Tag Archive: politics

Miles Davis, music, and toll of institutional racism

Miles Davis has been one of my favorite artists for close to 25 years. If I started going on about how his work has touched me, the scope of his influence, and the importance of his creative legacy, I’d be here all night. The act of expression through creation is sacred to me, and few exemplify this more powerfully than Miles Davis. Yet Youtuber Adam Neely makes an excellent point in the video below: A now infamous police brutality incident in 1959, just after the release of Davis’ masterful Kind of Blue album, almost robbed the world of 30 more years of groundbreaking music. It’s an unfortunate story all on its own, but it’s just one thread in a much larger tapestry. Miles was just…
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Rush Limbaugh’s stupid Covid-19 comments are going to get people killed

It’s one thing to be a rabble-rousing contrarian. It’s quite another to engage in dangerous rhetoric that will get people killed. And Rush Limbaugh’s recent rhetoric on the Cvid-19 outbreak absolutely will get people sick, and possible dead. This morning, Salon reported: On Friday, the 69-year-old Rush Limbaugh argued that health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cannot be trusted because they are part of “the Deep State” and have an anti-Trump agenda. In audio that Media Matters has posted on its website, embedded above, Limbaugh can be heard on Friday telling listeners, “We’ve talked about the Deep State all these years since Trump was elected — the Trump-Russia collusion, the FBI — well,…
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Donald Trump Is Dangerous. Period.

Contributed Post Image Source Surely the former presenter of the ludicrously successful show, The Apprentice can’t be all that dangerous, can he? Perhaps not if he remained a businessman, property mogul, and TV star, but this guy is now in the most powerful position in the world. He knows very little about the world, has no political experience and has been sacking more political advisors, aides and cabinet secretaries than you can shake a stick at. He is under investigation regarding his links to Russia and his dodgy dealings during the presidential election, and he has taken on a hugely isolationist tone throughout his first year as president. Just how dangerous is Donald J Trump? America First is an admirable slogan when taken at first…
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The Evolving Politics of Police Actions

Contributed Post Image source The first official American police force was established in 1751 in Philadelphia, although it was only a night watch. Prior to that it was pretty much a system based on old English laws and relied mainly on volunteers and people who were conscripted. In just a few years, Richmond in Virginia and Boston had followed suit but it was nearly 100 years before there was a police force established in New York. To start with, the police departments were controlled by the local politicians and split into the same municipal areas. The officers were usually recruited from within the area, which resulted in a police force that was not very diverse. It meant that ethnic groups such as the Irish or…
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3 Benefits of Regularly Writing out Your Thoughts

Image via Pixabay The funny thing about writers is that they like writing. Hold on; I promise this is going somewhere. You see, writers may engage in the act of writing in order to generate an income — as in the case of professional copywriting, for example — but it’s rare to find a writer who writes professionally and who doesn’t also enjoy writing about various topics for his or her own entertainment, or as a productive hobby of sorts. Most people can barely stomach the idea of writing anything longer than a standard Facebook post or Instagram caption. This is a shame, not just because they might find writing fun or fulfilling if they gave it an honest try, but also because there are…
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