More commentary from Keith Olbermann

Following up on Bill Clinton's recent Fox News interview, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann comments on President Bush's re-writing of history with regard to 9/11:

After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts—that he was president on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.

The story and video here.

Embracing inconsistency

I was walking around Union Square today and found myself thinking about people and relationships.

We all have so much experience in interacting with people, and in some ways we're all expert armchair psychologists. And the work I've been doing the last three years has really given me a lot of insights into what drives people.

Today I was noticing how much I want to come up with a theory that explains all the inconsistencies that are embodied in the people I know. And I don't mean a general theory, but rather a person-specific theory, an explanation for why that friend of mine Jane Doe does what she does. Why she says X and then does Y without batting her lovely eyelashes.

As I walked around today I was thinking that, no mattter how much I learn about human behavior, my theories will never be more than that... just theories. And while they may have elements of truth in them, they will never be the truth.

And as I tossed this particular thought salad, I came back to an idea that I've had before, that maybe it's okay for people to be inconsistent. Maybe there's nothing wrong with people just being how they are. I know that I want so many things that are incompatible; everyone does. Inconsistency is inherent in choosing--and creating--our path. We always live in the moment, trying to map our way from remembered points in the past to imagined points in the future.

Which illuminates something else: it makes no sense for me to try to come up with a strategy that will "work" with somebody based on my theory of who they are and what's motivating them. If my theory is, at best, only partially true, any strategy that I come up with is likely to produce some other result than I intended.

All that there is is living in the moment. Accepting people as they are. Right now. Inconsistencies and all.

Dancing in the streets

I danced my ass off this past weekend.

And the amazing thing is, I was sober the entire time, though few people could tell. I was consistently the guy with his hands in the air, jumping about, loving the music and the energy.

And I feel great today. :-)

On Saturday I went to the Love Parade, which I can best describe as the straight equivalent of gay pride (though there were gay people there, of course). Dance music fans and clubbers followed twenty floats into San Francisco's Civic Center; the floats ringed the Center, and the whole space was filled with people dancing from one DJ to the next.

There were youngsters and some of the world's oldest living disco dancers. There were people in all manners of costume, from fairies to those inspired by Dr. Seuss. There were naked straight men (and just like gay pride and Folsom, they weren't necessarily the men you wanted to see naked). But to paraphrase my friend Michael's line of many years ago: hey, it's their Love Parade, too; let 'em have it!

And there were so many bunnies... too funny. A few months ago I was at the End Up on a Saturday night, which is predominantly straight, and two guys came in dressed in head-to-toe bunny suits. I kept hoping to catch them standing together so that I could get in between them, throw an arm over each of their shoulders, and ask, "Hey, guys, what do you say we go home and f*ck like bunnies?" :-) Alas, I never got the chance... but since then I've been seeing bunnies everywhere. Someone fill me in, please!

Oh, yeah, that reminds me of another comment from that night at the End Up: "Well, there goes 5 years of post-Donnie Darko therapy down the toilet!"

Near the end of the afternoon as our group gathered near the main stage, I saw a club kid wearing a paper bag hat. I walked over and told him it was the nicest paper bag hat I'd ever seen. It felt like a perfectly natural thing to do; I didn't feel the slightest bid self-conscious in doing it, and the guy beamed at the comment. I can be really playful when drinking, and complimenting a stranger on his makeshift hat wasn't something I would normally do sober. And I loved doing it.

I'M DATING SOMEONE NEW... a beautiful young man named Anthony. We've seen each other a few times over the past month, but something "clicked" last Wednesday, and we spent a lot of time together over the weekend. We slept in on Saturday night, skipping Magnitude, the main event of Folsom Street Fair weekend, in favor of getting up at 4am and going straight to Aftershock, an afterparty held a few times a year.

We arrived at 5am and danced until 10:30am when it closed. It was a wonderful morning. One of my favorite DJs, Abel from Miami, was spinning. (My best friend and I used to say that Abel was seated at the right hand of god. :-) Aftershock, as always, was held at City Nights, my favorite SF dance space. The crowd was hot... so many sexy, masculine men. I saw lots of friends. And most importantly, I had a great time dancing with Anthony.

I noticed how different it was to be with someone when I was sober. I didn't go into my head and get caught up in wondering who he was looking at or what he was thinking. I didn't de-generate into some child worried only about getting attention. I got to be an adult and still have fun...

A little over a year ago I realized how much I've fought with the men I've dated when we've gone out. The one exception was Tommy; he was truly unique, the most generous and accepting husband someone could ask for. And as I looked at this phenomenon of fighting with boyfriends more closely, I realized that at least nine out of ten fights I have had with people I've dated have been while I've been drinking.

I almost never fight with friends when I drink. Rather, I'm usually a lot of fun, the life of the party. But inject someone I'm romantically involved with and my insecurities move to the fore. Am I cute enough? Do they want someone else? Do they want me?

I've learned so much about myself and the things I get hooked by in the last few years. Spending this weekend of partying with someone new, and doing it sober, really opened my eyes. There were seveal moments where, had I been intoxicated, I would likely have spiraled downward into some nasty episode. What a gift to see that.

AFTER AFTERSHOCK WE TOOK A BREAK to shower and change before heading to the Folsom Street Fair. I've heard Folsom is one of the largest annual events in California, with around 400,000 attendees each year. The thing I love about it the most is the opportunity to dance in the sun, and getting to do that for a second day in a row was awesome. Anthony and I had several groups of friends, and it was hard to keep everyone moving in the same direction, let alone together. Yet we managed, and we danced, and once again 10th Avenue became our little street fair, a world separate from the scene 50 yards away on Folsom.

Sunday evening I had been planning to head to Real Bad, the final party of the weekend, and I had two of the coveted tickets in my pocket. Anthony and I left the Fair around 5pm. He wasn't going to Real Bad; I was going to go shower and change and meet up with my gang.

But sitting there on Anthony's couch, talking about our weekend, heading back into another dark club wasn't sounding too attractive. I had surprised myself by how easy it was to venture out sober into a world that I had only inhabited while imbibing and find it to be just as fun, to find that I was still me. Now I was ready for some downtime. We ordered Chinese food; we watched a movie. We slept.

Oh. Writing that last paragraph, I just remembered sitting in a chair sharing with the person sitting next to me at the Landmark Forum in January, 2003. I recall saying that what I wanted was the ability to feel happy, relaxed, and uninhibited around people as easily when I was sober as when I was drinking.

And I'm getting that I've found that.

Ann Richards quote

Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, passed away last week. Her granddaughter Lily Adams told the crowd at her service that her grandmother had a message:

This is your life. It is the only one you get. So no excuses, and no do-overs. If you make a mistake or fail at something you learn from it, you get over it and you move on. Your job is to be the very best person you can be and to never settle for anything less.

Quote for the day

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, a chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves, too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issue from that decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way if he was still doing his thing. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

-- William H. Murray, The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951)

A whole new wing

What a wonderful new world I'm living in today!

And I hardly know where to begin. :-)

In August I was in CTI's Fulfillment course, the second course in their life coaching curriculum. We were paired up for a coaching exercise, and when it was my turn to be the client, I was asked to name a bold future to live into. What came into mind was being a Wisdom Course leader, and I spoke those words. Boy, have I learned the power of a simple declaration!

What inspires me about taking this on is my experience both as a participant in the course, which I completed in 2003, and as a YODA (Your Own Devoted Angel, a sort of coach) for the course this year. Being in the course completely altered the course of my life, and I'm finding that assisting in the course this year is doing the same, perhaps even more profoundly. Sitting in the course as a participant three years ago, I found myself looking out the window of the Seattle hotel ballroom we were in, noticing the traffic on the freeway slowly moving by. The thought that occurred to me was that humanity is a sleeping giant, that we are mostly going about our lives on auto-pilot, asleep to the full potential that we have as human beings. This year as a YODA, I declared that I wanted to be known as someone committed to waking that sleeping giant.

The natural action to take was to speak to a current Wisdom Course leader in training, and I did so the following week. And a week after that conversation, I registered in Landmark Education's Introduction Leaders Program. This seven month intensive program is designed to train the course participants in how to introduce people to Landmark's programs, and it's the first step for people interested in leading seminars and other courses for the company. But it's about far more than teaching us how to pass on information; it's really about developing our capacities to communicate effectively, to listen to others, to get into their world, and to assist them in creating new possibilities for their lives that didn't previously exist. An introduction to the Landmark Forum isn't just about finding out what the course is about. Rather, it's designed to give participants value they can leave with and an experience of what participating in Landmark's courses is like.

So, just two week's after speaking the words, "I want to be a Wisdom Course Leader," I was sitting in a chair as the first of the Introduction Leader Program's four weekends began. In the room with me were 200 other participants from Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. As we each proceeded to the stage to briefly introduce ourselves, I found myself judging people; in particular, noticing and being frustrated by the participants who introduced themselves more effectively and eloquently than I. And then I saw what a jerk I was: these people were committed to the same thing as me... these people also wanted to wake the sleeping giant. Did I think I was going to do that alone? These people were my partners!

THIS PAST WEEKEND I completed my third CTI coaching course, Balance. The class developed our ability to assist clients who felt stuck in some areas of their lives. We learned techniques for having them look at those areas from additional perspectives and to then to choose a perspective from which they could take more resonate actions. A key and sometimes confronting step in this process is realizing that one's current view of how things are isn't reality itself, isn't truth, but rather is just one among many perspectives.

The twenty-four participants in the course were amazing. Some of them had been in my previous courses; some were new to me. As a group, working in conjunction with two awesome leaders and three great assistants, we created a powerful space for really exploring what's possible for people. We were--we are--twenty-nine people who are going to change the world, one person at a time.

One of my friends in the course had a breakthrough experience on Saturday. We were doing a paired coaching exercise, and when it ended, I realized that something had fundamentally shifted for her. She got a life-altering view into her world; she got that her reality is just a perspective. And she got that she is responsible for her life. The only place I have ever seen that happen for someone is in the Landmark Forum; that three-day program is designed to provide this sort of breakthrough for the participants. At the next break, I took my friend aside and talked to her, giving her a chance to really get rooted in this new wide open world that she had discovered.

THE COURSE ENDED SUNDAY EVENING, and I headed back to San Francisco. I went to the gym, and while working out I reflected on some of my recent experiences in the Wisdom course, in the Introduction Leaders Program, and in my coaching classes. The passion and commitment that people bring to these programs is incredible, and I felt strongly that this was the life I wanted for myself: committed to being my best, to stepping into all that I can be, to saying "no" to business as usual and to playing small. I began to wonder how I'd integrate all of this with the life I already had; I began to worry that it wasn't possible.

And then what I had just learned in Balance came to mind: thinking that it would be difficult to integrate the old and the new was only a perspective, and there were other places I could stand. And I stepped over and took the view that my life was expanding, not remaining the same size, and that there was room for all.

I moved to another machine, and then something began to quake in my world. A little over a month ago, a friend of mine chose to give up drinking for 30 days. At the end of the month, he sent out a note to tell us that he was enjoying re-connecting with activities that he had not enjoyed for some time, things that had been neglected while he had been carousing with us at bars. I was most touched by his description of the simple pleasure of preparing meals for himself.

And he chose to take on another 30 days of not drinking.

There in the gym I found myself thinking about doing the same: abstaining from drinking for a month. But it wasn't occurring for me as a thought or a good idea. Rather, I had the sense of the universe pulling me toward that action, of something powerful calling on me to take this step. I was reminded of something Landmark promises: that new openings for action will powerfully call me into action. And that was my experience... that deep within me my true self was saying, "Do this."

I found myself in a monologue about when to begin. This coming weekend is my first free weekend in several weeks, and afterwards I am in class the following four weekends. This weekend is also Folsom Street Fair, my favorite weekend in San Francisco, a weekend of fun and parties. The smart thing to do would be to start my 30 days on Monday the 25th. But I could feel in my bones that there was no truth in that. What felt true to myself was starting now.

The whole experience was somewhat frightening. I was scared because I suddenly found myself staring into the unknown. I could sense that my life was changing... no, that my life was growing. And yet it wasn't my life that was growing. It was me. The metaphor that came to mind was that I was a house, and in this moment I had found and opened a door. Behind the door was a whole new wing to the house... it was as if I had found that my whole life had been lived inside only half of who I am. The last three years have been ones of amazing breakthroughs and growth, but they took place in the rooms that I already lived in, in the life that I already inhabited. What was happening now was opening a wholly new, wholly unexplored world. And I was scared.

I left the gym and tried to reach my mother. I want my mommy! I called three other special friends who I thought could understand my experience. All I got was answering machines. I think I must have had the look of a man who had just walked out of the desert, wide-eyed and a little crazy.

An hour later, I spoke to Mom and my friends Romaine and Siobhan, and all three conversations grounded me and clarified what I was experiencing. To all of you, Thank You.

Next year I am taking a Landmark course called Partnership Explorations. One of the inquiries the participants take on is, "What if the fundamental thing that determines who we are is not something in ourselves but rather a function of the relationships that we are in?" In speaking to my mother, I began to see something in that. What if the breakthroughs I had in the course I took in Costa Rica were a result of being embedded for a week in conversations with the others in the course? What if I showed up as a leader because that was what was being called forth from me by my fellow travelers? What if I can re-create who I am by expanding the circle of people that I speak to?

Wow. I'm reminded of a perspective that we tried on in CTI's Balance course: the world is a banquet of unending possibilities.

TODAY IS MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18TH. The world is wide open today. I have a whole new wing of myself to explore...

And this day begins my 30 day break from alcohol and any substitutes that may present themselves.

Namaste!

Beautiful glass

I love glass art, particularly kiln work, and I've taked a couple of classes myself.

My friend Teresa Krage took up working with glass around the same time that I did, but, oh, has she ran with it while I'm still crawling! She recently entered eight pieces in the Glass at the Gardens show in Denver; four of creations won a total of awards!

I just checked out her latest work at her website; her pieces that evoke oil paintings are especially beautiful. The pieces that won are Chrysalis (two awards), Pinna, White Blaze, and Sunflower Madness.

Congratulations, Teresa!

Random thoughts and news stories

What an interesting day.

I had some great conversations with friends and family members about what is possible in life.

And I spoke to friends who were quite concerned about the well being of people they care about.

What is common to both sets of conversations is that the people in our lives do matter. Our connections to them matter. And that we want to make a difference in the world.

I'm reminded of a passage for some reason that my cousin shared with me once:

I will close this chapter with some general thoughts on addiction. We all come into the world with wounds; they come with human birth, no matter what kind of family we grow up in, no matter what kind of society we live in. Much of our human seeking is a search for healing. We long for a sense of completeness and wholeness and for an end to craving. Most often we look for satisfaction outside of ourselves. That is the root of addiction. Ironically, whatever satisfaction we gain from food, drugs, sex, money, and other "sources" of pleasure really comes from inside us. We project our power onto external substances and activities, allowing them to make us feel better temporarily. This is a strange sort of magic. We give our power away in order to achieve a transient sense of wholeness, then suffer because the objects of our craving seem to have power over us. Addiction can be cured only when we consciously experience this process, reclaim our power, and realize that wounds must be healed from within. Suffering and craving goad us into action, forcing us to discover who we are, to identify with our true selves.

-- From Natural Health, Natural Medicine by Andrew Weil, MD

What it speaks to me is that we are more powerful than we cop to. That we really are at the source of our lives, even if we are unconsciously creating a reality that has us occur to ourselves as powerless. And that we can make a difference, not only in our own small world, but in the larger one as well.

And if you want to make a difference, here are some articles to read that might give you reason to act:

• Arctic ice melting rapidly, study says
• U.S. Military Excluded Bombs From Baghdad Murder Toll
• Higher Risk

The fifth anniversary of 9/12

The fifth anniversary of September 11th came and went for me, mostly uneventfully.

Today is September 12, 2006, the fifth anniversary of September 12, 2001.

So what do I have to say?

The thought that first occurred to me is wondering what all of the fuss is. Yes, I know. I really do. Some of the fifth anniversary coverage I read yesterday left me choked up, present again to the feelings I had that frightening morning.

But what we've done in the aftermath is obscene and misguided. In the last five years, nearly as many American military personnel have died in Afghanistan and Iraq as in New York, Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania countryside on that fateful day.

And for what? Are we truly safer?

More importantly, is that even the question to be asking?

What occurs for me is that we've let one horrible attack become the focal point for our entire civilization... the frame through which all events are viewed... the scale on which all decisions are weighed. The "war on terrorism" has become the single overriding priority for our government; for many of our elected leaders themselves, this "war" seems second in priority only to getting re-elected.

With respect to terrorism, there is a real danger. On last Sunday's Meet the Press, Cheney observed that if "they'd had a nuke instead of an airplane" the results would have been very different. (For a wry look at this logic, check out this post on AMERICAblog.)

And I don't disagree: there is a real danger that someday we'll be attacked with a nuclear weapon. Or a biological weapon.

Our response to the 9/11 attacks is misguided, however. The truth is that creation always precedes destruction. This goes to the heart of that old saw, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." That's true enough, but if there are no guns, I don't have to worry about being killed by someone when I'm sitting in an open meadow, a hundred yards from anyone else. The gun changes that equation.

The same is true with nuclear weapons. We don't have to worry about a psychopathic fundamentalist taking out New York if there are no nuclear weapons in the world. But there are. And so we worry.

We worry. And we strike "pre-emptively." We are stuck reacting.

An alternate path, going back to the fact that creation invariably precedes destruction, is to bring more wisdom to what we are creating in the world. One place to start is to ask, What technologies are we creating? What risks do they entail?

More importantly, let's look at the conversations that we are bringing to the world. Are we truly speaking on behalf of the neglected, the suffering, the millions without a voice? Or do we speak out of one side of our mouth while really giving voice only to our own interests?

What listening are we creating in the world? How have the perceptions of the United States of America shifted in the Muslim world and with our allies? On both counts, our record is not good (see here and here).

With every one of our actions we shape the future that the United States is living into. With every statement we make, we alter the perceptions of those around us. We have the power to create a world that truly is aligned with our interests as human beings and that doesn't undermine the interests of others. But that path requires choices other than those we're making.

The "eye for an eye" teachings of the Old Testament appeal to our basic instincts. It is natural, perhaps, to want blood revenge and to seek security through killing.

But it is the "turn the other cheek" in the New Testament that is the radical idea, the wisdom that offers humanity something more than the status quo. War is a very young cultural conversation; it invites no transformation, asks nothing more of a people than allegiance.

War is expensive, but peace is the hard work. Life is always tenuous. Neither war nor peace offer any permanence. That is, at least, until weapons of mass destruction enter the mix. Then war truly does offer some finality.

War is a solution for the current generation. Something else is needed if we are seeking a solution for our children, and their children. Considering the perspectives of someone other than ourselves doesn't come naturally. Thinking proactively requires more of us. Acting as an adult calls forth wisdom.

We've already created the seeds of our destruction. The question we now face is, What can we create that will restore a wide open future?

Today is my coming out day

Or at least the anniversary of it.

It was 1987 and the summer between my junior and senior years at Stanford. I was living on campus with my girlfriend Jane; we had swapped roommates with another couple in order to make that work.

Jane and I had a wonderful summer. We had been dating for a little more than a year; I loved her. But when I was alone--late at night as she lay sleeping, or as I walked across campus--my mind wandered. And now that summer was coming to an end, Jane had headed back east to spend a few weeks with her family.

One of the things I remember most about Stanford was running. I ran around campus. I ran up in the foothills to the Stanford dish, the huge radiotelescope that was a major area landmark. I ran at the track. I ran alone and with friends. For a brief time I joined the Stanford Running Club. I ran during the daytime. I ran at night. I was young and lean and--while running--free.

This night, a Monday, I was running around campus. I think I must have been nearing the end of my run as I was on Serra Street, close to the apartment building where we lived. And I think my mind must have been spinning, struggling to figure out who I was. Or maybe it wasn't. The only thing I remember clearly is that I stopped running, not far from the Stanford Federal Credit Union, and said, outloud, "I'm gay."

I don't remember what I thought next. I don't remember what happened that night or the next day. But that following Thursday I made my way to the End Up in San Francisco. I worked at the library, and I'd occasionally sneak a copy of the B.A.R., a gay newspaper, into the reading lounge area, slip it inside another newspaper, and read it. The End Up's weekly wet jockey shorts contest had always caught my eye, and I had decided to check it out.

Easier said than done. It was easy to find the End Up. It wasn't so easy to go in. I sat in my car, just across the street from the front entrance, unable to get up the nerve to go in. Eventually a drag queen knocked on my window; when I rolled it down slightly, she asked if she could come in and have sex with me. Roll 'em up! I was out of there so fast and back on the road home.

But a week later I was back. I found the courage to get out of the car. I paid and went in. And there, on the dance floor in front of me, was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen: men dancing together.

I was home. :-)

Jane returned a week or so later. I couldn't yet explain the transformation I had experienced; instead I could only lamely say that "I needed to find myself." To make the situation more difficult, Jane's wait list request to move into my senior dorm had been approved. She'd be in the room directly below mine.

Once the fall quarter began, I discovered a gay and lesbian coming out group at The Bridge on campus. I began to form my first gay male friendships, and I had begun coming out to my close straight friends. But Jane was still in the dark.

Then the end of October approached, and I again found myself at the End Up on a Thursday, this time two days before Halloween. That night I met Tony who became my first boyfriend. He invited me back to the city for Halloween in the Castro. He was a tiger, complete with face paint. I, a bit more naive, was dressed as Mr. Bubble. We had dinner at the Patio Cafe on Castro Street before joining his straight friends at 1015 Folsom for dancing. The only thing I really remember from being there was hearing Book of Love's "Boy" as we sat at a table:

I want to be where the boys are
But I'm not allowed
I wait outside of the boy's bar
I wait for them to all come out

Eventually we made our way back to the Castro for more people-watching. We made out in the car for an hour (or two?) before walking down Market Street to get back to the festivities. It was the first time I had ever held hands with a man in public, and I was surprised by the number of smiles that people gave us as we passed. The reason became clear when I looked at Tony--his face paint was smeared... and my face was a mirror image, lol.

An hour later, standing in front of Castro Street storefront, we made out for what seemed like forever.

I cannot pass that place today without remembering what has always been the most romantic evening of my life.

Back in the dorm the next day, I saw Jane. She remarked that I was in a good mood. I said that I was. "You met someone," she guessed.

"I did."

"What's her name?"

"His name is Tony."

"He's a guy?"

"Yes."

"You're gay?"

"Yes."

Jane rose, walked to me, and held me. And in that moment all the pain and awkwardness that we'd felt was gone.

The End Up remains a San Francisco insitution. One of the bartenders, Debbie, has been working there since the mid-80s. And this past Labor Day weekend, I spent quite a few more hours there than I'm willing to admit in public, hee hee hee.

Next year will mark the 20th anniverary of my coming out, and I think I'll be making a late night trip to the Stanford campus... for a run.

And Jane, wherever you are, thank you. That hug, your love, and your friendship has made such a difference in my life.

(After 9/11, I wrote a short essay that also touched on my early experiences as a gay man. You can read it here.)

CORRECTION

Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, is a Democrat, not a Republican. Thanks to Bette for catching that. :-)

Quote for the day

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Salt Lake City's mayor blasts Bush

My friend Andrew just shared with me an AMAZING speech by Rocky Anderson, the Republican Democratic mayor of Salt Lake City. He takes Bush to task for not being truthful with the American people regarding the war in Iraq:

The truth has been established. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the United States. There is no evidence of any operational ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. And there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie, our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation led to a tragic, illegal, unprovoked war.

We are here because of our values. We love our country. We cherish the freedoms and liberties of our country. We don't call those who speak out against our nation's leaders unpatriotic or un-American or appeasers of fascists. We have good, wholesome family values. In our families, we teach honesty, we teach kindness and compassion toward others, we teach that violence, if ever justified, must be an absolutely last resort. In our families, we teach that our nation's constitutional values are to be upheld, and that they are worth standing up and fighting for. Our family values promote respect and equal rights toward everyone, regardless of race, ethnic origin, and sexual orientation.

And this:

What did our nation do in response to Hussein's use of chemical weapons, killing tens of thousand of people, when he actually had them?

We befriended, coddled, and rewarded him - with government-guaranteed loans totaling $5 billion since 1983, freeing up currency for Hussein to modernize his military assets.

Perhaps those in the US government who aided and abetted Saddam Hussein to further US business interests, while he was gassing the Kurds, should be sharing his courtroom dock as he is being tried now for crimes against humanity.

In the speech, Anderson also quotes an editorial written by Theodore Roosevelt during World War I:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

-- Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

Anderson ends the speech with a powerful call to the American people to no longer stand for what we've been getting from the Bush administration.

The transcript of the speech is available here.

Bad decisions

The last two issues of The New Yorker have carried articles about GM and how it's past decisions have made things rough for it these days.

The first article in the August 28th issue, "The Risk Pool," was written by Malcolm Gladwell. He shows how the decision by GM and the rest of the automobile industry to offer company-specific pensions and health care plans rather than participate in a scheme where multiple companies collectively offered such benefits has put these companies in such a bind today. The critical factor is that the dependency ratio--the number of retirees relative to the number of active workers--had increased dramatically over the last 50 years:

In 1962, G.M. had four hundred and sixty-four thousand U.S. employees and was paying benefits to forty thousand retirees and their spouses, for a dependency ratio of one pensioner to 11.6 employees. Last year, it had a hundred and forty-one thousand workers and paid benefits to four hundred and fifty-three thousand retirees, for a dependency ratio of 3.2 to 1.

(A year ago Gladwell wrote "The Moral-Hazard Myth: The bad idea behind our failed health care system" which was published in the August 29, 2005, issue of The New Yorker. It explored a shift in the insurance industry to increasingly group the insured into smaller pools, thus gradually eliminating much of the benefit of spreading risk across the greatest number of people.)

The second, shorter article on GM, "Dealer's Choice," appeared in the September 4th issue; in it James Surowiecki examines how the auto industry's decision to use franchised dealerships rather than company-owned outlets has tightly constrained their ability to adapt to changing market conditions.

Words about war

I just read "Playing with War" at GlobalGuerrillas, a pretty interesting take on warfare in the 21st century.

And I was reminded of an old column that Michael Ventura wrote, "Lessons from Guernica":

War is how civilizations make love and multiply, fructify, and become each other. And no one knows at war's outset what one side will absorb from the other.

Hard hitting commentary about Rumsfeld's recent speech

Wow, just watched MSNBC's Keith Olbermann deliver a forceful commentary about Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's speech last week to the American Legion. A quote:

From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelope this nation - he [Rumsfeld], Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have - inadvertently or intentionally - profited and benefited, both personally, and politically. And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor's New Clothes.

I rarely watch TV and would have missed this if I hadn't seen Richard Greene's post.

U.S. election guides

The New York Times has a pretty cool interactive election guide on their site.

Take some time to get informed about the races and ballot measures that will be decided in November. One place to start is USElections.com which has information on all fifty states. If you're a Californian, check out the voter guide from the California Voter Foundation.

And while you're at it, check out the Black Box Voting site which bills itself as "consumer protection for elections" and aims to educate the public about electronic voting machine issues and other related problems.

California to cut CO2 emissions by 25% by 2020

California's Democratic legislature and Republican governor have agreed to a groundbreaking plan to cut emissions of carbon dioxide within the state by 25% by 2020. While the global impact of the plan may be small in isolation, the legislation has the potential to spur other states to follow California's lead and to get the federal government into action as well.

To read more about this important step, read on.

An extraordinary week!

What an amazing week this has been... and what a magnificent life I am fortunate to have.

I have been in constant motion all week long, and it's been a total rush. It truly has been one of the most extraordinary weeks I've had in a long time.

Even more wonderful, I have been having conversations with other people who are also having miraculous experiences. My mother just called and shared with me something happening in her life. She's a participant in Landmark Education's Wisdom Course, and part of her coursework is to take on an initiative in which she brings a distinction of Landmark's curriculum into her community. She chose "generosity" for her initiative, and today she shared with me a particular conversation in which she was generous in her acknowledgment of someone else.

As soon as she began to speak, I found myself crying, even before I heard what she had to say. I was immediately aware that the person I was listening to was a woman more powerful than my mother had ever been. I could hear the breakthrough in her voice, not as a momentary burst of excitement, but as a now deep-rooted grounding in her true self. It was incredibly moving.

All week long I have been living in a sea of what is possible in the world, engaging in conversations with people about what they want out of their lives. I am finding in myself a hugely expanded ability to hear people, to really be with them. And what a miraculous experience it is... over and over and over in conversation I have been reminded of the Nelson Mandela "child of god" quote in which he says, "And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

I became aware this week that something has fundamentally shifted in my life since my trip to Costa Rica. I feel bigger in the world and full of energy. I feel as if I matured ten years in the course of a week, and I do mean matured in the best possible sense. Free to own all of my gifts, free to step into everything that I am capable of. Free to stretch myself to be bigger than I know myself to be. And willing to enage life full on and challenge myself as I've never done.

I have never been one to plan very far ahead, but this week I found myself looking at what training I wanted to take on in 2008. That's a radical act for me. :-)

THIS WEEK MARKS A HUGE MILESTONE IN MY LIFE. I was hired by two people as a life coach; they are my first paying clients. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with both of them. While having lunch with my friend Kiko this week, I realized another wonderful benefit of becoming a life coach is that I only have to work with people that I want to work with. How awesome is that?

Today is Friday, September 1, and it's Labor Day weekend. Whether it's a three day weekend for you or you find yourself working throughout it, I invite you all to take on your life joyfully and passionately. Step beyond where you normally stop. Love every moment. Don't hold back anything.

As Helen Keller said, "Life is a daring adventure, or nothing." Live it!