to black people [and] to brown people get raised without black and brown people on this stage,” Patrick told POLITICO.

Black and Latino voters stick by Biden and Bernie

Multiple things can be true. The Democrats’ system of selecting their nominee may indeed be outdated, resulting in it favoring conventional, in most cases white, candidates. But it’s also apparent that African American voters haven’t budged all year from Joe Biden and that Bernie Sanders has a strong following among Latinos. Voters point out that seeing themselves represented in a candidate isn’t everything they’re after this time around.

Underlying that devotion especially to Biden is the “electability” factor, which activists are quick to say is code for “white and male.” The theory is that with Trump in the White House, Democratic voters don’t want to gamble on trying to make history electing another “first.”

“You have to answer two questions when you’re running for president: One is should you be president and the other is could you be president. And if you are a white man you do not have to answer that second question,” said Addisu Demissie, Booker’s campaign manager.

Demissie said Booker is aware of the skepticism about whether Democrats are ready to nominate another black man after Obama. He said Booker’s candidacy is “premised on this faith that people are ready to vote their hopes and not just their fears.”

But, he added, “There is a fear that Donald Trump is an expert at exploiting the differences between us, the biggest historically of which is race in this country.”

When Harris dropped out, people inside and outside of Booker’s campaign, including former Harris supporters, saw him as the candidate who would carry her mantle. The two looked to each other for reassurance, taking comfort in the fact that they weren’t the only black candidate in the race like Obama had been, according to multiple people close to both candidates.

Despite Booker’s urgings that the DNC change its qualifications so more candidates can participate in next year’s debates, the party argues it’s “led a fair and transparent process” and made candidates aware nearly a year ago, to no objections, that the qualification criteria would increase.

As Booker has decried the debate qualifications and Castro has challenged Iowa and New Hampshire’s status as the first two voting states‚ citing that they’re 90 percent white, they’ve been met with this rejoinder: Obama did it, so the system isn’t stacked against you.

But Obama was potentially a “once-in-a-generation” candidate, said Andrew Gillum, the African American former mayor of Tallahassee, Fla.

“The question is, do you build the rules around [what Obama accomplished], or do you build the rules around more of what would be typical in this process,” said Gillum. “Sometimes when you’re the first, people get a taste of it, they feel like they checked that box, and then they turn very decidedly away from it.”

‘A bad look’

David Axelrod, who served as a close adviser to Obama, said he “can’t accept” that Obama will be the only nonwhite man to enter the White House for years to come. “I don’t think he was elected and the door swung closed behind him.”

“It is an awkward fact that the frontrunners are all white in a party that’s very diverse and a field that was the most diverse in history,” Axelrod said. “It’s a bad look.” But “I don’t know that there’s an institutional explanation for it,” such as the nominating structure, he said.

Howard Dean, the former DNC chair and presidential candidate in 2004, agreed with Axelrod that it’s not the image that Democrats would ideally project. But Dean disagreed about the nominating process: “New Hampshire and Iowa are a big problem.”

New Hampshire’s new law making it more difficult for students to vote by requiring a state ID is an “embarrassment,” said Dean. Already lacking in racial diversity, the state is now limiting young people from casting votes, he said.

“It’s an embarrassment to the Democrats who stand up for the right to vote, having our first primary there,” Dean said. “They’re going to be toast sooner rather than later.”

New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said the “calendar is set for 2020” and Democrats in the state are “focused on defeating Donald Trump” and electing Democrats up and down the ballot.

“There is plenty of time after the election to respond to any misunderstanding, misconception, or misinformation anyone has to spout regarding the four early states,” Buckley said in a statement, blaming the voter ID law on New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Troy Price recently co-wrote an op-ed defending the state’s first-caucus status. He argued that Iowa, due to its small size, allows candidates with small budgets but strong retail political skills a shot at vaulting into contention for the nomination.

Every election cycle the nominating process comes under scrutiny. After complaints from Sanders in 2016, the DNC overhauled its superdelegate system, changes that still irk some Democrats. And the DNC, concerned about a circus on the debate stage, exerted a heavier hand on qualifications this time than in past cycles.

‘Racism and sexism is everywhere’

Castro’s criticism has given new life to a perennial debate about the Iowa-New Hampshire nomination kickoff. One longtime DNC member said New Hampshire’s law mandating that it be the first primary in the Democratic nominating process is a top obstacle and that some officials in the state have threatened to move up the primary to December if the DNC tries to change the order.

But almost every House Democrat interviewed for this story — even those who support Biden, like Reps. Filemon Vela (D-Texas) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) — said the voting order should change to better reflect black and brown voters.

“Having Iowa and New Hampshire first disadvantages minority candidates without question,” Vela said. Cleaver thinks Maryland or Nevada should go first.

Many Democrats pin the fact it hasn’t changed on the DNC, or say the politics of doing so have been insurmountable.

“Institutional racism and sexism is everywhere in this country, present in all of our institutions,” said Leah Daughtry, a former DNC official. “And the presidential primary system is not exempt from that.”

It’s an open question whether Democrats will change the nominating process or find ways to help candidates like Harris, Booker and Castro compete against self-funding billionaires who have bought their way to higher polling numbers. Though Harris made the December debate stage, she cited a lack of funds as the primary reason for her ability to continue on.

After Harris dropped out, younger black elected officials like JA Moore, a state representative in South Carolina, found themselves trying to make sense of what happened.

The core of Harris’ campaign was “the fact that African American women and women in general, have carried the Democratic Party,” Moore said. Now, he said, her young African American endorsers “are asking what does this mean for us? What do we do next?”

Ryan Lizza contributed to this report.

Read More

[hikingladyboots]

Ball Fireman Night Train III Review

Check Out Pricing and Reviews on Amazon

Ball Fireman Night Train III Review

The automatic watches that lights up your way in the middle of nowhere. The robust watch with shock-resistance and lights that won't fade anytime soon.

John V.

5 Total Score

The New Ball watch with Insanely Amount of Lume

The automatic watches that lights up your way in the middle of nowhere. The robust watch with shock-resistance and lights that won't fade anytime soon.

User Rating: 4.9 (1 votes)

For most of us, a watch is just another piece of jewelry that helps us tell time. As long as it’s precise and feels comfortable on our wrist, there’s nothing much to look in the watch.

You couldn’t be any further than the truth as watches can do so much more than helping you not be late on your meetings. Apart from the looks, which can be selling points in some situations, the build and the features of a watch can make your life easier and even help you succeed in the most challenging conditions.

In all fairness, watches have traveled a long way ever since their creation and come with functions that only the new era people are going to understand and appreciate.

Why is Ball watches a respected name within the watch industry?

Ball Watch Company is an American watch company with its headquarters in Switzerland. It was founded at the end of the 19th century in Ohio, and it’s connected to the American railroad history.

Ball Watch Company is one of the most appreciated watch brands in the United States, and its efforts to keep pace with the continually moving tastes of customers have never stopped. Even though the looks may have changed throughout the years, the fundamental spirit of the brand (which is an industrial function) never did. The original details (the dial always relates to the standard railway watch) never went away, and they all (the shape of the hands, the style of numerals and many more) sustain the precision of the watches.

Ball has been creating watches that are loaded with features and come for reasonable prices. The brand had changed the strategy only recently when it started to offer new watches at pre-order prices.

What the Ball Fireman Night Train III at a glance?

If you know a thing or two about watches, you may also be aware that Ball watches are affordable ETA-based mechanical timepieces that include self-illuminating tritium tubes chief.

Ball watches fall in the category of tough and adventure watches, and several features stay behind this nature. The watches present a patented Amortiser system (it’s made of an antimagnetic ring between the movement and the case and a system for locking the rotor), which sustains the shock-resistance. Let’s not forget that the company used to make chronometers for America’s railway conductors as they needed highly-accurate pocket watches for preventing fatal accidents when trains would go behind schedule.

Coming back to the Ball Fireman Night Train III, we see a reasonably simple three-hander watch that includes a magnified date at three o’clock. The watch makes a pleasant first impression, but it’s a lot more than meets the eye. The watch comes with a strong ETA2824-2 automatic, and the anti-magnetic ring protects it well. The Ball’s reliable shock-absorbing “Amortiser” system doesn’t miss from this one either.

The watch is also outfitted with the famous tritium gas tubes that we find in most Ball watches. If you know nothing about tritium gas, we’re here for the rescue. Tritium gas doesn’t need to “charge” from a light source (the way any other photoluminescent materials do) and doesn’t fade either. It means that you’re going to be able to read the watch for a very long time. The most impressive part comes from the fact that the Ball Fireman Night Train III is equipped with no less than 61 tubes around the dial, which is more than enough even in the darkest night.

The watch comes in three sizes: 31mm, 40mm, and 43mm. However, you get to customize it too, and you can select the dial color, the strap, and even the lume color. Just make sure you put a buck aside for paying when pre-ordering.

All in all, the Ball Fireman Night Train III is a typical Ball watch that is very easy to use and dependable for a long time.

Let’s go over the details as well!

If you’re a timepiece aficionado, you should never miss your chance of owning a Ball watch. A Ball watch is all about rugged build, long-glowing tritium-tube-equipped dials and antimagnetic system for protecting the movements. The Ball Fireman Night Train III doesn’t make an exception, and the watch impresses with the nighttime performance and functionality.

As we’ve stated, the watch comes in several diameter and thickness options, and you can choose the diameter you think it’s going to fit your wrist the best. You can have your pick when it comes to the color of the dial too. Black, green or blue are the options to choose from.

The case is made with stainless steel, which ensures excessive wear, without losing its abilities. The 40 and 43 mm versions feature tritium tubes for the hours and minutes, whereas the 31mm version comes with tritium only for hours.

You can select between green or orange color for the Lume. You may also decide which type of strap you want for your watch as well. The 31mm version only comes with steel bracelet, whereas the 40mm and 43 mm options include a leather strap, steel bracelet or rubber strap. You may want to take a look at the extra Nato straps that come in two sizes.

The build of the watch doesn’t disappoint, and the watch has 100meter water resistance. The case back is solid and comes with engraved train iconography.

When it comes to functions, there are some differences. The ETA 2671 includes hours, minutes and seconds, whereas the ETA 2824-2 displays hours, minutes, seconds and date as well.

The winding is automatic, and the power reserve is 38 hours.

What’s our final line?

The Ball Fireman Night Train III isn’t your regular watch. It’s a long-lasting, robust and impressive watch that takes the wear and the abuse for a long time, helping you stay on track even in the middle of the darkest night. Some things should never change. And Ball Fireman Night Train III is proof that some things can work without changing that much. It’s the classic Ball watch with a subtle touch of the modern era for the customer of the 21st century. Why not take the plunge?

RESOURCES

Ball Watch Co.

Introducing: The Ball Fireman Night Train III – HODINKEE

Ball Watches Fireman Night Train III Pre-Order • Gear Patrol

  The post Ball Fireman Night Train III Review appeared first on Atomic811.

[theconservativebrief]

The president is the billionaire head of a global business empire, and his mostly millionaire Cabinet may be the richest in American history. His opponent in the 2016 election was a millionaire. Most Supreme Court Justices are millionaires. Most members of Congress are millionaires (and probably have been for several years).

On the other end of the economic spectrum, most working people are employed in manual labor, service industry, and clerical jobs. Those Americans, however, almost never get a seat at the table in our political institutions.

Why not? In a country where virtually any citizen is eligible to serve in public office, why are our elected representatives almost all drawn from such an unrepresentative slice of the economy?

This year, it might be tempting to think that working-class Americans don’t have it so bad in politics, especially in light of recent candidates like Randy Bryce, the Wisconsin ironworker running for the US House seat Paul Ryan is vacating, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former restaurant server whose primary election win over Democratic heavyweight Joe Crowley may go down as the single biggest election upset in 2018.

In reality, however, they are stark exceptions to a longstanding rule in American politics: Working-class people almost never become politicians. Ocasio-Cortez and Bryce make headlines in part because their economic backgrounds are so unusual (for politicians, that is). Their wins are stunning in part because their campaigns upset a sort of natural order in American politics.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

The figure above plots recent data on the share of working-class people in the US labor force (the black bar) and in state and national politics. Even in the information age, working-class jobs — defined as manual labor, service industry, and clerical jobs — still make up a little more than half of our economy. But workers make up less than 3 percent of the average state legislature.

The average member of Congress spent less than 2 percent of his or her entire pre-congressional career doing the kinds of jobs most Americans go to every day. No one from the working class has gotten into politics and gone on to become a governor, or a Supreme Court justice, or the president.

And that probably won’t change anytime soon. The left half of the figure below plots data on the share of working-class people in state legislatures (which tend to foreshadow demographic changes in higher offices) and the percentage of members of Congress who were employed in working-class jobs when they first got into politics. As a point of comparison, the right half of the figure plots data on the share of state legislatures and members of Congress who were women. (Of course, these groups overlap — a woman from a working-class job would increase the percentages in both figures.)

Christina Animashaun/Vox

The exclusion of working-class people from American political institutions isn’t a recent phenomenon. It isn��t a post-decline-of-labor-unions phenomenon, or a post-Citizens United phenomenon. It’s actually a rare historical constant in American politics — even during the past few decades, when social groups that overlap substantially with the working class, like women, are starting to make strides toward equal representation. Thankfully, the share of women in office has been rising — but it’s only been a certain type of woman, and she wears a white collar.

This ongoing exclusion of working-class Americans from our political institutions has enormous consequences for public policy. Just as ordinary citizens from different classes tend to have different views about the major economic issues of the day (with workers understandably being more pro-worker and professionals being less so), politicians from different social classes tend to have different views too.

These differences between politicians from different social classes have shown up in every major study of the economic backgrounds of politicians. In the first major survey of US House members in 1958, members from the working class were more likely to report holding progressive views on the economic issues of the day and more likely to vote that way on actual bills. The same kinds of social class gaps appear in data on how members of Congress voted from the 1950s to the present. And in data on the kinds of bills they introduced from the 1970s to the present. And in public surveys of the views and opinions of candidates in recent elections.

The gaps between politicians from working-class and professional backgrounds are often enormous. According to how the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce rank the voting records of members of Congress, for instance, members from the working class differ by 20 to 40 points (out of 100) from members who were business owners, even in statistical models with controls for partisanship, district characteristics, and other factors. Social class divisions even span the two parties. Among Democratic and Republican members of Congress alike, those from working-class jobs are more likely than their fellow partisans to take progressive or pro-worker positions on major economic issues.

These differences between politicians from different economic backgrounds — coupled with the virtual absence of politicians from the working class — ultimately skew the policymaking process toward outcomes that are more in line with the upper class’s economic interests. States with fewer legislators from the working class spend billions less on social welfare each year, offer less generous unemployment benefits, and tax corporations at lower rates. Towns with fewer working-class people on their city councils devote smaller shares of their budgets to social safety net programs; an analysis I conducted in 2013 suggested that cities nationwide would spend approximately $22.5 billion more on social assistance programs each year if their councils were made up of the same mix of classes as the people they represent.

Congress has never been run by large numbers of working-class people, but if we extrapolate from the behavior of the few workers who manage to get in, it’s probably safe to say that the federal government would enact far fewer pro-business policies and far more pro-worker policies if its members mirrored the social class makeup of the public.

As the old saying goes, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.

Now, defenders of America’s white-collar government will tell you that working-class people are unqualified to hold office, and that voters know it and rightly prefer more affluent candidates.

Alexander Hamilton said it (“[workers] are aware, that however great the confidence they may justly feel in their own good sense, their interests can be more effectually promoted by the merchant than by themselves”). Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists have said it (“voters repeatedly reject insurrectionist candidates who parallel their own ordinariness … in favor of candidates of proven character and competence”). Donald Trump has said it (“I love all people, rich or poor, but in [Cabinet-level] positions, I just don’t want a poor person.”).

However, this line of reasoning is flat wrong. The raw personal qualities that voters tend to want in a candidate — honesty, intelligence, compassion, and work ethic — are not qualities that the privileged have a monopoly on. (In fact, two of the traits voters say they most want in a politician, honesty and compassion, may actually be a little less common among the rich.)

When working-class people hold office, they tend to perform about as well as other leaders on objective measures; in an analysis of cities governed by majority-working-class city councils in 1996, I found that by 2001, those cities were indistinguishable from others in terms of how their debt, population, and education spending had changed.

When working-class people run, moreover, they tend to do just fine. In both real-world elections and hypothetical candidate randomized controlled trials embedded in surveys (which help to rule out the so-called Jackie Robinson effect), voters seem perfectly willing to cast their ballots for working-class candidates.

The real barrier to working-class representation seems to be that workers just don’t run in the first place. In national surveys of state legislative candidates in 2012 and 2014, for instance, former workers made up just 4 percent of candidates (and around 3 percent of winners).

So why do so few workers run for office? I’ve been researching this question for the past decade, and I think the answer is right under our noses: campaigns.

Let me say from the outset that I love our democracy, and I wouldn’t want to live in a country that selected political leaders any other way. But American democracy isn’t perfect — no system of government is — and one of the side effects of selecting leaders via competitive elections is that groups with fewer resources are at a huge disadvantage.

In democratic elections, people can only be considered for office if they take time off work and out of their personal lives to campaign. Even in places where candidates don’t spend a lot of money on their campaigns, they still put in a lot of time and energy — any candidate will tell you that running was a significant personal sacrifice. They give up their free time. They give up time with their families. Many of them have to take time off work.

For politically qualified working-class Americans, this feature of elections seems to be the barrier that uniquely distinguishes them from equally qualified professionals. In surveys, workers and professionals alike hate the thought of asking for donations. They say that the thought of giving up their privacy is a downside. They express similar concerns about whether they are qualified.

But it is the thought of losing income or taking time off work that uniquely screens out working-class Americans long before Election Day. When the price of competing is giving up your day job (or a chunk of it), usually only the very well-off will be able to throw their hats into the ring.

But couldn’t party and interest group leaders help working-class Americans overcome these obstacles? Couldn’t foundations create special funds to encourage and support candidates from the working class?

Of course. But they usually don’t. The people who recruit new candidates often don’t see workers as viable options, and pass them over in favor of white-collar candidates. In surveys of county-level party leaders, for instance, officials say that they mostly recruit professionals and that they regard workers as worse candidates. Candidates say the same thing: In surveys of people running for state legislature, workers report getting less encouragement from activist organizations, civic leaders, and journalists.

The reasons are complicated. Some party leaders cite concerns about fundraising to explain why they don’t recruit workers, for instance, and in places where elections cost less, party officials really do seem to recruit more working-class candidates. However, by far the best predictor of whether local party leaders say they encourage working-class candidates is whether the party leader reports having a lower income him- or herself and whether the party leader reports having any working-class people on the party’s executive committee.

Candidate recruitment is a deeply social activity, and political leaders are usually busy volunteers who look for new candidates within their own mostly white-collar personal and professional networks. The result is that working-class candidates are often passed over in favor of affluent professionals.

What about foundations, reformers, and pro-worker advocacy organizations? Couldn’t they help qualified working-class Americans run for office?

Of course. But they usually don’t. There are models out there for doing so, actually — the New Jersey AFL-CIO has been running a program to recruit working-class candidates for more than two decades (and their graduates have a 75 percent win rate and close to 1,000 electoral victories). But the model has been slow to catch on in the larger pro-worker reform community.

To the contrary, the pro-worker community has focused on reforms aimed at addressing the oversize political influence of the wealthy that have historically tended to look at on inequalities in political voice, imbalances in the ways that citizens and groups pressure government from the outside. We’ve heard the same story for decades: If we could reform lobbying and campaign finance and get a handle on the flow of money in politics, the rich wouldn’t have as much of a say in government. If we could promote broader political participation, enlighten the public, and revitalize the labor movement, the poor would have more of a say.

The key to combating political inequality, in this view, is finding ways to make sure that everyone’s voices can be heard — and the idea of giving workers influence inside government has never been a part of the mainstream reform conversation.

That may change someday, and I hope it will — especially considering the practical and political roadblocks facing other reforms like increasing voter turnout and reforming the campaign finance system. The opportunity to go down in history as the Emily’s List of the working class is just waiting there for some forward-looking organization.

In the meantime, what can you do? A lot, actually.

First, look up what the candidates on your ballot do for a living. Many people get sample ballots in the mail, or have the option to look them up online. Create your own occupational profile of your ballot — find out how your candidates earn a living (or if they work full time in politics, find out how they earned a living before). While you’re at it, look at the representation of women, people of color, people with disabilities, or any other social group you think is important. When you’re done, post the results on social media. The virtual absence of working-class people in American political institutions is something that people take for granted. Challenge that.

And if you aren’t happy with the mix of people on your ballot, contact your local party leaders and let them know that you would support a more economically diverse slate of candidates. Be nice to them — most local party leaders are volunteers with day jobs just doing their best — and express appreciation for all the hard work they do to keep your local party running. But also let them know that you’d like to see more people with experience in working-class jobs on your ballot. And if you’re willing and able, offer to help however you can.

When working-class candidates run, stick up for them. If they’re people you can get behind, donate to their campaigns, or send them encouraging notes, or talk about them positively to your friends. If you’re able, offer to volunteer for their campaigns. Working-class candidates start at a disadvantage, and they don’t get as much support from political insiders. Reach out to them and let them know that you see the sacrifices they’re making. If you’re one of the rare Americans who has a working-class candidate on the ballot, and if you support them, offer to help.

Regardless of whether you find a working-class candidate to support, call out social class stereotypes and prejudices when you see them in political media. When workers run, journalists often express amazement, or talk about them in class-coded ways that demean their intelligence and character. (The CNN coverage of opposition research on Randy Bryce is a great example.) When media outlets cover working-class candidates, ask yourself: Are journalists treating the other candidates in this race the way they’re treating this candidate? Would they say that about a candidate with a white-collar job and a big house in the suburbs? If the answers are no, write to their editors, or call them out on social media. Demand political news coverage that doesn’t slide into social class stereotypes.

Finally — and this is the big ask — set up an organization to recruit and train working-class candidates. Contact party leaders and interest groups in your area and organizations that work directly with working-class people, and ask what it would take to create a program to encourage workers to run for office. Start small — ask if you can help put on a simple candidate training program for workers in your area. Make it a one-time event. It will be easier than you think. Then do it again. And again. Give it a name, find funders, and make it your life’s work. (I told you it was a big ask.)

Campaigns have a built-in bias against working-class candidates. Call it an unintended consequence, a glitch in an otherwise admirable system, a side effect. Whatever it is, it isn’t a necessary evil, or an inevitability. Politicians work for you. If you don’t like what the millionaires have done with your government, fire them.

Nicholas Carnes is the Creed C. Black associate professor of public policy and political science at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. He is the author of The Cash Ceiling: Why Only the Rich Run for Office — and What We Can Do About It. Find him on Twitter @Nick_Carnes_.

Original Source -> Working-class people are underrepresented in politics. The problem isn’t voters.

via The Conservative Brief

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

Go Ahead, Millennials, Destroy Us

By TIM KREIDERMARCH 2, 2018

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As with all historic tipping points, it seems inevitable in retrospect: Of course it was the young people, the actual victims of the slaughter, who have finally begun to turn the tide against guns in this country. Kids don’t have money and can’t vote, and until now burying a few dozen a year has apparently been a price that lots of Americans were willing to pay to hold onto the props of their pathetic role-playing fantasies. But they forgot what adults always forget: that our children grow up, and remember everything, and forgive nothing.

Those kids have suddenly understood how little their lives were ever worth to the people in power. And they’ll soon begin to realize how efficient and endless are the mechanisms of governance intended to deflect their appeals, exhaust their energy, deplete their passion and defeat them. But anyone who has ever tried to argue with adolescents knows that in the end they will have a thousand times more energy for that fight than you and a bottomless reservoir of moral rage that you burned out long ago.

Like most people in middle age, I regard young people with suspicion. The young — and the young at mind — tend to be uncompromising absolutists. They haven’t yet faced life’s heartless compromises and forfeitures, its countless trials by boredom and ethical Kobayashi Marus, or glumly watched themselves do everything they ever disapproved of.

I am creeped out by the increasing dogmatism and intolerance of millennials on the left; I felt a generational divide open up under me last year when everyone under 40 seemed to agree that Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till in his coffin should be removed from the Whitney Biennial. When I was young it seemed the natural order of things that conservatives were the prudes and scolds who wanted books banned and exhibitions closed, while we liberals got to be the gadflies and iconoclasts. I know that whenever you disapprove of young people, you’re in the wrong, because you’re going to die and they’ll get to write history, but I just can’t help noticing that the liberal side isn’t much fun to be on anymore.

Yet this uprising of the young against the ossified, monolithic power of the National Rifle Association has reminded me that the flaws of youth — its ignorance, naïveté and passionate, Manichaean idealism — are also its strengths. Young people have only just learned that the world is an unfair hierarchy of cruelty and greed, and it still shocks and outrages them. They don’t understand how vast and intractable the forces that have shaped this world really are and still think they can change it. Revolutions have always been driven by the young.

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I whole heartedly agree with the premise of this article. Change will come, regardless of what any segment of the population thinks. It is...

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Ever since Columbine, almost 20 years ago, I’ve absorbed the news of more mass shootings than I can count with an ulcerating rage that gradually scabbed over into deadened cynicism. To those of us who have lived with certain grim realities our whole adult lives — the widening moat between the rich and the rest of us, the sclerotic influence of money on politics, the N.R.A.’s unassailable coalition of greed and fear — they seem like facts of life as unalterable as death itself.

I’d come to the conclusion that America has always been a violent nation, from our founding genocide to the slave labor that built the country to the arsenal, unprecedented in human history, that maintains our empire. We spend $60 billion a year on pets but won’t go to any inconvenience to keep second graders from getting slaughtered. Despite all our competitive parenting and mommy machismo and trophy kids, we don’t really give a damn about our children — by which I mean, about one another’s. When a race stops caring for its young, its extinction is not only imminent but well deserved. But maybe my bitter complacence about our civilization’s irreversible decline is just a projection of my feelings about my own.

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Power is like money: imaginary, entirely dependent upon belief. Most of the power of institutions lies in the faith people have in them. And cynicism is also a kind of faith: the faith that nothing can change, that those institutions are corrupt beyond all accountability, immune to intimidation or appeal. Harvey Weinstein ultimately wasn’t the one enforcing the code of silence around his predations: It was all the agents and managers and friends and colleagues who warned actresses that he was too powerful to accuse.

Once people stopped believing in his invulnerability, his destruction was as instantaneous as the middle school queen being made a pariah. Watch: As soon as the first N.R.A. A-rated congressman loses an election, other politicians’ deeply held convictions about Second Amendment rights will start rapidly evolving.

The students of Parkland are like veterans coming home from the bloody front of the N.R.A.’s de facto war on children. They’ve seen their friends, teachers and coaches gunned down in the halls. To them, powerful Washington lobbyists and United States senators suddenly look like what they are: cheesy TV spokesmodels for murder weapons. It has been inspiring and thrilling to watch furious, cleareyed teenagers shame and vilify gutless politicians and soul-dead lobbyists for their complicity in the murders of their friends. Last week Wayne LaPierre was reduced to gibbering like Gen. Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” about a “socialist” takeover and “hardening” our schools. You could see the whites all around his irises. That look is fear.

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One of my students once asked me, when I was teaching the writing of political op-ed essays, why adults should listen to anything young people had to say about the world. My answer: because they’re afraid of you. They don’t understand you. And they know you’re going to replace them.

My message, as an aging Gen X-er to millennials and those coming after them, is: Go get us. Take us down — all those cringing provincials who still think climate change is a hoax, that being transgender is a fad or that “socialism” means purges and re-education camps. Rid the world of all our outmoded opinions, vestigial prejudices and rotten institutions. Gender roles as disfiguring as foot-binding, the moribund and vampiric two-party system, the savage theology of capitalism — rip it all to the ground. I for one can’t wait till we’re gone. I just wish I could live to see the world without us.

Tim Kreider is the author of the essay collections “I Wrote This Book Because I Love You” and “We Learn Nothing.”

[michaelwalshblog-blog]

DHS secretary defends Trump amid immigration firestorm: ‘We’d like to have people with skills’

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen defended President Trump’s incendiary comments about immigrants from Haiti and various African countries before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning.

Testifying under oath at a previously scheduled oversight hearing, Nielsen engaged in heated exchanges with Democrats over what she recalled Trump saying at the much-discussed, closed-door meeting on immigration reform last week.

Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the only Democrat who attended the White House meeting, asked Nielsen to recall what Trump had said.

“What I heard him saying was that he’d like to move away from a country-based quota system to a merit-based system. So, it shouldn’t matter where you’re from. It should matter what you can contribute to the United States,” she answered.

Durbin asked about reports in the Washington Post that Trump called Haiti and African nations “shitholes” – which Durbin himself has publicly confirmed.  “How did he characterize those countries in Africa?” he asked.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen responds to questions from Sen. Richard Durbin while testifying during a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee January 16, 2018 in Washington, DC. Sen. Patrick Leahy and Durbin both questioned Nielsen about derogatory language reportedly used by U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting last week on immigration. Nielsen said “I did not hear that word used”, when asked about the word “shithole”. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Nielsen said she couldn’t specifically remember “the categorization of countries in Africa” because those gathered were speaking over each other and there was “a lot of rough talk.”

“Do you remember the president saying expressly, ‘I want more Europeans. Why can’t we have more immigrants from Norway?’” Durbin asked.

Nielsen said Trump brought up European nations during a conversation about removing the diversity lottery. According to Nielsen, Trump was asking if the spots reserved for the diversity lottery would be assigned to underrepresented countries in U.S. immigration and whether this would apply to European countries.

“From that perspective, I think he did ask, ‘Would that cover European countries or by its very nature would that mean we are purposefully establishing immigration to exclude Europeans?” she said.

Durbin asked what Trump said specifically about immigrants from Norway.

“I heard him repeating what he had heard in a meeting before. That they are industrious, a hard-working country. They don’t have much crime there. They don’t have much debt. I think in general I just heard him giving compliments to Norway.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee on “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security” on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 16, 2018. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Durbin pointed out that Nielsen, during an appearance on Fox News, claimed she could not recall whether Trump used vulgar language. She repeated to the Senate Judiciary Committee that she could not remember Trump’s specific words because “nearly everyone” in the room was using profanity.

“Did you hear me use profanity?” Durbin asked.

“No sir, neither did I,” she said.

“Did Senator Graham use profanity?”

“I did hear tough language from Senator Graham, yes,” she said.

Durbin explained that Graham had been citing Trump’s language to admonish the president for what he regarded as a slur against Africans, and said he respected Graham, a Republican who has been an occasional Trump critic – and frequent supporter – for taking a principled stand.

He said Graham reminded the president that the Trump family did not come to America with great skills or wealth, but they came here as most families do, looking for a chance to prove themselves and make this a better nation.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee on “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security” on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 16, 2018. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Graham, who was also at Tuesday’s hearing, said he had expected the meeting last week to be cordial and productive; earlier that same morning, Durbin had briefed him on a phone call with Trump that suggested a fair and bipartisan agreement was within reach. But this sympathy and even-handedness was apparently gone by the testy meeting.

“So, what happened between 10 and 12?” Graham asked. “I’m going to find out and I’m not going to ask you because between 10 o’clock and 12 o’clock we went from having conversations between Sen. Durbin, which I believe every word, and the president that was very hopeful, and by the time we got there something had happened.”

Graham said just days before he was proud to golf with Trump and call him his friend, but that it had all changed by Thursday.

“Now, I don’t know where that guy went. I want him back,” Graham said.

Nielsen praised Graham and Durbin’s leadership and recalled approaching Durbin after the meeting to discuss working toward an agreement on immigration reform.

Earlier in the hearing, Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., called Trump’s comments “the most vulgar and racist thing I’ve ever heard a president of either party utter.”

As Sen. Richard Durbin (R) (D-IL) looks on, Sen. Patrick Leahy (L) (D-VT) questions Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee Jan. 16, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Leahy and Durbin both questioned Nielsen about derogatory language reportedly used by U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting last week on immigration. Nielsen said “I did not hear that word used”, when asked about the word “shithole”. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

“In fact, I’ve never heard any president, Republican or Democrat, utter anything even similar. Now he denies using these specific words,” he said.

Nielsen told Leahy that she did not hear Trump use “that word,” referring to “shithole.”

“The conversation was very impassioned. I don’t dispute that the president was using tough language. Others in the room were also using tough language,” she said.

Leahy expressed skepticism of Nielsen’s interpretation that Trump was advocating for a merit-based immigration system like those in Australia or Canada, noting that he didn’t use phrases like “PhD students” or “skilled workers.”

“He said that he wanted more people from Norway. Being from Norway is not a skill,” Leahy said. “And with the standard of living in Norway better than ours, you’re not going to have too many people from there. What does he mean when he says he wants more immigrants from Norway?”

According to Nielsen, Trump was using Norwegians as an example of people who work very hard and could make significant contributions to American society. She said Trump was referring specifically to what Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg about the industriousness of her citizens during their meeting the day before.

“So, what he was saying, from a merit-based perspective is we’d like to have people with skills who can assimilate and contribute to the United States, moving away from country quotas and to an individual merit-based system,” she said.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee on “Oversight of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security” on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 16, 2018. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

“Norway is a predominantly white country, isn’t it?” Leahy asked.

“I actually do not know that, sir, but I imagine that is the case,” she responded.

Trump was roundly condemned for his comments during the immigration meeting and he claims that people like Durbin have “totally misrepresented” what he said. Others have defended the president. Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., for instance, claims that Trump did not use the language Durbin attributed to him. Graham, while avoiding quoting Trump directly, has made public comments that support the gist of the Washington Post account.

Although this was among the more inflammatory topics covered during the hearing, Nielsen’s opening statement outlined four issues she wants to be addressed to secure the nation: giving U.S. authorities the ability to quickly remove people who immigrate into the U.S. illegally, ending the diversity lottery that gives visas out to people from countries that haven’t sent many immigrants to the U.S., ending family-based chain migration and finding a permanent solution for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) recipients.

In her assessment, the U.S. faces a serious and persistent terror threat that will not weaken anytime soon. She called on Congress to pass a DHS reauthorization bill that would increase her department’s ability to confront contemporary threats to the nation.

“We can’t keep the United States and its citizens secure with authorities drafted for a different era, to address the threats of the last decade. We need updated authorities, updated support and updated accountability for the world we live in today.”

Nielsen, a long-time aide to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and an expert on cybersecurity, briefly served as Kelly’s principal deputy last year. She joined the administration in that capacity on September 6, but Trump nominated her on October 11 to lead the DHS. The Senate confirmed her nomination on December 5 with a 63 to 37 vote — the tightest margin ever for that position — and she was sworn in the next day.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., listens during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Oversight of the United States Department of Homeland Security” on Jan. 16, 2018. (Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said that listening to Nielsen’s testimony made it apparent she doesn’t appreciate how hurtful Trumps comments were. Booker, who is African-American, said he owes his success to “good white people,” civil-rights advocates who stood against bigotry. He said hearing about Trump’s words in the Oval Office disturbed him deeply, and were on the minds of the many people he’s encountered over the past week — from everyday Americans to luminaries of the Civil Rights Movement.

“Now I’ve been in the Oval Office many times. And when the commander-in-chief speaks, I listened. I don’t have amnesia on conversations I had in the Oval Office going back months and months and months,” Booker said.

Describing himself as “frankly seething with anger,” Booker reprimanded Nielsen for having “convenient amnesia” and for standing by in the face of bigotry. Paraphrasing civil rights hero Martin Luther King, Booker said neutrality only empowers that oppressor — never the oppressed — and that “conscientious stupidity” is more dangerous than “sincere ignorance.”

“Your silence and your amnesia is complicity,” Booker said. “I’ve got a president of the United States, an office that I respect who talks about the countries of origins of my fellow citizens in the most despicable manner. You don’t remember! You can’t remember the words of your commander in chief! I find that unacceptable,” Booker said.

He openly doubted whether Nielsen spent much time at the DHS cracking down on white supremacist hate groups that target African-Americans and other minorities. She responded that she abhors violence in all its forms and that the department’s programs have recently been reassessed to address this threat.

“I share your passion. It’s unacceptable. it can’t be tolerated in the United States. Under the authorities that I have at the Department of Homeland Security, violence in any form will not be tolerated,” she said.

Read more from Yahoo News:

Skullduggery podcast: It was 20 years ago today – a look back at the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal (available here or wherever you listen to podcasts!)

Obama reports no gifts from Putin in 2016 — sad!

Trump denies he’s considering ‘bloody nose’ strike on North Korea

New York’s Donald J. Trump State Park: A story of abandonment and decay

Oprah and Trump go way, way back together. Here’s proof.

Photos: Martin Luther King, Jr.

[dylan38sanders]

10 Jaw-Dropping Event Marketing Stats That Point to the Future of the Industry

What is the state of event marketing? Where is it going? These are the questions we set out to answer in a recent industry report. The resulting event marketing stats and findings were—for lack of a better turn of phrase—jaw-dropping.

We know that events are effective, we know that they’re popular and if you are reading this post, then there’s a good chance that you are a believer in the power of events, too. However, for much of the history of events it’s been difficult to judge just how effective and powerful events can be. The ability to track, attribute and analyze event ROI just wasn’t there before.

Without concrete numbers to back their strategies, event marketers were left with hunches and superficial statistics to justify their event strategies. This event generated X amount of revenue from registrations. X amount of people became customers at this event. Our logo got in front of X amount of eyes at this one.

While those metrics served a purpose, they failed to tell the full story of an event marketing campaign and in doing so created a fragmented picture of event success.

Then came along modern event technology.

Then everything changed more than anyone could have ever imagined.

The proof is in the data.

For the Event Marketing 2018 Benchmarks and Trends report, we surveyed over 400 mid- to senior-level marketers. We asked them questions about event marketing budgets, strategies, technologies, trends and more. The resulting findings, as you will soon see, paint a startling picture of where event marketing is and where it is going.

To help illustrate that picture, we’ve pulled 10 of the most significant stats from the Event Marketing 2018 report and explained how they spell out big, jaw-dropping changes for the future of events.  

1) The majority of marketers (80%) believe live events are critical to their company’s success.

Events are no longer a nice to have. They are absolutely critical for outpacing and outlasting competitors. Every type of organization—from accounting firms to tech companies, to nonprofits, to publishers—now produce events. Take for instance BDO Australia, HubSpot, The American Heart Association and Forbes. All of these organizations believe events are critical to their company’s success and produce them because of it.

To paraphrase the mantra of the Instagram era: “Events or it didn’t happen.”

This belief in the power of events is made all the starker by the following…

2) Most marketers (31%) believe that event marketing is the single-most effective marketing channel.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, marketers businesses invested heavily in traditional advertising (print ads, billboards and tv ads) to generate awareness and ultimately gain customers. In the early ‘90s and the late ‘00s, businesses began establishing strong online footholds through email, websites and social media.

Today, marketers agree that, more than any other marketing channel, event marketing reigns supreme. And for a good reason…

3) 95% of marketers agree that live events provide attendees with a valuable opportunity to form in-person connections in an increasingly digital world.

The rise of digital ads in the early ‘90s and late ‘00s coincided with the widespread adoption of internet and social media platforms by consumers. Businesses invested heavily in the online world, but a response from consumers was inevitable.

Time and time again, consumers have expressed a reluctance to engage with brands digitally. Think about the last time you tried to watch a video on YouTube. Chances are you were eagerly awaiting the appearance of the “Skip This Ad” button. (If you’re a YouTube Red subscriber, you probably avoided seeing any ads altogether.)

In some cases, consumers can skip advertisements and in other cases they outright block them. But even when consumers are not consciously resisting brand engagement, advertisers have to fight tooth and claw with one another to be noticed.

Every minute 3.8 million Google searches are made, 1,440 blog posts are published and nearly 150,000 emails are sent.

If brands hope to engage with prospects, customers and partners in meaningful ways, they are going to need to make like Morpheus and step out of the online world and into the real one.

4) Most event marketers (40%) believe email marketing is the most effective channel for promoting an event.

While event marketing will continue to be a must for engaging with prospects, customers and partners in meaningful ways—digital marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, it’s the intersection of digital marketing and event marketing that makes the latter as effective as it is.

When it comes to promoting live events, most marketers say that email marketing is the most effective channel. The widespread growth of email platforms, marketing automation systems and event management software that is able to integrate with both has enabled marketers to design, segment and optimize live event email marketing campaigns like never before.

Take for instance this targeted and beautifully designed email from HubSpot:

Or this video-integrated email from Wistia:

Live events may be the best channel for achieving business goals, but email is the best channel for getting people to come to your events.

5) An overwhelming majority of event marketers (86%) believe that technology can have a major positive impact on the success of their events.

Email may be one of the most important technologies for driving event success, but it isn’t the only one. There are a number of technologies that have emerged in the past couple of decades that have only made event marketers more capable.

These include but are not limited to:

Event management software

Mobile event apps

Marketing automation systems

Software integrations

Live-streaming

Social media

Social walls

Virtual and augmented reality

Badge scanners

Meeting schedulers

Projection mapping

Each of these technologies fulfills a unique niche in the event lifecycle—be it attendee engagement, contacts management or marketing automation. In the coming years, we can expect that these technological solutions will only become more nuanced. Which is a good thing, considering…

6) The majority of event marketers (63%) plan on investing more in live events in the future both in budget and number of events.

Currently, most organizations allocate between 20% and 50% of their budget to in-person events. The majority of marketers plan on allocating even more in the future. Given the advantages of events stated earlier, this makes sense.

If events are becoming an increasingly valuable marketing channel and if organizations want to outpace and outlast their competitors in this channel, it follows that additional investment is necessary.

This additional investment could go to hosting events or it could go to exhibiting at other events (most organizations only allocate 1% – 5% of their budget to exhibiting, currently).

Just as likely, this additional budget will go to investing in technologies that make marketing, managing and growing events all the more successful.

If marketers are not engaging their prospects and customers through live events, a competitor will gladly do so. Successful brands, after all, aren’t running away from live events. In fact, they’re actively pursuing them.

7) 80% of businesses that are overperforming in regards to their company goals will increase their live event budgets next year.

Whereas 63% of all of the marketers surveyed said that they plan on investing more in live events in the years to come, 80% of marketers from organizations that are overperforming in regards to their business goals plan on investing more in events.

That is to stay, the most successful brands are investing in live events and they are doing so more than less successful brands.

Consider Google, Apple, AdAge, HBO, Virgin, The Wall Street Journal and Adobe. In addition to undeniable success, each of these brands has garnered a reputation for actively pursuing a live events marketing strategy.

Google is known for their Google I/O event series, Apple for their Worldwide Developers Conference, HBO for their experiential and event marketing campaigns, AdAge for their digital media conference, Virgin for their mix of B2B and B2C events, Wall Street Journal for a wide array of industry-specific events and Adobe for their Adobe Max conference. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Each of the above organizations does not simply invest in their events strategy; they make it a priority. In the future of marketing, that may very well be what separates the great from the rest.

8) An overwhelming majority of C-Suite executives (87%) believe in the power of live events and plan on investing in them more in the future.

The credence placed in live events goes all the way to the top of the organizational hierarchy. In fact, the Event Marketing 2018 report indicates that C-Suite executives place more credence in live events than anyone else in their organizations.

One C-Suite executive with this kind of thinking is Lloyed Lobo, Co-founder and CSO of Boast Capital puts it:

“Live events are a great way for generating leads, if your annual contract for a client is large enough. If you’re selling 10 dollar stuff it’s not worth it, a way to primarily generate leads. Otherwise, it’s a great opportunity engage your community and to build products, to understand what your community cares about. Because as a business you should always be talking to your customers.”

It’s the job of the C-Suite to be thinking of high-level strategy and where their organization is headed. That leaders like Lloyed can place such a vote of confidence in live events is telling of how the leaders of organizations see the future of marketing.

9) The majority of overperforming organizations plan on increasing their event technology budget and plan on doing so more than other organizations.

We’ve already seen that the majority of marketers plan on increasing their future event marketing budgets and that even more overperforming marketers plan on increasing their event budgets. When it comes to event technology, the same trend holds.

In fact, 80% of marketers plan on investing more in event technology and they plan on doing so with thousands of more dollars than marketers from organizations that are underperforming or performing as expected.  

This increase in marketing technology spend is not without precedent.

First, Salesforce came along and elevated the client relationship management system (CRM) to the next level. It provides comprehensive capabilities and it did so from the cloud. The modern CRM then enabled marketers to expand and automate their tasks with marketing automation platforms like Marketo and HubSpot. Using the organized databases that CRMs like Salesforce provided, marketers could build workflows, send emails and otherwise engage intelligently with their audiences.

The combination of both the modern CRM and the modern marketing automation system has given rise to the modern event management platform, which enables marketers to manage, measure and grow their events like never before.

Consider this…

10) Almost 60% of event management software users are able to measure ROI.

One of the biggest obstacles for organizations in the past was accurately attributing and measuring event ROI. The data illustrates that in modern event management software, organizations have found their boon.

Through software integrations, contacts databases and revenue tracking tools modern event management software makes the ever elusive event ROI very much clear.

When we look at overperforming organizations—the organizations that are investing the most in event technology—a pattern emerges.

Overperforming organizations are able to demonstrate event ROI 26% more often than organizations that are underperforming and performing as expected which may be because overperforming organizations are more willing to invest in event technology.

Wrapping Up: On the Shoulders of Technology

As these event marketing stats illustrate, a growing chorus of marketers agrees that in-person events are essential for engaging customers and prospects, are worth investing more into and are overall critical to their organization’s success. But this trend toward the in-person did not emerge out of the void. It is as much a result of the oversaturation of the internet as it a result of the rise modern event technologies.

Just as the CRM and marketing automation software enabled the digital marketing revolution, so has modern event technology aided the event revolution.

It’s time to join the revolution.

from Endless Events http://helloendless.com/event-marketing-stats/

[likefusion]

You're Probably Doing Link-Building Wrong: Google can be really frustrating sometimes. If you've been in SEO for anytime at all, you know exactly what I'm talking about! Google's success and global search market dominance have largely hinged upon its ability to perpetually evolve and provide the best user experience possible. As a result, SEO is in a constant state of flux. It's literally always changing! But one thing that hasn't changed is the fact that quality links are the foundation of nearly every successful SEO campaign. Although many people have been predicting the demise of links as a primary ranking signal for years, link-building is still very much alive and quite well. According to First Page Sage, links are still the number one ranking signal in Google's algorithm in 2017. As they point out, inbound links have been the primary currency Google uses to determine its level of trust for a website since the search engine established itself in 1998. It worked for them then, and it still works for them now. So, yeah… Link-building is kind of a big deal, regardless of what the naysayers may think. And this means one thing. You need to have your link-building on lock. Unfortunately, many link-building campaigns are full of holes due to misconceptions and misunderstandings as to what Google is really looking for. It can be especially brutal for noobs, who are just getting their feet wet. Here are some of the most common link-building mistakes SEO marketers make and how to resolve them. Botching anchor text The great anchor text debate has raged on for a few years now. Okay, maybe that sounds overly epic, but employing anchor text is one of the most misunderstood aspects of link-building. Back in the day, you could often outrank the competition by simply being obnoxious and going crazy with exact match anchor text (the keyword phrase you're trying to rank for.) But Google quickly discovered that way too many people were gaming the system and launched a counterattack with Penguin in 2012. They tweaked their algorithm, and the sites that went overboard on exact match anchor text were penalized. Of course, SEO marketers didn't want to incur the wrath of Matt Cutts and his minions, so they did the only sensible thing. They went the opposite direction. Many people ceased to use exact match anchor text altogether. And I can totally see why. To be honest, I'm still a little sketched about using exact match anchors. But here's the thing. Doing anchor text the right way can be encapsulated in one word: natural. If it's natural, you're good to go. What exactly do I mean by natural? You want to make sure you're diversifying your anchor text and not going overboard with any particular format. The different types of anchor text When you break it down, there are six main types of anchor text: Exact match – Like I already explained Partial match – This contains the keyword phrase you're trying to rank for but isn't exact Branded – The name of your brand Naked URLs – This is the URL exactly how it appears in your browser Generic (also known as junk anchors) – Some examples would be “check this out” or “click here” LSI – This is latent semantic indexing, which is variations of your keyword. If this still seems a little vague, here are examples provided by Ahrefs: Speaking of Ahrefs… They performed some extensive research on anchor text fairly recently (mid-2016) to determine its impact on SEO. There's a ton of data, which can be a little confusing if you're not an SEO nerd. Allow me to give you the key takeaways. First of all, anchor text continues to play an integral role in link-building, and SEO in general, and is unlikely to change any time soon. Second, it's completely true that you need to be careful when using keyword-rich anchor text. Going overboard can definitely get you penalized. However, this doesn't mean you should never use keyword-rich anchor text. It's actually okay—as long as you don't go crazy with it. Ahrefs suggests “using exact match at around 2 percent and phrase match at around 30 percent.” And that sounds about right to me. The bottom line with anchor text is that it needs to be natural. To achieve that natural effect, you want to use a variety of different formats. This graph from Search Engine Journal offers their version of ideal anchor text diversity: It's usually all right to throw in some keyword-rich anchor text, but you need to be smart about it. If you follow this formula, you should be good to go, and you can construct hyperlinks—both internal and external—the right way. For more insight, check out the article from Ahrefs I referenced above. In my opinion, it's one of the best currently out there on anchor text. The myth of never linking to directories Ah…directories. Most SEO marketers cringe at the mere mention of them. And I totally get it. I remember back in the mid-2000s, directories were popping up everywhere, and they were a cheap way to get links. Most had little to no credibility and looked incredibly spammy. And quite frankly, many were. So, of course, when you ask your average SEO marketer whether or not you should ever get links from directories, most would adamantly say “no!” But I disagree (sort of). Now, let me preface this by saying you shouldn't get links from highly-questionable, spammy, irrelevant directories that have absolutely nothing to do with your niche/industry. That's a recipe for disaster. However, Rand Fishkin of Moz made a really great point in one of his Whiteboard Friday sessions. He basically said that there's an ongoing myth that you should never get links from directories. But this just isn't the case. There are plenty of high quality directories that can be very beneficial to your link-building campaign. Here's a screenshot of an example he provides about a monthly list of bars in Portland, Oregon: The point here is that you should definitely take a link like this. It's legit and going to help your SEO. Once again, I'm not condoning getting spammy links from low-quality directories. But in many cases, the right directories can be quite beneficial. Just use your best judgment. Having a “quantity over quality” mindset If you look at it on paper, it might seem more sensible to get a high volume of so-so links rather than only a handful of high-quality links. I get it. It's much easier to grab the low hanging fruit and take the path of least resistance. But like with many areas of online marketing, you're much better off opting for quality over quantity. Just like it makes more sense to create one in-depth, longform, high-quality blog post than three or four mediocre, generic 500-worders, a single high-quality link can be much more valuable than dozens of low-quality links. Think of it like this. High-quality links do much more than just improve your link profile and provide you with SEO juice. They can enhance your brand equity and bring in quality referral traffic as well. If you've had a quantity over quality mindset up until now, it's time to change it. Forgetting about social signals One of the other great SEO debates is just how big of a factor social signals are. Some people seem to think social signals are a significant ranking factor, while others believe they're just a waste of time. I'm in the camp that believes they're a substantial ranking factor. At least nowadays. While I'm not saying they're super high on the totem pole, you definitely don't want to overlook social signals in your link-building. In fact, Backlinko includes social signals in a recent list of Google's 200 ranking factors. More specifically, they mention the following social signals as having a considerable impact: Number of tweets Authority of Twitter user accounts Number of Facebook likes Facebook shares Authority of Facebook user accounts Pinterest pins Votes on social sharing sites Number of Google+1s Authority of Google+ user accounts Social signal relevancy You get the idea. A few years back, Moz broke down the potency of some of the more powerful social signals: I know it's a little outdated (2012), but I think this data is still fairly relevant today. The bottom line here is that you should do everything within your power to maximize your social signals. This starts with creating epic content that outperforms that of your competitors (see the skyscraper technique). You should install social media buttons if you haven't done so already. This is super easy to do if you're a WordPress user. Just install a plugin. Also be sure to ask your audience to share your content. Sometimes that's all it takes! And don't forget that social signals do much more than just boost your SEO. They can also have a considerable impact on your brand's reputation and whether or not readers will stick around and read your content. Just think about it. Which brand would you take more seriously? One with an article with a high volume of social shares like this… Or an article with only a handful of shares? I rest my case. Conclusion Like it or not, link-building is essentially the lifeblood of SEO. And I really don't see that changing anytime soon. Until Google radically changes its algorithm, links are likely to remain one of the top ranking factors. But like with many other areas of SEO, what constitutes proper link-building can be a little confusing. There's plenty of room for misunderstanding even for the most adept of SEO marketers. By acknowledging any mistakes you're making, you can tighten your link-building and make your overall campaign run like a well-oiled machine. Can you think of any other common link-building mistakes SEO marketers make? http://bit.ly/2q8pArb

[davepainchaud-blog]

How To Resist, or, Go To Work.

I see a lot of angst out there about what’s to come and I share it. I think many of us are deeply troubled and worried about whether the next president will get us all killed or, short of that, cause an enormous amount of unintended consequences that sort of breaks the nation beyond repair (if that hasn’t, in fact, already happened). The angst seems to play out, at least for me, in all its vibrancy, the most on Twitter - lots of pissed off leftists there. All sorts of people are grasping at ways to respond and fight back and are often lamenting the fact that they have virtually no real power of any kind, although they desperately want some. Eventually through all the talk and sniping there comes a point where somebody levels the charge, “Well, what are YOU doing to actually change things?!?!?!?!” It’s a fair question, although it doesn’t take that long to drill down and come up with an answer not only for yourself, but one that might apply to most of us in a general sense, but before I get started down that particular angle of attack let me just say that I do get the inclination to throw up your hands and quit. As I approach my 51st year, I can look back and see that we’ve done what we’ve done in 2016 before - I was around for Reagan (a disaster) and Geo W. (arguably a far worse disaster) and can remember the American people having voted in Tricky Dick...  twice. Why do Americans keep doing this? Because much of our fine nation is a tribal, racist, authoritarian, religious and uneducated mess and unless we really work hard that’s not going to change anytime soon. Still, if you’re in my sphere of anti-nationalist, multicultural, pro democracy, humanists who went to college, you at least want to try to do something. 

So, what DO you do in a situation like this where the world has seemingly gone off the rails and virtually everyone in power shares none of your values and is literally out to get people that share yours? Well, the one thing most people can do - the one real way we exercise the most power, has already been done: we’ve voted. But, because of the nature of our antiquated electoral system (that doesn’t work when push comes to shove and we actually elect a crazy person that the electoral college is meant to overturn) we have a minority of the public that actually decided to vote having the final say. So, we have a situation where there is a power-hungry, minority, conservative side of our country which does not believe in democracy (that’s for suckers after all) and has successfully gerrymandered our political system so that things go their way in virtually every respect. If you voted to the left as a narrow majority did, you still lost pretty much across the board. So...  more is required, right?

Okay, let’s keep going down the rabbit hole. What’s next after voting? Political activism?  Yeah, this is pretty much the answer. People need to “get involved” and to do that, they need to be informed. How do you do that in an era in which fact itself is under siege? When in doubt, the old “wire services” (people who simply get you headlines without commentary that is inevitably partisan) is the way to go and a good start. Have a twitter account? Great (or, okay, they’re free - go get one!) and follow Reuters, the AP, the BBC and maybe the New York Times (leaning left) and the Wall Street Journal (leaning right). With that, you’ll have a sense of what’s happening on our glorious planet. If anything catches your eye, you can always put on your hip waders and mosey into the swamp that is televised news to try to get additional detail (although be forewarned that you’re going into the an almost borderline fact free place of uber-spin when you go there, so be careful what you believe). 

How you “get involved” seems to be the tough part. I mean, how do you DO that? Well, you can become active in your local party to make a change there and that sort of grass roots thing is important, but unless it’s going to totally take over your life, you may have very little chance of making a real difference. Even if you succeed, how is that going to change anything nationally, which is after all, what brings us to the table to start with? Well, it isn’t, but perhaps this is a place where you can make a difference. Then again... know thyself. Maybe you’re not cut out for that and you know it. Okay, that’s cool. What else can you do? You can get involved in an actual protesting organization - there are people organizing protests etc. and you can certainly participate in that. I don’t know how much impact that will have, but you’ll feel like you’ve DONE something and that’s good, I suppose. Perhaps the best way to fight is to simply use your first amendment rights - speak out! You’ll have the biggest audience to do so online - perhaps that’s a way to mobilize the most humans if you feel you have the gift for gab. And of course, the biggest way to try to have an impact is to actually run for something, but I’m leaving that to the side for the purposes of this argument. I’m going in with the assumption that you already have something you do in this life and that you are dedicated to - if you had wanted to make a life in politics you would have done so a long time ago and that what you really want to do is pursue your goals in a culture that shares your values. That’s fine - that’s where most of us are.

Okay, so where does that leave us? Well, I think there may be another way. One of the things all of these scenarios/methods I’m outlining shares is that the degree to which any of them has an impact is by all practical means unmeasurable. You’ll just never know to what degree any of this has any leverage over events. There will be a tendency to second guess yourself and wonder if you’re not just tilting at windmills. Here’s the thing though. You’re not. And I know this because of the curiosities and mysteries of my own profession. I’m a musician and a composer and in my world we can never truly measure to what degree our work has any power, but we know it does and that it does in ways we cannot predict. We know this because people tell us how our work effected them and maybe changed a behavior - the impact can be dramatic at times and at others, practically nil. We can tell if the work is successful and people like it, but again, you never know exactly why. But what we DO know is that even if the impact is impossible to measure, there is still SOME impact. Think of this problem from a historic perspective, can we measure definitively the sway of the arts over the centuries in our culture? Nope. No way, but we know the influence is tremendous. 

So, if this logic seems persuasive, try to take an extra step (and I grant that this may seem a tad too poetic to you), but each of is like a musical composition in that we effect others constantly without ever truly realizing it. We influence people by the attitudes we carry with us and the way we treat others. Thus, if you’re a liberal, live a liberal life - live up to those ideals in everything you do and specifically, live up to it in your work - whatever it is that you do. I believe you will do more to transmit your values through the viral method of living a life consonant with your values that in any other way. 

So for me at least, when faced with the question of “What are YOU doing to change the world???”, I can reply, without concern as to whether I’m lying to myself, that I wrote some music today and, in this existence, that is the thing I can do that has the most power and ability to change things. Maybe your method is more concrete, and bully for you if it is, but that’s where I think we’re all at. Want change and you’re a teacher, lawyer, doctor, office worker, mechanic? Do each of these jobs and every other under the sun in a manner consistent with your values. Be involved to the degree that you can be AND live your life in a way that upholds your convictions and you’ll be a part of the change that you want made.