Social Media Nerd
Concise, curated news and rambling rants on social media
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Photo reblogged from NBC News on Tumblr
4 congresswomen photoshopped into official group photo
(Photo: Getty Images / Office of Nancy Pelosi)
After posing for that cheesy portrait for the holiday card, we all know about the headaches group portraits can cause. For House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic congresswomen, it’s turned into something of a migraine.
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In Upworthy writer Edwardo Jackson’s hometown of Seattle, residents vote exclusively by mail and can register to vote online. Here’s more compelling evidence the ballot box is the analog past while online and mobile voting are our digital future.
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Post reblogged from ShortFormBlog
The US House will miss the midnight Monday deadline lawmakers set for voting to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”
House Republicans notified lawmakers that the chamber will vote Monday evening on other bills. They say that will be their only votes of the day, the Associated Press and others reported.
It remained unclear whether the Senate would vote Monday.
Congress could pass later legislation retroactively blocking the tax hikes and spending cuts.
More from the Associated Press here.
As we predicted, the ball already dropped. No need to watch TV tonight. Dick Clark (RIP) won’t be on anyway, sadly. :(
WE’RE GOING OVER
OH YEAH
You know, props to Obama for not giving in. About time.
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Photoset reblogged from The Atlantic
Gun Buyback Programs Are Thriving Like Never Before After Newtown
This weekend, a state-sponsored cash-for-guns program in Camden County, New Jersey, saw the return of 1,137 firearms — the most successful buyback in state history, and not the only record-breaking return haul since Friday’s massacre.
Read more. [Images: AP]
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Quote reblogged from The Political NotebookA distinction needs to be made. The battle over ideas — over who owns the truth in a given conflict — should be fought with notebooks and video cameras, not weapons of war.
David Carr, “Using War As A Cover To Target Journalists.”
This is beautifully written, and talks some serious sense about a dangerous trend.
(via thepoliticalnotebook)
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Currently on the Israeli Defense Forces Twitter Feed
Live blogging its attack on Hamas.
Images: Screenshots from @IDFSpokesperson. Select to embiggen.
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Red v Blue, Not So True
Via Chris Howard:
America really looks like this - I was looking at the amazing 2012 election maps created by Mark Newman (Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan), and although there is a very interesting blended voting map (Most of the country is some shade of purple, a varied blend of Democrat blue and Republican red) what I really wanted was this blended map with a population density overlay. Because what really stands out is how red the nation seems to be when you do not take the voting population into account; when you do so many of those vast red mid-west blocks fade into pale pink and lavender (very low population).
So I created a new map using Mark’s blended voting map based on the actual numbers of votes for each party overlaid with population maps from Texas Tech University and other sources.
Here’s the result — what the American political voting distribution really looks like.
Images: Chris Howard’s “blended” voting map, via Facebook (top); Mark Newman’s 2012 voting maps by state, county and percentage vote by county (bottom). Select to embiggen.
Augh what is this gorgeousness
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- 220 misdemeanor marijuana charges have been dropped by prosecutors in King and Pierce counties before a new law legalizing possession of the (still federally controlled) substance takes effect next month. Washington’s widely publicized legalization initiative is set to become the law of the land on Dec. 6, barring federal intervention in the interim, but local authorities see little point in trying to enforce laws that will soon expire. ““I think when the people voted to change the policy, they weren’t focused on when the effective date of the new policy would be,” said King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg. “They spoke loudly and clearly that we should not treat small amounts of marijuana as an offense.” source
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Photo reblogged from The Atlantic
![theatlantic:
The GOP Must Choose: Rush Limbaugh or Minority Voters
There will be plenty of talk in coming weeks about the Republican Party, the conservative movement, racial demographics, and whether they’ll inspire significant changes in policy or philosophy.That conversation is more important than this one.It would still be prudent for conservatives to take some advice that seems blindingly obvious, but apparently isn’t: Stop letting prominent voices of movement conservatism get away with saying things that are a) actually just racist; b) demagogic race-baiting; or c) so obviously tone-deaf that anyone with common sense can see how terrible it would sound. Why is that so hard?!
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md8duoMAcr1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
The GOP Must Choose: Rush Limbaugh or Minority Voters
There will be plenty of talk in coming weeks about the Republican Party, the conservative movement, racial demographics, and whether they’ll inspire significant changes in policy or philosophy.
That conversation is more important than this one.
It would still be prudent for conservatives to take some advice that seems blindingly obvious, but apparently isn’t: Stop letting prominent voices of movement conservatism get away with saying things that are a) actually just racist; b) demagogic race-baiting; or c) so obviously tone-deaf that anyone with common sense can see how terrible it would sound.
Why is that so hard?!Read more. [Image: Reuters]
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Latinos, blacks, young adults and women: They’re the ones who handed President Obama a second term. Now, he and his fellow Democrats in Congress have to decide just how earnestly they’ll fight for what their key constituencies want.
So it was yesterday — just hours after the Election Night celebration had ceased here in Obama’s hometown — that Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the author of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the House, had a message for his party and his president: Get cracking.
“Democrats better not think that the community that came out so forcefully for the president and his re-election is simply going to say, ‘OK, do whatever it is you wish,’ ” Gutierrez told The Daily, after a news conference with a local pro-immigration group. “They better act on this issue, and they better act on it quickly, and in a forceful way.”
