|
|
 24 Mar 2008 @ 20:50, by quinty. Politics
For Hillary Clinton to step aside? To “suspend” her candidacy?
A political analyst parsing the race the other night on TV claimed Hillary would have to acquire at least 64% of all the remaining delegate vote to top Obama. That numerically she can not win the primary race without a miracle. More >
|
|
|
|
 29 Feb 2008 @ 06:49, by jazzolog. Politics
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
---Walt Whitman
I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly,
for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
---John Donne
And if the earth no longer knows your name,
Whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.
---Rainer Maria Rilke
This photo of the Obama family clearly is a couple years old at least, but only over the March 1st weekend are we getting more recent pictures. "The Phenom" has become a tidal wave. The children are Sasha, in Mom's lap, and Malia on the right.
This peculiar title doesn't mean I advocate for Michelle Obama in place of Barack. It just means Mrs. Obama came to our town yesterday afternoon and took the place by storm. It means if we can vote Barack Obama into the Presidency, we get a package that includes a lovely family and this remarkable woman for First Lady. I hadn't studied the matter, knew nothing about her except those couple of media things, and was unprepared totally for one of the greatest addresses of any kind I've ever heard.
I was pretty much resigned to Athens, Ohio, being the place the candidate spouses come to visit. Hillary Clinton was here stumping for her husband back in the day, and now the former president showed up earlier in the week to give an energetic speech for her. I'd wanted to see Barack Obama before our primary next week, but I learned all we would get was a look at his wife. Oh well, my daughter and I went to stand in line.
The Templeton-Blackburn Auditorium---or Mem Aud, as it used to be called---holds a couple thousand people, so I thought if we got there an hour early we might at least get inside out of the cold. No tickets required, a quick frisk, and we soon were in the 12th row. The place has a magnificent sound system and mostly soul tunes from the '60s were banging away. Well you can't beat that stuff, and so pretty soon everybody was groovin'. Smiles began to appear, and as I looked around I realized I hadn't been in an audience of such racial, age, and gender mix maybe ever.
On stage was a bunch of people, but no obvious dignitaries or union T-shirts. My daughter said she heard folks were chosen at random to go up there. The active volunteers were being afforded the front rows as usual. The auditorium filled up completely from what I could see, and I suppose I'll read reports as to whether any were turned away or a sound system set up outside. A barrage of TV cameras, reporters, anchors and photographers was in the usual cluster.
We waited---but the hits kept on coming, so who cares? The spirit of hope and expectation was in the air. People looked happy but serious. We're not gonna get fooled again! The black woman next to me kept checking her watch. I heard her say she had kids that needed to be picked up. As it got to be 5 minutes past the hour, she said out loud, "They oughta have SOMEbody come out." I didn't want my first words to her to be discouraging, having waited hours at things like this, so I asked, "Do you know where she's coming from?" She didn't. But 5 minutes after that, out came the first of 2 introductory speakers...and we were off! More >
|
|
|
|
 24 Feb 2008 @ 13:25, by jazzolog. Politics
We must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
---Indira Gandhi
If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a longing, LAST real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop---everything.
---Pema Chodron
An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child.
---Arnaud Desjardins
The photo of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, taken by Melanie Burford for the Dallas Morning News, held my attention this morning from the instant I saw it. I think it's a great American face there, worthy of Mt. Rushmore. I'm not kidding, and I'm not saying it's a stone cold face. I mean that's a presidential face we're looking at. There's no doubt in my mind this candidate could handle the job. Except...except...
What is wrong with that picture? This is a portrait of a person in conflict. Cover the left side of her face as you're looking at her. In the half you see there's even a flicker of a smile, an openness, a quality of friendliness that I know she has. Now cover the other half. Woe, there is a person you wouldn't want to cross. Something unforgiving there in someone who's been banged around a lot.
I attempt this crude and rather adolescent psychology on Hillary Rodham Clinton because a certain unpredictability has permeated her campaign as well. If you watched her in debate with Barack Obama Thursday night, you saw it too. I didn't know what she was going to do next. She seems genuinely to like the man when she's standing right in front of him, looking him in the face. But then she'll go back to the it-should-be-in-your-own-words thing, and draw a shudder of disappointment from Obama, and boos from the crowd. Who is this person?
Maureen Dowd goes after it this morning, and while I do some shuddering myself at the masculine/feminine behavior characteristics in the column, I think she's on to something. She thinks Clinton is calculating her different approaches to impress various voting groups. She wants to be tough and macho for some, and sensitive and understanding for others. I think I have to differ with Ms. Dowd on this, though I'm really glad she noticed the stuff and decided to write about it. I'm not sure Senator Clinton is in control of how she's coming off. I think she's reeling from blows received in the ring.
Bill Clinton will be in Athens tomorrow, and I'm afraid the announcement came too late for me to clear my calendar. I do hope to get to it before it's all over, trusting he'll be an hour late like most of these guys. Former President Clinton is the first, and I hope not the last, of the big names to get to this important corner of the state. As the rest of the Ohio continually reminds us, we're rather different here. Some people even refer to Southeast Ohio as the West Virginia part of the state. There's some truth to that, going all the way back to glacial times. But let's not get into climate change.
Or maybe we should. When ARE these candidates going to mention it? And did you see McCain's record of environment votes? [link] Check out the fascinating final part of that blog entry to see how the new legislators, who replaced NINE of the 12 so-called "dirty dozen" in the last election, are doing.
Here's the link to Maureen Dowd's column this morning. [link] Let me say in another criticism of it (and I'm grateful to my online acquaintance Elle for reminding me of this), while Shirley Chisholm's presidential run in 1972 may not have been taken seriously she definitely was a serious candidate. I supported her too, just as far as she could go. [link] More >
|
|
|
|
 19 Feb 2008 @ 21:28, by weneedadream. Politics
Senator XXXXX,
Are you willing to take a leap of courage, faith, and vision?
Are you willing to challenge Americans to reach higher?
Are you willing to lead America to a higher purpose?
If so...
a few ideas:
1)Mission/Vision/Values for America
If co-created by "We The People", this could inspire, unite, and empower ALL Americans like never before.
2) WeNeedaDream.org
Offers many ideas to unite and inspire enemies on a shared vision, a higher purpose, a new American Dream... towards Heaven on Earth.
3) Nonviolent Communication
I've seen this process transmute "impossible" conflicts into win-win harmony.
4)America's Higher Purpose
Few Americans are aware of the higher (and spiritual) purpose behind the founding of this nation. You could champion a return to this purpose. More info in the attached paper.
5) Soul of America
A deeper perspective of who we are
6) Partnership Way
Possibilities for shifting our exhausted dominator paradigm to an energized partnership paradigm
7) Conscious Evolution
A higher perspective of what's happening
Yes, we can...
Carl Landsness
Madison, WI
"And so, my fellow Americans:
ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world:
ask not what America will do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man."
JFK More >
|
|
|
|
 18 Feb 2008 @ 10:26, by jazzolog. Politics
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
---Rumi
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
---Izumi Shikibu
Ultimately, let’s hope that the nation turns back to the task it abandoned — that of ending the poverty that still poisons so many American lives.
---Paul Krugman, in his column this morning, entitled Poverty Is Poison
[link]
It's so easy to not want the Clintons back in the White House. It's like that temptation to get with your old girl friend again from a few years back. It should have worked out, it could have worked out...but... There was all that nastiness, and stuff going on behind your back. The trust factor. Has she changed? Did she really do anything wrong? Yeah, ultimately everything got ruined. My whole life got ruined! Eight long years of hell while I tried to get over it. Now...do I want to risk going back to that?
We're a forgiving people. But worse, we're a forgetting people! We don't seem to learn from history. And we've become even more loud, pushy and obnoxious than we were accused of when we were only tourists. Now we insist of owning and controlling everything---and we dare to call that condition for others democracy and freedom. We only are interested in getting our own little piece of the pie...and then, shotgun in hand, bragging that America means no one can tell me what to do. The Clintons again? Isn't there another woman somewhere to run for this office?
And so we find ourselves turning around to see what Barack Obama is about. People ask and write What are his programs? Is this happening to you too? I've been replying that I'll wait to see if he wins the nomination and then get after the details. But how many presidents actually do what they say in their campaigns anyway? So what difference does it make? Well, we're having this primary in Ohio in a couple weeks. I've got to vote for one of them. Both families are running all over the state at the moment...but nobody's come down here yet. Bill Clinton was in Marietta last night, but we couldn't get up the stomach to go see him. They've got to get to Athens sooner or later.
And so it's with this kind of anticipation and disenchantment that I came upon a new website for me. It's called the Black Agenda Report, and it looks as if I'll be visiting there everyday from now on. The insolent montage illustrating this introduction comes from there. At the moment it's a place to go where people have had some history with Mr. Obama. The managing editor of the site, Bruce Dixon, has other issues to discuss, but right now he wants to share some concerns he has about this candidate. It think we may be hearing a lot about this site in coming days...and about these concerns. Here's Bruce Dixon last Thursday~~~ More >
|
|
|
|
 4 Feb 2008 @ 19:45, by quinty. Politics
Has anyone seen John McCain on TV recently? He becomes violently passionate when he discusses "Islamo fascism," claiming the US under his presidency will never accept "defeat." He even beat his chest in one performance. As the piece below describes he still even thinks we should have 'won" the Vietnam War.
This is a scary guy. One whose finger on the button would make me very nervous since it appears he may actually use it. We live in a time of much fear and paranoia. McCain, I think, will only heat things up.
Yes, old mild mannered John McCain becomes quite violently passionate over the existential threat the Muslim hordes present us. And appears to genuinely believe "if we don't fight them there we'll have to fight them here." More >
|
|
|
|
 31 Jan 2008 @ 19:53, by quinty. Politics
If the Devil is at play here, and he is setting us up for the one two punch, then Barack is his main man. The perfect front.
For after eight years of George Bush, of nightly seeing a President of the United States on television smirk, lie, mangle the language, and smile confidently and broadly as countless die, all at his hand, the dignified portrait of noble and eloquent sobriety Obama brings us is the perfect contrast. More >
|
|
|
|
22 Jan 2008 @ 19:39, by celestial. Politics
It's just a billion. More >
|
|
|
|
 14 Jan 2008 @ 19:59, by quinty. Politics
Is he for real? John Kerry seems to think so, closely echoing his message when he endorsed him the other day in South Carolina.
Is he, Barack Obama, a new Lincoln or FDR or is he merely another Huey Long? He is, undoubtedly, one of the best political orators who has come along in a long, long time. He is, in fact, an extraordinary orator. More >
|
|
|
|
10 Jul 2007 @ 18:37, by a-d. Politics
"Are You A US
Citizen Or Not?" ( or any other Nation with Central Bank & Soc Sec numbers for the People? If so; you are in the same boat as all Americans! MAke no mistake about it! / a-d )
/// 7-3-7
Link to the article: [ [link] ] Posted by a-d
"WARNING: Information provided here will challenge your comfort zone and will involve some reading and research.
Can you handle the truth ? More >
|
|
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Older entries >> |
|
