“Will either side draw the right lessons from this midterm election? Mr. Obama, and his party, have to do a far better job of explaining their vision and their policies. Mr. Obama needs to break his habits of neglecting his base voters and of sitting on the sidelines and allowing others to shape the debate. He needs to do a much better job of stiffening the spines of his own party’s leaders.” — NY Times Editorial Board, today (link). The key piece of this passage is the part about neglecting the base. We’re the ones who donate, who talk to friends, who create grassroots media, who blog, who write letters to editors, who comment on articles — in short, who are influential. We’re also the ones who vote — when we aren’t being shat upon. If the NY Times editorial team gets it, the enlightenment of Democratic politicians is past due.
This is addressed to those of you who compromised. Who “threw bones.” Who fawned. Who laughed. Who shook hands. Who capitulated.
Over and over, you got one Republican senator to vote for priority legislation in committee only, at the expense of more effective policy.
You did all of this to look moderate. To win votes come election season. How’d that work out for you?
Do you really think things could have been any worse? You lost an election, in the grandest terms of the modern era, even though the victorious party is more hated than you are. You lost to a corporate-funded “movement” that is morally and intellectually bankrupt in the most obvious terms.
The alternative was to stand strong, together. To fight back. Perhaps it’s at least conceivable that your electoral prospects might have been similarly poor had you stood strong; but it’s inconceivable that things could have been worse. Republicans, for all their stupidity and malice, should have taught you that.
Stand strong. No matter what.
If you’d made Republican senators literally filibuster; if you hadn’t tabled priorities at the mere threat of a Republican filibuster; this country would understand that Republicans are to blame for the lack of strong solutions to all the problems we face. Instead, you never made the assholes follow through on their threats. You never gave them the delightfully horrible PR situation of filibustering politically, mathematically, and morally righteous health insurance reform. Investment banking and housing reform. Civil rights reform.
Republicans voted against health care money for 9/11 responders, and still you couldn’t make them pay politically! They started a trillion-dollar war on false pretenses in the name of 9/11, and you couldn’t make them pay — politically and legislatively — for 9 billion dollars of health care for those who were there? Back then, you caved to the hysterical opinions of red-state soccer moms who quite insanely believed they were under threat on 9/11; but you couldn’t make Republicans pay for failing to honor the health needs of those who risked everything, without promise of reward?
Speaking of health, you could have pushed a health care bill that reflected ours and your principles — a single-payer bill set to initiate in 2010, instead of a compromised bill that couldn’t even muster the inclusion of a 70%-supported public option, set to fully initiate 2.5 election cycles later, in 2014. If you had, things could not have been worse for you politically. But at least you’d have enacted a policy that works, a policy that would have given you a chance in this election.
Will you learn? Will you understand? Or are you like Republican voters — easily manipulated, psychologically disturbed, reality-disconnected?
Yes, the average American is an ignoramus. But what is politics except the art of communication? And you know what communicates better than anything? Courage. Followed closely by real-world policy.
In this election, reality stares you in the face. You were weak. You lost. If you want to win: stand strong, together. And you must win.
A set of rules to live by:
1. The media need you (not the other way around).
2. Progressive policies — because they take into account reason, science, and history — work.
3. Republicans are bad-faith negotiators. They will never meet you halfway. Their promises are empty, their intentions malicious.
4. You are held to a different, stricter set of rules and standards regarding your intelligence and your conduct. Embrace and exceed them.
I send you a cry in the night. A plea for sanity and duty, upheld. If you heed it, you will succeed. Ignore it, and you lose. We all lose, even those of us who don’t realize it.
This is your wake-up call. You’re already late. Now it’s time to make up for it.
“Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: “Because the animals are like us.” Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: “Because the animals are not like us.” — Charles R. Magel, highlighting one of the many contradictions animal exploiters embrace to rationalize their cruelty.
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• Time spent sleeping last night: 0 hours
• Travel time to get to HuffPo Sanity Bus pick-up spot: 1.25 hours
• Wait time to board a bus and depart NYC: 1.5 hours
• Travel time to RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.: 5.5 hours
• Travel time to rally site: .75 hours
• Time spent at rally site: 2 hours
• Travel time to get back to RFK Stadium for bus departure: 1 hour
• Travel time back to NYC: 5.5 hours
• Travel time back to my apartment: 1.5 hours
• Helping Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert stick it to Glen Beck, Fox News, the Tea Party, and idiocy-based fear tactics? Priceless.
friendlyatheist: aggressiveretreat:
“Militant atheist.” Doesn’t mean quite the same thing, does it?
(via deepwithfuture)
“The sows who perished in Sunday’s fire had spent their entire lives in a miserable cycle of forced impregnation and birth. Confined in metal farrowing crates, they could not turn around, interact with their babies or engage in any of the natural behaviors enjoyed by pigs when left to their own devices. When Sunday’s blaze ripped through their dismal world, they had no other choice but to sit and wait for it, along with their babies. These animals did not choose to spend their lives treated like unfeeling machinery and they certainly did not choose to die in such a horrific manner.” — Gene Baur (head of Farm Sanctuary), on the fire that destroyed a large pig confinement barn Sunday afternoon in Iowa (via veganmatters)
(Source: sparklingsights, via weeptowaterthetrees)
Apparently, we both come to mind when thinking of artists that stand up for something important. MTV affiliate OurStage had this to say:
Whether through music or using their voices to speak up on behalf of a cause they believe in, be it animal rights (HERE, Paul McCartney) or civil rights (Beautiful Small Machines, Pink), education reform (Lil Mama, John Legend) or the environmental crisis (Green Day, KT Tunstall), curing diseases (Coldplay, John Mayer) or fighting poverty (Metric, Madonna), musicians are ready to be heard for more than just music. From the U2’s of the world right on down to more underground outfits like HERE, artists are making a difference globally and locally through the medium of music or the fame that comes with making great music.
Yes, HERE (yours truly) has been mentioned on an MTV affiliate site in the same breaths as Paul McCartney and U2. What the hell is going on?
In other news — and we realize we’ve been teasing you for a while now — HERE’s debut album pastpresentfuture is almost ready. We’re doing it all ourselves, so things take longer. But it WILL be out by the end of Fall, we promise you that.
If you’re saying to yourself, “Wasn’t that just another teaser?,” you’re quite correct. But hey, you can’t rush art, right? Thanks for sticking with us this far — you won’t be disappointed.
Who wants more high-profile anti-fur fashion journalists? -
(via theethicalman)
I know I do.
Normally, most of us don’t have a say in the matter. But, right now, we can vote for my animal-loving friend Nell as she tries to win an amazing high-profile fashion journalist position. She’ll be a stronger voice for animals than just about any other mainstream fashion commentators.
Let’s get her there! All we have to do is vote.
“No such thing as a vegan,” eh? This chart is so riddled with ignorant hyperbole it’s hard to know where to begin. For just a few obviously false examples, according to this chart: all “minerals,” “plastics,” “fertilizers,” “textiles,” and “medicines,” and even the very abundant atmospheric chemical “nitrogen,” come exclusively from “cattle.” Moreover, apparently personal consumption of everything on this list, including frivolities like “fireworks,” are necessary for our very existence. Those two very false premises are necessary to “conclude” from this chart (can it really be called a “chart”?) that it’s impossible to be vegan.
Let’s cut to the chase. Vegan alternatives exist to almost everything named above, and hey — a lot of those products you think you need? You don’t. Especially not fireworks. This chart, even where it manages to be partially accurate (for example, only some refined sugar is made with bone char — not all of it), merely shows how disgusting it *actually* is to be a conventional consumer.
To the creator of this monstrosity: You. Are. An. Idiot. I’m not sorry for saying it. You don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. You don’t deserve any kindness in the midst of your attempt to rationalize unimaginable cruelty to animals.
You. Are. A. Certifiable. Idiot.
Don’t want to be an idiot? Great. Stop being one.
—Dan
(via citiesandyears)
nomoreundead asked: can you guys come out to california?
The short answer is yes! Haha. Right now we’re putting the finishing touches on the album and I’m launching a menswear retailer.
But we very much want to tour in California. Email us at HEREcontact [at] gmail [dot] com — tell us where we should play! :-)
Just saw this Google ad for the Republican party:
Ungrammatical stream-of-consciousness blather, punctuated only by badly misunderstood concepts — is this how Republican operatives think? Or is this how their base thinks (thus making this an effective ad for the GOP)? I’m inclined to think both.
Whatever the case, the explicit hating on “socialism” coupled with the implicit loving on “join[ing] us” represents an asymptotic curve towards complete imbecility that only a purebred Republican could love.
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“One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and become worthier of sharing this planet with them.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (h/t Bina A.)