Sunday, November 07, 2010

Obama could take a history lesson from FDR's 1936 re-election

H.W. Brands, the author of "Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" has a great opinion piece published today that says what I feel about our president:

Many of Obama's supporters wish he would emulate Roosevelt's combativeness. They have lamented his efforts at bipartisanship, which yielded him little, they say, and cost him the political momentum of 2008. But Obama has generally ignored such counsel. Some of this difference owes to diverging temperaments and personal styles; where Roosevelt relished getting angry in public, Obama apparently does not.

Read the whole thing.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Faux News asks 7 Times, but Fiorina Fails To Give One Solution To Cut Spending

Via ThinkProgress:

Today on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace gave Fiorina a chance to lay out her actual plan. Touting her “tough, bottom-line business executive” motto, Wallace pointed out that Fiorina also wants “to extend all, all the Bush tax cuts which would add $4 trillion dollars to the deficit…where are you going to find $4 trillion dollars to cut?” But when Fiorina retreated to recycled response of government waste and an earmarks ban, a frustrated Wallace begged Fiorina seven times to “name one single entitlement expenditure you’re willing to cut” because “that’s where the money is.” Fiorina’s only response? “You’re asking a typical political question”.

Video here.

Amnesty International USA in SF for 50th Anniversary Conference

You can register online for the 50th Anniversary Annual Conference of Amnesty International USA. It will be held in San Francisco on March 18-20, 2011. If you register by January 15, 2011, the regular rate is $90 member, $100 non-member.

March 18 - 20, 2011
The Fairmont Hotel
950 Mason Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
The conference promises amazing speakers, prominent human rights leaders, and special celebrity guests, as well as panel discussions of AIUSA's core human rights campaigns and new strategies for mobilizing the human rights movement on both local and national levels. It's an opportunity to gain skills in human rights advocacy, volunteering and community organizing.

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Quote of the Week

It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.

--Robert F. Kennedy

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Wicked : Wonderful & Something Bad

I went to see the musical, "Wicked," in San Francisco last week. Of course, I latched on to the socio-political themes in the play. Two quotes, both from the character of the Wizard, stuck in my head.

In the show, the Wizard is more manipulative, pretending to be doing things for the good of Oz and to be subjugating the animals for the greater good, but it becomes clear through the course of the evening that he is doing these things only to remain in power, and that his scapegoating of the animals (pun intended) is because
"one sure way to bring people together is to give them a really good enemy."

And from the song, Wonderful, the Wizard sings:
Where I'm from, we believe all sorts of
things that aren't true. We call it - "history."
A man's called a traitor - or liberator.
A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist.
Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?
It's all in which label
Is able to persist.
There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities,
So we act as though they don't exist.

This rings true, for who does not know that "History is written by the victors, not the vanquished," and "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"?