I am constantly amazed at the great PR Apple gets: this week the iPad was on the cover of Newsweek, Steve Jobs was on the cover of Time and Stephen Colbert gave the iPad the best plug I have ever seen.
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When we read about the war in Afghanistan, we almost always read about it from the US point of view – duh! – or a Marines point of view, or a NGO peace workers point of view.
A couple of days ago, I read a blog in the NY Times (it is amazing how much good stuff is in the Times, I wonder, and not in a good way, where it will go after the Times folds – if it doesn't just disappear) that talked about why the Taliban are such poor shots. And it sort of talked about it , inadvertently, I think, from the Afghans point of view. Among a long list of problems like having and using equipment in poorly maintained condition, relying on automatic fire rather than aiming, using mismatched and bad ammunition, was
a matter of public health. Many Afghans suffer from
uncorrected vision problems, which have roots in factors ranging from
poor childhood nutrition to the scarcity of medical care.
Sunday afternoon, while the rain feel all afternoon, I watched Afghan Star
The two of them, together, left me with an almost overwhelming feeling of how poor Afghanistan really is. Not We have no doctors, poor. but We have no good sanitation poor. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on Earth. So poor, most of the adult population can't see very well.
And there is a huge minority of the Afghan population that is afraid to move away from that poverty,. Afraid that they will lose more than they will gain. Maybe they are right – they will lose community, they will lose their convictions and answers – I don't think they are right to be afraid, but, then, I've eaten from the apple a long time ago. I am biased.
* with the same caveat that I had for Lynn Hill
Bob White, or – if you like – Robert Michael White, died last Wednesday, March 17 2010. He died peaceably, presumably in his bed, at the age of 85.
Given Bob White's life, that was a pretty unlikely event. When he was twenty, he was flying P51 Mustangs in combat over Germany. He was still only twenty when, after 52 missions, he was shot down and taken prisoner. Then he flew in combat over Korea. Then he became a test pilot, eventually flying the X-15.
While flying the X-15, on November 9, 1961, White flew at 4093 mph. That is over 68 miles a minute. That is six times the speed of sound. At one point, the shock waves and vibration did this to his canopy.
And White still landed the plane safely and lived to die, peacefully, at 85. I hope we are all so lucky.
As an aside: Try Goggling images of Nancy Pelosi. Most of them are pretty bad – they are either shot to make her look bad or doctored to make her look bad. I am not sure why; maybe it is because the right just takes up more space – in the same way that a Hummer takes up more space than a Honda Civic – but I could be convinced that we are even more of a sexist nation than we are a racist nation. Either way, or if something else is going on that hasn't occurred to me, Nancy Pelosi doesn't seem to get the same respect that the great Sam Rayburn got, or great Tip O'Neil or, even Thomas Reed. But there is a funny thing about racism or sexism, or homophobia for that matter, once we get to know somebody and they are no longer an archetype; it is much harder to remain a racist or sexist, or homophobe. End aside.
With all the credit that should go to President Obama – and he has done an extraordinary job of getting the Health Care Bill pushed through – without Nancy Pelosi it wouldn't have happened. Period!
To quote NEWSER,- a sort of web Reader's Digest for those of us that think three paragraphs is just too long –
President
Obama may be the one history remembers for pulling off the biggest
domestic policy reform in decades, but Nancy Pelosi "emerges from this
battle as the real powerhouse in Washington," Julian Zelizer writes for CNN.
Wielding both a "clear ideological agenda" and the "pragmatic political
tactics" to round up votes, Pelosi is the clear heir to Ted Kennedy's
legacy, Zelizer writes.
After Scott Brown's election, with
Harry Reid and Rahm Emanuel backing away from comprehensive health
reform, Pelosi "kept the steel in the president’s back," a Democratic
rep tells Politico.
"When Kennedy died, many Democrats wondered who would take his place as
the party's dealmaker," concludes Zelizer. "Now they have their
answer."
At the end of the day, Saturday, I got home after being at a event honoring women in the military – a post on that to follow – and sat down to check the news. In the New York Times, under the article on the Pope and the latest sex scandals, was an article saying Obama Rallies Democrats in Final Push for Health Care.
The article talked about exactly what the headline said but it didn't, in my opinion, really capture the moment. C-SPAN did with the meeting on video – I guess we can't really say video-tape any more – and it was truly extraordinary. Who ever called the meeting to order, first talked about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and how she was going to do something that no other House Speaker has been able to do.
About that time, Michele came in and said I am hungry. I said I am too, let's go out and get something to eat. But I want to watch this for a minute. We started watching the meeting again, at the beginning, and and an hour later, we finally went out to dinner. Feeling much better about America. If you have an hour, watch the meeting here, you won't regret it.
To quote Michael Scherer in his article titled Without A Teleprompter, in Time's Swampland:
We knew president Obama would give a speech today to House Democrats.
We didn't know it would be this good of a speech. The video below is
just the last ten minutes of an address that lasted about 30 minutes.I suggest you start watching at 2 minutes. The president takes his
caucus on the political equivalent of a guided meditation. Assuming the
bill passes, this is political rhetoric for the history books.