In case you haven’t been reminded the past few years (or specifically, since you gave up on everything on November 2, 2004), this little blurb from the kos (by Dan Kurtzman, from his book) is a nice refresher. If you’re like me, you completely shut off the sound or even mention of bullshit lib/con wars years ago when those assholes stole the country again, effectively destroying what I hoped would be the best decade of my life. Anyway:
Liberals believe in clean air, diplomacy, stem cells, living wages, body armor for our troops, government accountability, and that exercising the right to dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Liberals believe in reading actual books, going to war as a last resort, separating church and hate, and doing what Jesus would actually do, instead of lobbying for upper-class tax cuts and fantasizing about the apocalypse.
Liberals believe in civil rights, the right to privacy, and that evolution and global warming aren’t just theories but incontrovertible scientific facts.
Liberals believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment that (1) prohibits another Bush from ever occupying the White House, and (2) prevents George W. Bush from ever becoming baseball commissioner before he does to our national pastime what he did for America.
Liberals believe in rescuing people from flooded streets and rooftops, even if they’re too poor to vote Republican.
Liberals believe that supporting our troops means treating our wounded vets like the heroes they are, and not leaving them to languish in rat-infested military hospitals under the outsourced management of incompetent cronies who think they’re running a Taco Bell franchise.
Liberals believe in pheromones, sex ed, solar panels, voting paper trails, the common good, and that, no matter how fascinating a story it may be, a president should never sit around in a state of total paralysis reading “My Pet Goat” while America is under attack.
And above all, liberals believe that it’s time to come together as a country and put a collective boot in the ass of shameless conservative fearmongers, hate merchants, and scapegoaters who are sucking the freedom out of all our souls.
I felt that was a nice reminder as to why we’re involved so much right now. You are still licensed by law to be enraged at the state of your country. Just as I am licensed by virtue to be enraged at the state of American health care and samaritanism. Like I’ve been saying for a while, this year’s fight is a complete downhill battle. Let’s just be sure to do our fair share and win it, and win it clean to rub it in. Then maybe we can pawn off this cynicism for some idealism and maybe progress.
Most important is that we always keep Fox News on the air to prove our dedication to reason and the First Amendment, in reverse order. Also for comedy.
Ok, I know the name is weird and stupid, but this is a grassroots political support campaign on crystal meth. A site that strictly entertains videos of the Obama supporting persuasion, with no other rules. A truly democratic (hackable!) voting structure pushes popular shit to the top. The introduction:
It may seem obvious that years of experience in national politics would be the best preparation for the White House, but it’s not the case.
Look at two presidents who had the most political experience when they took office: Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon. They had great experience, but they weren’t the greatest presidents. On the other hand, look at two presidents who had the least amount of experience: Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Now, decide if you want to vote just for experience or for the better candidate.
Weird defense to the experience thing, but an interesting statement of support. The consists of videos of all walks of Obama-supporting life. It combines YouTube with a sort of digg-like voting structure to support the candidate said to be most tech-savvy (he’s not scared of technology?! what!?).
Here’s hoping internet people understand that it’s up to them to get outside and make the magic spread from internet to their jobs and schools and prisons and churches and bars and all that. Talk about this shit in public; it is a public affair.
So this crazy shit about what day is the most depressing of the year. There’s this theory about “blue Monday” which is basically:
…calculated by Dr. Cliff Arnall…and has been quoted in the popular press, although there is little if any scientific basis to his methods…”the fact is that Cliff Arnall’s equations are stupid, and some fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms.” The date was calculated by using many factors…weather conditions, debt level, time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action…typically falls on the Monday of the last full week of January. This would make 21 January the Blue Monday of 2008.
Aside from the fact that Arnall’s theory has been discounted by many in the academic community, I’ve got a better way of finding the true nadir of depression: Look to our search behavior. If we think we’re suffering from a real bout of the blues or a mental crisis, we’re likely to Google the symptoms. In fact, online searches for “depression” are among the most popular searches sending traffic to the 5,900 sites that we track, but the peak is not in January. According to our Internet behavior, our depression spikes reliably in mid-November every year, right in time for Thanksgiving, the launch of the holiday season.
That’s true too! Holy shit!
Or maybe we’re just all crazy. I know I am blessed with my own manstrual cycle that tortures me every four weeks. Serious.
The doctor guy says the best day of the year is in the 24ish part of June also.
Right, so I think it’s important to note that no other candidate talks about political and government reform. Meanwhile, this one guy is tired of the same old shit. From here:
Barack may be inspiring, and we may like his ideas, but he hasn’t been in Washington long enough. He hasn’t been stewed and seasoned long enough. We haven’t boiled all the hope out of him.
There’s a lot of connections being made here. It’s seeming less like impractical idealism and more like urgent reality by the day.
I examined a pamphlet book type thing that fell on my head one day in this video.
This is part one of three. Stay tuned for the rest (the video feed on the right or do your youtube thing on it or whatever), which is a detailed discussion of your options when approaching the arena of electronic games in a manner that doesn’t piss off god.
IN FACT see you tomorrowhere is part 2 and part 3 (it is arguably worth watching all three).
Could such an oddball but somehow sensible concept have prevented the Civil War? Ron Paul thinks so. After all, every other country did it without a civil war…
Driving from Illinois to Georgia, we saw someone with a Ron Paul bumper sticker somewhere in Tennessee. I didn’t think those existed in real life irlstyles meatspace.
Today the only other place on the street that was open was that huge coffee chain. Dude that is always there was talking Ron Paul with a customer.
Could an internet subculture be much much huger than the mass media portrays it? Yes. Would this be one of those cases? That question is why this is interesting.
I have one more note related to the presidential speech tag clouds. There are large chunks of American history when “constitution” was a regularly-used word in government address. Now is not one of those times. Here’s a quote:
I have seen nothing since I came here to change my opinion . . . but abundant reason to be convinced that our affairs are in a more distressed, ruinous, and deplorable condition than they have been in since the commencement of the war. By a faithful laborer then in the cause; by a man who is daily injuring his private estate without even the smallest earthly advantage not common to all in case of a favorable issue to the dispute; by one who wishes the prosperity of America most devoutly and sees or thinks he sees it on the brink of ruin, you are beseeched, most earnestly, my dear Colonel Harrison, to exert yourself in endeavoring to rescue your country by (let me add) sending your ablest and best men to Congress. These characters must not slumber nor sleep at home in such times of pressing danger; they must not content themselves in the enjoyment of places of honor or profit in their own country while the common interests of America are moldering and sinking into irretrievable (if a remedy is not soon applied) ruin, in which theirs also must ultimately be involved.
If I was to be called upon to draw a picture of the times and of men from what I have seen, heard, and in part know, I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seems to have laid fast hold of most of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seems to have got the better of every other consideration and almost of every order of men; that party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day, while the momentous concerns of an empire–a great and accumulated debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit (which in their consequences is the want of everything)–are but secondary considerations and postponed from day to day, from week to week, as if our affairs wear the most promising aspect. After drawing this picture, which from my soul I believe to be a true one, I need not repeat to you that I am alarmed and wish to see my countrymen roused.
That was George Washington in 1778. As you go back farther in time, they use more words and more diverse words, and the speeches are so dense that they had to have been given slowly. It’s jarring.
The above tag cloud shows the popularity, frequency, and trends in the usages of words within speeches, official documents, declarations, and letters written by the Presidents of the US between 1776 - 2007 AD.
Terrorist and Iraq have been the biggest words the past few years (6 years of terrer!), and economy’s been big since the 70s. There’s some very telling things inside these walls of text. It’s like flash cards of four year periods.
Gratuitously overmentioning family for stupid emotional points was invented by Ronald Reagan and crew in 1986! Seriously. It became a buzzword in 1986. It’s only been 20 years. We can overcome the bullshit rhetoric in politics and be real (and still lie about it even). We did it for hundreds of years.
Have a look at Franklin Roosevelt’s third (!) inaugural address (1941) or the social security announcement (1935), or . Those are serious problems. What the fuck do we think we’re doing now? p.s. Those were real speech writers like damn. That shit jerks tears.
“…the advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt…This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.â€
“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.
Not sure what the jazz and classical thing is supposed to mean, but he was probably high.
The RIAA and friends say file-sharing is hurtful stealing that kills the blood cells of huge artists and gives them HIV. Why would you believe companies that steal from the very artists they pretend to protect? Everyone knows almost all music contracts are completely one-sided deals that artists hardly benefit from in comparison to the contractor. Fun fact:
50 Cent has engaged in numerous feuds with other rappers including Ja Rule, The Game, and Fat Joe.
THE DUDE IS SERIOUS BUSINESS. He deserves serious respect, even if he was blazed out of his brainhole during the interview; he utters truth. File sharing hurts profits, not artists.
If you have the kind of brain aids that makes you constantly need to feed it more things, you might be interested in oddly detailed, guided tours through history. If you’re interested in that or learning how we learned how to learn, you’ll like this:
I know some people could be sensitive and call it dry, but James Burke is a pretty serious cut-up considering his field of study, and I’ve worshiped his books for years. Note that this is part 2 of 5 of episode 1 of 10. This can be a serious fast track to general knowledge of the history of science, and is almost an eerily appropriate primer for skeptical thought and understanding of the scientific process and how it effects history, all under the umbrella of chaos! This is multi-threaded teaching and thinking.
In the closing scenes of The Day the Universe Changed, Burke suggested that a forthcoming revolution in communication and computer technology would allow people all over the world to exchange ideas and opinions instantaneously. Subsequent events seem to have proven him right. His views of the connected nature of history have also been substantiated by recent research in chaos/complexity/network theory.
Essentially anything here is going to be similar or have an even wider berth, but I definitely suggest Connections as it caused a bit of an educational revolution that logically played out to its fullest form on the internet.
“He misconstrued my beliefs.” - Ron Paul re: John McCain attacking him at the Republican YouTube debate.
I am amazed at his stickiness. He seems to attract the undercurrent need of prototypical-American freedom in people. He brings up fundamental American issues that effect everyone (and always have), has interesting and different things to say about the junk topics being portrayed as the platform, and can even handle serious modern issues. His statements are all theoretically solid. He interests people that aren’t interested in politics. The dude sounds like Thomas Jefferson.
I’m wondering what kind of insane explosion an internet movement can cause in a real live grassroots campaign.
It’s worth noting I still don’t consider anyone ready to receive votes. I could be convinced though.
