How do we move the Democratic party, and the nation, to the left? 
How do we become a more progressive nation?

I think that our approach must take two forms.  We must change our leaders in tow ways.  First, by replacing bad politicians with better ones, and second, by changing the politicians while they stay in office.  Nice as it would be to replace a few hundred representatives and a few dozen senators with clones of Dick Durbin and Diane Watson (the most liberal senator and representative, per National Journal) it isn’t likely to happen.  In the meantime…

crossposted from dailyKos

Recently, the historically important Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA) had one important clause part removed: It no longer protects transgender people.

To this straight, white person, that’s a bad idea.  It goes in exactly the wrong direction.

We need more voices, not fewer.  We need to sing a chorus, not a bunch of solos. 

When does an orchestra sound good? When each instrument is tuning up, alone, or when all of them are playing together?

more below the fold

reposted from daily Kos, with a lot of changes and edits

There is a lot of talk about DINOs (Democrats In Name Only).  There is, in fact, more talk than there are DINOs.  There is only ONE DINO in the senate (and it’s not Jolting Joe) and perhaps 5 or 8 in the House. And ALL those DINOs are from red red red areas

This is not to say that there are not a lot of disappointing Democrats.  There are.  I would rather have 435 house members who vote like my own rep (Jerry Nadler NY-08).  I am on the left wing of the party. 

It’s one thing to be less inspiring than you might be.  It’s another to be a DINO, or to be as bad as a Republican.  Or to slaim that the parties are identical. 

reposted from dailyKos
How do the senators line up?  Are there groups of Senators with similar records (other than the obvious Dem vs. Rep?)

There’s a statistical tool to answer questions like this: It’s called cluster analysis.  It takes a group of subjects (here Senators) and some method of saying how similar they are (here, ratings from various groups) and tries to put the subjects into groups.

There are LOTS of subtleties, some of them (along with results) are below the fold

reposted, with changes, from dailyKos

Over at daily Kos, feemus wrote a very good diary about the Bell Curve (the book, that is).  That led to a discussion of nature and nurture.  All such discussions are silly.  To see why, go below the fold.  (Oh, and the Bell Curve is nonsense masquerading as science, as feemus and nearly all the commentators knew)

Yesterday, we looked at measures of central tendency.  Today, we will look at measures of spread, and tomorrow, measures of shape .  One way of looking at a measure of central tendency is as your best guess of what something will be.  Measures of spread tell you how good that guess is, and measures of shape tell you how you are likely to be wrong.