| |
 |
Sunday, January 18, 2004 |
Why. we are in truly deep shit. "America as a One-Party State." Read it and don't weep. Don't mourn, organize.... [Electrolite]
electoral rules have been rigged to make it increasingly difficult for the incumbent party to be ejected by the voters, absent a Depression-scale disaster, Watergate-class scandal or Teddy Roosevelt-style ruling party split. After two decades of bipartisan collusion in the creation of safe House seats, there are now perhaps just 25 truly contestable House seats in any given election year (and that's before the recent Republican super gerrymandering). What once was a slender and precarious majority -- 229 Republicans to 205 Democrats (including Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who votes with Democrats) -- now looks like a Republican lock. In the Senate, the dynamics are different but equally daunting for Democrats. As the Florida debacle of 2000 showed, the Republicans are also able to hold down the number of opposition votes, with complicity from Republican courts. Reform legislation, the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), may actually facilitate Republican intimidation of minority voters and reduce Democratic turnout. And the latest money-and-politics regime, nominally a reform, may give the right more of a financial advantage than ever.
11:15:24 PM Permalink
|
|
Tweaking MySQL (4.x) Primer. Your database driven website was doing well when only Uncle Ted and the guy down the street were viewing it, but now thanks to a brilliant piece of viral marketing your website is being pounded. Before shelling out money for a more powerful server, it would benefit you to see if you could optimize to increase performance. In this article I'll share a few tips I've picked up over the last week or so dealing with optimizing your MySQL 4.x database server. Some are nifty little apps that help you understand what's going on, while others are ways to improve your SQL for better performance. I'm running FreeBSD 4.x personally, so YMMV for some of this if you're using a different OS. [kuro5hin.org]
11:12:06 PM Permalink
|
|
 . Feel the love
More Hate From the Christian Right
"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash
over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called
on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."
--Randall Terry, The News Sentinel, (Ft. Wayne, IN.), 8/16/93
"When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will
find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it. I will make it
part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed."
--Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, speaking of doctors who perform abortions, in an
address to the U.S. Taxpayers Alliance, 8/08/95
[Craig's BookNotes]
5:00:00 PM Permalink
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
|
|
|
|
|
