Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Tera Saath Hai To Mujhe Kya Kami Hai












In The News

India silent as China deploys forces on Nepal soil Times of India China stationed forces on the Nepalese side of the border with Tibet last week ..... The Chinese forces were in plainclothes, but armed with small weapons .... the major diplomatic snub inflicted by China when its foreign office summoned Indian ambassador to Beijing, Nirupama Rao, at 2am to give her a list of demonstrations that Tibetans planned to organize in India. .... foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice jointly addressing the Tibet issue in Washington.
Fresh violence in Sichuan, China vows action fortnight-long monks-led pro-independence protests ..... the first major challenge to the Communist giant in two decades.
Detroit's mayor indicted in sex scandal Reuters The criminal charges stem from text messages between Kilpatrick and Beatty dating back to 2002 ..... now included more than 40,000 pages of documents as evidence, including text messages. ..... Granholm, a prominent Clinton supporter

Clinton, Obama campaigns snipe at each other Newsday
Poll boost for Obama after race speech
Guardian
Experts Analyze Impact Of Obama's Speech On Race Voice of America
Obama-Clinton tie in new poll: Pastor flap erased
Baltimore Sun
Clinton Says She ‘Misspoke’ About Dodging Sniper Fire
New York Times
Clinton's YouTube ad backfires Globe and Mail and Casey just happens to have grown into an 18-year-old Obama supporter. She saw the ad and started talking to the media about how she didn't agree with the "politics of fear" that the Democratic hopeful was using.

Barack Obama surfaces in the Caribbean Los Angeles Times
Clintons lose luster with black voters Chicago Tribune
Richardson: Clinton Backers Practice "Gutter" Politics. U.S. News & World Report
Clinton rolls out economic crisis plan
NEWS.com.au the acute economic anxiety stalking Americans ...... she trails Senator Obama in pledged delegates, the popular vote and in fundraising. ..... "She was very gracious, she was not happy, she did say she was disappointed," Gov Richardson ..... on vacation with his family in the US Virgin Islands.

Asia Day Ahead: JPMorgan Quadruples Bear Stearns Bid (Update1) Bloomberg
XM, Sirius merger clears Justice Department scrutiny Bizjournals.com
Riots rage in China as protests overshadow Olympic ceremony AFP 130 people had now been confirmed killed in the Chinese crackdown after two weeks of protests ....... The Olympic flame is scheduled to pass over Mount Everest in Tibet in early May, and through the capital Lhasa the following month. .... Its journey is expected to spark a wave of global protests against Chinese authorities over Tibet and a range of other issues, such as Beijing's record on human rights and religious freedoms.

Clinton's road to nomination gets steeper Christian Science Monitor with Florida and Michigan giving up last week on new primaries ..... some 300 superdelegates, or party leaders, who remain uncommitted. ...... The efforts in both states bogged down in a quagmire of legal, financial, and logistical questions, as well as bitter disagreements between the Clinton and Obama campaigns.





Monday, March 24, 2008

Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong: A Dialogue


Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong: A Dialogue

Geraldine Ferraro: You racist bigot!

Geremiah Wrong: Lady, you are no clean spigot yourself.

Geraldine Ferraro: You have one filthy mouth.

Geremiah Wrong: Another way to look at it would be that I am oozing with black anger.

Geraldine Ferraro: So you now claim to speak for an entire people? And not just for yourself?

Geremiah Wrong: In case you did not notice, that chicken coming home to roost was not an original line. I borrowed it from Brother Malcolm X. I also intend to borrow his greatness.

Geraldine Ferraro: A God fearing man would not say God damn America. It is America that puts food on your table.

Geremiah Wrong: If God can damn New Orleans, is America a sacred cow?

Geraldine Ferraro: So you stand by your word?

Geremiah Wrong: If white men can stand by their word, why can't this black brother?

Geraldine Ferraro: You support a black man for president. Because he is black? Is that not racist?

Geremiah Wrong: Your slave owner great-grandfather, and your restaurant owner father would know better.

Geraldine Ferraro: Slavery and segregation are dead horses. How long do you intend to beat those dead horses?

Geremiah Wrong: Segregation lives in my personal memory. Slavery is on Discovery Channel. They are not going away. Not on my dime.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are a disgrace to your church.

Geremiah Wrong: Too late to make that point. I am retired.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are a disgrace to Obama 08.

Geremiah Wrong: Too late to make that point. They already kicked me out.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are a disgrace to America.

Geremiah Wrong: America is a disgrace to me.

Geraldine Ferraro: Do you vote?

Geremiah Wrong: If a brother is running.

Geraldine Ferraro: If Barack were a white man, he would not be where he is today. You agree?

Geremiah Wrong: I agree. He would already have been in the White House for 200 plus years.

Geraldine Ferraro: It is so much harder for a woman. Ask me what it was like in 1984.

Geremiah Wrong: 1984, the book?

Geraldine Ferraro: No, stupid. When I ran.

Geremiah Wrong: You ran the marathon?

Geraldine Ferraro: No. When I ran for Vice President Of The United States.

Geremiah Wrong: I thought that was brother Jesse in 1984. Actually I am pretty sure.

Geraldine Ferraro: Do you ever read? Or do you just preach?

Geremiah Wrong: Neither. Not no more. I have served my time on the pulpit.

Geraldine Ferraro: But the woman thing.

Geremiah Wrong: Black liberation also automatically applies to black women. Don't black women look black to you?

Geraldine Ferraro: There's no point talking to you. There is a short circuit in your brain.

Geremiah Wrong: This conversation has felt unreal the entire time to me as well. Why are we even talking?

Geraldine Ferraro: Because you have a big mouth.

Geremiah Wrong: Lady, can we please just not go into the name calling territory? I have a reputation to live up to.

Geraldine Ferraro: It is not like you ever ran for Vice President.

Geremiah Wrong: Like you did.

Geraldine Ferraro: You are not in my league.

Geremiah Wrong: I am not white. I know that. That is the point I have been making my entire life.

Geraldine Ferraro: I was talking about achievement, not skin color.

Geremiah Wrong: You mean the achievement gap? It all goes back to slavery.

Geraldine Ferraro: Out you bring that dead horse.

Geremiah Wrong: If it is on Discovery Channel, how dead can it be?

Geraldine Ferraro: You know, the Hillary 08 people kicked me out as well.

Geremiah Wrong: Really? Just when I thought we had no common ground at all.

Geraldine Ferraro: I guess we do have a little bit to start with after all.

Geremiah Wrong: Welcome aboard.

James Watson, Now, Was He Your Pastor?
Talking About Race, Finally
Geraldine Ferraro, Geremiah Wrong






Yellow Rose



Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards where the twilight goes erasing statues
Yellow Rose

When you giggle, when you laugh
I get to wash
My 10,000 years of male guilt

Look happy for me, will you?

Queen, sometimes I think
Does it matter
That we are not together

You could not be president without me
On my own, I could not become
A billionaire

Two high voltage careers
And one happy relationship
Has never been done before

This is a brave new century

Love is electricity
Work is magnetism
Together they make for electromagnetism

Love is oxygen, lifeblood
Work is worship
If you believe in love

You will believe in God
That you have to find on your own
Or not, it is okay to doubt

Mouthing it
Is of anthropological
Interest

New York City is so much light
It is actually sound
DC is charming

The progressive political religion
That will engulf the planet
We will help build

Infrastructure
Political, social, economic
Infrastructure

We are the New York Mafia
Here to take over
The world

We measure progress
In the dollar figures
On every forehead

Shanghai has the skyscrapers
But not New York City's diversity
We live in the capital of the world

You run its premier
Political
Organization

Your 5.0 world I marvel at
As it unfolds in your presence
And absence

People are clay to you
You make pottery
Out of them

They get happy
When they are
Relevant to you

Let me just
Watch
You

In the love department though
Our entire mutual past
Feels dense with love

There are threads everywhere
Threads that no third person
Can make sense of

In the most public places
Privacy
Is possible

It feels to me like
You waited while I
Worked through my private pain

Pain from institutional abuses of power
In Kathmandu, Kentucky
Places that are part of my identity

Like my fingers
The landscapes
In my mind like scars

I will not have it
Any other
Way

But it is not about the past
Although that it is
It is not about the present

Even if that is all we got
And it is not even about a future
That has not happened, none can predict

The loftiest dreams can go mush

It is that feeling
That finally it is
Happening to you

You have found
The One
You are not in control

The Pahadis and Madhesis
Are all the drama in Nepal
But they are like medical patients

To me
In New York City

Race is for real
But so is technology

It is time to shame the men
Into making progress on gender
Fundamental progress

Progressive men
Will have to
Comply

5.0 and 2.0
A war between the sexes?
I think not

Instrumental?
Relational?
Maybe a little bit

Look in th eye
Open your mouth
And talk

Experience
The extreme interactivity
Of face time

If that is the point
I am getting it
I am getting there

I am one of those
My people persons
I can't think just of me

That is
My
Predicament

My Third World people
They need the message of democracy
Without exception

The Arab countries
Have to become democracies
Before they start making sense

Mostly though
It is about
Private moments

It is that feeling
That chemistry
That communication

Of being understood
Of wanting desperately
To understand

To give
It
All

To
Touch





Yellow Rose
Yellow Rose To Reclaim
Yellow Roses To Keep
Yellow Roses
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.

I go so far as to think that you own the universe.