Spring 2007 is the time to launch. Any later is too late. January is fine. February is fine. March is fine. April is getting late.
Any time in 2006 is too early. Nancy Pelosi will deserve the time to celebrate. Go on another listening tour before you announce. Get "permission" from your constituents in New York. They will be better off with you as president than as Senator.
It is the American dream, stupid sounds too much like 1992. Let's try something new. This should also appeal to the policy wonk in you. There is a need for a rethink on education, a rethink on health, a rethink on most everything. Let there be a flood of new ideas.
Some lefty looney described Secretary of State Colin Powell early in his term as a "house slave," and Powell said the critic was referring to "another era." JFK was the first non-WASP president, but that was another era. I don't think the first woman president needs to worry about her physical safety along the same lines.
But your style is not Bill Clinton's. Don't change. Your style works. Your style is different. Your style is yours. Don't shake too many hands. There are other ways of connecting. The best way is delivering on the promises.
Give the country four years to adjust on the first woman president thing. Then shake as many hands as you might want during reelection.
The idea is to best harvest votes. Gender is important. But it can not be allowed to overshadow all other concerns. Gender and other social issues need to take their rightful space. That also applies to gay rights. If the social issues drown out the mainstream economic issues, the progressives lose and the progressive causes get hurt.
If I am fiercely progressive, it is for social reasons. Don't get me wrong. But making all the right noise is less important than getting hold of the levers of power to get things done, also on social issues.
Even if gender is an issue, your best contribution will be to win. So don't let gender policy drown out the rest of your message. Hillary Clinton as president can have only so much positive gender impact on the system. But that impact can be much greater if women get organized at the grassroots. The masses of women will have to take responsibility and respond.
Strong On Defense Is A Plus
Can't win without it. War On Terror. Long War. Whatever you call it, it is the same magnitude as the Cold War. And it will only conclude after every country in the Arab world is turned into a democracy. There has to be a progressive way to spread democracy that competes with the wasteful, ineffective neocon way.
The military option can not be ruled out, but it has to be minimized as much as possible, and when it is used, it has to be used smart. You go in lean and thin, you go in smart. You use human intel to penetrate their organizations.
Education, Health, And The Information Age
There is a need for a fundamental rethink here. The country needs help, needs leadership that will take it to the Information Age. The Information Age beckons. That is good news.
You are looking at an era of a billion college graduates on the planet. You are talking free, online, ad-supported textbooks.
Health care reform is about introducing market forces into the sector. Prices would go down like for computers if the health care sector were being driven by market forces. You instead have oligopolies, these bizarre matrix of niche monopolies, ossified corporate bureaucracies.
You were right in 1993 on health care. Now the rest of them will need to catch up with you. Only this time I urge you to keep the debate open, public at all stages. Invite in the opponents. Let them make their case publicly. Invite in the people. And ultimately take the tough decisions.
The Information Age asks for lifelong education and universal health. Because the Information Age puts the onus on human capital.
Dot Com Boom Part 2
I was part of part 1 in a small way. I still can smell the fever. I call it progressive market zeal. Progressives are not only pro choice, and anti racism and for the environment, and all that, progressives also are the ones who dream up the companies of tomorrow, create the jobs of tomorrow.
Stay Pragmatic On Gender And Race
Delegate. Let the spectrum gurus work these two big social issues.
Bill Clinton Is An Asset, That Guy Is Elvis, Pele, What Have You
Al Gore made the mistake of not using Bill Clinton in 2000. Don't repeat. And he does not always have to be in the foreground, although he is always eager to be unleashed on crowds.
Noone can give you better advice. And you know it. He is your guy for all twists and turns. He is the ultimate political animal.
Know On Day One, You Will Win
Rather McCain than some rabid right winger. I respect McCain. He deserves an honorable defeat.
But have the confidence. Exude the confidence.
Obama Is Not Too Young, He Is Not Too Black, He Is Not Too Senatey
I recommend him for running mate. He is half white. He is whip smart. He has your kind of charisma.
You represent the Mid West, the South, the North East. He represents Hawaii, the Mid West, and Kenya. And Left Coast is a piece of cake. You are white, you are a woman. He is half white, half black, he is a man. The arithmetic looks great to me.
He is not baggage material. He is presidential material. That is the number one thing you want to look for in a running mate.
And Mark Warner would make into a great Education Secretary. He has done some good work with the schools in Virginia.
People are going to want to know, how will you help them make more money. And that is only fair of them to do. This is extra true for people in the income brackets most likely to vote for you.
The 1992 people can come in handy.
This Is Not 1992
Get a new team. Get your own team. Keep most of the 1992 bunch in the background. They pulled a classic win in 1992, one for the textbooks, and you were part of it, a big part, but this is time for a fresh start, a fresh team.
The race thing comes in many flavors. There is the personal space. And there is the public space. When I talk up race in a political way, my concern is the public space. Corporations qualify. Political offices qualify. If Blacks and Latinos and Asians are 25% of the country, they should be 25% of the composition all the way to the top, up the political space, up the corporate space. Anything else is problematic.
Considering most of the wealth is created in the private sector, most of the jobs are, I am going to take the productivity angle. It is so obvious to me that a corporate structure devoid of glass walls and ceilings will be more productive and will beat the competition, perhaps there have to be entrepreneurial efforts to that effect. Entrepreneurs should see market opportunity in the social justice theme.
So a person's performance gets measured with a whole bunch of numbers. There are matrices involved. My fascination with the IC vision is partly to do with this suggestion. Perhaps I can create a corporate entity that looks like the globe.
That entrepreneurship also applies to the political space. People who can't vote are virgin markets. You work to get them to be able to vote, and that is so many more votes for your camp. And beyond that is for the political entrepreneurs to come up with new permutations and combinations. You harvest votes, and in the process people who vote for you end up more empowered than they were before. They give you votes, you give them power.
Nothing personal, strictly business.
NYC
This city is special. The idea of earning voting rights for the 40,000 Nepalis in the city is appealing. The first goal has to be specific, and achievable, but that first goal has to be a small part of a broader vision. The whole idea of citizenship and voting rights has to be redone in this era of globalization. America's cultural diversity is what will keep it number one. It is time the country stopped acting like it were ashamed of its number one strength.
I have also been sending the message to my crowd that we should use new media and self generated rich, multimedia content on the web to possibly take the lead. You don't have to be a numerically big crowd to take the lead. You just have to offer quality leadership. The message transmits itself at lightning speed if it has oomph.
Politics, Business, Academia, Media
Fish from the Hudson can end up in the East River because the two are really one body of water. I feel the same way about my ongoing interests in these various fields. Each feeds on the other. And there are times when you focus on one like a laser beam. The rest are put on hold temporarily. Blogging makes that possible. You are not even on hold. The latest of what you have to say on a particular topic is still there for anyone to access, fresh to the first time consumers.
So when you do political work on voting rights for the Nepalis in the city, that is also market research for the future buyers of the IC machine. It is definitely work towards the Nepali Convention 2007 that is a business project. (April Convention Venue Options 1, April Convention Market Research 1)
21st Century
This has to feel like a departure. I keep myself sharp on race and gender the best I can because that is one of the best ways to prepare for group dynamics in a corporate setting also. Can you see the details? The more details you can see, better positioned you are to beat the competition. Can you appreciate the complexity, can you appreciate the multi-dimensional realities of race and gender? If you can't, you are at a major wealth creation disadvantage.
The Tetris Effect
If there are fewer layers from top to bottom, there are fewer ceilings, glass or not. Globalization and the internet make it possible to design corporate structures that have fewer numbers of layers. If your worker could be anywhere in the world, can come online and work, if your factory could be in Taiwan or Mexico or China or India, if your market is the entire planet, you don't have the option to have a sick heart and be at the top, I guess. Ends up costing you money. You hurt your bank account.
Face Time, Screen Time
There will never perhaps be a substitute for face time. But people who see the two as two different universes with perhaps different laws of physics kind of throw me off balance. I see the two as a continuum.
India, China
For someone like me who came to America when in his 20s, I draw a lot of political sustenance from the muscular economic growths of India and China. I think that is what makes my perspective on race fundamentally different to that of the African Americans. And there is a part of me that tells me even those African Americans will have to face the fact that the economic plight of Africa has a direct relationship to their political status in America, and so they might as well take an active, keen interest.
Flies, Asteroids
People who make petty racists comments will still show up here and now. You ignore, you swat, you move on. They are missing the action. It is perhaps a choice.
Movies
India produces three times as many movies per year as America. So the form of racism I find the most amusing is where it gets suggested that because you are not white, and came from a different country, you perhaps mistake the movies for reality. O-k-a-y.
Like this older white man told an African friend of mine once, here, let me show you how this icecream machine works. The guy felt like he was trying to be nice. He was being racist.
Timeframe Analysis
That is what you do to determine racist words and actions.
Non-Traditional Career
My share.
Thin Air
Wealth is literally created out of thin air. So is power.
"We are spending $8 billion a month in Iraq. That's $2 billion each week, $267 million each day, or $11 million each hour. For what we spend in three weeks, we could make needed improvements in order to properly secure our public transportation systems. For what we spend in five days, we could put radiation detectors in all of our ports. And for two days in Iraq, we could screen all air cargo." -- Howard Dean
You are waging a war at the cost of $100,000 a minute. Over $320 billion gone. Poof.
You have cost 2500 American lives.
You have cost more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.
You went in saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When it was proven beyond doubt that that was not the case, you invented a few new missions. You fabricated intelligence before the mission, you fabricated the mission statement after the early one went awry on you.
Terrorist organizations are stronger not weaker today. They have continued to strike with an eery regularity, in different parts of the world, including India.
You started on the wrong foot. War is not a weapon of first resort.
You threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran. That thought should not even cross the mind.
There was miscalculation after miscalculation after miscalculation.
Saddam was accused of costing 100,000 Iraqi lives. Bush did the same thing.
Big Defense is making money. Poor kids are losing lives.
You destroy the infrastructure. That attack costs you big money. The destroyed infrastructure is big money. And then you profess to rebuild some of it through no-bid contracts to your cronie companies that get paid way more than the local market price. Money sense? Harvard MBA?
Now there is talk of civil war. You destroy a state structure in its entirety. And create a vacuum. And the replacement is not to be seen. No wonder.
Do the Iraqis see freedom? Or do they feel occupation?
Why is the Arab street so opposed to the offensive in Lebanon, to the war in Iraq? Are hundreds of millions of Arabs dumb, and primitive and wrong? Or is it just Bush who is so?
The war has made worse the anti-Arab racism in America. Is that meant as a fodder to the right wing?
Sen. Barack Obama Says Iraq Is "A DumbWar" All Headline News sharp criticism of the Bush administration and Congress ..... Iraq is, "A dumb war. We haven't thought it through." .... enemies in Iran and North Korea, along with terrorist groups bent on doing the United States harm, are getting stronger while the U.S. is bogged down in Iraq. ..... chastised Democrats who are always opposed to war, even when force is necessary. In cases like World War II and, more recently, removing the Taliban government of Afghanistan, war can be the only option, with Obama saying, "There are real enemies out there and we have to face them." ..... expressed opposition of eliminating the tax on estates altogether. .... "After $7 million, the family farm is going to be OK. That's my sense," Obama said..... the single most important factor in job creation is education. ..... "A high school education doesn't cut it anymore." The war in Iraq is a “dumbwar,” Think Progress, DC THE BUZZ THE BUZZ Kansas City Star, MO A Hidden Problem WNY Media Network, NY Know Who Your Friends Are American Thinker, AZ
I showed up yesterday. They asked for my ID at the gate. Don't I look old enough? I am past 30 for sure. I don't eat much. It is a lazy bone thing.
The downstairs was crowded. The event was upstairs. They would not let me in. I was a few minutes early. They had not started to check people in yet.
I had this lingering feeling I had not been to a DFNYC event in a long time. This was not strictly a DFNYC event. But the organization was one of the sponsors.
Heather Woodfield passed by as I was seeping beer. "It's upstairs." She looked dead serious. Then Leila Noor. And she looked dead serious. "We were to get both floors, but they messed up." And because Leila talked to me, the "guard" let me in before time. Some people have friends in high places. I had a friend upstairs, it appeared.
A familiar faced lady was checking people in, a DFNYC person. "What's your name?" "Bhagat. You mean last name?" "No, first name." "Paramendra." "There you are." "You owe 20."
I had paid 15 online.
I went in. The crowd was thin. I decided to walk to a few tables. There were these two young ladies. Natasha, and Shawna. Never seen them before. The conversation did not pick. I headed to the next one. There was this Indian looking woman - "I have been to India twice" - and a blonde who looked like a starlet. She was. Heather Tom. She was the featured person for the evening. I did not put two and two together until much later. I had visited her website but did not recognize. She looks much more beautiful in person. I don't know what she is a star of, but she must be someone famous.
At that table also the conversation did not take off. So I moved to the next. "Ravi." "Oh, so you are Indian?" "That is my mother." White lady. "Did you adopt him?" "I'd have if he were not born to me!" "Julie." "Daughter in law."
Jewish New Yorker married to an Indian diplomat.
"You should go talk to the women," she suggested.
"I tried twice. It did not work. What do you say?"
"You say, Hi, how is it going?"
"Tried. Didn't work."
"Then say, Don't I know you from somewhere!"
I got up. I spotted Farez Qureshi. So it is the same guy, I thought. We touched base. It appears he knows Dana Northcraft. There was a little of how do you know her, how do you know her. And this ACLU lawyer lady he was talking to. She was feeling a little self conscious. "I might be the oldest person here." "That is a non issue. And besides, that is not true."
And then it happened, the gelling. Farez moved out of the circle. And first one, then two, then one more woman came along. And the conversation really took off. These four women and me. One was an organizer for the event. Adrian. The whole thing just gelled. And it was a wonderful conversation. "I grew up in a part of the world where women have it real tough. So I feel the need to make up for it. That is why I am here." "Actually I am here because I am a staunch supporter of Hillary 2008." "I almost did not come. Then I came." "The person who sold me the ticket, I cost her so much time, I felt guilty, and I came." "Oh, so you are from Nepal? Do you miss family?" "No. We talk all the time, online for free." "But Hillary will not win. They say Rudy might run." "I hope Rudy runs. Hillary can beat the crap out of him." "So that is your friend Amy you were talking about?" "You from Connecticut? Rhode Island? I been to Rhode Island." "All these right wing young white boys in DC. All of them are so short, and wear funny shirts, cut by the arm. It is like they got rejected at their high school proms and they never got over it." "I am one of the organizers." "This crowd is too small. Not enough money got raised." "You think there are a hundred people? That is more than 5,000 dollars." "Not enough." "What did she say? What did she say?"
Reminded me of my first year at college. A fresh off the boat foreigner. The college newspaper deputy editor said, "Do you notice how when the girls are talking to Paramendra they are really really happy!" All that was before the Kentucky Rednecks in various age groups, various shapes and sizes descended upon me after I poked into the religious hornet nest as a freshman elected student body president. "We should stop calling Berea a Christian college." In a speech to the entire faculty.
And then flash. Somebody just took a picture. It was Tracey Denton. She snapped her guy and the guy's male friend. I had this eery feeling I might have ended up in a corner of the picture. Going by the in your face flash. Me and my group were right behind the posing duo.
There is this chill phase between me and the DFNYC. Funny. A lot of water has gone down the Hudson. That was the first group I sought out after I moved to the city, before I sought out any of the Nepali groups.
I could just go down the list of people. Specific words, specific actions.
Like Dan Jacoby. The guy is a total asshole. He has made a racist comment every single time we have interacted. Like I am making small talk at this DFNYC Mixer - one where T snapped my picture with a black dude from Boston - with a young woman Austrain Green Party sympathizer journalist and Jacoby walks past, and I introduce him to her, and the guy makes this ugly hip gesture, and says something to the effect I should seek opportunities in the porn industry if the idea is to make money. The weird part is he feels somewhere along the way we bonded and became friends. Loser. Like he found me at this Laughing Liberally event as the April Revolution was raging in Nepal. "We did not have to send in the troops, did we!" I had to restrain myself. Noone knows you in Washington DC, bugger, don't flatter yourself. Who the fuck is we!
Josh Skaller and Heather Woodfield organized for me a date with an "Asian" a few weeks after it went public I had expressed "interest" in Denton. The highlight was his "long nails" comment to her. The story must have spread. Because I have had hints from a few others how it is all okay. Friends go out to eat. We do that at our university among students. I went for lunch with Wesley Clark. As in it is a political thing. Can't take offense.
It is an iceberg thing. The white male's cobra strike. It is like during an early month, Heather and I are at this bar on our way from the East Village LinkUp to the After LinkUp, just the two of us - she needed to drop off some campaign posters to the bar owner - and there is this white asshole male from Texas at the bar. The guy just can't stand it that I am with a white woman, the facts be damned. He hit on her.
Like I am at this party in Lexington, KY, my sophomore year, with a Scandinavian girl, a drive away from the college, and this white asshole male proceeds to hit on her for the sole reason that she is with me. She looks puzzled and gives me this look.
Or this redneck at the college food service. I am with a friend - girl - sitting at a table, whiling away. And the asshole pushes his chair between our chairs. His mother never taught him table manners. Mofo.
This is not romance. This is politics. The romance department goes like this. I am a Buddhist. The concept of soul does not exist. So it is not a soulmate thing. A relationship is a decision. That two people take. Cobra strikes only work when two people have not, or do not intend, or are not interested in taking the decision. But they are always always always relevant politically.
So when the cobra strike is a pattern, you are not dealing with humanity. It is more like physics. Like Josh Skaller at this DFNYC debate in Brooklyn. I ask a gender question. "What will it take to get more women in Congress?" He speaks his first sentence to me in months. He comes next to me and requests if I will please ask an enviroment question. That is what white men are like. Gender talk is taboo. And that right there is the opening counter strike to the cobra strikes. I am in. I am up for the challenge. I am angling for the fight. The April Revolution did something to me. It is like I got my voice back. I can talk again like during my freshman year.
Or poor old Abhishek Mistry. The token Indian at DFNYC. There was a time when people talked to me "through" him. There is mild racism. And there is mild internalized racism. Internalizing racism feels like too much work. I don't know how to do it. I am lazy like that.
Lewis Cohen. He has been getting my cold shoulder. Last two events where he found me. DL21C events. He makes small talk with Tom Daschle, Daschle obviously recognizes him, and Cohen makes the point, and then turns around and looks at me. As in, don't you know who I am! (Tom Daschle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) I don't give a fuck. Some of my fanciest comrades from the April Revolution are cab drivers in the city. If you want to impress me politically, show traction. Don't pull your white male stunts and expect me to get impressed. I lose respect. Like Larry Ellison said, I believe in random acts of kindness towards complete strangers, but that don't apply to my enemies. (Larry Ellison - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Cohen Sirs me. Now that's my kind of white male. There is this brief thaw. But only brief. If I see him again, I will explain the cold to him. If it is worth his time, or this is a big city.
If you are white, and you make a racist comment, I figure you are white, and you need to stay out of my face. But if you claim to be political, and you claim to be progressive, and I don't care what color you are, if you make a racist comment, I know you are not in the game. You are a novice, you must be some hobbyist. How can you be so blind to the political contours!
DFNYC stands out as an organization. I have tried them all. And Tracey Denton is a big part of it. She is amazing with face time. I have witnessed this many times. She is at some DFNYC gathering. And she leaves. And half the room leaves behind her. Reminds me of when they drive the jeeps on the mud roads near my homevillage. The dust follows. Half the time I can tell what she is doing, the mechanics, but I will have to work hard to get there myself, and I might not be able to. My specialty is screen time, with the face time in the works. She is so good at reading faces there have been times I have felt like saying, when you do all the talking, you feel like you had a conversation.
Like the last time she talked at me. Howard Dean had showed. It was a Mixer. She walked out with Dean. The dust followed the jeep, but some of us stayed back. (Dean, DFNYC, Daily Kos, Justin, Brooklyn, Nepal) I was talking to Maya. Denton apparently came back. And she was in her own corner. There were few people around. Maya left. Then I got up. And I walked over to the corner where T was running her show, holding court.
And she showed me the rainbow coalition looking straight at me. First it is, I am not engaged. Then it is, I have told my boyfriend we are not both going to be back at 6 PM. Then it is, my parents said if ____ and I were to break up, they are going with him. Then it is. Then. And then, something about like in the movies. Then something about professionalism. A leg movement. Then how her boyfriend speaks a few languages, and it is easier for someone like that to learn yet another language. She tried Dutch, I guess.
And she looks down. And I feel uneasy. And I move away to where Cohen is holding court: that guy barely talks. She gets up. She announces she has a newsletter to write before the end of the day. "Can I go now?" Cohen gets asked. The guy feels a surge of power.
"Did he screw you at his blog!" (Tracey Denton Of DFNYC) The slimey piece of shit actually began the evening with pleasant talk. And then she leaves, looking a little puzzled herself.
That particular blog entry has been a stickler. I never understood why. But I would rather have my blog than DFNYC events, by a wide margin.
Murderball. Bumped into Denton here a few days later.
When the spectrum goes from "I am not engaged" to you make me feel uneasy, the safe thing to do is to realize you have grown out of the organization. Especially when you are getting busy: Community Center Idea: A Few Options.
Too bad we are in the chill part. She feels uneasy.
I have a failed marriage in the past. I have a really complicated relationship with my brother in law who lives in the city, and it is bordering towards a non relationship. I have not seen my parents in a decade. I feel like a relative of mine who as a kid went to the train station in town and asked himself the question, I wonder where these train tracks go. He ended up in Assam.
I guess I don't have too many bragging rights on the personal front. Like Larry Ellison said once, I obviously failed as a Dad.
But then there is the safety issue, and there is the race issue. Like this girl at college, she took me through a college judicial hearing because I asked her out, and later told my now ex, then girlfriend that maybe I did not like her because her breasts are too small. Maybe she did not like the asking out happened over email. My enemies in the college administration used her to get even with me. I had challenged their power. I have not even started.
Email, phone, face time: they are a continuum. But if guys are instrumental, and women are more relational, I can see how email can feel instrumental.
Somewhere along the way, I became a public figure. Your reality changes a little when that happens. Parts of it get surreal. There are two basic furnaces in the mind. One is to do with curiosity, another to do with sex. If the crowd is an organism, it churns both ways. Inviduals the crowd identifies with become vocabulary to express the crowd's churns.
But the public figure part is so easy to walk away from in a big city. It is so easy to walk two blocks and become a nobody.
Mostly it is just fascination. Political reality, all political reality, is fascinating.
Cohen broke ice. Barely. Denton walked by a few times. She looked dead serious. If she had met eyes, I would have said hello, for ole' times' sake.
At the Tom Daschle event, Leila is like "you and Tracey should talk."
"Talk about what?" That was not supposed to be a smartaleck question. It was a plain question.
"She is a great person."
"She is a great political talent ..... During the April Revolution, there was this one village in the middle of nowhere. All the women in that village came out into the streets banging their pots and pans, chanting No More Cooking, No More Cooking ..... noone planned that, it just happened, it was spontaneous."
Then there was speech making. Dana Northcraft. And Heather Tom.
Then I bumped into this guy. He works at the same firm as Leila he told me. A Law School friend of his came along. That is when Cohen Sirs me. And these two guys look at me. They are impressed. They feel like they are in the company of greatness. I got taken by surprise. I did not show up to say hello to Cohen. But I did.
It is a decent thing to do. The active ingredients of DFNYC deserve to have their leg room. I got my own. I inhabit an alternate reality. We are talking voting rights among the Nepalis in New York City.
But what really floats my boat is the IC idea. It is not even Hillary 2008. I am going entrepreneurial. I am a netizen. Rupert Murdoch says he has always been an outsider, for a reason. You don't join clubs. It is called out of the box thinking. Politeness makes you numb.
By the way, I thought a theme for Hillary 2008: This Is A New Century. Like Bill Clinton had "It is the economy, stupid!"
And as for race, it is just work. You are in the business of selling ideas. It is not like you meet your kind, and there is amazing bonding. You have no idea about the ethnic stuff I deal with.
There are people who can't vote. You are still getting them to do things that will earn them the right to vote. And there are those with votes, but lack the power. You are trying to earn their votes. It is a market share thing.
There is the personal, and there is the political. The personal is one person at a time. The political comes in floods.
I am no authority on the abortion issue although I have instinctively supported the position since day one, which would be when I was at high school in Kathmandu and Bill Clinton showed up on the radar to run for president.
I personally don't know anyone who has had an abortion. Or noone who knows me who has had one has told me about it.
The Maoists in Nepal have been staunch supporters of abortion rights since their day one.
For me it has been primarily a white women issue. It tickles me as an issue for a few different reasons. One, it is one of those I did my good deed for the day things. Two, I feel like if I am to expect white women to support me on race issues, I should express solidarity on the gender issues. Three, we live in a sexist world. I am delighted when women get together and take offense on at least something. I maintain the agenda is far too narrow. But it is a start. Women should be angry.
Leila Noor has worked on me for this event. The last time I discussed race with her - and she is half black - I might have thrown her a little off balance. But then I cost her so much time overall, I felt like I should go just for that reason. If I was going to express solidarity with white women, it would have to be some other way, I thought. Nepal never tickled them last year. Nepal is Montana to them. They were too busy thinking of my blog as "The Onion" last year. My three main blogs are serious stuff.
But now I am kind of eager to go. I have not been to a DFNYC event in a long time, but I still get an occasional email from the DFA site, so I guess I am still a member. I thought that meant I could go in for free. But I have been told it is $35, as opposed to $50, a discount. The host committee has some of the usual names, some of the political hobbyists at DFNYC. There is an Adam Noor, and going by last name I wonder if that would be Leila Noor's brother. And there is a Farez Qureshi. Someone of that name used to come to one of my Entrepreneur MeetUps. I wonder if that is the same guy. And there is Susan Sarandon. That is a big one. I wonder if she will show, or she just shared her good name.
But then this is not that hard of a fight. The ban is on its way to getting overturned.
I have actually been to South Dakota. How many people can say that? It looked a pretty harmless state when I was passing through. What did I know? Looked like noone lives there. Hardly anyone. Who says a small group of people can't make a difference? Them back there, they have sparked a national debate.
I find these small population, remote states kind of exotic. Like Montana. Poll after poll there shows the number one issue there is terrorism. I don't think Bin Laden's knowledge of geography is so good that he has ever heard of Montana.
