Two Recent Entries From My Autobiography
Planetary Travel
Coming To America
In The News
India unveils free trade policy with Africa The Tide
Italy faces post-election stalemate International Herald Tribune
The World Bank: World Hunger Growing Voice of America
Food Price Surge Could Mean ‘7 Lost Years’ in Poverty Fight ...
Officials Tell How Sect in West Texas Was Raided New York Times
Google gains from Yahoo-Microsoft takeover drama: analysts AFP
BT Considers UK WiMAX network The Telecom
Is Windows Getting Morbidly Obese? TechNewsWorld
MySpace Signs Deal to Aim Its Content for Overseas TV New York Times
MySpaceTV Inks Distribution Deal For Original Programming
Maoists ahead in early Nepal counting Hindustan Times
A Day After Voting, Nepal Starts Counting
Murdered Pregnant Women: The Racial Divide
Obama Campaign Plans to Hit At McCain's Age U.S. News & World Report
Begala: 'Nothing but contempt' for Clinton adviser Penn
Does Obama Have A Catholic Problem?
Bill Richardson speaks (and yes, he almost endorsed Hillary Clinton)
The Story of Barack Obama's Mother Time Barack Obama's mother was at least a dozen things. S. Ann Soetoro was a teen mother who later got a Ph.D. in anthropology; a white woman from the Midwest who was more comfortable in Indonesia; a natural-born mother obsessed with her work; a romantic pragmatist ...... a certain recklessness. I think she was always searching for something ...... "She cried a lot," says her daughter Maya Soetoro-Ng, "if she saw animals being treated cruelly or children in the news or a sad movie—or if she felt like she wasn't being understood in a conversation." ....... Her research was responsible and penetrating. .... "My choosing to put down roots in Chicago and marry a woman who is very rooted in one place probably indicates a desire for stability that maybe I was missing." ...... a parent who gazed at different cultures the way other people study gems. ...... Born in 1942, just five years before Hillary Clinton .... Kansas to California to Texas to Washington—before her 18th birthday ..... Although Stanley was accepted early by the University of Chicago, her father wouldn't let her go. ...... He was one of the first Africans to attend the University of Hawaii and a focus of great curiosity. He spoke at church groups and was interviewed for several local-newspaper stories. "He had this magnetic personality," remembers Neil Abercrombie, a member of Congress from Hawaii who was friends with Obama Sr. in college. "Everything was oratory from him, even the most commonplace observation." ....... everyone was of the opinion that everyone wanted to hear their opinion—no one more so than Barack. ...... But when people called Hawaii a "melting pot" in the early 1960s, they meant a place where white people blended with Asians. At the time, 19% of white women in Hawaii married Chinese men, and that was considered radical by the rest of the nation. ....... Obama's father had an agenda: to return to his home country and help reinvent Kenya. He wanted to take his new family with him. But he also had a wife from a previous marriage there ....... "He was a man of his time, from a very patriarchal society." ..... There was no electricity, and the streets were not paved. ...... eating tofu and tempeh like all the other kids, playing soccer and picking guavas from the trees. He didn't seem to mind that the other children called him "Negro" ..... At first, Obama's mother gave money to every beggar who stopped at their door. ...... The couple fought rarely but had less and less in common. "She wasn't prepared for the loneliness," Obama wrote in Dreams. "It was constant, like a shortness of breath." ........ He was the only foreigner ..... she had a healthy skepticism of religion as an institution ..... Her aspirations for racial harmony were simplistic. .... gave her daughter, who was born in 1970, dolls of every hue: "A pretty black girl with braids, an Inuit, Sacagawea, a little Dutch boy with clogs," says Soetoro-Ng, laughing. "It was like the United Nations." ...... Indonesia is an anthropologist's fantasyland. It is made up of 17,500 islands, on which 230 million people speak more than 300 languages. The archipelago's culture is colored by Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Dutch traditions. ...... As with Obama's father, she kept in regular contact with Lolo ..... In Indonesia, Ann joked to friends that her son seemed interested only in basketball. "She despaired of him ever having a social conscience" ...... she spoke up forcefully at staff meetings ...... "She had, compared with other foundation colleagues, a much more eclectic circle," Zurbuchen says. "She brought unlikely conversation partners together." ........ neither of them remembers her talking about sexism or racism. "She spoke mostly in positive terms ...... A single mother of biracial children pursuing a career, she foreshadowed, in some ways, what more of America would look like. ..... Ann's most lasting professional legacy was to help build the microfinance program in Indonesia, which she did from 1988 to '92—before the practice of granting tiny loans to credit-poor entrepreneurs was an established success story. ....... Today Indonesia's microfinance program is No. 1 in the world in terms of savers, with 31 million members ...... Ann's friends say she was delighted by his career move and started every conversation with an update of her children's lives. ...... All of us knew how brilliant he was ...... Before her death, Ann read a draft of her son's memoir, which is almost entirely about his father. Some of her friends were surprised at the focus, but she didn't seem obviously bothered. ....... "When Barack smiles," says Peluso, "there's just a certain Ann look. He lights up in a particular way that she did."
Liking What White People Like when it comes to race in America, nothing's quite that easy. .... deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them ........ a very specific slice of urban elitist white culture ...... another thing that white people like (#14), Having Black Friends ..... in general white people like to deny that there is such a thing as white culture ...... Turn on the TV: it's all stuff white people like. .... Stuff Educated Black People Like (#9 Town Homes; #16 Moving to Atlanta) and Stuff Asian People Like (#30 Cash; #46 Cutting in Line). ..... Stuff Mixed People Like .... Having "such good features!" ...... "that's part of the appeal of Barack Obama. He makes us think we can set aside these hang-ups, not by resolving them, just by getting past them and rising above them." .... Obama himself clocks in at #8 for Whites and #12 for Educated Blacks. And he's obviously #1 on our hypothetical list of Stuff Mixed People Like.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com
#70 Difficult Breakups
#66 Divorce
#26 Manhattan (now Brooklyn too!)
#11 Asian Girls
#8 Barack Obama
TIME Poll: Clinton Hangs Onto Lead in Pennsylvania enjoys a notably broader margin of support among white Democratic women: 56% to Obama's 25%.
Poll: Bush Public Approval at New Low
China's View of the Olympic Torch War The group formed last August and trained by running six miles daily. ..... "In any event you'd have protests ... but the scale became much bigger when interest groups knew beforehand that they would be guaranteed prime-time television coverage. ....... last week's huge, chaotic outpourings in London and Paris. ....... many ordinary Chinese see the protests as evidence of that the West aims to humiliate and control China ...... Chinese torchbearer Jin Jing, who uses a wheelchair, has emerged as a hero in the domestic press. Shanghai-based paper Oriental Morning Post wrote that when the "splittists made a move towards the torch, Jin Jing turned away and protected the torch with her body, while looking proud through the turmoil." ..... "From now on, we will fight for ourselves," one Chinese woman in San Francisco wrote in a Chinese Internet forum. "We know it is our ever-stronger motherland that's frightening the western world. It is our development and confidence that's causing them panic. From certain aspect, a new Chinese value has formed through the torch, and all the Chinese people are coming together once again."
Barack Obama Isn't Not Running for President
The Fight for Yahoo: Five Scenarios
Clinton sounds off over Obama TV ads Los Angeles Times The New York senator says the misleading spots have led to his rise in popularity in Pennsylvania. ...... Clinton's camp complained Wednesday that Sen. Barack Obama was trying to buy the Pennsylvania Democratic primary with an extensive television advertising campaign ....... Obama was narrowing Clinton's lead in the April 22 primary to within a few percentage points. ..... He also was pouring millions of dollars into the television advertising that prompted a furious, though low budget, response from the New York senator on the radio. ........ "Half the workforce is going to be black or brown" in a few decades, Obama said. "If those kids are not educated . . . they're the ones who are supposed to be paying our Social Security. If we haven't taken care of them, they won't take care of us."
New Pa. Poll Shows Race Tightening, but Clinton FOXNews Clinton leads Obama 44 percent to 38 percent ..... maintains a strong lead among white Democratic women, 56-25 percent ..... 26 percent of Clinton supporters say they will be more likely to vote for likely Republican nominee John McCain over Obama in the general election if Obama is the Democratic candidate. ..... Twenty percent of Pennsylvania Democrats are still undecided ...... Clinton has a history of ballot over-performance compared to polling under-performance.
Clinton says she's only one with war plan United Press International
Clinton Moves Colombian Trade Deal Center Stage Evening Bulletin
