Edwards & Gore on Iraq at Current.com (Current comes to Converge South)

Former VP Al Gore and 2008 presidential candidate John Edwards have made videos for Current.com where they've expressed their opinions about the Iraq War.


Related:

Current.com comes to Greensboro, N.C.



Saskia Wilson Brown of Current.com




Current's Brandon Gross (on right) with co-panelist Jason McHugh (CrapTV)


Saskia Wilson-Brown and Brandon Gross of Current.com appeared at the 2007 Converge South conference held at North Carolina A & T University in Greensboro this past weekend. Photo by Jude Nagurney Camwell (Iddybud).



My set of photos from Converge South
Go to the link to see larger versions of the photos below.

ConvergeSouth 2007 Flickr Group
Technorati Results for ConvergeSouth2007
Anthology of Converge South postings [by David Beckwith]
Posted at Current.com by Saskia Wilson-Brown

What we've lost in the course of two generations

From a post where Open Left's Chris Bowers worries because he says that the Clinton camp has "twice, in the last week, inaccurately gauged public opinion on a topic as being further to the right than it actually is":

Perhaps I would feel differently if I was from a different generation, but my formative political experiences have largely been about the failure of Democratic and progressive elites in stopping the conservative movement from continuing to rise. We never seem to win, even when we are in elected office. As such, one of the things I am looking for in the Democratic primaries is not only a candidate who can win, but who can reverse that pattern of defeat in governance.

I am from a generation that saw the rise of prominent social figures and political luminaries such as JFK, Rev.MLK Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. And I saw what happened to them and how far their idealism carried them in a hateful, divided nation. Later, I watched my mother as she exuberantly supported Hubert H. Humphrey and how she cried when he lost to Nixon. Still too young to join them, I saw the intelligence, the heart, and the nerve of the flower children in their generation's cause to end another unjust war. I saw college students at Kent State gunned down by our own countrymen for their idealism. I remember the awful images of Vietnam in black and white on my parents' television screen. I remember watching the Watergate hearings with my grandfather during the summer I was about to become a senior in high school and how he, while disgusted yet too intrigued to turn his head away, took the time to explain what was happening to me. In 1976, at the age of 18, I voted for Jimmy Carter in my first election. I saw Ronald Reagan come to power with a new Conservative movement with misled neo-idealists and their leaders who kissed, corrupted, and co-opted Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority.

Where Bobby Kennedy and MLK Jr. were remembered for their risk-filled fight for equality and civil rights of all Men and Women, Ronald Reagan is remembered for smaller government... being at the helm at the end of crumbling communism (with JFK, Carter, and others who set up the whole fall getting little to no credit). Sitting in the Oval Office on a Sunday morning, October 23, 1983 when 241 Americans, most of them U.S. Marines, were killed by a terrorist truck bomb. Still President when Pan Am flight 103 went down because of a terrorist's bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, killing 35 Syracuse University students whose families never saw justice for the deaths of their children - and later were horrified to see George W. Bush make nice with devious Lybian leader Moammer Gahdafhi.


For all of this they wanted to put Reagan's likeness on the American dime.
Go figure.


You know the story from the post-Reagan years. Not too many brilliant profiles in courage-in-leadership, especially not from the Right. I think idealism and vision - the kind of vision that brings real, lasting, and necessary progress and not the kind lobbyists prefer to make - began to die off when they (whoever they may have been if you're a conspiracy theorist) began to literally kill off our most promising visionaries in this nation.


What passed for greatness after that was far from the vision of inspired men and women of the 60s Liberal era. What happened to the vision? Did it die with the murder-tainted innocence of a hopeful era? Do we teach our children to assimilate and not rock the boat because we're afraid for their well-being - - perhaps their very lives?

We think division in this country's something new, but it's not. I just think it's a lot more apparent today because of the expanded news media and the blogosphere.

What I think is particularly damaging is the people who complain about partisanship and label it as the disease that ails America. I believe the pattern of defeat in the Democratic party (pre 2006) was the tendency of Democrats to fall into the false framing of bipartisanship, traditional collegiality, and MSM-pleasing "centrism" (in parentheses because the media hasn't been shooting toward true American center on Iraq if you believe the polls). I use Senator Joe Lieberman's rise, thanks to being voted in by a majority of Connecticut Republicans and who now pushes the Iraq surge and gives lip service to a war in Iran that the majority of Americans say they do not want, as an example of how bipartisanship, by name alone, can be assigned a totally false value over common sense. I regret to see that our leaders (and the MSM who cover the horserace) seem to be regressing after winning a promising 2006 election. They have been far less than visionary and generally get a poor grade on action on ways they've chosen to try to end the Iraq war. "Going right", the direction that Glen Greenwald has caught Hillary Clinton's camp going (and they're not the only ones), is not going to help us bloggers, when MSM gets a hold of it, to convince anyone that our position is not heading toward the left fringe. This gives mouthpieces for the Right like Bill O'Reilly an opportunity to take so many undue potshots at us.

Hunter at Daily Kos can hardly wrap his mind around the audacity of O'Reilly and Fox News calling themselves a news network. I believe that the failure of our own Democrats to be strong in their vision these past five years have emboldened the owners of this new breed of media to think they can "destroy" real people out here on the blogs (like me):

Can you imagine any other news network mounting a multi-pundit jihad against a group of grassroots Americans, merely because they have the audacity to not support the Republicans? Can you imagine any other news network getting themselves into a bitter televised fight with a political community website?

Of course not. Because Fox News isn't "news" at all, and this is yet another example of why they should not be considered a legitimate news network, or even an "opinionated" news network. Actual news networks do not fabricate stories -- Fox News does. Actual news networks do not send pundits out in attempts to punish and/or sabotage grassroots political events of the opposing party -- it would be absurd. Only at Fox News, where a spectacular lack of ethics is after all the cornerstone of the efforts to manipulate the very news itself in order to prop up Republicans, would such things not get you immediately fired.

- Hunter

Nothing will change until our leaders change the tone and stop worrying about MSM's version of "partisanship" and "division".

In this country, it seems that we've always been divided on the things that matter. We're supposed to be a country that can withstand division and diversity of opinion and, out of it, create something that's actually healthy for our democracy. All we've seen these past twenty years are toxic results, a decided lack of vision, and unsatisfactory progress.

I came from a different generation, the one just before Chris Bowers' generation. After all I've seen, I have to ask many of our leaders: Why are we afraid of idealism and leading with bold vision these days? Why is our media money-jaded and controlled by private owners to the point where investigation is cut off in the editors' service of political bedfellows? Why are we made to see so often that they're working against us bloggers? Why do our leaders seem to be afraid? Who are they afraid of? What are they afraid of losing? An election? For all my eyes have seen, I'm afraid the country's losing its very soul.



The man in this video, John Edwards, has the kind of courage and vision I saw in JFK's time and the media is being complicit in framing him as a rich phony with only power in mind.

He says he won't let them shut him up.

I say good!

It's time for courage again.

Is this a returning breed?

Have we finally seen enough of the worthlessness from the empty promise of new conservatism from fat-faced hate-talk radio blatherers..and are we so sick of its vacuous political nature that we are returning to leaders who are looking well past the trees to see what could be possible beyond the forest?

This week at Daily Kos, my Idea Consultant colleague and fellow Spiritual Progressive David Beckwith said it well:

John Edwards is not promising you the world...he is delivering it. What needs being done...he is doing it. People in need cannot wait for him to be president, they need his help right now. And he is getting it to them.

I know of no one who is more deserving of the presidency, since we know he is not serving up empty promises. He is doing the heavy uplifting, and getting many other good and caring souls to help with this Herculean task.

We need an exemplar...especially after punishing the world with Bushworld Inc. Obama and Hillary are great and good people, but John is leading by example, and should be commended, not pejorated and smeared.

It has been said that when someone cares for another person, God cares for them too. Both of them. The caregiver and the recipient. I think most Americans realize that something of the sort is at play, and that caritas is indeed one of the sweetest and noblest acts a person can do.

There are people suffering today...this minute. We cannot wait for an election. Help us help John help people who need it.

Thanks Again, Harry Taylor

"In my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of my leadership in Washington. And I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and grace to be ashamed of yourself."

- Harry Taylor, April, 2006



When I saw Harry Taylor at an art gallery in the NoDa district of Charlotte, N.C. last weekend, I recognized him immediately. For those of you who may not remember, Harry is the gentleman who stood up at a town hall meeting with President Bush less than a year ago and asked him a question so honest and forthright that no one could believe he was able to do so - to "get away with it" - at a town hall meeting. "Getting away with it" shouldn't be the way an honest and forthright question successfully asked of a President should be seen, but at the point in time when Harry Taylor stood up, citizens were discriminated against at these so-called "open" Bush town hall meetings (and it's likely they still would be).

At the time he'd done it, I thought that Harry Taylor looked "solid American" - the kind of face you'd see in a Norman Rockwell portrait. In the portrait called Free Speech by Rockwell, the expression on the faces of the citizens who look up to a man willing to stand up and speak says it all. You can imagine they're thinking, "Good for you. I'm glad you did that. Amen, brother." That wasn't the reception Harry got last April. He was booed by fellow citizens, much to the disgust of the millions of us who watched the clip repeated on CNN and the evening news. Oh, how we cheered Harry Taylor for his courage and honesty that day. That sentiment is precisely what I hoped I conveyed when trying to tell Harry how I'd felt when he stood up and questioned President Bush about last April.





"You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you’d like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf."

- More of Harry Taylor's comments to President Bush last April




I found Harry to be a humble man. I told him that I held him in the highest esteem for the courage to have stood up and face the "boos" of those fellow citizens who'd been cowed by one another into eerie quiet and acceptance of things too many of us knew were wrong. In a free country, we have taken the right to free speech for granted. Harry showed us, after a long and bitter season of the kind of silence that comes from intimidation and discrimination, that democratic leadership can only come from the hearts of the people and that the health of that democracy depends on the courage of those who are willing to stand up and demand to be heard. A lot of people consider him to be a hero, but Harry would rather be seen as a citizen-leader just doing what should be expected of any person who cares deeply about participating in democratic goverment. He continues writing letters to the editor of his community newspaper and asking tough questions of his government representatives. He remains an Independent voter today.


It seems almost unbelievable that the tipping point, created by Harry Taylor himself, occurred only 11 months ago. We have to ask ourselves how the mainstream media could have slept through the "season of silence" for so long. Harry did their job for them when he stood up. A lot of "doubting Thomases" had epressed their fear that Harry was just another Jeff Gannon - an "intentional guest" at that infamous Bush town hall meeting. Meeting Harry, I can tell you that that belief is beyond the realm of possibility. As of last April (and, in large part, still today), Moveon.org was still being talked about by the MSM as if it was some wild-eyed leftist group and it just isn't true. Harry agreed with me that his standing up was a Malcolm Gladwell moment - a tipping point for a still-rapidly flowing waterfall of public honesty about the empty suit that our President has been all long. One short year ago, the media was all too willing to fill that empty suit with the Rovian illusions created by the designed absence of diversity of opinion at the Bush town hall gatherings. MSM seldom mentioned that it was a completely stifled reality.

Since his "15 minutes of international fame," Harry has taken the opportunity to participate in DFA grassroots training and MoveOn.org activities. Calling him liberal would be a stretch. Calling him a "small 'd' democrat" and a caring patriot would be far more accurate.

I really liked him.

Harry spoke for all of us almost a year ago. So much has changed since then. It was hard for me to find the right words to thank him, but I know he understood.

I'm just wild about Harry.

Last April at the John Edwards blog, David K. Beckwith [the blogger known as Anonymoses] wrote about what Harry did and why it was important. He said:

It was a moment to go down in history. A man, a North Carolinian, broke free of the groupthink silence and told the President the truth. On April 6, 2006, at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina, Mr. Harry Taylor stood before a crowd of Bush supporters and Mister Bush himself, and said what many have wanted to say, but were either silenced, timid or a human chicken.

It is weird to think that one act of defiance can win someone a place in the history books, but it just reflects the times we are in, and what is wrong with current "leadership".

My hat is off to the new American Hero, Harry Taylor.

Here were some of the many replies from fellow citizens:

Harry Taylor joined the ranks of "one who dared", which reminds me of the lone figure standing in front of the tank in Tianamen Square. That man and that tank are metaphors for the equally deadly machine operating out of the White House and one heroic figure with the courage to face up to that machine and publicly expose it for what it is. Mr. Taylor is a hero, purely and simply.

- Mardee

GWB what needed to be said as to how he felt. I think the man showed much character and he made me proud just to listen. In spite of the boos, he maintained his honor by speaking his thoughts.

- Im4jre

I was in shock when Harry started talking. I could not believe he got in the door AND they allowed him to speak.

- NCDem

Most times the truth hurts. It's about time someone had the courage to stand up and speak a truth that has been missing from so many of the mainstream "media" outlets and polls that are supposed to reflect public opinion. Mr. Taylor spoke the truth and there can be nothing wrong with that. If someone thinks otherwise they might want to check out a little document called the Constitution. They might find it's first amendment very enlightening.

- Cate-Iowa

Reminds me of a Steven Van Zandt song, "I Am a Patriot" -

And the river opens for the righteous, someday

I was walking with my brother
And he wondered what was on my mind
I said what I believe in my soul
It ain't what I see with my eyes
And we can't turn our backs this time

I am a patriot and I love my country
Because my country is all I know
I want to be with my family
With people who understand me
I got nowhere else to go
I am a patriot

- Benny

Abraham Lincoln portrayed ours as a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” This hardly describes what we have today. The only way to change that is to demand that our elected representatives in Washington, including the President, listen to us.

What can each of us do? Have conversations with others. Learn to be great listeners. Read… and not just material that favors your position. Develop healthy skepticism — make the facts prove themselves. Insist that your elected representatives respond, and support those who really do listen to us, the people. See the links to several November Congressional races to be fought against weak GOP incumbents. Please consider making a contribution.

I truly believe Americans are more alike than different; that we can find common ground that works for everyone; that we can have a genuinely representative government with compassionate leaders. We owe it to ourselves, and more especially to our children and grandchildren, to make this effort.

Know that courage is contagious. Together we do have the ability to win back our government and country.


- Harry Taylor, ThankYouHarryTaylor.com

* credit for the Rockwell/Taylor art: Cronus Protagonist, courtesy of the DU.

* credit for the art with the title The man who dared to tell the President what America thinks goes to Anonymoses [David K. Beckwith], who not only alerted me to Harry's presence at the NoDa gallery, but also took the photo of me with him above. Thanks, David.

"The Secret" Comes to Oprah February 8

ANNOUNCEMENT: From Agape Live!

In 1986, Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith founded the Agape International Spiritual Center, a trans-denominational spiritual community whose doors are open to all seekers in search of authentic spirituality, personal transformation and selfless service to humankind. In his own words, “My aspiration is that every individual who is touched by the vibration of Agape is inspired to cultivate a heart of love as wide as the world.”




Dr. Michael's Oprah Winfrey Show Airdate

On January 31, 2007, the taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show took place featuring Dr. Michael and Secret teachers, Jack Canfield, Lisa Nichols, James Arthur Ray and producer Rhonda Byrnes. [The Secret]

The show will air on Thursday, February 8, 2007.

Check your local listing for channel and times.

After watching the show, please email Oprah to let her know you want more of this type of programming.


Related: David K. Beckwith - Oprah to bring "The Secret" to TV