Pujah

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  3. Posted

    ^^ Well so far everyone is noticing his auditions. :D

     

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    The Wisdom In Talking

    By John F. Kerry

    Saturday, May 24, 2008; Page A21

     

    As President Bush commemorated Israel's 60th anniversary by attacking Barack Obama from overseas, here at home he found an all-too-frequent ally: John McCain.

     

    When Bush accused "some" -- including Obama, Bush aides explained -- of "the false comfort of appeasement," McCain echoed this slander.

     

    "What does he want to talk about with [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad?" McCain asked, fumbling to link Obama to the Iranian president's hateful words. Soon, a GOP talking point was born.

     

    Lost in the rhetoric was the question America deserves to have answered: Why should we engage with Iran?

     

    In short, not talking to Iran has failed. Miserably.

     

    Bush engages in self-deception arguing that not engaging Iran has worked. In fact, Iran has grown stronger: continuing to master the nuclear fuel cycle; arming militias in Iraq and Lebanon; bolstering extremist anti-Israeli proxies. It has embraced Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and spends lavishly to rebuild Afghanistan, gaining influence across the region.

     

    Instead of backing Bush's toxic rhetoric, McCain should have called George H.W. Bush's secretary of state, James Baker. After years of stonewalling, the administration grudgingly tested the Baker-Hamilton report's recommendation and opened talks with Iran -- albeit low-level dialogue restricted to the subject of Iraq. Is James Baker an appeaser, too?

     

    While the president attacks political opponents from the Knesset, responsible members of his own administration meet face to face with Iranians. Yes, Ahmadinejad's words often are abhorrent, and often Iran has played a poisonous role in Middle East politics. But when our ambassador to Iraq meets with his Iranian counterpart, he isn't courting "the false comfort of appeasement" -- he is facing the reality that Iran exerts influence in Iraq. That's why Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have called for engaging Iran. Appeasers all? Nonsense.

     

    Direct negotiations may be the only means short of war that can persuade Iran to forgo its nuclear capability. Given that a nuclear Iran would menace Israel, drive oil prices up past today's record highs and possibly spark a regional arms race, shouldn't we be doing all we can to avoid that conflagration?

     

    Opponents of dialogue often quip that talking isn't a strategy. Walking away isn't a strategy, either. McCain says that "there's only one thing worse than the United States exercising the military option, that is, a nuclear-armed Iran." But for all his professed reluctance, when McCain disavows diplomacy, he is stacking the deck in favor of war.

     

    What might we achieve by talking with Iran? Some say our engagement to date has not been productive -- but a less half-hearted and less conditional approach might well break the stalemate. We won't know until we try.

     

    Dialogue helps us isolate Ahmadinejad rather than empowering him to isolate us. More important, even if we fail to reach an agreement, engaging Iran will spark three conversations likely to strengthen our position.

     

    The first is between our leaders and Iran's. From nonproliferation to counterterrorism, frankly, Iran won't care for much of what we have to say -- but at the right moment, it is not unreasonable to think Tehran would cut a deal in exchange for economic incentives, energy assistance, diplomatic normalization or a noninvasion guarantee.

     

    Second is the conversation America's president should be having with the Iranian people. We should seize the chance to tell some of the region's most pro-American people how their own president has isolated them, denying their great culture its place in the world and the region a constructive dialogue.

     

    There's a reason the late Tom Lantos, Congress's only Holocaust survivor and a formidable diplomat, applied for a visa to enter Iran every year for the last decade of his life. What better way to puncture the petty lies of a demagogue than to force him to confront a man who has lived the very history he denies and trivializes?

     

    Some have asserted that meeting with Iran's leaders would legitimize Ahmadinejad, who is neither Iran's supreme leader nor someone whom Obama specifically promised to meet. Curiously, many critics then hype Ahmadinejad as a threat of historic proportions, thereby granting the stature they seek to deny. Iranian elections in mid-2009 could yield a less objectionable president; engaging Iran makes that more likely.

     

    The third conversation is with the world. By engaging Iran, we reclaim the moral high ground -- no small feat. If Iran refuses to budge, we have new leverage to expose it as a threat whose bad intentions cannot be explained away.

     

    Those who say they take no option off the table should not put America in a straitjacket by denouncing diplomacy.

     

    As Iran's centrifuges churn out enriched uranium, we're asking the wrong question. Instead of wondering why Barack Obama wants to talk with Iran, we should ask: "What are George Bush and John McCain waiting for?"

     

    The writer is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

  4. Posted

    Biden comes out punching

    By Scot Lehigh

    May 23, 2008

     

    JOE BIDEN is mad as - well, mad as a compulsively collegial US senator, one who is on a first-name basis with seemingly everyone in Washington, can be.

     

    more stories like this"I am so goddarn sick and tired of Democrats being portrayed as being weak on terror, weak on national defense, weak on foreign policy," the Delaware Democrat tells me. "I ain't taking it no more."

     

    Instead, the man who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is determined to push back.

     

    "We are a weaker, less secure, more vulnerable nation today under these bravado Republicans than we have been in the last half-century," says Biden, who vows to provide any interested Democratic candidate with an overview of the ways in which Republican foreign policy has proved counterproductive.

     

    In his pointed critique, the Bush administration's approach has us stuck treading water in Iraq, with little post-surge progress toward building a country that can defend, govern, and sustain itself in peace. Meanwhile, the war has damaged US credibility and thus its ability to lead in the world, while straining our military, draining our resources, and preventing us from doing all we need to in Afghanistan.

     

    The real effect of the administration's approach to the region?

     

    "Just look at the objective results," Biden says. "Freedom is not on the march in the Middle East. Iran is on the march in the Middle East."

     

    As part of his self-appointed role as defender of the Democrats, Biden spoke this week at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, where he criticized the Republicans for "an emerging, ugly pattern of political attacks masquerading as policy."

     

    There, he chastised Republican nominee-to-be John McCain for his recent attempt to paint Barack Obama as a patsy by saying that Hamas and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega favored the Democrat.

     

    "What the hell is that?" he says now, in obvious disgust.

     

    He also rebuked President Bush for remarks last week to the Israeli Knesset in which he compared those who would negotiate with Iran to those who had hoped to appease Hitler before World War II. Although the president didn't mention Obama by name, those remarks were widely seen as a broadside aimed at the Democratic front-runner.

     

    "What is stunning is that this is the only president I know - and I've served with seven - who would engage in this kind of activity while overseas in the Knesset," Biden said in his speech. "What is disheartening is that John McCain, a man I admire, endorsed the president's remarks instead of repudiating them."

     

    Despite attempts by McCain and Bush to make an issue of Obama's willingness to engage diplomatically with hostile nations, Biden pointed out that important Bush administration officials have taken a similar view.

     

    "The day before the president spoke, his own secretary of defense called for engaging with Iran," he said. "His secretary of state has done so repeatedly." What's more, "the president himself authorized American diplomats to meet with their Iranian counterparts about Iraq. And he struck a deal with Libya's Khadafy and wrote polite letters to North Korea's Kim Jong Il . . ."

     

    When it comes to Iran, the administration's saber rattling only drives up the price of oil, while uniting the Iranian people behind a leadership many of them otherwise hate, Biden says. The United States shouldn't treat Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as though he is the sole power when "the fact of the matter is that Iran is a fractured government," he says. Rather, we should try to engage on a number of different levels.

     

    Although Biden's underfunded presidential campaign never caught fire, his foreign policy prowess won consistently strong reviews. And his lethally funny line skewering Rudy Giuliani - "there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11" - remains one of the campaign's most memorable.

     

    As a man who knows many of the world's leaders and has a formidable grasp of geopolitical complexities, Biden has the expertise to help the Democrats propound - and defend - a very different foreign policy. This country badly needs that debate, which is why it's good to see him stepping into the fray.

     

    Source

  6. Posted

    ^He does have great surregates - For the first time I was really impressed with the democrats rapid response, when the president launched his political attack from the Knesset last week. And within hours Biden, Kerry, speaker Pelosy, senate majority leader Reid and Chris Dodd all responded. For now it looks like Obama will not get swift boated easily.

  7. Posted

    Republicans and Our Enemies

    By JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

    May 23, 2008; Page A15

     

    WSJ

     

    On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman wrote on this page that the Democratic Party he and I grew up in has drifted far from the foreign policy espoused by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.

     

    In fact, it is the policies that President George W. Bush has pursued, and that John McCain would continue, that are divorced from that great tradition – and from the legacy of Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

     

    Sen. Lieberman is right: 9/11 was a pivotal moment. History will judge Mr. Bush's reaction less for the mistakes he made than for the opportunities he squandered.

     

    The president had a historic opportunity to unite Americans and the world in common cause. Instead – by exploiting the politics of fear, instigating an optional war in Iraq before finishing a necessary war in Afghanistan, and instituting policies on torture, detainees and domestic surveillance that fly in the face of our values and interests – Mr. Bush divided Americans from each other and from the world.

     

    At the heart of this failure is an obsession with the "war on terrorism" that ignores larger forces shaping the world: the emergence of China, India, Russia and Europe; the spread of lethal weapons and dangerous diseases; uncertain supplies of energy, food and water; the persistence of poverty; ethnic animosities and state failures; a rapidly warming planet; the challenge to nation states from above and below.

     

    Instead, Mr. Bush has turned a small number of radical groups that hate America into a 10-foot tall existential monster that dictates every move we make.

     

    The intersection of al Qaeda with the world's most lethal weapons is a deadly serious problem. Al Qaeda must be destroyed. But to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.

     

    Terrorism is a means, not an end, and very different groups and countries are using it toward very different goals. Messrs. Bush and McCain lump together, as a single threat, extremist groups and states more at odds with each other than with us: Sunnis and Shiites, Persians and Arabs, Iraq and Iran, al Qaeda and Shiite militias. If they can't identify the enemy or describe the war we're fighting, it's difficult to see how we will win.

     

    The results speak for themselves.

     

    On George Bush's watch, Iran, not freedom, has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb; its influence in Iraq is expanding; its terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant in Lebanon and that country is on the brink of civil war.

     

    Beyond Iran, al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 – are stronger now than at any time since 9/11. Radical recruitment is on the rise. Hamas controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel every day. Some 140,000 American troops remain stuck in Iraq with no end in sight.

     

    Because of the policies Mr. Bush has pursued and Mr. McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure.

     

    The election in November is a vital opportunity for America to start anew. That will require more than a great soldier. It will require a wise leader.

     

    Here, the controversy over engaging Iran is especially instructive.

     

    Last week, John McCain was very clear. He ruled out talking to Iran. He said that Barack Obama was "naïve and inexperienced" for advocating engagement; "What is it he wants to talk about?" he asked.

     

    Well, for a start, Iran's nuclear program, its support for Shiite militias in Iraq, and its patronage of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

     

    Beyond bluster, how would Mr. McCain actually deal with these dangers? You either talk, you maintain the status quo, or you go to war. If Mr. McCain has ruled out talking, we're stuck with an ineffectual policy or military strikes that could quickly spiral out of control.

     

    Sen. Obama is right that the U.S. should be willing to engage Iran on its nuclear program without "preconditions" – i.e. without insisting that Iran first freeze the program, which is the very subject of any negotiations. He has been clear that he would not become personally involved until the necessary preparations had been made and unless he was convinced his engagement would advance our interests.

     

    President Nixon didn't demand that China end military support to the Vietnamese killing Americans before meeting with Mao. President Reagan didn't insist that the Soviets freeze their nuclear arsenal before sitting down with Mikhail Gorbachev. Even George W. Bush – whose initial disengagement allowed dangers to proliferate – didn't demand that Libya relinquish its nuclear program, that North Korea give up its plutonium, or even that Iran stop aiding those attacking our soldiers in Iraq before authorizing talks.

     

    The net effect of demanding preconditions that Iran rejects is this: We get no results and Iran gets closer to the bomb.

     

    Equally unwise is the Bush-McCain fixation on regime change. The regime is abhorrent, but their logic defies comprehension: renounce the bomb – and when you do, we're still going to take you down. The result is that Iran accelerated its efforts to produce fissile material.

     

    Instead of regime change, we should focus on conduct change. We should make it very clear to Iran what it risks in terms of isolation if it continues to pursue a dangerous nuclear program but also what it stands to gain if it does the right thing. That will require keeping our allies in Europe, as well as Russia and China, on the same page as we ratchet up pressure.

     

    It also requires a much more sophisticated understanding than Mr. Bush or Mr. McCain seem to possess that by publicly engaging Iran – including through direct talks – we can exploit cracks within the ruling elite, and between Iran's rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.

     

    Iran's people need to know that their government, not the U.S., is choosing confrontation over cooperation. Our allies and partners need to know that the U.S. will go the extra diplomatic mile – if we do, they are much more likely to stand with us if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary.

     

    The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It achieves nothing. But it forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders. And it spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right from American wallets into Tehran's pockets.

     

    The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on tension with America is an America ready, willing and able to engage. Since when has talking removed the word "no" from our vocabulary?

     

    It's amazing how little faith George Bush, Joe Lieberman and John McCain have in themselves – and in America.

     

    Mr. Biden, a Democratic senator from Delaware, is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

  12. Posted

    There is nothing wrong with procrastinations as long as you know your limits and can get your job or assignments done right on time – yeah you will be bit annoyed with yourself every time you have looming deadline and you realize how much time you have wasted but hey I do my best when under pressure.

  13. Posted

    ^^Doesn’t he look hypocrite though donning the flag pin on his lapel this late in the game after taking a principled opposition to it? I am afraid the right wing will start to label him as flip flopper like they did to John Kerry. I mean he could have continued wearing it on special occasions like whenever he is addressing the veterans or some veteran gave it to him. And continued to say my patriotism speaks for it self.

  15. Posted

    In
    The Audacity of Hope
    , Barack Obama tells an amusing story about his first tour through downstate Illinois, when he had the audacity to order Dijon mustard on his cheeseburger at a TGI Friday's. His political aide hastily informed the waitress that Obama didn't want Dijon at all, and thrust a yellow bottle of ordinary-American heartland-values mustard at him instead. The perplexed waitress informed Obama that she had Dijon if he wanted. He smiled and said thanks. "As the waitress walked away, I leaned over and whispered that I didn't think there were any photographers around," Obama recalled.

     

    Obama's memoir dripped with contempt for modern gotcha politics, for a campaign culture obsessed with substantively irrelevant but supposedly symbolic gaffes like John Kerry ordering Swiss cheese or Al Gore sighing or George H.W. Bush checking his watch or Michael Dukakis looking dorky in a tank. "What's troubling is the gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics—the ease with which we are distracted by the petty and trivial," he wrote.

     

    Last night at the National Constitution Center, at a Democratic debate that was hyped by ABC as a discussion of serious constitutional issues, America got to see exactly what Obama was complaining about. At a time of foreign wars, economic collapse and environmental peril, the cringe-worthy first half of the debate focused on such crucial matters as Senator Obama's comments about rural bitterness, his former pastor, an obscure sixties radical with whom he was allegedly "friendly," and the burning constitutional question of why he doesn't wear an American flag pin on his lapel — with a single detour into Senator Hillary Clinton's yarn about sniper fire in Tuzla. Apparently, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos ran out of time before they could ask Obama why he's such a lousy bowler.

     

    It must be said that Obama did not seem very comfortable on the defensive, and he had trouble answering questions like whether he's more patriotic than the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Since "performance" is all that the talking heads ever notice, they'll probably declare Clinton the winner of the debate. She constantly salted Obama's wounds, all the while insisting that she was merely concerned that Republicans would salt them in the fall, and that his various controversies simply "raised questions" about his electability; at one point she claimed that his exhaustively chewed-over relationship with Wright "deserves further exploration," which is kind of like saying that Whitewater deserves further investigation. "These are legitimate questions, as everything is when you run for office," Clinton said.

     

    But maybe Obama is right that Americans are tired of "the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with," as he put in his lapel-pin answer. And even if they aren't, it's nice to hear someone critique that image-obsessed, context-deprived soundbite culture-a culture, incidentally, in which Stephanopoulos flourished when he was spinning for the Clintons.

     

    Last night's debate did not reveal any big policy differences between Obama and Clinton. But it did reveal their different approaches to politics, and the different arguments for their candidacies that stem from those approaches.

     

    Clinton's main argument was that she can beat John McCain because she's already been vetted in this culture, "having gone through 16 years on the receiving end of what the Republican Party dishes out." She's basically saying that her dirty laundry-the questionable money she made in cattle futures, the Travelgate firings, her kiss of Suha Arafat, her husband's pardons, the unpleasantries of 1998-is no longer newsworthy, and the mere fact of her political survival shows that it's irrelevant.
    "I have a lot of baggage, and everyone has rummaged through it for many years," she said. Obama hasn't rehashed that baggage, although he did slyly remind Americans about her 1992 crack about staying home and baking cookies, ostensibly to make that point that she had been treated unfairly, probably with an ulterior motive. But in any case, it's not like she's survived all that baggage unscathed; she's got sky-high unfavorable ratings. And it's not like Republicans would agree not to raise all that baggage in the fall if she somehow became the nominee. Hey, she even said everything's legitimate when you run for office.

     

    Obama's argument is that he can rise above the divisive politics of the nineties—not just the intense partisanship, but the constant posturing and point-scoring in the service of winning a news cycle. He portrays Clinton as a victim of those war-room politics—but also a veteran practitioner. "Senator Clinton learned the wrong lesson, because she's adopted the same tactics,"
    he said last night. He's talking about the culture of perpetual spin, where everything is fair game in the service, including your opponent's kindergarten dreams of grandeur. It's a game of guilt by association, as Obama said last night, "the kind of game in which anybody I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship, their ideas can be attributed to me."

     

    This makes for extremely stup!d politics, where substance is only relevant to catch politicians in flip-flops or mistakes. Last night, for example, Gibson tried to nail Obama over capital gains taxes, revealing only his own misunderstanding of the difference between correlation and causation.
    For all the back-and-forth over a crazy Weatherman he once served with on a board, Obama never got to tell voters that he opposed the war in Iraq from the start. For all the back-and-forth over her Tuzla goof—Obama stayed out of it, although he acknowledged that his campaign aides addressed it when asked—Clinton never got to mention anything she's done in the Senate. And the only real constitutional issue that got discussed was the right to bear arms.

     

    It's funny, because the intended point of Obama's ill-advised comments about small-town voters was that they "cling" to wedge issues involving God and guns because they've lost faith in our political culture's ability to solve problems. It's an arguable point. But last night suggests that there's little denying that our political culture has lost its ability to illuminate any issue more complicated than the appropriate condiments for a red blooded American to eat.

     

  16. Posted

    I don't think anyone can call that a debate - whole hour was wasted on non issues like a lapel pin flag, 60s radical leftists, rev Wright and the 'bitter' debacle that consumed the airwaves last few days. Obama was put on the defense most of the night and most questions came from right wing radio and faux news host Sean Hannity of all people. Oh yeah and Clinton's sniper gate was sandwiched somewhere between accusations of his patriotism and judgment with no follow up either from him or the moderators.

     

    Over all big fat F for Obama and D mines for Clinton. I gotta admit she seemed more prepared but then again I wouldn't put past George to have been in the tank with Mrs. Clinton considering all his connections with the former president.

  17. Posted

    Am I supposed to be mad about LeBron?

     

    Would someone please write a handbook? "What Will and Won't Piss Black Folk Smooth the **** Off" would be an international bestseller.

     

    I'm black, and I'm pissed off most of the time, but I wouldn't leave home without the handbook. Not in these racist-ly confusing times. I can barely keep up with when I'm supposed to be disappointed as opposed to offended as opposed to being pissed smooth the **** off.

     

    Right now I need to know where this LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen-Vogue-cover controversy falls. And just who am I supposed to be mad at, LeBron, the photographer, the editors at Vogue or Tom Brady?

     

    Maybe they're all to blame. Maybe that's the point of this whole mess. Or maybe they're just as bewildered as I am.

     

    According to the allegations, King James looks like King Kong clutching Fay Wray on the latest cover of Vogue, and the image, according to potential handbook writers, "conjures up this idea of a dangerous black man."

     

    Hmm, to LeBron and his handlers, he looks like LeBron clutching a pretty white woman on the latest cover of Vogue, and the image conjures up the idea that LeBron can race up court with a basketball and a supermodel.

     

    I agree with LeBron. The photographer captured him exactly as he is. You know, when he covered his body in tatts years ago, mimicking a death-row inmate, LeBron invited people to jump to the conclusion that he's dangerous. Yeah, that's the way the image-is-everything game is played. Ink is a prison and gang thing. Don't act like you don't know the origin of the current fad.

     

    Vogue put a mirror in our face, and we're complaining about the reflection. Half the black players in the NBA take the court each night in front of white audiences tatted from neck to toe like they're shooting a scene for Prison (Fast)Break.

     

    When David Stern insisted on helping these players with their image by implementing a dress code, many of the players and their media groupies screamed racism. You see, showing up to work in a white T and iced-out (heavy jewelry) was their way of showing loyalty to their boys in the 'hood, a shout-out to the corner boys and girls.

     

    And any time someone with common sense points out that athletes are making fools of themselves and feeding negative stereotypes, he or she is shouted down as a sellout, racist or out of touch.

     

    Just look at how much heat the NFL takes for trying to stop Chad Johnson from bojangling. This is why a handbook to clear up the confusion is so necessary. When Johnson slaps in his gold teeth, dyes and cuts his hair into a blonde Mohawk, dances a jig in the end zone and makes life absolute hell on his black coach, that is fun and good for the game.

     

    But when King James apes King Kong it is a terrible blow to the perception of black men.

     

    Would we be having this discussion if LeBron struck the same pose on the cover of Ebony while holding Selita Ebanks? Think about it. And if we wouldn't be having the discussion, what does that say about us? Are we only bothered by negative images of black men when the primary/sole consumer of the image is white people?

     

    Vogue ain't for us. Tyler Perry's new movie, Meet the Browns, was produced with us in mind. It had a great box-office debut, coming in at No. 2 with a take of more than $20 million. It also broke records for negative black stereotypes and simple-mindedness.

     

    We ate it up, and I've yet to hear much of an outcry about a romantic comedy built around a single mama with three baby daddies, her loud-mouthed, weed-smoking, gun-toting Latino best girlfriend, a deadbeat daddy, a drunk sister and a deceased father who was a pimp-turned-preacher. I could go on. This list is endless.

     

    Rather than reading and hearing universal condemnation of Tyler Perry, the drag-queen moviemaker is being hailed as a genius for recognizing what attracts us to the movie theater.

     

    I'm telling you we need a handbook. We need something athletes, entertainers, black and white folks can easily refer to when deciding how to react to the images we choose to project. The chapter on rap-music videos could be studied at major universities across the globe. I'd like for Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Exploitation Television, to pen that section when he comes off the Clinton campaign trail.

     

    LeBron James is a kid, and his talents as a basketball player and absence of a father allowed him to "grow up" rather than be "raised." His stated goal is to be one of the richest men in the world. Like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan, he is a child celebrity interested in increasing his fame and little else.

     

    He's in very good and very deep company when it comes to being unconcerned with and unqualified for the job of representing black men in a positive light.

     

    Hell, given our current state of confusion, I'm not sure Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could handle the job.

     

    Jason Whitlock can be reached by email at
    .

     

  18. Posted

    Thousands of years ago a handful of fortune-tellers roamed ancient China, traveling to the palaces of Mandarins and predicting the future. When they were right, they were showered with riches and praised at lavish banquets. When they were wrong, they were boiled alive.

     

    Taking a risk is scary when you focus on what can go wrong, and exciting when you consider the benefits if all goes well. The trick is to think about risk in the right way and use it to your advantage. Most people see taking risks as opening themselves up to unnecessary, even dangerous, chance. But the truth is, avoiding risk won't keep you safe, nor will it guarantee a smooth ride.

     

    In fact, the opposite is often true. It's like the monkey parable: A monkey sees a nut in a hole and reaches in to grab it. Once he's closed his fist around it, he can't get his hand back out of the narrow opening. He can't free himself unless he lets go of the nut, but because he's afraid to lose it, he won't let go.

     

    Trying to avoid risk is like clinging to that nut. You may think you're playing it safe by holding on to what you have, but in reality you're just hindering your own progress.

     

    Rule 1: Take risks that are calculated, not crazy.

     

    Rule 2: The worst-case scenario is rarely as bad as you think.

     

    Rule 3: Don't personalize things that aren't personal.

     

    Rule 4: It's best in the long run to make your life a grudge-free zone.

     

    Rule 5: Be generous with praise—and careful with criticism.

     

    Rule 6: Know the rules so you know which ones to break.

     

    Rule 7: It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

     

    Source

     

    What is your thoughts on these rules? specially the bit about it being easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.

  19. Posted

     

    (CNN) — A spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s campaign sent out a press release Tuesday morning belatedly attacking Barack Obama for his failure to release his tax returns – at virtually the exact moment the Illinois senator’s campaign posted his 2000-2006 filings on his campaign Web site.

     

    “In the public record there are 20 years of Hillary's tax returns, hundreds of thousands of pages of records from her time in White House and countless other documents detailing her time in public life. Sen. Obama's record is far more opaque. Sen. Obama has not released his tax returns, except for 2006,” Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said in a statement sent to reporters just as the Obama camp posted the Illinois senator’s returns online.

     

    The newly-released Obama documents include all schedules. In a statement sent to reporters, the Obama campaign criticized Clinton for not releasing her 2006 tax returns, pointing to her decision to lend her campaign $5 million earlier this year, and former President Bill Clinton’s $20 million payout from supermarket holding company Yucaipa.

     

    Clinton has promised to release the returns sometime after this year’s April 15 tax deadline, just a few days before Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary.

     

    “Senator Clinton recently claimed that she’s ‘the most transparent figure in public life,’ yet she’s dragging her feet in releasing something as basic as her annual tax returns,” Obama’s communications director, Robert Gibbs, said in a statement. “Senator Clinton can’t claim to be vetted until she allows the public the opportunity to see her finances — particularly with respect to any investment in tax shelters.”

     

    – CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand

     

  25. Posted

    Obama's speech: The reviews

    Posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 9:15 AM by Mark Murray

     

    Here's a round up of editorials and local feedback from around the country. As expected, it is hard to find a negative editorial about Obama's speech.
    The New York Times’ editorial:
    "We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane."

     

    The Washington Post:
    "We don't agree with the way Mr. Obama described some of those problems yesterday or with some of his solutions for them. But he was right to condemn the Rev. Wright's words, was eloquent in describing the persistent challenge of race and racism in American society -- and was right in proposing that this year's campaign rise above ‘a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism.’”

     

    The Arizona Republic’s editorial page:
    "This was the biggest speech of Obama's political life, the most majestic and sweeping any candidate has given thus far in the presidential campaign. It was also the riskiest, a gamble that Americans have the fortitude and willingness to face this searing issue."

     

    The Baltimore Sun:
    "win or lose, Mr. Obama's thoughtful exposition of race in America was an important contribution to this presidential campaign."

     

    The Boston Globe:
    “That's why, as Obama said, voters have to choose. They can focus on scandal and spectacle, on who said what outrageous thing. They can focus on the racial dynamics of who votes for whom. But the truer course is to focus on building a better America, one with stronger schools, better health care, reliable voting machines, fairer taxes, strong roads and bridges, and a healthy economy. Voters have to choose, and in doing so they should seize this chance to forge their self-interests into a new, truly United States of America."

     

    Dallas Morning News:
    "Has any major U.S. politician in modern times ever given a speech about race in America as unflinching, human and ultimately hopeful as the one Barack Obama delivered yesterday? Whether or not the speech satisfies critics of Mr. Obama's close relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, this remarkable address was one for the history books."

     

    The Kansas City Star:
    "Obama challenged all Americans — black and white — to find a path toward better understanding. A bigger, necessary conversation is a challenge that the country should accept."

     

    Source