January 2012
12 posts
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“One of the real dilemmas we have in our country and around the world is that...”
– Bill Clinton in an Esquire interview about the current political landscape (via kottke)
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Are Any Christians Running for President? →
Actually, what these candidates assure their followers is that one can be a devout Christian (which seems for them to center on eliminating abortion and saying “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays) without manifesting any of the paradigm Christian virtues like humility and peacefulness. As long as we reject pornography and eliminate women’s rights to control their own bodies, it is...
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“Congress appropriates military funds with alacrity and generosity. It...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr. (via azspot)
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America Isn’t a Corporation →
But there’s a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen — even great businessmen — do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery.
Why isn’t a...
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My Call to Senator Schumer’s Office on PIPA: It’s... →
Today I called a Senator’s office for the first time.
First, let me say how fantastic it is that when you call the office, a real-live human picks up the phone and can speak to you. There’s no annoying menus, no transfers, no answering machines. Washington, please don’t ever change this.
I was calling mostly to find out why the Senator supports (and co-sponsored!) S.968, aka the...
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Christian Conservatives seldom Conserve the Real... →
Why do I mistrust so much Christian “conservativism”?
1) It usually wants to “conserve” a very recent version of history or Christianity (theirs!)
2) It is almost always tied to money and power, which seems very unlike Jesus.
3) It loves the status quo too much, which is really to love one’s own comfort, security, and status.
4) It seldom loves the poor or the outsider,...
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December 2011
19 posts
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“The entire Republican primary, thus far, has had the quality of a dream within a...”
– Amy Davidson’s commentary on Newt Gingrich and the republican primaries in The New Yorker
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Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public... →
youngmanhattanite:
Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths
Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker‘s John Cook, who — in an...
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“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring.
It is an active noun, like struggle.
...”
– ~ Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers (via bohemianarthouse)
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“However, exploitation is not only found in communism, capitalism is a system...”
– Hayao Miyazaki (via andrewfm)
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American deceptionalism →
kateoplis:
In the US, the message from the mayors is simple: You’ve made your point. Now go to your room and shut up. We’ve got a lawn to keep up, and you’ve spoiled it. America’s “grown-ups” as the political class likes to think of itself, have never had much patience when it comes to the “children”, as its mere citizens are known. And yet, America’s democratic revolutionary origins are at the...
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“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been....”
– Isaac Asimov (via azspot)
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“…I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed...”
– Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail
(via jsmooth)
November 2011
19 posts
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Dear OWS: The police state has been around longer... →
malheureuxmarxist:
The police state has been around longer than you, because the US has been a settler-colonial project since the very beginning. It was designed to keep the internal colonies of the United States contained, dominated, and exploited.
the police brutality against the occupations has been pretty minor compared to the brutal, systemic violence of the colonial occupations of ...
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“[TW: police brutality] When students covered their eyes with their clothing,...”
– Open Letter to the Chancellor of UC Davis, calling for her immediate resignation. (via evanfleischer)
you have GOT to be FUCKING SHITTING ME
OMFG
(via lau-ra-sau-rus)
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This is amazing: a grid of 360 simultaneous... →
seldo:
Taken from the Exploratorium in San Francisco. You can see the different times the sun rises throughout the year, you can see the foggy days cluster around winter (and July!), and you can see the bright, gorgeous blue that clearly and undeniably makes up the majority of the sky time in San Francisco.
So cool to see the changing seasons displayed in such an immediate way.
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The right questions
squashed:
Asking what the Occupy Wall Street protestors want is probably not a helpful question. They want a lot of things—and we don’t much care what they want, except where we already agree with them. Writing about their goals is really writing about what we want their goals to be. It’s more about our goals.
A better question:
Why are they protesting? What part of our social contract has...
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“[More than five hundred thousand people worldwide die each year in road...”
– anticar activist Jan Lundberg quoted in The Culture of Make Believe (2002) by Derrick Jensen, p. 277
Perspective.
(via feminismistheshit)
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How Silicon Valley works
Jay: A million guys walk into a Silicon Valley bar. None of them buy anything. The bar is declared a rousing success.
Laurie: Google acquires bar.
Mark: Ten clones of the bar are opened the next day.
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“While the Occupy protests are an encouraging sign that Americans are not...”
– The Rutherford Institute: Occupy America and Friendly Fascism: Life in the Corporate Police State (via greaterthanlapsed)
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Watchlowtax:
i dont give a shit how old this is
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“Of course, nobody inside the U.S. Government is objecting on the ground that it...”
– Glenn Greenwald, “The Drone Mentality” (via andrewfm)
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“We can choose tax structures that underfund our schools, we can believe that we...”
– Anthony Cody, “New data Bill Gates, other ed reformers should care about.” The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post