Flava
art by Patrick Moberg
Pretty much says it all.
[via Andrew Sullivan]
Archive for the politics tag
Costs Of War
The War in Iraq costs $720 Million a day.
That’s $500,000 a minute.
That’s $8333 a second.“I think people are becoming more aware of these guns or butter questions,” said Gary Gillespie, “But when you talk about $720 million a day, even people who work on this issue are shocked by the number and shocked by what could have been done with that money. War has no return — you’re not producing a product.”
Great piece, combines clear narrative and simple/effective motion graphics.
[via shust's tweet]
McSame Poster
I was perusing my rss feeds this morning, when I came across a post on the PUERTO VALLARTA SCENE (a relatively new blog on what’s happening in PV - good information resource) about a John McCain poster contest. Apparently the McCain campaign wants you to design a cool poster for his campaign, that’s an original idea [ed- insert dramatic irony pause here], the PV Scene post is tongue-in-cheek at best.
Let me stop here for a second, to say that I thought it was common knowledge that anyone with an IQ high enough to be able to “design” a poster (or even to know how to open photoshop), would never vote for John McCain, never mind making (propaganda) posters for his axis of evil campaign. I’m pretty sure there’s only one category of human being that would gladly try to organize type and imagery in to something resembling a poster for John McCain: the CEOs of Exxon / Chevron / Halliburton / Kellogg Brown Root / JP Morgan / AT&T / etc… and they would most surely never use photoshop. They’d use MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint to do it, like good business people would.
Absentmindedly I thought of the original Bush/Cheney bumper sticker, an idea popped and 20 minutes later I had put together this new version for McCain, since basically he’s taking over Bush’s same policies, in exchange for disregarding everything he’s thought and fought for his entire life. They say “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. McCain has already subjugated his beliefs just to get a shot at that power, you wanna imagine what he’d be like if he actually won? He’d make Napolean look like Ghandi.
Now someone has to take this to kinkos and get it printed out a million times on that cheap poster board and take them to the republican stockholder meeting convention.
All Colors Together
The Year in Pictures hips us to these awesome posters created by Brazilian graphic designer Daniel Molin. The Google Machine™ has never heard of Molin (unless he’s the same guy creating massive amounts of sci-fi fantasy art - which i doubt). That’s a shame. Regardless of your political leanings, these are beautiful pieces of design.
Simplicity works so well.
LA vs War
[SWF]http://www.youtube.com/v/ulMUxwwnbPo, 425, 355[/SWF]
Mear One rocks some wicked pieces in promotion of LA vs War, a 4 day art + activism even in downtown Los Angeles, April 10-13:
LA vs WAR highlights the travesty of a senseless war now going into its 6th year, giving LA artists a platform to exercise their freedom of speech. Hundreds of artists representing our diverse communities unite in delivering a universal message of peace and understanding, and offering resistance and opposition to the US government’s war policies.
Good art + Good ideas. The Ghandi piece, in the video, is amazing!
[via Wooster]
The US Economy and Zombie Suburbs
File this one under:
How This Economy Is Going To Play Out by Ian Welsh at Fire Dog Lake.
Welsh wrote some dire predictions about the US and world economies in this post from November. He revisits the post and italicizes which ones have already come true in the last four months:
1) Housing prices and sales will continue to decline. Expect 3 years before the bottom, as a very optimistic best case scenario.
2) Commerical real-estate will suffer a steep decline as well.
3) Consumer demand will drop. Unemployment will rise.
He continues on through number ten and even adds four more bonus predictions, here’s one:
15) A serious collapse of the US stock market, probably by September at the latest. Maybe within a couple months.
Read the full article as he goes in depth as to the “why” of the equation. This particular paragraph really hit home:
The old, oil based, suburban sprawl economy based on forever rising house prices, on easy credit, on subdivision after subdivision–on running up credit cards and on leverage piled on leverage piled on arbitrage, is in the middle of cracking up, spectacularly…Huge swathes of exurbia and suburbia become simply economically unviable. Zombie Burbs.
If you wanna get a litmus test as to the validity of what this guy is saying, just ask someone who manages money (not your money), like a hedge fund manager. We did, three months ago. and they said the same exact thing.
[FireDogLake article via Digg] and [zombie suburbs article via Curbed LA]
Bush’s Legacy (?!?)
Bush Uses Veto on C.I.A. Tactics to Affirm Legacy - New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.
Steven Lee Myers mines the last eight years of Bush’s presidency and this is what this guy comes up with? That Bush’s legacy is that he fought for “strong executive powers”? Let’s cut the crap: this is what Bush’s legacy is and this. GW makes Richard Nixon look like Tiny Tim and all Myers can come up with is that Bush tried to help the post of the president have a stronger say in government?
whoa.
[GW tap dancing videos via Lords of Apathy]
Wikileaks Rocks!
File this one under: “I can’t believe I didn’t find out about this website until now”: Wikileaks. A site whose DNS record was recently ordered to be nuked by a California judge. But the site is still available via IP address. Rage against the machine, people!
Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. Our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by all types of people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.
and this from Daily Kos:
Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikieaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq [see my The Secret Rules of Engagement in Iraq], the 2003and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya [see also here] that apparently affected the Kenyan elections.
Yes, We Can.
Just in case you didn’t know where I stand, check out this wickedly good music video Yes, We Can. featuring Will.I.Am, John Legend, Common, Scarlet Johansson, Kareem Abdul Jabar and a bunch of other people who I recognize but lack names for. Here’s the original speech from new hampshire, which admittedly, I hadn’t seen til just now. Go Obama! This time must be different. We want change.
Yes, We Can.
