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THE QUOTE
“Turn on to politics or politics will turn on you.” — Ralph Nader
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JENNA WANTS MITT TO LICK BARACK
Retired porn star Jenna Jameson has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Don’t you love it?
“When you’re rich,” Jenna reasons, “you want a Republican in office.”
Family Values
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To balance things out, the incomparable Ron Jeremy is behind the President. Poor Barack.
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WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON?
If this doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you I don’t know what will.
In a piece on the radical right in America, al Jazeera claims that Republicans quashed a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report suggesting hate groups began to proliferate in the United States after the election of Barack Obama.
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Not that the groups weren’t proliferating before that, mind you. Only that their rate of proliferation was bumped up dramatically by the presence of a brown man in the White House.
I’d say the GOP has some ‘splainin’ to do.
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HATE IS ENOUGH
We still don’t understand the meaning of hatred in this country. ABC News ran this online headline yesterday:
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Still No Motive?
Does the swastika have different meanings for different people even at this late date?
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THE NEW MACHINE
Many years ago, even the most polarizing figures in this holy land were permitted to have nuanced and even seemingly self-contradictory viewpoints. They didn’t run in fear from the Thought Crime authorities within their political parties or the punditocracy.
For instance, one of the heroes of the hard-hat, blue-collar, bungalow-belt Silent Majority was Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago. He ran a highly disciplined political machine. He tolerated little in the way of dissent. He was a tough guy.
The Boss
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He’d called for his police to shoot to kill arsonists and shoot to maim looters during race riots. He turned his police force loose on demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Convention. By the early 1970s he ranked just below George Wallace, Spiro Agnew, and Jack Webb in the law and order pantheon.
Yet he was a staunch opponent of the Vietnam War and, even more surprisingly, guns. According to Rick Perlstein in “Nixonland,” Daley was in Washington, DC testifying before a congressional committee in the summer of 1972. “Take the guns away from every private citizen,” he said.
Can you imagine any darling of the right even suggesting private citizens should be limited to possessing several dozen assault rifles these days?
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A NEW UNDERGROUND RAILROAD?
Author and journalist Achy Obejas (say it, AH-chee oh-BAY-hahss) spent a few years at Indiana University before she dropped out and went to work covering politics, GLBTQ issues, night life, and a host of other beats.
Obejas
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Achy points out the latest lunatic pronouncement from a member of the holier-than-thou gang. It seems Bryan Fischer, one of the paid squealers for the American Family Association, has called for good, god-fearing citizens to save children being raised by same-sex couples.
Well, perhaps the word save isn’t quite right here. How about kidnap?
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Achy’s got a horse in this race. Her wife, Megan, gave birth to a son last year. Achy swears she’s never been happier.
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IN YEARS AHEAD, HE WOULD NOT BE TED
Here a sample of some graphic ad work a then-unknown artist named Theodore Geisel did back in the 1930s and 40s:
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Recognize the style? Geisel later became Dr, Seuss.
See more at “25 Advertisements by Dr. Seuss Before He Was Dr. Seuss” on BuzzFeed.
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Here’s how I waste my time. How about you? Share your fave sites with us via the comments section. Just type in the name of the site, not the url; we’ll find them. If we like them, we’ll include them — if not, we’ll ignore them.
❏ I Love Charts — Life as seen through charts.
❏ XKCD — “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
“What If?” From XKCD
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❏ Skepchick — Women scientists look at the world and the universe.
❏ Indexed — All the answers in graph form, on index cards.
❏ I Fucking Love Science — A Facebook community of science geeks.
❏ Present and Correct — Fun, compelling, gorgeous and/or scary graphic designs and visual creations throughout the years and from all over the world.
❏ Flip Flop Fly Ball — Baseball as seen through infographics, haikus, song lyrics, and other odd communications devices.
❏ Mental Floss — Facts.
❏ Caps Off Please — Comics & fun.
❏ Sodaplay — Create your own models or play with other people’s models.
❏ Eat Sleep Draw — An endless stream of artwork submitted by an endless stream of people.
❏ Big Think — Tapping the brains of notable intellectuals for their opinions, predictions, and diagnoses.
❏ The Daily Puppy — So shoot me.
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Electron Pencil event listings: Music, art, movies, lectures, parties, receptions, games, benefits, plays, meetings, fairs, conspiracies, rituals, etc.
◗ Bear’s Place — Jazz Fables: Mr. Taylor and His Dirty Dixie Band; 5:30pm
◗ Muddy Boots Cafe, Nashville — Americana Showcase; 6-8:30pm
◗ Monroe County Public Library — Monthly meeting, Bloomington Transportation Options for People; 6:30pm
◗ IU Cinema — Film: “To Rome with Love”; 7pm
◗ Cafe Django — Jeff Isaac Trio; 8-10pm
◗ The Comedy Attic — Tim Wilson; 8pm
◗ Serendipity Martini Bar — Team trivia; 8:30pm
◗ Max’s Place — Wake the Dead; 9pm
◗ The Bluebird — Apollo Quad; 9pm
◗ The Bishop — Home Blitz, Bloody Mess, The Tsunamis; 9:30pm
Ongoing:
◗ Ivy Tech Waldron Center — Exhibits:
- “40 Years of Artists from Pygmalion’s”; through September 1st
◗ IU Art Museum — Exhibits:
- Qiao Xiaoguang, “Urban Landscape: A Selection of Papercuts” ; through August 12th
- “A Tribute to William Zimmerman,” wildlife artist; through September 9th
- Willi Baumeister, “Baumeister in Print”; through September 9th
- Annibale and Agostino Carracci, “The Bolognese School”; through September 16th
- “Contemporary Explorations: Paintings by Contemporary Native American Artists”; through October 14th
- David Hockney, “New Acquisitions”; through October 21st
- Utagawa Kuniyoshi, “Paragons of Filial Piety”; through fall semester 2012
- Julia Margaret Cameron, Edward Weston, & Harry Callahan, “Intimate Models: Photographs of Husbands, Wives, and Lovers”; through December 31st
- “French Printmaking in the Seventeenth Century”; through December 31st
◗ IU SoFA Grunwald Gallery — Exhibits:
- Coming — Media Life; August 24th through September 15th
- Coming — Axe of Vengeance: Ghanaian Film Posters and Film Viewing Culture; August 24th through September 15th
◗ IU Kinsey Institute Gallery — “Ephemeral Ink: Selections of Tattoo Art from the Kinsey Institute Collection”; through September 21st
◗ IU Lilly Library — Exhibit, “Translating the Canon: Building Special Collections in the 21st Century”; through September 1st
◗ IU Mathers Museum of World Cultures — Closed for semester break, reopens Tuesday, August 21st
◗ Monroe County History Center —Photo exhibit, “Bloomington: Then and Now” by Bloomington Fading; through October 27th
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