DennisL09

So, it’s all about jobs. There’s a lot of validity to that. Without a job, households and lives can fall apart pretty quickly.  Let’s look at some of the numbers as provided by the ThinkProgress War Room (as shown to me by my friend Marc Liu)

Now that the first Presidential test is in the books, the US media will relentlessly pound away at explaining it to us. Most of the media won’t be far behind Fox News. I think there’s several facts that we really need to remember:

1) In Iowa, fully 60% of the Republicans attending the caucuses are white Evangelical Christians. They are not just virulently opposed to womens reproductive rights and LGBT rights, most are opposed to public education because it teaches the Theory of Evolution rather than Creationism. And for many of them, these “social issues” are more important than war, the social safety net, the economy, education, etc.  And these are the people that should define the issues for the Presidential election?

2) How many people actually vote in the GOP Iowa caucus?  About 122,000. That’s One Hundred Twenty-Two Thousand voters. Slightly more people than attended the Rose Bowl yesterday. Less than the population of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So this tiny spec of population is more influential in the choice of our next President than all the people in California, New York, Texas, etc. But don’t despair, the next big Presidential test is New Hampshire….

3) Many people think American Democracy comes down to how much you spend on TV advertising. It didn’t work out that way in Iowa. Rick Santorum, who finished in a virtual tie for first with Mitt Romney, spent $20.59 per vote in media advertising. Mitt Romney spent $155.43 per vote. Even the renegade Ron Paul spent $103.64 per vote. And Rick Perry? He spent a whopping $478.87 per vote. NOTE: These dollar totals ONLY include media advertising. They do NOT count all the other costs of a campaign like offices, staff, donuts, etc.

Presidential debates are known for whoppers. Candidates play loose and slippery with the truth. It seems like they make up “facts” to support their positions. Since many political pundits have opined that the current wave of Republican debates have brought these stretches of the truth to unprecedented levels, it’s important to distinguish between facts, lies, and what is just a  political opinion.
For example,  at last Thursday’s debate in Orlando, Florida, Michelle Bachman said “President Obama has the lowest public approval ratings of any president in modern time.” Approval ratings are a concrete and well documented number. It’s a fixed number which can be checked. For example, President George W. Bush hit a low of 25%. President Obama? His low is 38%.  In fact, all 8 Presidents in the past 47 years have had lower ratings at some point of their Presidency.  And that’s a numerical fact. Further, according to the Gallup Poll web site, only two Presidents in the past 70 years (Eisenhower and Kennedy) didn’t dip lower. So Michelle Bachman’s “facts” were not even close to being true. 
As part of trashing Social Security, Rick Perry called the it a “crumbling monument to the failure of the new deal”  Was the New Deal a failure? That’s an opinion that historians, including contemporary ones, have consistently debated.  True, the New Deal built many of our country’s dams, bridges, highways, public buildings, etc. It created the infrastructure that helped drive the USA to become the world’s most successful economy.  It put millions of people to work who were jobless in the Depression.  It created Social Security and many of the underpinnings of the social safety net which helped build the middle class. But to say it was a failure is an opinion, not something which is fact based. 

Latin Jazz at LACMA on a summer night. Another good reason to love LA :)

hitrecord:

Midnight Remix

This is what happens when i can’t sleep….remix remix remix !

by Elayne

A short  history of hitRECord !

hitrecordjoe:

My dear friend and great mentor, John Lithgow, performs a dramatic (comedic) reading of a politician’s ludicrous-but-real press release on The Colbert Report.  Now THAT’S an actor!

If you can’t view the embedded video (like I can’t here in the UK) due to geographic location and silly Viacom internet policies, I was able to watch it HERE. 

John Lithgow is an actor’s actor. And is an incredibly intelligent, gracious person. Only the best from and for him.

It”s May 21. Has the world ended? If it has, then you don’t have to read anymore. I was wrong. It hasn’t ended? Maybe the Religious Right wasn’t right about the world ending? Is it possible that all the massive weather events, which they say point to the end of the world, might actually be something else? Like maybe Global Climate Change?
Maybe all the floods and droughts are the new normal?  West Texas has had a record-length dry spell the past five years, even though there were two 100-year rain events. Maybe the rash of major hurricanes, deep snowfalls and searing heat are just our new reality. This week the Union of Concerned Scientists organized a conference call of top climate scientists. Unfortunately, the worlds top scientists say all these massive weather events might just be the new normal. The Reuters news article summary is here

You can learn a lot more about the relationship between severe weather events, global warming and greenhouse gases in this excellent article by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Maybe it’s time we considered what’s necessary to continue living on this planet. Maybe now that we are in the Post Rapture era, we can seriously consider ways to head off more greenhouse gases and the climate change that comes with it.

Look at the #2 story at Metallica’s web site:  http://www.metallica.com/

themadeshop:

hrrrthrrr:

The Made Shop’s film documenting the creation of Son Lux’s “We Are Rising” album artwork.

If I had my way, I would work for The Made Shop.  I love anything and everything they produce. It’d be like my dream job and I’d be working with the coolest family around. 

Anyway…this video is a perfect example of how wonderful they are. Setting off 28 colored smoke bombs while shooting from a make-shift crane…yeah…cool.  And the finished product is just beautiful.

If you love design, you might swoon a little over this.

Hrrrthrrr was one of the very first few people I followed when we joined Tumblr over two years ago, and I’ve very much enjoyed her work and posts consistently ever since. Her taste is just impeccable, so I’m understandably honored and humbled by her kind words about us and our Son Lux project above.

<3

If the music is half as good as the video for making the album cover, it’s gotta be killer. Marke and Nathan are two of the best artists anywhere, but clearly it was Maxx that was directing :)