How much Hispanics matter in 2012 — in one chart

Republicans have a Hispanic problem.

Unless they can find ways to begin convincing the nation’s fastest growing population — Hispanics accounted for half of all the growth of the U.S. population over the last decade — that the GOP is a potential political home for them, they won’t remain a credible national party in 2016, 2020 and beyond.

Some within their party understand this. Take Florida Sen. Marco Rubio who is pushing a Republican “Dream Act” designed to show the Hispanic community that the entirety of the party is not lined up against them. And even former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who took a hardline stance against illegal immigration in the presidential primary, is starting to moderate his positions.

Resurgent Republic, a conservative-aligned, polling conglomerate has produced a snappy infographic that details everything you need to know about the Hispanic vote including the fascinating chart below that allows you to experiment with how much of the 2012 electorate will be Hispanic, how much of it Republicans will win and what that means for the outcome of the contest.

CREW and Others Call for Increased Disclosure of Political Spending by Insurance Companies

WASHINGTON - July 16 - Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other organizations called on the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), the regulatory organization for the insurance industry, to require insurance companies to disclose all political spending from corporate funds. 

Recent revelations, including the discovery that the insurance giant Aetna contributed more than $7 million to the American Action Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have underscored efforts by companies to illicitly influence the 2012 elections.

Anonymous supports Green Peace, hacks oil companies

In what the loosely-tied hacker group Anonymous calls #OpSaveTheArctic, over 1,000 email credentials and Hash checks of email passwords from five major international oil giants were released. The companies targeted included Exxon Mobil Corporation, Shell Petrochemical Corp., and BP Global; as well as the Russian based Gazprom Corporation and Rosneft Petroleum Corp.

The data dumped on anonymous text post website Pastebin includes 317 emails and their unsalted MD5 hashed passwords from a hack on Exxon mobil from June. Added July 13th: a further 724 emails and hashed passwords from BP, Gazprom, and Rosneft, and 26 emails with clear-text passwords from Shell Petroleum. Also listed: all of the internal mail system information, detailing routers, operating system type, database details and server hardware vendor. Further detailing of the type of data gained is available at the DC/Nova/Maryland network security blog site NovaInfoSeco.com.

YouTube study shows the future: citizen-filmed news

This week a study has been released by Pew Research Center surrounding YouTube’s viewership over a period of 15 months and have found citizens, not news organizations, to be holding the gold metal for most viewed videos. While it remains clear that non-web-based television is still the top gun as far as video-based news goes, YouTube’s viewership loves everyday Joe-made news clips more than they like news corporations’ take on everyday goings-on around the world. Is it possible that one day we’ll rely on individuals on the scene at big events rather than a news van to pick up and report on happenings in real time?

Ron Paul's Latest "Audit the Fed" Bill Passes Committee Unanimously

This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee unanimously passed Ron Paul's latest "Audit the Fed" bill, H.R. 459.

The bill would eliminate certain restrictions that now exist on any audits done on the Federal Reservefrom 31 U.S.C. 714, such as:

Audits of the Board and Federal reserve banks may not include—

(1) transactions for or with a foreign central bank, government of a foreign country, or nonprivate international financing organization;

(2) deliberations, decisions, or actions on monetary policy matters, including discount window operations, reserves of member banks, securities credit, interest on deposits, and open market operations; 

(3) transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee; or

(4) a part of a discussion or communication among or between members of the Board and officers and employees of the Federal Reserve System related to clauses (1)–(3) of this subsection.

Again, the above are the existing restrictions that H.R. 459, if it eventually passes the full House and then becomes law in unaltered or unamended form, will eliminate from Fed audits. By the time his last try at this got in some form into a final bill, even Ron Paul himself wouldn't vote for that whole bill.

Flat-pack cardboard and plywood car scoops Eco-Design award at Shell Eco-Marathon


Aston University's hydrogen-fueled, flat-pack cardboard and plywood creation

Aston University’s entry into this year’s Shell Eco-Marathon may look a little low-tech, but that didn’t stop the hydrogen-fueled cardboard and plywood flat-pack car from scooping the Eco-Design award at the European event, held in Rotterdam in May… Continue Reading Flat-pack cardboard and plywood car scoops Eco-Design award at Shell Eco-Marathon

Section: Automotive

Tags: Aston University, Cardboard, Fuel efficiency, Hydrogen-powered

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How Universal One-Click Payments Will Change Everything

Stripe, a startup backed by the same band of self-styled Libertarian revolutionaries who founded and then cashed out of PayPal, is set to do to every transaction on the planet what one-click payments did to Apple's App store and Amazon.com. If the company succeeds, the psychological abstraction of money at the core of the one-click impulse buy could make buying things easier than ever -- maybe even too easy -- and the backers of Stripe very, very rich.

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