Tag: Politics
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Billy Bragg, Help Save The Youth of America (Live and Dubious), 1988 on Elektra
Billy Bragg live six song EP released to encourage US youth to vote in the 1988 presidential election. Includes “Chile, Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto” (written by Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock) and “There is Power In a Union.” Remember, when you elect a President, you are electing President for…
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Does One-Click Activism Work?
Via Erik Marcus I came to an excellent blog post by Mark Hawthorne, who takes on a question I’ve often wondered about: Is One-Click Activism Effective? You’ve almost certainly seen one-click activism: you get an email, click on a link, and send a pre-written message to a pre-selected legislator or other politician. It’s activism made…
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New Years Day
One of my favorite songs from what I think of as “first-period” U2 (the era before Unforgettable Fire) has always been “New Year’s Day,” with its juxtaposition of optimism and acquiescence, suggesting: Nothing changes on New Year’s Day. On New Year’s Day. But then at the center of the song declaring with renewed affirmation: Though…
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Some Quotations from David Brin’s Transparent Society
Just finished reading The Transparent Society, David Brin’s 1998 rumination on the question of “Will Technology Force Us to Chose Between Privacy and Freedom.” It’s a really thoughtful book about an alternative approach to the battle over privacy based on two-way transparency, or more accurately accountability. Along the way I marked a few passages in…
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Obama, Pollan on “Food” Policy
While I’ve not doubt that a vegan president-elect Kucinich would be closer to my views on the animals-we-call-food, it’s enheartening truly to see Obama talking about food policy with a true intellectual approach, trying to understand how environmental issues are mixed up with how “food” is produced. First, to backtrack. Via ecorazzi ( Barack Obama…
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No They Can’t
I just wanted to quickly share two recent videos cover my disgust over California’s prop 8 and related legislation better than I could myself. The first is Lindsay Campbell, from MobLogic.tv: The second, from Countdown with Keith Olberman on MSNBC: I’m simultaneously very proud we managed to elect Obama; equally sad we chose to remove…
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Obama Family Dog petition
I don’t normally push online petitions, the theory being that the ease with which a petition is generated, circulated, and signed is inversely proportional to the influence it has on those addressed (online petitions are too easy to do and therefore less meaningful). But this one I think has a chance: If Sen. Barack Obama…
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Like Hope, But Different
What if will.i.am were a McCain fan rather than an Obamaniac? My favorite moment is the guy hyperventilating into a paper bag as McCain talks about a hundred years, maybe a thousand years . . .