Congratulations to Americapedia author Daniel Ehrenhaft for being chosen as a 2012 National Book Awards judge. The National Book Foundation selected Dan to be one of five judges of the Young People’s Literature category. Susan Cooper, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Gary D. Schmidt and Marly Youmans are-a-judgin’ too.
Speaking of young people. Here’s Bob Marley’s first recording, released when he was just 16. It’s called “Judge Not.”
Come see Americapedia‘s Andisheh Nouraee with Atlanta Journal-Constitution ace columnist Jay Bookman deliver the 10th Annual REAL State of the Union. The event is a fundraiser Georgia WAND.
Americapedia co-author Andisheh Nouraee is live-Tweeting tonight’s State of the Union address over on his Twitterz page.
UPDATE: It’s archived here.
How are superPACs changing American politics?
In a sentence, very wealthy people can pour unlimited amounts into advertising and marketing for the political candidates of their choice, provided they follow a few rules. One of the rules is they can’t explicitly tell you to vote for the person they like. They can, however, savage the opponents of the person they like.
Wait, that two sentences!
To illustrate the absurdity of the rules governing superPACs, Stephen Colbert started one. In my opinion, he’s done a much better job explaining them to the public than any of the so-called “serious” media. Here are two links worth following on the subject
1. The serious explanation.
2. The funny one:
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
We’ll blog fer realz later, but as results come in we’ll be Tweeting @Americapedia and @AndishehNouraee
Today South Carolina Republicans will reveal their choice to take on President Barack Obama in November. A few things worth noting as we wait for the results tonight.
Thing 1: South Carolinians get to vote on Saturday, which is pretty darn great. Tuesday voting was designed to fit the scheduling needs of 19th century farmers. A Gallup/Americapedia poll conducted last week found less than one percent of today’s Americans are actually 19th century farmers. Americans picked Tuesday voting back-in-the-day to be considerate of people’s jobs. Why not be practical today, too? Saturday and Sunday are the days most people have off work. Let’s have all elections on weekends, please.
Thing 2: If you want to use “polls” and “momentum” to guess who’s going to win, don’t just pick one poll, or several polls at random. Instead, go to one of the web sites that combine the results of several polls to generate an average. We like the Real Clear Politics poll of polls because it’s easy to read. The latest average has Newt Gingrich ahead and improved in South Carolina. We’re not predicting he’s going to win tonight, but polls are.
Thing 3: If you’re ever puzzled or annoyed by cable news coverage of presidential politics, remember this: More than 5 million viewers watched Thursday’s Republican debate on CNN, roughly nine times as many viewers as CNN had in the same time period the night before. If it seems like it TV networks are very interested in presenting the Presidential race like a sporting contest/competitive reality show, it’s because they are.
It’s nice to see corrupt redistricting practices die somewhere! From Slate:
We think Americapedia makes a great holiday gift for people who like like politics, humor and the chocolate-n-peanut butteresque intersection of the two.
For realz: people we know who have their own copy of the book keep coming up to us with gift copies to sign for friends and relatives. You buy one copy of your friend’s book out of politeness. You buy three because you actually like it a lot.
As great as that this, recently released U.S. Census data indicates at least 300 million Americans DO NOT YET have a copy of Americapedia. How sad. To help correct this problem, we have a digital sample of Americapedia to share. If you like what you see, you can buy Americapedia at your local bookstore or have it delivered to you by Amazon.
If you can’t see the book sample above, you can also find it here.
Americapedia co-author Andisheh Nouraee is a featured author at tonight’s Atlanta Press Club Holiday Author Party. Please stop by.
Do you want a free copy of Americapedia mailed to you? You can have one. Just tell us why on Twitter. Our favorite reason wins a free copy of Americapedia: Taking the Dumb Out of Freedom.
Be sure to include “@Americapedia” in your Tweet so we can find it.
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