ideapalooza blog

The following passage could be the most beautiful thing I have ever read.

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.  I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.  I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon.  I want to know if you have touched the center of your won sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!  I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.  I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true.  I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.  I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy.  I want to know if you can see beauty even if it’s not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from God’s presence.  I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the liver moon, ‘Yes!’

It doesn’t interest me where you live or how much money you have.  I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary, bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are, how you came to be here.  I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.  I want to know what sustains you from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself; and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

- The Invitation, inspired by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Native American Elder, May 1994

How did a completely unknown democratic candidate in South Carolina win his parties nomination for congress? Alvin Greene held no fundraisers, ran no paid advertisements, made no campaign speeches, had no established platform, hired no campaign manager, conducted no state wide tours, attended no Democratic Party events, printed no yard signs and did not even establish a web site.

Many have postulated many theories but they have overlooked a subtlety.  The spelling of Greene’s name (with the letter ‘e’ at the end) is uniquely African American.  Greene, spelled Green predominately with whites and Greene predominately for blacks, allowed black voters to know instantly Alvin Greene was African American.

In Greene’s district, the demographic spread of all eligible voters ranges from 10-70% African American by county.  The majority of Democrat voters in these counties is African American.  You can view the correlating statistical spread here.

The final premise to overcome then is this:  knowing now that Alvin Greene is black because of the spelling of his name, would this mean that African American voters would vote for him simply because of the color of his skin?  Just ask Barack Obama, who received 96% of the African American vote, and you have your answer.

Todd Smith
@ideapalooza
ideapalooza.com

In November of 2008 I created the Barack Obama Promise Tracker,  an excel file cataloging 895 campaign promises that I personally culled from all of Mr. Obama’s speeches and his undated internet published Plan for America. This excel file is downloadable, shareable, contains links to original sources and has a keyword search function.

So how is he doing?  Depends who you ask.  Most people feel like he is breaking most if not all of his promises.  This is because he is breaking the most popular and publicized promises.  The media, of course, spends days breaking down the broken promises and barely, if at all, mentions his kept promises.

A look at the numbers show he has kept 26% of his promises thus far; broken 13%; and either has no action, pending action, or stalled action on 61%.  He is scoring poorly on promise keeping in categories such as Economy and Ethics and scoring well in social spending categories such as Energy, Family, Health Care, and Urban Policy.

What is stunning and bears mentioning is that a full 12% of his kept promises thus far (HALF!) were funded with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) signed and passed into law on February 17th, 2009.  As a reminder, the massive, 2200 page ARRA Stimulus Bill was introduced only 6 days after inauguration and 80 days after his election as a jobs bill.  Boy, somebody worked through the Christmas and New Year holidays.  This figure of promises funded with ARRA Stimulus money is corroborated on the St. Petersburg Times website, Politifact.

This excel file is unequivocal objective proof that the ARRA Stimulus Bill was a promise keeper bill, not a jobs bill as positioned.  Obama’s campaign promises never centered around jobs but social spending.  We did not need a stimulus bill or a jobs bill in September of 2008.   Either it was the intention of the new government to spend massive amounts of money all along OR they created the poor economy as an excuse to spend massive amounts of money. This excel file proves the guise of needing the stimulus for jobs was a lie.  It was planned all along that this money for social programs was to be spent.  The rapidity of its authorship along with the amount of pre-economic collapse promises funded with this bill proves this fact.

Todd
July 15, 2010
@ideapalooza
ideapalooza.com