Reverb, when applied to drum samples as you master how to make beats, is grossly underused in popular music. At the same time, though, a lot of the people who make use of the effect for their drum parts abuse it and degrade the drum samples to the point of annoyance.
When considering using these samples as you make beats, make sure to specify (at least to yourself) the role that the sound is supposed to fulfill. If it's for a single sound, you run the risk of making the other drum samples take a backseat to the reverb of this one instance. So if it's a noise that plays all the time and consistently, you should turn down the bleed/return.
This is the first part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Florida. Part two can be found here.
In 2008, Illinois Senator Barack Obama won Colorado by 9.0%, Florida by 2.8%, and Indiana by 1.0%. Guess which one was the "swing state" in 2004.
The answer is Florida, and if that seems strange in light of the above - it is. In fairness, one might counter that Obama did relatively poorly in Florida (where he didn't campaign in the primaries) and relatively well in Colorado (where the Democratic convention was held).
Here's another question. Colorado, Florida, Indiana. Only one of these three sends a majority-Republican delegation to the House of Representatives. Which one is it? (A hint: it's not Indiana.)
The damage done by the Bush administration to the rule of law occurred over a few years - relatively quickly in legal terms. Repairing it will be a much longer task, as repairing always is.
For more on pruning back executive power see Pruning Shears.
I had to read a lot of books about the current war and occupation in Iraq before I found one that's laugh out-loud hilarious. It's a book about a U.S. military hospital in Iraq, a journal kept for a 10-month tour of duty by an operating room medic. The story never leaves the hospital, and it focuses in large part on the relationships among the characters working there, including pranks and hijinks aplenty. One almost inevitably thinks of MASH and its fictional Army hospital in Korea, but there are major differences.
When Frances Beinecke, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council, set out to write Clean Energy Common Sense her goal was simple- To bring more people into the climate change conversation now. Now? Conversations on climate change are happening in real time across the internet, on talk radio, in nightly news casts, and beside the water cooler. With only weeks until the UN's Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, a book seems like the wrong medium to insert yourself into the conversation.
Whilst lefty attention is concentrated on the public option question, each version of the health care bill has been assiduously stuffed with coporate welfare on an epic scale.
Allows insurers in the individual and small group markets to offer a qualified health plan nationwide, which is subject to only the State benefit mandate laws of the State in which the plans are issued; but requires such plans to provide the essential benefits package.
So - the insurers shop for the state with the flimsiest regs and issue the plans from there; and those regs govern the plan in all the other 49. (States can opt out - but the insurers' lobbyists will have a word to say on that.)
There is a pattern - which way in the distant past (coupla years ago) I did some pieces on - in which Federal laws are enacted which pre-empt state regulations on things like (from memory) predatory lending.
It's really effective, and is very hard to drag from below the radar where it mostly goes on.
Of course, shedloads of moolah are going to be laid at the feet of insurers, pharma, hospitals, etc, by any health care bill that passes (money press-ganged from the average Joe); but the bill will also be making whole load of gifts in kind like Eshoo-Barton and the nationwide plans provision the value of which I suspect has not even been quantified.
As expected, there are plenty of new public opinion polls on health care and health care reform. Though some people may already be tired of the topic, it is more important now than ever that we understand where the public stands on health care, how the trends in opinion are changing, and why. Indirectly related to issues of healthcare is a new public opinion poll on capitalism, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Health Care
Health Care: the Individual Mandate and a Public Option The October Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll found that 66% of those surveyed report that they are in favor of requiring all Americans to have health insurance (provided there is financial help for those who need it). A majority of those surveyed (57%) also expressed support for the creation of a government-administered public health insurance option that would compete with private insurers. In addition, a majority expressed that “it is more important than ever to take on health care reform now” (55%).
Who will be better Off with Health Care Reform?
According to the above Kaiser poll, a majority asserted that the country as a whole would be better off if Congress passed health care reform (53%). A plurality (41%) expressed that individually, they or their families would be better off if Congress passed health care reform, with 27% expressing that they would be worse off.
Last weekend in Singapore, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a comprehensive international climate deal will not be reached during the climate change summit in Copenhagen. While many might view this as a letdown, lowering expectations might actually be a good thing, as Matthew Yglesias notes for the American Prospect. According to Yglesias, the conference can now be framed as a relative success whatever happens, and that will keep the momentum for climate action going after Copenhagen.
Our favorite irascible media tyrant is in the news once again, and once again it's time for me to bring you a story of doing one thing while wishing for another.
We have heard a lot about the...how can I put this politely...challenges Murdoch seems to face associating factual reality with his reality, and we could have lots of fun going through his factual misstatements-but instead, I want to take on one specific issue today:
Rupert Murdoch says he hates it when people steal his content from the Internet to draw readers to their sites...which is funny, if you think about it, because he has no problem at all stealing my content (and lots of yours, as well) for his sites.
They're considered a minority in the United States, composing a rapidly growing sub-set of the population. The majority are immigrants; public sentiment, aroused by nativism, is sometimes hostile towards them. They vote heavily Democratic, but because many are immigrants they turn-out in numbers not as great as the share of the population they compose.
I'm not talking about Latinos. I'm talking about white Catholics in the early 20th century.
Today, Democrats hope that the Latino vote will be an essential part of a permanent majority, the keys to an unyielding period of Democratic dominance. Latinos were a major part of Obama's victory in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado. They've turned California blue for the foreseeable future. Red states Arizona and Texas are home to millions of Latinos, who represent a threat to the Republican character of those two states. Opportunity beckons.
Or so it seems.
In reality, however, it seems that the path of the Latino vote is the same as that of the white Catholic vote. The more Catholics that entered the country and the more time that passed, the more assimilated they became. In the early 20th century, Catholics were seen as an "other," as Italian and Irish immigrants not fully part of the Unite States. Today, however, such sentiment is long gone. We regard white Catholics as normal, dull. The days of anti-Catholic discrimination are long gone.
With it has disappeared the Democratic hold over the Catholic vote. JFK won nearly 80% of Catholics because he was Catholic, and because in that time there was still anti-Catholic sentiment. 40 years later, John Kerry lost the Catholic vote, despite being a Catholic.
Will Latinos follow the same path? It seems likely. A large part of what connects Latinos to the Democratic Party is that they are an immigrant community - and Democrats have always represented immigrants. If - when - they assimilate, and the word Latino becomes just another synonym for white, Latinos will behave much as white Catholics do today. Which is to say that they will vote no different from the rest of America.
When my business partner and I formed Donkey On The Edge Productions a year ago, it was our hope that we would be able to parlay our years of advertising experience into a progressive advocacy production company. So far, we've been lucky enough to work with Courage Campaign on a couple of videos and now we're thrilled to be working with Blue America on a project that I am so excited about.
This year's fight for real health care reform is arguably the biggest battle the modern progressive movement has fought or ever will fight. As the focus shifts from the House to the Senate where we have a putative "filibuster proof" majority but where conservative Democrats are threatening to join a Republican filibuster, we must hold those Democrats' feet to the fire. So when Blue America approached us about producing an ad to help pressure Senator Blanche Lincoln to allow an up or down vote on the public option, we jumped at the chance.
Recently, world leaders announced some deeply disturbing news: they gave up on reaching a binding climate deal at the upcoming Copenhagen conference. [1]
A major impediment was the refusal of President Obama and Congress to enact tough cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Right now, the most ambitious target that Obama has endorsed is a 3.5% reduction in emissions by 2020. [2]
That's pathetic, compared to the 25-40% reduction that we need to have a 50:50 chance of avoiding disastrous runaway global heating, according to the International Panel on Climate Change. [3]
The United States ought to lead by example. We can do it with strong emission reductions.
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 11/18/09 - Legal proceedings, such as they are, rumbled to life again today at Guantanamo Bay. Pre-trial issues in the case of Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan man who was captured by the U.S. in Afghanistan in 2003, were heard in a military commission courtroom on a small hill a few miles away from where the more than 200 detainees left at Guantanamo are housed.
With all due respect to Don Draper sometimes the best way to sell a message isn't a clever campaign but the truth. A recently exposed whopper conjured up by climate change deniers highlights exactly what is behind the fight against climate change solutions: lies. The site Fight Clean Energy Smears has been tracking the attempts by a very small minority of deniers out there who are using, quite simply, lies to protect their interest in the status quo
There will be mandates
There will not be full subsidies
The subsidies will be based on the comical federal poverty line
There aren't cost controls of pharmaceuticals
There aren't strong caps on premiums
If my state fucks up and elects a Republican Governor (this is Maryland, it has happened), I would have to buy from a private company
And that's not even considering the ridiculous "MUST PRESERVE HYDE" language.
The 2008 election was the most diverse in modern history, with increases in participation among young people, minorities, unmarried individuals, and other historically underrepresented groups, according to a comprehensive new report by the voting rights group Project Vote. Whether gains by these groups will hold steady in 2010, however, remains to be seen.
This week's Immigration Blog Roundup will cover some policy news, newly released research on immigration and more.
Washington D.C. will join 94 other jurisdictions in employing the Secure Communities program which allows authorities to check the immigration status of every person booked into a local jail. The program which started with President Bush in 2008 has expanded under the Obama administration in an effort to target immigrants that have committed crimes.
Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Alejandro Mayorkas has stated that although it would be a last resort, the agency is considering increasing fees for immigration benefits. After a sharp decline in immigrant benefit applications, the USCIS experienced a $164 million defecit this year.
As part of a larger series regarding the positive economic impacts of immigration in various states, The Immigration Policy Center has released their findings on immigration in Indiana. A fact sheet and summary of findings can be found here.
Some highlights include:
- Immigrants in Indiana paid an estimated $2.3 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2007.
- The purchasing power of Indiana's Latinos totaled $6.8 billion and Asians totaled $3.1 billion in 2008.
- If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Indiana, the state would lose $2.8 billion in expenditures, $1.3 billion in economic output and approximately 16,700 jobs.
First it was immigrants from Mexico, now Muslims in the armed services. After the tragic shootings at Fort Hood, conservative pundits are verbally attacking Muslims and Arab-Americans, much like they have vilified the immigrant community. The complexities of Islamic faith are being glossed over and "Muslim Terrorist" is stamped upon any act of violence involving their community. As a result, nuanced voices are buried in favor of suspicion and violence.
I was going through David Sirota's blog entries and decided to look at his columns on Huffington Post. I've been thinking lately about how the progressive movement (such as it is) has become owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Democratic Party -- which uses us, takes us for granted, and abuses us when it's not doing the other two things.
Parties are loyal to their own power regardless of policy agenda; movements are loyal to their own policy agenda regardless of which party champions it.
This has been true throughout American history. During the tumultuous 19th Century, the nascent progressive movement used the Whigs and their successor party, the Republicans, to implement their agendas of ending slavery, giving Backs and women the right to vote (the latter group took longer to enfranchise and it wasn't achieved until 1920), pass anti-trust and pro-labor laws, etcetera. What's more, we progressives weren't constrained by party politics like we are today. In 1912, we broke with the Republicans, formed our own party, and made the Republican incumbent place last in a three-man race. Over the next twenty years, progressives took control of the Democratic Party, and used that political entity to pass its agenda.
Today, the movement exists largely as an extension of the ever-more conservative Democratic Party -- a pretty wrapper on an otherwise downright ugly package. By contrast, conservatives took control of both major parties, making them subservient to their cause. They understood something we forgot: it's the agenda, stupid. Political parties are just the means to achieving it.
Can progressives learn to reverse this problem? There is evidence that it can be done. As Sirota poitns out, organizations such as the Working Families Party have gotten results by engaging in movement, not party, politics. Politicians, regardless of party affiliation, take them seriously because they know the WFP will gladly support whichever candidates will represent them and get them into office. Ideology and policy, not party affiliation, is what matters to the progressives who dominate the WFP. Everything else is junk.
All signs pointed to the release of Carmelo Agamez Berrio, a well known Colombian human rights activist, who has been unjustly detained for almost a year in Sucre. He had been appointed a new prosecutor and senior Colombian justice officials had raised concerns about due process rights violations in his case. However, in a surprising twist last week, the 28th antiterrorism prosecutor in Bogota issued a resolution formally bringing to trial the specious investigation against Agamez.
