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True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” - Martin Luther King Jr. Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech.

If Cormac McCarthy was a Yelp reviewer

I wonder if he’d get a pass on his ‘style’ of writing anywhere other than his books…

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[The Bridge Trilogy] is a fable about counterculture, the kind of counterculture that may no longer be possible. There are no backwaters where things can breed—our connectivity is so high and so global that there are no more Seattles and no more Haight-Ashburys. We’ve arrived at a level of commodification that may have negated the concept of counterculture.
William Gibson
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You’re blowing it with Fox News. The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you’re not careful.
Steve Jobs to Rupert Murdoch
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Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth. There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensible to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune.
Theodore Roosevelt

Five Reasons why Occupy Wall Street is the Real Tea Party

 In the late 18th century, the British government became deeply entwined with the interests of the East India Trading Company, a massive conglomerate that counted British aristocracy as shareholders. Americans, upset with a government that used the colonies to enrich the East India Trading Company, donned Native American costumes and boarded the ships belonging to the company and destroyed the company’s tea. In the last two weeks, as protesters have gathered from New York to Los Angeles to protest corporate domination over American politics, a true Tea Party movement may be brewing



[via Think Progress]

 

What’s Really Killing Innovation

The patent trolling situation is getting beyond ridiculous. The bloody troll bullies from Innovatioare suing small owners of franchise hotels an coffee shops. In fact, their plan is suing everyone using Wi-Fi, although you’re not on their list

Companies like this exist all over the United States. They buy up and hoard vague patents then bully start-ups and small entrepreneurs who can’t afford lawyers and months, if not years, tied up in court.

[via Gizmodo]

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Liberalism is not socialism, and never will be… Liberalism has its own history and its own tradition. Socialism has its own formulas and aims. Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly.
Winston Churchill, 1908

It’s a Texas miracle!

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Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
Isaac Asimov