It is not everyday that a writer gets a piece published in the Sunday edition of The Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/jan/25/portland-mls-soccer-paulson
Whether you agree with me or not on the issue is is pretty damn cool huh? I can add a world renowned paper to my bylines. Yeah, I’m a bit stoked.
You know sometimes when things are all FUBAR it’s the small things that make you get up in the morning, smile and get going. Today I woke up to Cooper sleeping on me. Here he is:
The cutest huh?
That was the key moment for me in the inaugural speech today. I stood up in my chair at the Living Room Theater and applauded with a couple hundred of my closest politico friends.
Here is the key graph:
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
In one simple phrase, ” As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. ” he sums up all that was so terribly wrong and morally bankrupt about the Bush Adminsitration and everything that will hopefully be right about the Obama Administration.
As of noon today America stopped torturing in our name. Let that one sink in for a moment.
I understand something big is happening today?
So The Atlantic came up with this awfully cool map that highlights how our economy and country has changed from 2000-2008. Unsurprisingly things haven’t changed for the best to say the least.
Some of my favorites
Mortgage Backed Securities
2000 -$684 Billion
2008 – $2.04 Trillion
Hmm wonder how we got into this financial crisis?
Billionaires
2000- 298
2008- 454
I wonder who benefited most these past 8 years?
Defense Spending
2000 – $381.3 Billion
2008 – $671.7 Billion
Wow, nearly doubled.
People who think Homosexuality is “morally acceptable”
2000 – 40%
2008- 48%
That’s actually pretty remarkable progress given the fact that Rove and company basically ran against the “homosexual agenda” in 04 and incited hate speech on a national level against gay people.
So the Barack Obama Inauguration Committee is running a contest that will give 10 people a chance to attend the event all expenses paid. The catch? You have to tell them what President-Elect (god I love writing that) Barack Obama’s inauguration means to you.
This is what I sent in (I re-purposed some stuff from an earlier election day post):
The inauguration of Barack Obama means many things to me: Hope for a better economy, the end of the Iraq war and the restoration of America’s reputation abroad among the most important. But it also means something far more personal to me.
Barack Obama’s inauguration is for the nine year old me. You see, when I was nine years old I first discovered racism.
I am a child of a tri-racial mixed family. Our family was unusual even by Washington D.C. standards: two white children, one black child, 4 Vietnamese children and two white parents. I knew we were different in some ways but when you are nine years old our difference was my normality. My parents fiercely protected that innocence and made sure we lived and went to schools in a community that celebrated, embraced and more often than not looked like our family.
Then we went to my grandfather’s funeral in rural North Carolina in 1982 when I was nine years old.
I would like to pause in this story to acknowledge what Obama’s speech on race and America back in March of 2008. When he said, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe,” it resonated with me. It resonated because it took me back to that trip to rural North Carolina in 1982.
In 1982 my family at the time consisted of my oldest sister Wendy and I who are white, my oldest brother Greg who is African-American and my Vietnamese-American siblings Dzung and Si.
A lot changed for me on that trip. For the first time I learned we were truly different. I will never forget the stares and whispers at the gas stations as our happy band poured out to go to the bathroom. The incredulous looks and gasps of surprise when we stopped to eat. But for the most part people were kind and understanding and sympathetic to my parents plight of dealing with 5 young kids.
And then we went to eat in a diner off the interstate somewhere in the mountains of North Carolina. To this day I can remember how the entire place got quiet after we walked in. And then many turned around and simply stared at us while we ate. I remember feeling uncomfortable, but mainly because my parents were acting so weird. For the first time in ages us kids ate our food in silence, being stared at like exotic animals in the zoo.
I learned we were different that day. I learned the race mattered to alot of people. So much so that it permanently scarred my African-American brother and affected our family in ways that reverberate today.
So I never thought I would see the moment that I could fill out a ballot for a black man with a funny name for President. As I filled in the little oval next to Barack Obama’s name I thought to myself – “this is for those folks in the diner all those years ago that made my family feel so uncomfortable and taught a none year old all about racism without ever saying a word”.
That is what Barack Obama’s inauguration means to me.
Here is a picture of my family at my sister’s wedding. As you can see, the folks in the diner didn’t win.
So people make all sorts of new years resolutions and people wind up breaking these resolutions by January 3rd.
This year I decided to make a different sort of resolution. Something that should be both fun and good for me.
I resolve to expand my life.
What does that mean? It means that I feel like I wind up doing the same thing, every day and frankly I am getting bored with myself. I feel like my life has shrunk and it’s time to change that. I think maybe other people look at me and think I have alot of diverse activities and lot’s of friends but for me, here in January of 2009, it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.
So what makes up the resolve to expand my life?
Three parts:
1) do one thing, once a month that I haven’t done before
2) volunteering
3) meeting new people
I just signed up over at Hands on Portland which is an organization that connects people with organizations that need volunteers. It’s a bit overwhelming and I am not sure what exactly I want to do but I figure I will start small and expand as I feel capable.
I think 2) do one thing once a month that I haven’t done is going to be the hardest. But it’s a fun challenge. I think I am going to sit down and make a list and then spread it out over 12 months. Look for a future blog post.
The last part – meeting new people – I think will come through doing the first two aspects of this resolution. And I mean meeting new people of both sexes not just folks to date.
But along the dating lines, I have tried the online dating thing and unlike other people who all seem to have horror stories, so far I have met some really cool people: One person who liked me far more than I liked her, one who I still have no idea what we were/are, a third who decided to act her age after two months and a fourth who I just recently met who seems very, very cool and there very may be something there. But I am not sure I am going to continue the online thing so meeting new people is going to require getting up and away from this online world.
I will let you know how this New Years Resolution goes with periodic updates.
You can file this under politics and passion. Video of a soldier’s dogs greeting him after 14 months in Iraq. Of course they are border collie mixes. 
I challenge you to watch this video without getting a little teary.
As someone famous once said:
“If there ain’t no dogs in heaven I want to go where the dogs are when I die”
