From NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams and nightly.msnbc.com.
It’s nice to see a President accessible and own up to his mistakes – not only via press release, but also on national television. Here are a few remarks that gave me chills and left me with more hope, despite the “mistakes.”
“..I’ve got to own up to my mistake, which is, that ultimately, it’s important for this administration to send a message that there are not two sets of rules… I’m frustrated with myself, with our team, but ultimately, my job is to get this thing back on track….”
“The fact of the matter is Tom Daschle pulled out today, and I’m here on television saying I screwed up. And that’s part of the era of responsibility is not, never making mistakes, it’s owning up to ‘em and trying to make sure you don’t repeat ‘em. And that’s what we intend to do.”
--President Barack Obama
See the video here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/#29002023
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barack Obama. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Friday, November 21, 2008
Support and Make a Difference
The email below is from one of my best friends and influential marketing professor at Berklee College of Music. Even if you don't pass the link along, watch it.. one of the most inspiring videos you will see.
********************************************************************************
Earlier this week fifty of my marketing students launched a grassroots
campaign to help land two professors, vocalist Donna McElroy and pianist
Jetro da Silva, a performance of "America the Beautiful" at the
Presidential Inauguration this January.
In support of the required application to perform filed with the Armed
Services Inaugural Committee, the students uploaded a video to YouTube of
Professors McElroy and da Silva performing a stirring rendition of the
anthem at Roger Brown's 2004 inauguration.
The students’ strategy is to increase the probability of the link reaching
the President-elect or his 'right-hand ears' by using the same tools and
tactics used by Obama to win the election.
After the federal filing and YouTube upload, students are now rolling out
email, social networks, public relations, phone and word-of-mouth efforts
to draw attention to the performance video on YouTube.
You can watch the video here.
Please know this is not political commentary - it is a request to help
seize a golden opportunity that benefits faculty, students and the College
no matter the outcome. The Inaugural booking decisions will not be made
until mid-December at the earliest so we have time to build momentum.
If you are willing, please pass the link along to your contacts.
Again, the video.
Thanks very much for your consideration.
-sk
********************************************************************************
Earlier this week fifty of my marketing students launched a grassroots
campaign to help land two professors, vocalist Donna McElroy and pianist
Jetro da Silva, a performance of "America the Beautiful" at the
Presidential Inauguration this January.
In support of the required application to perform filed with the Armed
Services Inaugural Committee, the students uploaded a video to YouTube of
Professors McElroy and da Silva performing a stirring rendition of the
anthem at Roger Brown's 2004 inauguration.
The students’ strategy is to increase the probability of the link reaching
the President-elect or his 'right-hand ears' by using the same tools and
tactics used by Obama to win the election.
After the federal filing and YouTube upload, students are now rolling out
email, social networks, public relations, phone and word-of-mouth efforts
to draw attention to the performance video on YouTube.
You can watch the video here.
Please know this is not political commentary - it is a request to help
seize a golden opportunity that benefits faculty, students and the College
no matter the outcome. The Inaugural booking decisions will not be made
until mid-December at the earliest so we have time to build momentum.
If you are willing, please pass the link along to your contacts.
Again, the video.
Thanks very much for your consideration.
-sk
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Chopra on Palin
I'm posting this everywhere I know. Thanks to a good friend, I got this and it brought tears to my eyes. It was something I really needed to hear/read and makes a lot of sense. No matter what camp you are in, it's worth a read.
Please pass this along on your own blogs, discussion boards and email.
Taken from The Huffington Post.
Obama and the Palin Effect
by Deepak Chopra
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.
Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.
Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.
Please pass this along on your own blogs, discussion boards and email.
Taken from The Huffington Post.
Obama and the Palin Effect
by Deepak Chopra
Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.
She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.) I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.
Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.
Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good. The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness.
Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.
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