This is neat. Could be useful for a viral marketing campaign.
THE BALL
You must click on the ball to make it change colors.
Click here: http://mazzanet.id.au/ball.php
Worthwhile excerpts of President Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention:
Our nation is in trouble on two fronts. The American dream is under siege at home, and America’s leadership in the world has been weakened. Middle-class and low-income Americans are hurting, with incomes declining, job losses, poverty, and inequality rising, mortgage foreclosures and credit card debt increasing, health care coverage disappearing, and a very big spike in the cost of food, utilities, and gasoline.
And our position in the world has been weakened by too much unilateralism and too little cooperation…
… by a perilous dependence on imported oil, by a refusal to lead on global warming, by a growing indebtedness and a dependence on foreign lenders, by a severely burdened military, by a backsliding on global nonproliferation and arms control agreements, and by a failure to consistently use the power of diplomacy, from the Middle East to Africa to Latin America to Central and Eastern Europe.
Clearly, the job of the next president is to rebuild the American dream and to restore American leadership in the world.
…As president, he will work for an America with more partners and fewer adversaries. He will rebuild our frayed alliances and revitalize the international institutions which helped to share the cost of the world’s problems and to leverage the power of our influence.
…The choice is clear. The Republicans in a few days will nominate a good man who has served our country heroically and who suffered terribly in a Vietnamese prison camp. He loves his country every bit as much as we do. As a senator, he has shown his independence of right-wing orthodoxy on some very important issues.
But on the two great questions of this election — how to rebuild the American dream and how to restore America’s leadership in the world — he still embraces the extreme philosophy that has defined his party for more than 25 years.
And it is, to be fair to all the Americans who aren’t as hard- core Democrats as we, it’s a philosophy the American people never actually had a chance to see in action fully until 2001, when the Republicans finally gained control of both the White House and the Congress.
Then we saw what would happen to America if the policies they had talked about for decades actually were implemented. And look what happened.
They took us from record surpluses to an exploding debt; from over 22 million new jobs to just 5 million; from increasing working families’ incomes to nearly $7,500 a year to a decline of more than $2,000 a year; from almost 8 million Americans lifted out of poverty to more than 5.5 million driven into poverty; and millions more losing their health insurance.
Now, in spite of all this evidence, their candidate is actually promising more of the same.
Think about it: more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that will swell the deficit, increase inequality, and weaken the economy; more Band-Aids for health care that will enrich insurance companies, impoverish families, and increase the number of uninsured; more going it alone in the world, instead of building the shared responsibilities and shared opportunities necessary to advance our security and restore our influence.
This is an article that showed unusual insight and courage, in writing and in life.
Worthy of real concern is the relationship between Venezuela’s dictator-in-development Hugo Chavez, Iran’s Ahmadinejad and the Hezbollah terrorist network, which has been reported to be basing itself in Venezuela to target anti-US operations.
I hope every American family tonight got a chance to listen to Michelle Obama’s speech and to see the girls playfully send regards to their Dad.
Her speech should shatter any sown doubts about her patriotism, & her commitment to what is great about America & the American dream. More important, seeing the family interact with such natural warmth should highlight their commonality with all Americans and hopefully uproot vestiges of race-based suspicion.
To the many well-intentioned Iran scholars who wistfully point out that Ahmedinajad’s rants can be discounted because true power lies in Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ‘Supreme Religious Leader,’ his recent defense of Ahmadinejad, including of his nuclear policy and confrontational style, should cause pause.
Totally unrelated to silly Republican attacks against Obama for being too popular and too hip, the Obama campaign (to which, though an independent, I’ve contributed the maximum allowed) some times seems to not quite get the need for a bit more gravitas. I just got an email (the umpteenth one in the last week) asking me to send $30 and be the first to get an Obama-Biden T-shirt. The subject of the email:
First Edition Obama-Biden T-shirt
Really? Is that the message the campaign should be disseminating?
Now, if some putz out there wants to hawk political campaign t-shirts as epochal collectors items, that’s fine. But the official campaign team?
Show your support for the Obama-Biden ticket today. Make a donation of $30 or more and you will receive a first edition Obama-Biden T-shirt.
This follows a neat idea to have Obama supporters be the first to get an email advising who Obama had selected as his VP - and in Biden he made a great choice with gravitas. That was a smart choice. And it is great that the campaign can be "with it" and appeal to the young and use all necessary tech tools.
But let’s hope the Obama team doesn’t get too enamored with itself and it’s appeal to the new generation. It also has to appeal to the older generations.
The only thing better than lyrics from Coldplay’s songs are their actual songs. Chris Martin’s vocals melt and reassemble the soul at once. Here are the lyrics from FIX YOU - but if you haven’t heard the song, you should.
When You Try your best but you don’t succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep
Stuck in reverse.When the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can’t replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix youAnd high up above or down below
When you’re too in love to let it go
But if you never try you’ll never know
“Just what your worth”Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix youTears stream, down your face
When you lose something you cannot replace
Tears stream down your face
And I..Tears stream, down your face
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
Tears stream down your face
And I..Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.
COLDPLAY
FIX YOU
Convicted Of Charisma
By Michael Kinsley
Washington Post, 8/23/2008
Kinsley explains the Republican strategy for presidential elections. He says they don’t waste much time and energy probing the Democratic opponent’s weaknesses. Instead, they go after his biggest strength. So, in 2004 they attacked Kerry’s war service and in 1988 went after Dukakis’ populist appeal. Now the Republicans are attacking Obama’s charisma, as if popularity itself were a disqualifying factor. It comes close to being an attack on democracy itself.
Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Time magazine.
Link to full text in primary source.
72 hours that will change the world
By Nahid Hatr
Al Arab Al Yom (Jordan), 8/18/2008
Hatr comments on Raghida Durgham, a well-known writer for Al-Hayat, who expressed anxiety because of the "American retreat and confusion facing the Russian bullying in the Caucasian region." "What is important here is that Durgham is close to the pivots of the Arab-American alliance. Thus, her attitude shows that the circles of this pivot are extremely worried that Washington might be too weak to confront Moscow’s return to the international playground as a major player," he writes. "Washington’s allies must be feeling extremely edgy at the escalating international developments, which are leading to the emergence of a new multi-polar world order." How will the Americans respond? Will they accept the new balance of power and the new world order based on many players? "Or will the Americans follow Durgham’s advice and use their forces in Iraq in a new aggression on Iran as part of an effort, which we believe is doomed to fail, to regain global hegemony?"
Link to full text in primary source.
For those denying that America is being enveloped by an obesity epidemic whose repercussions we cannot begin to fathom, as if data about how 1 in 3 children born this year will be diabetic and 32% of children are overweight, new data shows that adult obesity rates increased in 37 US States across the US over the past year. "The rate of adult obesity now exceeds 25% in 28 states" compared to a national average of 15% back in 1980. 1980 is when obesity started growing at such steep pace, and it is no coincidence that 1980 is also the year when high fructose corn syrup was introduced.
