Unity, N.H.

Photo credits: VertexofLife/Daily Kos.com/

On the Netroots, FISA, National Media, Obama

Chris Bowers of Open Left, in a post about the Netroots' collective complaint about Barack Obama's recent handling of FISA and the national media's opinion that speaking out will benefit the Progressives only if it doesn't result in any reduction of financial/volunteer efforts on his behalf:

".... being told to shut up and empty your wallet feels more like a mugging than a convincing fundraising ask. Campaigns are no more entitled to small donors and free volunteers than they are to voters. Rather, campaigns have to earn those volunteers and donors by inspiring people to give their time and money."

Reading Mr. Bowers' post, I have to ask myself, "Where is the imagination of the national media?" Aren't there ways to hold the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee accountable that won't result in his electoral defeat? With the sidelining of the 527 arm of MoveOn.org and other influential voices of the strongest progressives, someone's going to have to be free to speak their minds in a nation that has always prided itself in being the land of freedom of speech, freedom of will and spirit, freedom of gun-ownership, freedom of religion, freedom of this, freedom of that.....

I ask you, most realistically, what happens to the firm believers in "freedom of" when their leaders and the national media pundits who love (and are paid well) to talk themselves request that the believers just shut up?

Hillary and Obama: Unity

I spoke about Hillary Clinton's rise toward unity last March. Despite the mainstream media and blogosphere's hand-wringing for the past four months, I've felt that Hillary Clinton embraced the idea of unity all that time through small signals and gestures... despite her strong will to be top of ticket.

I think the idea came through in a big way today in Unity, N.H.

It's become increasingly obvious that this team of once-rivals should go with the momentum while the mo is the mo that it is.

I've been making this case for a long time at Daily Kos and have gotten the kind of reception you'd expect from people who were hoping passionately for an Obama nomination.But that time is good and gone and now it's time to realize that these two strong candidates not only get along just fine and appeal to disparate groups of voters, but that Bill Clinton is no threat (a fear-mongering talking point of the parrots of cable news), but is rather a very good politician to have on your side.

Adirondack Photos

Through the Pines






Sunset, Sabattis




Photos by Jude Nagurney Camwell

Creative Capitalism: A Conversation

Michael Kinsley: Help Me Write a Book
Source: Huffingtonpost.com
Tags: Bill Gates, Capitalism, Charity Organizations, Gates Foundation, Michael Kinsley, Philanthropy, Business News

Anyone interested is welcome to join in at http://www.creativecapitalismblog.com


Creative Capitalism: A Conversation:

"A Conversation is a web experiment designed to produce a book -- a collection of essays and commentary on capitalism, philanthropy and global development -- to be edited by us and published by Simon and Schuster in the fall of 2008. The book takes as its starting point a speech Bill Gates delivered this January at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In it, he said that many of the world's problems are too big for philanthropy--even on the scale of the Gates Foundation. And he said that the free-market capitalist system itself would have to solve them.

This is the public blog of a private website where a group of invited economists have spent the past couple of weeks criticizing and debating those claims. Over the next couple of months we'll be posting much of that material here, in the hopes of eliciting public commentary."