Source: http://www.outsidersdc.com/index.htm

Barack Obama Has Already Accomplished What He Most Needed To Do:
Unite the majority of Americans, across lines that traditionally divided them,
towards the fulfillment of a common purpose. Now the citizenry, "We the
People," must refine that purpose into a clear blueprint, distill it into
achievable goals, and commit to their fulfillment. Goal Number One should be
a congratulatory examination of what "We the People" have matured into.

America's Maturation: Race and the Obama Presidency
President Obama raised the bar for all Americans and his victory quashes the
notion that race is a lock, or a key, to success. Because humans excel at
inventing reasons to discriminate against or hate each other, prejudice will
exist forever. If not focused on one's appearance, it will center on something
else. Fortunately, stupidity and unfairness are easily outsmarted, and
outmaneuvered, so nothing can stop an individual's progress except the
individual himself.

President Obama's success will inspire and motivate individual black
Americans, but not validate them. Another person's victory cannot be
consigned to oneself, and taking personal credit for the successes of your
ethnic group is fraudulent, unless you also take personal credit for your
group's failures (and assume responsibility for correcting them).

The Civil Rights Act gave black Americans full legal rights as citizens in 1964.
The "It's Up to You Now" memo, explaining that economic self-
empowerment is the only way to enforce and protect those rights, was,
unfortunately, never distributed. As a result, black Americans did not fully
engage the clutch of advancement, despite the engine of progress running at
full speed, a limitless fuel supply, and a wide-open road of opportunity.
Instead, the weight and inertia of the legacies of discrimination and slavery
caused them to figuratively sit in neutral:

"I see the accelerator and the shifter, and could use the steering wheel to
circumvent obstacles, but if I do that someone or something will probably
just stop me so I'll play it safe and stay here, or follow other people who look
like they might know where they are going, or perhaps wait for someone to
come and drive for me."

That sort of thing.

To accelerate forward as a nation, ideas of reparation, and feelings of white
guilt, must be abandoned partly because they impede progress, but mostly
because notions of victim and victimizer, oppressor and oppressed, are
irrelevant. In historically turbulent, sometimes abusive relationships, each
party requires understanding and support in order to righteously resolve their
issues, because each is a co-conspirator in creating, and perpetuating, those
issues.

The struggles, pain, and mistakes of previous generations were theirs. They
become ours only to learn from and build upon, not to emotionally resurrect
and relive. Depending on how intelligently we undertake them, our actions
today will be praised, or condemned, by those who follow us. In the end,
logic and common sense always prevail, so the smart thing for us to do is rely
on them to arrive at our desired destination much quicker, and much happier.

An easy exercise is to project ahead to the time when mutual respect
prevails on this planet. Visualize, and feel, how you perceive yourself and
others; how you behave towards them, and they towards you. Recall how
foolish and hateful people of the past (our present) were, and reflect on the
root causes of their attitudes and behaviors. Capture that image and bring it
back, perceiving and behaving now exactly as you did in the future.

Current realities will not change, but your reactions to them will, because you
will experience them in detached hindsight with less emotion, greater
understanding, and genuine compassion. You'll be surprised at how
effectively this works, if you make an earnest effort. As a bonus, you'll
become better equipped to prosper in our broken economy.

The Economy: Greed and Stupidity
The orderly collapse of the American economy is underway, no one knows
when it will end, what pattern the rubble will assume, how much will be
salvageable, and how much will become manure that fertilizes new ventures.

President Obama was polite in his inauguration speech when he said greed,
and a failure to make hard choices, were the causes of our economic woes.
Investment banks and other financial interests looted the country via their
bailout. The average American, equally caught up in the frenzy of quick
profits and/or equity in an insanely overvalued real estate market, helped
them do it.

The Obama administration's planned investment in infrastructure development
and Green energy production is essential, beneficial, and makes sense.
Injecting more capital into banks to pay for toxic assets, or bailing out
homeowners who knowingly bought overpriced property, does not.

The root problem is simple: Investment capital, like a river, needs a place to
flow and accumulate; otherwise it evaporates. When the Dot-Com bubble
burst, capital flowed into real estate. After real estate, it flowed into
commodities, however, that bucket was not big enough to hold it. Now the
money has nowhere else to go, and is evaporating through depreciating
prices and equity.

Persons who see opportunity, not tragedy, and adapt to it, will benefit
tremendously. The dinosaurs of the "old" economy are dying and new types
of business entities will feed on their corpses, and still-living bodies, as they
ascend to replace them.

The most successful of these entities will think and function collectively
through a "hive" mind and structure, as opposed to traditional, individualistic
hierarchies. The common good of the country, and planet, will be core
elements of their missions and mandates, and they will form new "rivers" of
investment capital that are bubble-proof because of safeguards inherent to
their structures. As no individual can prevail against a collective, they will be
formidable global competitors.

The current economic crisis hopefully will also cause Americans to examine
the value of their lifestyles, since this is what the majority have to look
forward to:

Go to work, eat, go shopping, eat, watch American Idol, eat, get married,
eat, be unhappy in marriage, eat, get drunk, eat, have kids, eat, buy a dog,
eat, send kids to college, eat, save for retirement, eat, die without spending
all retirement money. Kids repeat cycle.

How many Americans reach for, and achieve, the lofty aspirations they
proclaim as a birthright? How many fail because of needless barriers erected
against them? How many recognize that their shopping-centric lifestyle
reduces them to little more than walking credit scores? How many feel it is
justifiable to kill people around the world to protect freedoms squandered on
a mundane existence?

Unflattering, but also how the world, and many of ourselves, perceive us.
Restoring America's global stature will require more focus on transforming
ourselves, our values, and priorities, than on mending diplomatic fences.

America's Global Standing: Reinventing an Image
Advancing your interests sometimes requires you to set them aside,
particularly when the needs of other people outweigh your own. Hopefully
that will be one of the tenets of Hillary Clinton's "Smart Power," as Secretary
of State.

Apologizing for the boorishness of the Bush administration will not be enough.
America took a giant dump on the rest of the world and that mess must be
cleaned up diplomatically, and through a new paradigm of foreign relations
that integrates the American private sector into the development of a true
global community.

Building infrastructures, advancing technologies, and improving standards of
living in less-developed countries (without first bombing them into oblivion) is
a sure way to earn both friends and profit. A private sector version of the
Peace Corps with similar goals, but more innovative and efficient
implementation, would be an excellent conduit for the equitable exchange of
knowledge and resources between this country and others, to balance, and
optimize, living standards for all.

Eric Silver, Publisher
OutsidersDC

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2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

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Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

My two cents on where we are, where we have been, and where we can go.

__________________
2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

Nicely written. Don't agree with much of it.

You know what's funny? Back in 2006 when I predicted a Biden-Obama ticket, people said the exact same thing.

__________________
2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

You'd have been right if you'd predicted the Obama-Biden ticket.

Someone tells you that in two years you will have a black Ferrari and gray Aston Martin in your garage -- the Ferrari on the left and the Aston on the right. Two years later you have a gray Ferrari and a Black Aston Martin in your garage, and the Ferrari is on the rigt and the Aston is on the left.

Was the person really all that wrong? Is the end result not equally satisfying?

__________________
2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

300 million people make predictions every day. Some are right, some are wrong.

yesterday, Ma Kettle used the number of black hairs on her upper lip to choose a lottery ticket and she won.

A broken clock is right twice a day.

Nood more evidence?

Exelent article.

I agree.

Reminds me of the Gandhi quote.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

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When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

... and pay your taxes to pay for the change.

Nice article. I especially agree with the following:

BTW, you have a typo here:

__________________
2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

Nope, don't nood more evidence. (I couldn't resist.)

You can't be sour on Obama forever. He has managed to help bring out the best in people -- who are serious about change on this country.

__________________
2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

Good catch. Thanks.

__________________
2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

I'm not sour on President Obama. Look it up. He's somewhat less than the messiah. He's more than satan. You know: A human.

People have invested so much of their own aspirations in the poor guy that there is no possible way for him to satisfy everybody.

Whatever happens, I wish him well. Because I believe the things that will test him are unforeseen at this moment. The obvious things are the events that have already happened and we simply project them to the future. But that behavior defies reason. All we need to do to grasp that simple truth is look at the unpredicted events that have driven previous presidents to greatness or to the doghouse, but mostly somewhere in between.

Obama's defining crisis will be something nobody has foreseen as plausible, except perhaps some lonely writer who will recall a paragraph he wrote in some forgotten tome. That person will feel vindicated, forgetting all of the wrong predictions he made.

Botnst, you are missing the point. People are not relying, or having faith in Obama; they are relying on, and having faith in, themselves.

He is more of a coach. The American people, coming together, are the team on the field that is playing, and will "win" the game.

__________________
2008 E350 4matic / Black/Anthracite

------------------------------------
Gone but not Forgotten:
2001 E430 4matic, 206,xxx miles, Black/Charcoal
1995 E320, 252,xxx miles, Black/Grey
1989 260E, 223,00 miles, Black/Black

I'm glad you feel that way, don't forget that W had a 90% approval rating. I think that high approval ratings doom politicians, if you love Obama don't give him a blank check feel free to point out errors.