Which way up? Poverty, chess and code in Uganda
Phiona is a brilliant, determined, hard-working and respectful teenage girl with an uncertain future. Queen of Katwe by Tim Crothers describes her difficult path from street to competing in the...
View ArticleValue Driven: The Humanity Project
You won’t find standing up to bullies in the common core curriculum, but being bullied is a common experience for many kids. Sierra, a 10th grader writing for the Humanity Project for Kids, explains...
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"You have to be a fair amount of crazy"
Kathe Padilla wasn't the only person to read a Arizona Daily Star article about orphan children starving in Zambia. But she may have been the only one who went from reading about it to flying to...
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Transparency, Torture and Terrorism
If Said-Emin Ibragimov is telling the truth, he was tortured with knives and cigarrettes for two days by Putin's operatives for making statements opposing the regime. If a Russian citizen opposes the...
View ArticleLessons from Ft Lauderdale
Thanks to a patron with a cell phone, the cop who slapped a homeless man in Ft Lauderdale is facing an investigation. Police abuse of force should be addressed systematically, but not only by...
View ArticleProgressives should be fearless defenders of human rights
Yara Sallam believes in standing up for human rights. So when a delegation from the UN came to visit her in El-Qanater Prison in Egypt, where she is currently serving a 2-year sentence for protesting...
View ArticleWhich Republican said self-interest as a primary principle is incompatible...
The longer quote is this:"...it (an action the speaker disagreed with) forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty --...
View ArticleWhen your mother is 'illegal'
What does it do to a community when a significant fraction of its members are declared illegal by their presence? It creates a culture of fear. When a 6% of the people in a state are "illegal" they...
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Fewer Slaves on Boats thanks to the NYT: Investigative Journalism Works
The world is full of injustice and problems. Relatively speaking, I'd consider being kidnapped and held on a boat miles from shore for months, subject to beatings and shackles, pretty high on the...
View ArticleGoal for the day: not to be complicit in horrible crimes
"No trading partner or trade agreement is worth sacrificing our values and becoming complicit in such horrible crimes." was Rep Grijalva's immediate response to the issue of human trafficking in the...
View ArticleWhat about the hard problems?
I absolutely agree that a registry of Muslims is a disgusting, disturbing idea that is completely antithetical to our values. I also agree that Syrian refugees and other refugees from war-torn Arab...
View ArticleAn idea for controlling access to guns by terrorists
So maybe this is a dumb idea, but…In order to manufacture a weapon, a structured society with cooperation is required. The metals, machining, processes involved are all results of complex...
View ArticleUrgent! Now! Emergency! We're being too shrill!
Here are some quotes from recent fundraising emails I’ve received, perhaps you have too:“we’re DESPERATE””DEVASTATING news””URGENT problem”“we could miss tonight's make-or-break … goal”um...its May,...
View ArticleHow to talk to conservatives: Science is the Bridge
Talia Fuentes is an optimist. She is running as a Democrat in Arizona's 5th district, which in the last presidential election favored the Republican Romney by nearly 30%. So on a daily basis, in...
View Article"Brave Vladmir Putin" is Google's top hit - someone is playing pagerank
Try searching on Google for ‘putin assassination’. Unless the Google wizards have fixed it, your first link will start with the words “Brave Vladmir Putin...” and go on from there to explain how the...
View ArticleThe Trump Handy Reference Guide
So my cousin Ken Larsen assembled these nifty lists of Trumpisms. They are the most complete cataloging that I’ve seen, and I wanted them out here for posterity (and possible last day conversation)....
View Article"You can do something here" #Aleppo
There IS something everyone can do about Aleppo right now; we can do what Zouhir is asking. He asks that everyone please demonstrate against the Russian embassies. And that is possible. If not in...
View ArticleCore principles for Fighting while Listening
Between the attacks on health care, tearing apart families at the border, and corruption at the highest levels of our government, it may seem tame and disconnected to back up and talk about core...
View ArticleWe have to have a plan to fight terrorism
It’s not enough to bash the idiots running our country. Three terrorists just killed and injured innocent people on London Bridge. Its not only the numbers, it is the fear that anyone enjoying their...
View ArticleLittle Old Ladies Counting Ballots Are Our Best Bet for Democracy
A friend of mine who is a doctor, asked my advice as a software engineer, how best to safeguard our elections. Which, after all, are pretty much our only hope for escaping from the nightmare we wake...
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Campaigns - Even Long Shots - Can Create Change Now
"Why should I vote? Democrats never do anything for me except bother me at election time." Joel Feinman was going door to door in his 2016 campaign for Pima County Attorney when this statement struck...
View ArticleDemocratic Core Values : Don't Lie, Cheat, Steal or Kill. Plus notes from...
www.washingtonpost.com/…This Washington Post opinion piece is worth a read, in particular this section: In 2016, when Democrats held the presidency, it may have been hard for them to argue against the...
View ArticleCBP trampling on property rights: maybe this will stir up Texans?
Bloggers Jude Lieber and Marianna Wright with the National Butterfly Center have first person accounts of property rights violations by contractors working for CBP. This is being done quietly, so...
View ArticleBusiness leaders are on our side? (DACA)
This is interesting — not only did several of them quit the councils, but some of the most effective lobbying on behalf of DACA is coming from CEOs. No rose colored glasses here — there are straight...
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Answering the right: DACA
When I write here, I am talking to progressives. So I probably sound conservative, because I’m discussing the points I have disagreement with progressives about.The real debate of course is with the...
View ArticleAddressing the right: book review of SuperFreakonomics
My niece asked me to read one of her favorite books, SuperFreakonomics. At first it was funny, interesting and entertaining. The authors are economists who claim to have insight into society and...
View ArticleOutreach piece: Representation without Taxation and Corporate Personhood
I just wrote this piece on Medium, trying to reach out to moderate types who might be reachable. Quoted the bible too, and used ‘bible’ and ‘constitution’ as tags — on Medium, when you read one...
View ArticleGrassroots Leadership Beyond Protests
Outrage is like the dissonance of a musical piece, leading to resolution and a satisfying climax. But when the dissonance continues without end, we have to find our own mini-resolutions, our own small...
View ArticleEnd Citizens United campaign launched
Love these guys Big Money 20 just launched — nice summary of each of the worst 20 congress members working for special interests. The information isn’t new, but its good to have a focus and clear...
View Article"No one will ever believe you" - Trump wants Moore's wish to come true.
This is so disgustingDonald Trump backs Roy Moore at Florida rally and casts doubt on alleged victimRoy Moore supporters cry forgery after accuser says she added notes to signatureWrote this letter to...
View ArticleReal Leadership Needed on Iran
We get it. Trump’s a moron. His people are incompetent backstabbers. Got it. Done. Convinced. So who exactly is going to stand up for the university students in Iran who are protesting against...
View ArticleCorruption as a uniter - report from Unrig the System
Hey friends — so many of you know, I keep advocating solution oriented approaches to fixing things, instead of focusing on blaming the idiot in charge. Thus for me, Unrig the System Summit was really...
View ArticleWhen Bernie's Words Went to Washington (a true story)
I met Selina Vickers, who’s running for the state house in West Virginia, about two weeks ago at the Unrig the System Summit in New Orleans, where folks across the country got together to work on...
View ArticleWalking precincts best cure for the news blues
Seeing the news every day can lead to outrage fatigue, and worse — depression, even despair at the daily onslaught. Fortunately, its primary season, and walking the streets for candidates gets you in...
View ArticleWhew! But next time - Instant Runoff, please?
We dodged a bullet. I love that the Democrats are the freethinkers here, not the lock-step thoughtslaves on the right. But, the winner-take-two system in the California primaries nearly turned the...
View ArticleQuestion - individual advocates for families?
Hey Kossacks — this is a question more than a diary — does anyone know any program matching individual citizen advocates with individual families who are separated? (That would be in addition to the...
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#SingleStagingAreaNow - before the next horror
It’s pretty exhausting just to keep up with the latest outrage, let alone following up on the six from last week. So I hope all you fellow Kossacks out there will keep up the laser-like pressure on...
View ArticleOutreach in the Local Paper
I wake up sometimes thinking about how to do this, how to reach enough ‘others’— people who are not engaging here, who aren’t already on board. Somewhere there must be people privately regretting...
View ArticleBeyond Winning: Yahya Yuksel's Unique Campaign
Last July, I wrote a piece about how even long shot campaigns could create change by harnessing the power of the campaign itself. This July, I have the pleasure of writing about a campaign doing...
View ArticleIf It Were My Kid, I Would Follow Through after I yell at them.
Its draining to just call a GOP congressional office over and over voicing the same concern. But if these were my kids, who had been lost by ICE, I wouldn’t just yell at the staffer and hang up. I...
View ArticleGlobal Human Rights is the Key Issue: Latest is Dam in Laos
Democrats need to stand up for human rights everywhere, whether its resisting facists at home, fundamentalists in Tunisia or these South Korean corporations in disregarding human life in Laos. Global...
View ArticleTrump bows to Russia on Crimea on the day Oleg Sentsov might die of his...
And there is something we can do: please ask our Democratic congresspeople to co-sponsor HRes 1022, condemning the Crimea occupation, and Senators to co-sponsor SR 571.www.newyorker.com/…Sentsov is...
View ArticleThe Big Toad Of Tibadoodle Swamp and his toadies...a love story
This story is now my defining mental image of the disgusting toad in the white house. I found it quite entertaining, but be warned — don’t read it while eating, or if you have a sensitive stomach....
View ArticleNon-Voting Dems Lists - I didn't realize this was a thing
So I’m on hold with my local democratic headquarters, because I’m holding a house party this weekend with some active dems in my neighborhood. And a friend told me about this thing, that I didn’t know...
View ArticleTime to walk the walk.
All the outrage in the world won’t make any difference if we don’t get voters to the polls in November. And you lovely readers on dailyKos, aren’t enough.Its 9:38PM now in Arizona, so I’m blogging and...
View Article...And change your bank. A power tool.
Right now most of our focus is on the Kavanaugh hearings, GOTV efforts, and the latest stupidity or atrocity in the news. And rightly so. But if you have a bit of outrage left over, a target that...
View ArticleDialog with the Texas SecofState over election integrity (actual email exchange)
In response to the reports of vote flipping in Texas, on Friday Oct 26 I wrote this open letter to the director of elections and copied the secretary of state:Dear Director IngramConfidence in the...
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Open Dialog with Senate staff: Global Magnitsky Act for Khashoggi's killers,...
We have a unique opportunity right now, because of the leverage of the National Defence Authorization Act, to get prisoner’s of conscience freed in all nations receiving military aid from the US. In...
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Election Fraud CAN Be Caught (it takes work)
Preparing for November is like running a triathlon on a tightrope. On the one hand, voter turnout and batting away fake accusations of fraud are critical. But on the other, the prospect of election...
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