TRUMP IS TIME'S 2016 DISSED PERSON OF THE YEAR ("DIVIDED STATES OF AMERICA")

TRUMP IS TIME'S 2016 DISSED PERSON OF THE YEAR ("DIVIDED STATES OF AMERICA"):

TRUMP DIDN'T DIVIDE AMERICA, OBAMA DID.


Sources: TIME, YouTube


******* TIME Person of the Year 2016: The Choice - TRUMP


This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.

So which is it this year: Better or worse?

The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.

It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption.

This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur—never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own—now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously.

Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.

For those who believe this is all for the better, Trump’s victory represents a long-overdue rebuke to an entrenched and arrogant governing class; for those who see it as for the worse, the destruction extends to cherished norms of civility and discourse, a politics poisoned by vile streams of racism, sexism, nativism.

To his believers, he delivers change—broad, deep, historic change, not modest measures doled out in Dixie cups; to his detractors, he inspires fear both for what he may do and what may be done in his name.

The revolution he stirred feels fully American, with its echoes of populists past, of Andrew Jackson and Huey Long and, at its most sinister, Joe McCarthy and Charles Coughlin. Trump’s assault on truth and logic, far from hurting him, made him stronger.

His appeal—part hope, part snarl—dissolved party lines and dispatched the two reigning dynasties of U.S. politics. Yet his victory mirrors the ascent of nationalists across the world, from Britain to the Philippines, and taps forces far more powerful than one man’s message.

We can scarcely grasp what our generation has wrought by putting a supercomputer into all of our hands, all of the time.

If you are reading this, whether on a page or a screen, there is a very good chance that you are caught up in a revolution that may have started with enticing gadgets but has now reshaped everything about how we live, love, work, play, shop, share—how our very hearts and minds encounter the world around us.

Why would we have imagined that our national conversation would simply go on as before, same people, same promises, same patterns? Perhaps the President-elect will stop tweeting—but only because he will have found some other means to tell the story he wants to tell directly to the audience that wants to hear it.

It turned out to be a failing strategy when Hillary Clinton, who loves policy solutions and believes in them, tried to make this race a character test, a referendum on Trump.

But it was certainly understandable. He presented so many challenges, so many choices about what America values.

Her popular-vote victory, while legally irrelevant, affirmed the prospect of a female Commander in Chief. In fact, she crushed Trump among voters who cared most about experience and judgment and temperament, qualities that have typically mattered when choosing the leader of the free world.

Even at his moment of victory, 6 in 10 voters had an unfavorable view of Trump and didn’t think he was qualified to be President.

But by almost 2 to 1, voters cared most about who could deliver change, and in that category he beat her by 69 points.

This is his next test. The year 2016 was the year of his rise; 2017 will be the year of his rule, and like all newly elected leaders, he has a chance to fulfill promises and defy expectations.

His supporters and his critics will discover together how much of what he said he actually believes. In the days after the election, everything was negotiable:

the wall became a fence, “Crooked Hillary” is “good people,” and maybe climate change is worth thinking about. Far from draining the swamp, he fed plums to some of its biggest gators. Were his followers alarmed?

The critics were hardly reassured: nearly half of Americans expect race relations to worsen, and many women fear that his ascent comes directly at their expense. Trump prefers to talk about the alienated workers who flocked to his rallies and believed a billionaire could be their tribune—“I love them and they love me”—and avers that his every action will be on their behalf.

But can he devise a New Deal for workers in the age of automation, renegotiate trade deals and reopen factories while simultaneously elevating many of the same people who profit from the trends he denounced?

For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year.

Marijuana Should Be Decriminalized By Toure' & Pat Robertson

Back in 2004 Pres. Obama supported the idea of Marijuana Decriminalization.
However after his Election he made Marijuana Possession a Felony & said he was No longer in Favor of Decriminalizing Marijuana even though he knows Millions of BLACK Men are Arrested and Jailed for Pot each year.
What's Up with that Obama?

For the record NO I do NOT Smoke Weed or Cigarettes, nor do I drink Alcohol. So why am I in favor of Decriminalizing Weed?
I am in favor of any Legal Reform that will help keep Millions of BLACK & Latino Young Men out of America's Prisons.
Heads Up Congress: Fix Our Country's Broken, Racist Criminal Justice System!









Marijuana Should Be Decriminalized

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to change New York’s laws to decriminalize marijuana. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have rushed to agree. Cuomo’s proposed change is a repudiation of Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk program, which has arrested more than 400,000 people for marijuana crimes— more than were arrested by the three prior Mayors combined — while still not denting marijuana use or availability in New York. It seems that Bloomberg’s previous tactic was doing little besides creating unwilling clients for the prison-industrial complex.

Everyone who has been a teenager knows how prevalent marijuana is throughout America and how easy it is to acquire. If the police did stop-and-frisks of every white boy in almost any city or college, they would yield plenty of arrests for marijuana possession. But black men are targeted and stopped and frisked for the crime of being black in poor black neighborhoods, and those found with small bags of marijuana are sucked into the justice system and forever branded a criminal. This means they will struggle to find work, may not qualify for student-aid and likely stay in public housing. These men are virtually removed from society for a nonviolent offense that many Americans commit. They are failed by America.

Cuomo recognizes that arresting those caught with small amounts of marijuana is not pragmatic in terms of the time and energy of police, prosecutors and courts — in New York more people are arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana than any other crime. Cuomo also knows that it doesn’t make sense to ruin the job prospects of so many New Yorkers for this crime. Twelve states have already decriminalized marijuana, including California, but because of New York’s size and place in America, decriminalizing marijuana in the state represents a significant turning point.

Recognizing that, I called Ohio State University Associate Professor of Law Michelle Alexander, the author of the The New Jim Crow, a definitive study of the impact of the War on Drugs. Professor Alexander told me that the loss of human potential for possessing small amounts of marijuana is staggering. “If Barack Obama had been caught for making that mistake [smoking weed in high school], he would have been branded a criminal and the odds that he would’ve made it to college are slim,” Alexander said. “He might not even be eligible to vote.” Decriminalization is a positive step toward stopping the damage, Alexander said, but she also thinks we should do even more.

“I find it encouraging that Cuomo acknowledged the racial dimensions of these marijuana arrests and the lifelong consequences of acquiring a criminal record. Once you are branded a criminal, even for marijuana possession, that record follows you for life,” Alexander said. “It’s encouraging that Cuomo acknowledges how people of color have been subject to discriminatory enforcement, and a criminal record can relegate you to permanent second-class status. What I’d like to see is Cuomo go even further and call for the expungement of records for those who’ve been criminally charged with marijuana possession to ensure those who were ensnared before this likely policy change aren’t branded for life.”

But what do we say to those who think if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime? Or those who think it’s the perpetrators’ fault for having weed in their pockets and thus their problem? Alexander has an answer. “There are those who believe the government shouldn’t be in the business of locking people up and putting them in literal cages because they ingest marijuana. Drug consumption should be treated as a public health problem and not as a crime.

I share that view,” she said. “Why criminalize marijuana at all? If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve gotta admit the harm associated with being branded a criminal for life is vastly more devastating to individuals and families than any potential harm associated with smoking marijuana. So if we’re gonna point fingers and say, ‘If you don’t wanna do the time, don’t do the crime,’ then we have to ask ourselves why is this conduct criminalized? Why is it treated as a crime rather than a public-health problem, and why are the odds of being punished so much greater if you’re a person of color than if you’re white? Why should young people in ghettoized communities pay for their mistakes for the rest of their lives, while middle-class white kids get to make those mistakes and then go off to college?”

The War on Drugs has a movement rising against it, a movement that’s toppled the Rockefeller drug laws and is now battling stop-and-frisk and the criminalization of small amounts of marijuana. When major politicians who have an eye on the White House, such as Cuomo, are willing to listen and make changes, signaling that they know legislation is not going to hurt them in a run for national office, then in terms of reforming the War on Drugs, it just could be early morning in America.





Pat Robertson: Marijuana should be legal

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government's war on drugs has failed.

The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of "The 700 Club" on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. He said people should not be sent to prison for marijuana possession.

The 81-year-old first became a self-proclaimed "hero of the hippie culture" in 2010 when called for ending mandatory prison sentences for marijuana possession convictions.

"I just think it's shocking how many of these young people wind up in prison and they get turned into hardcore criminals because they had a possession of a very small amount of a controlled substance," Robertson said on his show March 1. "The whole thing is crazy. We've said, `Well, we're conservatives, we're tough on crime.' That's baloney."

Robertson's support for legalizing pot appeared in a New York Times story published Thursday. His spokesman confirmed to AP that Robertson supports legalization with regulation. Robertson was not made available for an interview.

"I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol," Robertson told the newspaper. "If people can go into a liquor store and buy a bottle of alcohol and drink it at home legally, then why do we say that the use of this other substance is somehow criminal?"

Robertson said he "absolutely" supports ballot measures in Colorado and Washington state that would allow people older than 21 to possess a small amount of marijuana and allow for commercial pot sales. Both measures, if passed by voters, would place the states at odds with federal law, which bans marijuana use of all kinds.

While he supports the measures, Robertson said he would not campaign for them and was "not encouraging people to use narcotics in any way, shape or form."

"I'm not a crusader," he said. "I've never used marijuana and I don't intend to, but it's just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn't succeeded."

In a statement Thursday, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, said Robertson's "clearly stated and well-reasoned comments throw a curve ball into the growing debate over legalizing marijuana."

"Defenders of marijuana prohibition... must be wondering if it's only a matter of time before theirs proves to be a lost cause," he said.

Christian advocacy group Focus on the Family opposes legalization for medical or recreational use, Carrie Gordon Earll, the organization's senior director of government and public policy, said in a statement. The group would not comment specifically on Robertson's statements.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the medical use of marijuana. Several states also have decriminalized marijuana, which removes or lowers penalties for possession. Legalization, however, would eliminate penalties and pave the way for regulated sales similar to alcohol.


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Sources: ABC, CBN, CBS News, The Young Turks, TIME Magazine, Youtube, Google Maps

Breastfeeding Until The Age Of 3? No Way! Kiddie Porn Or "Attachment Parenting"??

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Each time I look at the recent TIME Magazine Breastfeeding Cover I think "Kiddie Porn".

Disgusting!

I am the Mother of two Adult Sons.

When my Sons were Babies I did Breastfeed them up until almost prior to their First Birthday.

Choosing to stop Breastfeeding them just prior to Age One was my personal preference as a Mother.

However.....

I would NEVER, EVER have Breastfed my Sons up to the Age of 3!

I don't care what Dr. Bill Sears or anyone else says, choosing to Breastfeed a 3-Year-Old is NOT "Attachment Parenting", its just plain Crazy and NOT Emotionally Healthy for Children.

Especially little Boys who have to grow up & become Strong, Men!

I believe TIME Magazine's Breastfeeding Cover was Provocative, Shocking, Brilliant & Controversial as it relates to Selling Units and the Magazine's bottom line, even if it does promote a style of Parenting that may NOT be Popular.

Yes this kind of Shock value does in fact Sell, just as Sex Sells.

The ironic thing is if an Adult posts a Video of a 3 or 4-year-old Child Sucking on a Woman's Breast, that Adult would be Arrested for promoting Kiddie Porn NOT for promoting "Attachment Parenting"!

Thus the question becomes NOT "Are You Mom Enough?" but Are You "Mom Enough" to STOP Breastfeeding Your Children before the Age of One or once they are able to Walk, Talk, Use the Bathroom Alone & Eat Real Table Food just as an Older Child can?


Time magazine cover -- forget the breast, what about the boy?



Jamie Lynn Grumet, the 26-year-old mother featured on the cover of Time magazine breastfeeding her 3-year-old son, has done more this week than become the poster woman for “attachment parenting,” the sometimes laudable movement that advises parents to be physically and emotionally available and responsive to their children.

She has shown the limits of such a concept, and the ways in which it can be twisted into a bizarre, contemptible caricature of itself.

Grumet is a model, and models have to have at least healthy dose of narcissism (television journalists like me, too, by the way).

But I fear Grumet has more than what’s healthy.

Because she thought nothing of becoming far more famous than she ever was or ever would have been by getting naked on the cover of Time using her son as a prop—letting him, in fact, look right into the camera and be completely recognizable while sucking her nipple.

He may never be better-known for anything than for being a breastfeeding 3-year-old on the cover of a national magazine.
Ever.
When he enters school later in his young life he may be ridiculed for it.

And these realities hint at a woman who could (and I have not evaluated her) have very poor boundaries and be willing or likely not only to nurture a child, but to absorb him, deny him his personhood and render him no more than her appendage.

In short, it is not at all clear who is the “parent” in the Time magazine photograph.

Is Grumet responding to real and healthy needs emanating from her son’s psyche, or is he responding to her potentially outsized needs to be the center of attention and the object of desire (if only for warmth).

Who, we can legitimately ask, is feeding whom?

See, Grumet loves being photographed.
And she apparently loves having her son breastfeed.

And she loves attention.

And she’s happy enough to get naked in front of other people (which there may be nothing wrong with—for her).

But that may or may not be the case for her 3-year-old boy, which seems not to have mattered to her—at all. And if his will was bent to hers in order to have him suck his mother’s nipple in front of a photographer and makeup artist and art director and all of America, then it stands to reason that his will may be being bent to hers in all sorts of ways—including protracted breastfeeding.

The truth is that what Time magazine may have unwittingly captured and been party to was a grotesque form of psychological abuse—the parading into public of an intimate moment (intimate for mother and child) at the sole direction of that child’s mother, who didn’t stop to think that her child may not be able at the age of three to know what he thinks about the whole thing, much less to stop it, if he wanted to.

Grumet has stained the attachment parenting movement by documenting how easily it can go wrong, when used as an excuse for poor boundaries and manipulation.

In a way, while looking at the Time magazine cover, we are all Grumet’s son and may know something of his possible plight: finding her a compelling and dramatic presence, seduced by her combination of sex appeal and motherhood—unable, in fact, to detach from her.

Talk about a prescription for psychological disaster.

This is self-centeredness at its worst, sold as good parenting.

And this is an act of media violence against a child, committed by adult journalists who also commandeered his will (as did his mother), for sensation and profit.

Rarely do we get such evidence of how wrong parenting can go, how poorly journalists can behave and how slow we can be to recognize ugliness when it is disguised as something beautiful.


Breastfeeding Mom on Time magazine cover speaks out on ‘Today’ show

The young mom who sparked a media storm breastfeeding her 3-year-old son on the cover of Time magazine is opening up about the controversial photo.

Jamie Lynne Grumet, 26, appeared on NBC's "Today" show on Friday to discuss the cover, which shows her casually nursing her toddler Aram, who stares straight into the camera while he stands on a wooden chair.

"I do understand why Time chose this picture, because it did create such a media craze ... to get the dialogue talking," Grumet said.

The ensuing controversy focused on attachment parenting - the topic of Time's cover story - particularly extended breastfeeding.

Grumet explains that she was breastfed until she was 6-years-old and cites it as the reason she and her mother have a close bond.

Dr. Bill Sears, who developed the attachment parenting theory, also appeared on "Today" with Grumet. While both are advocates of the controversial parenting technique - which also includes co-sleeping, or letting children sleep in their parent's beds - Grumet admits it's not for everyone.

"You need to do what's best for your own baby and your family," she says.

Commenters on the Daily News' original article about the Time cover were alarmed by the Grumet's photograph, one reader even calling it "child porn."

Other commenters agreed, voicing concern that Grumet's son would endure psychological problems later on in life.

"Nice job lady," one reader wrote. "You've at best given this kid a lifetime of needing major therapy and at worst created a serial killer."

And not all of the criticism is coming from people against attachment parenting, Grumet notes.

"I understand some of the breast-feeding advocates are actually upset about this," she said on "Today."

Mommyish.com blogger Shawna Cohen, who says she practices some attachment parenting principles, wrote that she was disappointed in the Time cover.

"It angers me because it portrays AP moms as being totally extreme," she wrote in a blog post. "And in most cases, that couldn't be further from the truth."

Even celebrities chimed in - including new mom Alyssa Milano.

"Time, no! You missed the mark!" the actress wrote on Twitter. "You're supposed to be making it easier for breastfeeding moms. Your cover is exploitative and extreme."

Grumet explains that the cover didn't adequately demonstrate the nurturing side of attachment parenting.

"This isn't how we breastfeed at home," she says. "It's more of a cradling, nurturing situation."

Grumet, who has one other 5-year-old son, says she hopes to stop breastfeeding Aram, who turns 4 next month, sometime in the next year.



Sources: Morning Joe Show, MSNBC, NBC, NY Daily News, TIME Magazine, Today Show, Youtube

Richard "Bulldog" Holbrooke Talks Obama, Afghan War & Foreign Policy (Videos)

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Sources: Charlie Rose, C-Span, TIME, Zimbio, Youtube, Google Maps

Julian Assange Vies For TIME Magazine's Person Of The Year

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks Founder, Up For Time's "Person Of The Year" With Obama, Palin & More


Could the man on Interpol's most wanted list also be Time's Person of the Year?

If it were up to the magazine's readers, Julian Assange, founder of the controversial whistleblower website WikiLeaks, would certainly have a shot.

More than 90,000 readers have voted for the 39-year-old Australian, placing him in third place, alongside comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Strangely, leading the pack is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey. And in second place is pop singer Lady Gaga.

"For better or for worse, Julian Assange has changed the accessibility to knowledge of the two wars that involve the U.S., within a matter of months," Lauren Zalaznick, president of NBC Universal Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, told Time. "He has also put journalistic integrity on a knife-blade edge: What is the responsibility of the journalist to make public or keep private?"

Assange's whereabouts are unknown since WikiLeaks' latest release of more than 250,000 top-secret U.S. documents on Sunday. Interpol has put him on their wanted list in a separate issue involving Assange, who allegedly sexually assaulted at least one woman in Sweden. He has vehemently denied the charge.

The WikiLeaks founder is beating several candidates -- including news personalities, politicians, athletes and entertainers -- for the magazine's prestigious prize. On the list are Fox News' Glenn Beck (fifth place), former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (10th place), the Chilean miners (ninth place), basketball player LeBron James (22nd place), President Obama (sixth place) and the unemployed American (eighth place).

Time's editors will make the final decision, but if Assange wins, he won't be the first whistleblower to receive the award. In 2002, “The Whisteblowers,” made up of Cynthia Cooper of World Com, Sherron Watkins of Enron and Coleen Rowley of the FBI all won the prize after they blew the lid on their respective employers.

Of course, if he wins, Assange would also join some of the world's most hated figures including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Ayatollah Khomeini.





Who Will Be TIME's 2010 Person of the Year?


He is a new kind of whistle-blower: one made for the digital age. Those before him (like Daniel Ellsberg) were limited in the ways they could go public with their information.

But in founding WikiLeaks.org, Julian Assange gave himself the freedom to publish virtually anything he wants, whether it's the true nature of Iraqi prisoner abuse, the double role Pakistan plays in Afghanistan or the personal e-mails of Sarah Palin. Assange's site, which he started four years ago, has made public a trove of secret and classified documents — close to 500,000 pages on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone.

But in the process, governments he has targeted (like the U.S.'s) claim he has put the lives of informants and soldiers in jeopardy. Warranted or not, Assange is convinced that the governments and intelligence agencies he is unmasking are watching his every move, and as a result, he finds himself in virtual exile in Europe.




WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Tells TIME: Hillary Clinton "Should Resign"


Hillary Clinton, Julian Assange said, "should resign." Speaking over Skype from an undisclosed location on Tuesday, the WikiLeaks founder was replying to a question by TIME managing editor Richard Stengel over the diplomatic-cable dump that Assange's organization loosed on the world this past weekend. Stengel had said the U.S. Secretary of State was looking like "the fall guy" in the ensuing controversy, and had asked whether her firing or resignation was an outcome that Assange wanted. "I don't think it would make much of a difference either way," Assange said. "But she should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up. Yes, she should resign over that."

Assange spoke about the latest tranche of documents from WikiLeaks in a 36-minute interview with TIME (the full audio will be available soon on TIME.com). He said there would be more: "We're doing about 80 a day, presently, and that will gradually step up as the other media partners step in." Indeed, every region of the world appears to be bracing for its turn in the WikiLeaks mill. Pakistani officials are almost certain that more revealing documents focusing on their country will come out soon. And the Russian media are anxious to see if future leaks will detail any behind-the-scenes dealings over the August 2008 Russia-Georgia war.

Assange said that all the documents were redacted "carefully." "They are all reviewed, and they're all redacted either by us or by the newspapers concerned," he said. He added that WikiLeaks "formally asked the State Department for assistance with that. That request was formally rejected."

Asked what his "moral calculus" was to justify publishing the leaks and whether he considered what he was doing to be "civil disobedience," Assange said, "Not at all. This organization practices civil obedience, that is, we are an organization that tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction." As for whether WikiLeaks was breaking the law, he said, "We have now in our four-year history, and over 100 legal attacks of various kinds, been victorious in all of those matters." He added, "It's very important to remember the law is not what, not simply what, powerful people would want others to believe it is. The law is not what a general says it is. The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is."

And the source or sources of all the diplomatic cables? Stengel asked Assange if U.S. Army PFC Bradley Manning, now detained in Quantico, Va., was the sole source of the megaleak. "We're a source-protection organization," Assange said, "so the last thing we would do is discuss possible sources. However, we do know that ... the FBI, State Department and U.S. Army CID [Criminal Investigation Command] has been going around Boston visiting a number of people there." He referred to "people who have been detained coming back into the United States" with connections to Manning. The U.S. soldier's "mother's home in Wales, in the U.K.," he said, was "visited, or raided, depending on how you want to describe it," by the FBI.

Stengel asked what was coming next from WikiLeaks. "We don't have targets," said Assange, "other than organizations that use secrecy to conceal unjust behavior ... That's created a general target." A story in Forbes magazine, which interviewed Assange before the latest leak, said that WikiLeaks has a large U.S. financial corporation in its sights. Assange confirmed that. "Yes, the banks are in there. Many different multinational organizations are in the upcoming weeks, but that is a continuation of what we have been doing for the past four years" since WikiLeaks was founded. He added that the volume of material has increased. "The upcoming bank material is 10,000 documents, as opposed to hundreds, which we have gotten in the other cases."

TIME and TIME.com will continue to report stories based on Stengel's Assange interview and on the continuing fallout from the release of the diplomatic cables.


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Sources: NY Daily News, The Guardian, TIME, Google Maps

John F. Kennedy's 1960 Presidential Bid: Man Of The People

John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Inaugural Address: Delivered January 20, 1961


Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, reverend clergy, fellow citizens:

We observe today not a victory of party, but a celebration of freedom -- symbolizing an end, as well as a beginning -- signifying renewal, as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe -- the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.

We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans -- born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

This much we pledge -- and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do -- for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom -- and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.

To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support -- to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.

Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.

We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course -- both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind's final war.

So let us begin anew -- remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.

Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah -- to "undo the heavy burdens, and [to] let the oppressed go free."¹

And, if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor -- not a new balance of power, but a new world of law -- where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved.

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days; nor in the life of this Administration; nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.

In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.

Now the trumpet summons us again -- not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need -- not as a call to battle, though embattled we are -- but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation,"² a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own.


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Sources: American Rhetoric, TIME, Youtube, Google Maps

The American Dream Has Gone Global: Intelligent Cities: TIME

Intelligent Cities from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Restoring The American Dream & Creating Intelligent Cities


The American dream for me, growing up in India in the 1970s, looked something like the opening credits of Dallas.

The blockbuster TV series began with a kaleidoscope of big, brassy, sexy images — tracts of open land, shiny skyscrapers, fancy cars, cowboy businessmen and the very dreamy Victoria Principal. We watched bootlegged copies of the show, passed around on old Betamax cassettes.

America (certainly the CBS soap-opera version of America) seemed dazzling and larger than life, especially set against the stagnant backdrop of India in the 1970s. Everyone I knew was fascinated by the U.S., whether they admitted it or not. Politicians who denounced the country by day would go home in the evenings and plot to send their kids to college in "the States."

Of course, the 1970s were actually tough times in America — stagflation, malaise, the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate — but they were brutal in the rest of the world. Hyperinflation racked most third-world countries; coups and martial law were familiar occurrences, even affecting staunchly democratic India, where emergency rule was enforced from 1975 to 1977. Set against this atmosphere of despair, the U.S. looked like a shining city on a hill.

A few years later, when I got to America on a college scholarship, I realized that the real American Dream was somewhat different from Dallas. I visited college friends in their hometowns and was struck by the spacious suburban houses and the gleaming appliances — even when their parents had simple, modest jobs.

The modern American Dream, for me, was this general prosperity and well-being for the average person. European civilization had produced the great cathedrals of the world. America had the two-car garage. And this middle-class contentment created a country of optimists. Compared with the fatalism and socialist lethargy that was pervasive in India those days, Americans had a sunny attitude toward life that was utterly refreshing.

But when I travel from America to India these days, as I did recently, it's as if the world has been turned upside down. Indians are brimming with hope and faith in the future. After centuries of stagnation, their economy is on the move, fueling animal spirits and ambition. The whole country feels as if it has been unlocked. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the mood is sour. Americans are glum, dispirited and angry. The middle class, in particular, feels under assault. In a Newsweek poll in September, 63% of Americans said they did not think they would be able to maintain their current standard of living. Perhaps most troubling, Americans are strikingly fatalistic about their prospects. The can-do country is convinced that it can't.

Americans have good reasons to worry. We have just gone through the worst recession since the Great Depression. The light at the end of the tunnel is dim at best. Sixteen months into the recovery, the unemployment rate is higher than it was in the depths of all but one of the postwar recessions. And as government spending is being pared back, the economy is showing new signs of weakness.

Some experts say that in every recession Americans get gloomy and then recover with the economy. This slump is worse than most; so is the mood. Once demand returns, they say, jobs will come back and, with them, optimism. But Americans are far more apprehensive than usual, and their worries seem to go beyond the short-term debate over stimulus vs. deficit reduction. They fear that we are in the midst of not a cyclical downturn but a structural shift, one that poses huge new challenges to the average American job, pressures the average American wage and endangers the average American Dream. The middle class, many Americans have come to believe, is being hollowed out. I think they are right.


Going Global

For a picture of the global economy, look at America's great corporations, which are thriving. IBM, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel and Caterpillar are all doing well. And they share a strategy that is becoming standard for success. First, technology has produced massive efficiencies over the past decade. Jack Welch explained the process succinctly on CNBC last September. "Technology has changed the game in jobs," he said. "We had technology bumping around for years in the '80s and '90s, and [we were] trying to make it work. And now it's working ... You couple the habits [of efficiency] from a deep recession [with] an exponential increase in technology, and you're not going to see jobs for a long, long time." Welch gave as an example a company owned by the private-equity firm with which he is affiliated. In 2007 the business had 26,000 employees and generated $12 billion in revenue. It will return to those revenue numbers by 2013 but with only 14,000 employees. "Companies have learned to do more with less," Welch said.

Next, companies have truly gone Global.

The companies on the S&P 500 generate 46% of their profits outside the U.S., and for many of the biggest American names, the proportion is much higher. You might think of Coca-Cola as the quintessentially American company. In fact it is a vast global enterprise, operating in 206 countries. "We have a factory in Ramallah that employs 2,000 people. We have a factory in Afghanistan. We have factories everywhere," explains Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coke. Nearly 80% of Coca-Cola's revenue comes from outside the U.S., and an even greater percentage of its employees are in foreign countries. "We are a global company that happens to be headquartered in Atlanta," says Kent.

America's great corporations access global markets, easy credit, new technologies and high-quality labor at a low price. Many have had to cut jobs at home, where demand is weak, and have added them in the emerging markets that are booming. They are not "outsourcing" jobs. That word makes little sense anymore. They simply invest in growth areas and cut back in places where the economy is weak. None of them will ever give up on the American market — it is too large, too profitable and too central to their businesses — but the marginal dollar is more likely to be invested abroad than in the U.S.

While businesses have a way to navigate this new world of technological change and globalization, the ordinary American worker does not. Capital and technology are mobile; labor isn't. American workers are located in America. And this is a country with one of the highest wages in the world, because it is one of the richest countries in the world. That makes it more difficult for the American middle-class worker to benefit from technology and global growth in the same way that companies do.

At this point, economists will protest. Historically, free trade has been beneficial to rich and poor. By forcing you out of industries in which you are inefficient, trade makes you strengthen those industries in which you are world-class. That's right in theory, and it has been right in practice. As countries have traded with one another over the past two centuries, they have prospered, and average living standards in those countries (primarily in the Western world) have soared. Those places that kept themselves protected (mostly communist and third-world nations) found that they had crappy industries, shoddy goods, massive corruption and slow growth.

And yet something feels different this time. Technology and globalization are working together at warp speed, creating a powerful new reality. Many more goods and services can now be produced anywhere on the globe. China and India have added literally hundreds of millions of new workers to the global labor pool, producing the same goods and services as Western workers at a fraction of the price. Far from being basket-case economies and banana republics, many developing economies are now stable and well managed, and companies can do business in them with ease. At some point, all these differences add up to mean that global competition is having quite a new impact on life in the U.S.

Two weeks ago, for example, I sat in a Nano, the revolutionary car being produced by Tata Motors in India. It's a nice, comfortable midgetmobile, much like Mercedes-Benz's Smart car, except that rather than costing $22,000, it costs about $2,400. Tata plans to bring it to the U.S. in two to three years. Properly equipped with air bags and other safety features, it will retail at $7,000. Leave aside the car itself, whose price will surely put a downward pressure on U.S. carmakers. Just think about car parts. Every part in the Nano is made to global standards but manufactured in India at about a tenth of what it would cost in America. When Ford orders its next set of car parts, will they be made in Michigan or Mumbai?

This is not a hypothetical. Steven Rattner, who helped restructure the automobile industry, tells the story of getting a new General Motors plant online in Michigan by bringing management and unions together. "The unions agreed to allow 40% of the new plant to operate at $14-an-hour wages," he says, "which is half of GM's normal wages. The management agreed to invest in this new plant. But here's the problem: workers at GM's Mexican operations make $7 an hour, and today they are as productive as American workers. And think of this: $14 an hour translates into about $35,000 a year. That's below the median family income. The whole experience left me frightened about the fate of the American worker."

Alan Blinder is also worried. A distinguished economist and Princeton professor, Blinder is a former vice chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve. In a now famous essay in Foreign Affairs, he argues that while we recognize the pressures placed on manufacturing jobs by international competition, technology ensures that service jobs are now similarly exposed.

Since the service sector is a much larger part of the economy, Blinder estimates that 28 million to 42 million jobs will be "susceptible" to being shipped offshore — jobs such as customer-service representative and stock analyst, which we tend to think of as local. Blinder understands the benefits of free trade but worries that the new wave of offshoring is so big and fast that Western societies will have difficulty adjusting. The crucial distinction for the future, he argues, might be not between highly educated and less educated workers but between those jobs that can be done abroad and those — such as nurse or pilot — that cannot.

You can divide the American workforce in many ways, but any way you slice it, you see the same trend. People who get paid a decent wage for skilled but routine work in manufacturing or services are getting squeezed by a pincer movement of technology and globalization. David Autor, an MIT economist, has done an important study on what he calls "the polarization of job opportunities" in America.

Author finds that job growth divides neatly into three categories. On one side are managerial, professional and technical occupations, held by highly educated workers who are comfortable in the global economy. Jobs have been plentiful in this segment for the past three decades. On the other end are service occupations, those that involve "helping, caring for or assisting others," such as security guard, cook and waiter. Most of these workers have no college education and get hourly wages that are on the low end of the scale. Jobs in this segment too have been growing robustly.

In between are the skilled manual workers and those in white collar operations like sales and office management. These jobs represent the beating heart of the middle class. Those in them make a decent living, usually above the median family income ($49,777), and they mostly did fine in the two decades before 2000. But since then, employment growth has lagged the economy in general. And in the Great Recession, it has been these middle-class folks who have been hammered. Why? Autor is cautious and tentative, but it would seem that technology, followed by global competition, has played the largest role in making less valuable the routine tasks that once epitomized middle-class work.

You can divide the American workforce in many ways, but any way you slice it, you see the same trend. People who get paid a decent wage for skilled but routine work in manufacturing or services are getting squeezed by a pincer movement of technology and globalization. David Autor, an MIT economist, has done an important study on what he calls "the polarization of job opportunities" in America. Autor finds that job growth divides neatly into three categories. On one side are managerial, professional and technical occupations, held by highly educated workers who are comfortable in the global economy. Jobs have been plentiful in this segment for the past three decades. On the other end are service occupations, those that involve "helping, caring for or assisting others," such as security guard, cook and waiter. Most of these workers have no college education and get hourly wages that are on the low end of the scale. Jobs in this segment too have been growing robustly.

In between are the skilled manual workers and those in white collar operations like sales and office management. These jobs represent the beating heart of the middle class. Those in them make a decent living, usually above the median family income ($49,777), and they mostly did fine in the two decades before 2000. But since then, employment growth has lagged the economy in general. And in the Great Recession, it has been these middle-class folks who have been hammered. Why? Autor is cautious and tentative, but it would seem that technology, followed by global competition, has played the largest role in making less valuable the routine tasks that once epitomized middle-class work.


Recapturing the Dream

So what is the solution? It's easier to identify the wrong answer than the right one. It would be pointless and damaging to try to go down a protectionist route, though polls show a stunning drop of support for free trade, even among college-educated professionals, its usual cheerleaders. But technology is a much larger driver of the hollowing out than trade. You cannot shut down this new world. How would you stop people from sending one another e-mails, which is what a lot of offshoring comes down to these days? Nor can you help a modern economy by shielding industries from world-class competitors, which just encourages greater inefficiency. I grew up in an economy made up of those kinds of industries, all tightly protected from "foreign exploitation and domination." It added up to stagnation and backwardness.

There are solutions, but they are hard and involve painful changes — in companies, government programs and personal lifestyles. For more than a generation, Americans have been unwilling to make these adjustments. Instead, we found an easier way to goose the economy: expand consumption. During the early 1950s, personal consumer expenditures made up 60% to 65% of the U.S.'s GDP. But starting in the early 1980s, facing slower growth, we increased our personal spending substantially, giving rise to new economic activity in the country. Consumption grew to 70% of GDP by 2001 and has stayed there ever since. Unfortunately, this rise in consumption was not triggered by a rise in income. Wages have been largely stagnant. It was facilitated, rather, by an increase in credit, so that now the average American family has no fewer than 13 credit cards. Household debt rose from $680 billion in 1974 to $14 trillion in 2008. This pattern repeated itself in government, except on a much larger scale. People everywhere — from California to New Jersey — wanted less taxes but more government. Local, state and federal governments obliged, taking on massive debts. A generation's worth of economic growth has been generated by an unsustainable expansion of borrowing.

That is why the current economic debate between another stimulus and deficit reduction is frustrating. Right now, there is a strong case for government stimulus, since no one else is doing much spending. But then what? What happens after another year of federal spending? Consumers still might be cautious; do we really want them to spend like they did in the old days? Is the strategy simply to reinflate the housing bubble? In recent years, the left and the right in America have conspired in feeding consumption spending. The left expands government, much of which means more consumption (pensions, health care). The right focuses obsessively on tax cuts, which have a similar effect. The political system, pandering to today's constituents, encourages both tendencies. But when will we invest for our children's economy?


What We Need to Do Now

Ultimately American jobs are created from the bottom up by companies, not from the top down by government fiat. But there are measures we can take that will encourage the process. Here are the key ones:


Shift from consumption to investment.

Fundamentally, America needs to move from consumption to investment. Everyone agrees that the best way to create good jobs in the U.S. is to create new industries and companies and to innovate within old ones. This means large investments in research, technology and development. As a society, this needs to become our strongest focus.

Despite substantial increases and important new projects under the Obama Administration, the federal government is still not spending as much on R&D as a percentage of GDP as it did in the 1950s. I would argue that it should be spending twice that level, which would be 6% of GDP. In the 1950s, the U.S. had a huge manufacturing base that could absorb millions of semiskilled workers.

Today, manufacturing is a small part of the economy and faces intense global competition. The only good jobs that will stay in the U.S. are jobs related to knowledge and innovation. Additionally, in the 1950s, America was the only research lab in town, accounting for the vast majority of global scientific spending. Today, countries around the world are entering the arena.

Two weeks ago, South Korea — a country of just 50 million people! — announced plans to invest $35 billion in renewable-energy projects. We should pay for this with a 5% national sales tax — call it an American innovation tax — which would be partly offset by a small reduction in income taxes. This would have the twin benefits of tamping down consumption and yielding some additional funds. All the proceeds from the tax should be focused on future generations, because we need to invest massively in growth.

The often overlooked aspect of investment is investment in people. America has been able to create the future in large measure because it has tapped into the energies and work of immigrants. It has managed to invest in human capital by taking smart, motivated people from around the globe, educating them in the planet's best higher-education system and then unleashing them in a dynamic economy.

In this crucial realm, the U.S. is now disinvesting. After training the world's best and brightest — often at public expense — we don't find ways to make sure they stay here by giving them a green card but rather insist that they leave and take their knowledge to another country, where they will invent, inspire, build and pay taxes. Every year, we send tens of thousands of the smartest Indians and Chinese back home, which is a great investment — in the future of those countries.


Training and Education.

"Most jobs that will have good prospects in the future will be complicated," says Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of American Express and IBM. "They will involve being able to juggle data, symbols, computer programs in some way or the other, no matter what the task. To do this, workers will need to be educated and often retrained." We need more and better education at every level, especially job retraining. So far, most retraining efforts in the U.S. have not worked very well.

But they have worked in countries that have been able to retain a manufacturing base, like Germany and parts of Northern Europe. There, some of the most successful programs are apprenticeships — which cover only 0.3% of the total U.S. workforce.

There are advantages to the U.S. system. We don't stream people too early in their lives, and we allow for more creative thinking. But the path to good jobs for the future is surely to expand apprenticeship programs substantially so industry can find the workers it needs. This would require a major initiative, a training triangle in which the government funds, the education system teaches and industry hires — though to have an effect, the program would have to be on


Fiscal Sanity.

To pay for such initiatives, the government needs to get its house in order. The single most important aspect of this is getting health care costs under control, followed by other entitlement programs, especially pensions at the state level. Government today spends vast sums of money on current consumption — health care and pensions being a massive chunk of it — which leaves little money for anything else. We need a radical rebalancing of American government so it can free up resources to fund future growth.


Benchmark, Benchmark, Benchmark.

There is now global competition for growth, which means the U.S. has to constantly ask itself what other countries are doing well and how it might adapt — looking, for example, at what other countries are doing with their corporate tax rates or their health care systems and asking why and where we fall short. Americans have long resisted such an approach, but if someone else is doing tax policy, tort litigation, health care or anything else better, we have to ask why.

There are things the U.S. does well. Most new jobs in America are created by start-ups and small companies, so the ease of doing business is crucial — and there's good news there. The World Bank has a ranking of countries measured by the "ease of doing business," and the U.S. is No. 4. That's very good, but there's a catch. Those rankings are divided into several categories. In most, like "starting a business," the U.S. does well. But in one category it's only 61st in the world, and that is "paying taxes."

The American tax code is a monstrosity, cumbersome and inefficient. It is 16,000 pages long and riddled with exemptions and loopholes, specific favors to special interests. As such, it represents the deep, institutionalized corruption at the heart of the American political process, in which it is now considered routine to buy a member of Congress's support for a particular, narrow provision that will be advantageous for your business.


The Work Ahead

My proposals are inherently difficult because they ask the left and right to come together, cut some spending, pare down entitlements, open up immigration for knowledge workers, rationalize the tax code — and then make large investments in education and training, research and technology, innovation and infrastructure. But the fact that it is a solution that crosses political borders should make it more palatable, not less. And time is crucial. The U.S. has considerable advantages, but every day other countries try to find ways to attract growth within their borders. People often note that America's political system is broken. Perhaps the truth is more awkward: America needs radical change, and it has an 18th century system determined to check and balance the absolute power of a monarchy. It is designed for gridlock at a moment when quick and large-scale action is our only hope.

When I left India, the marginal tax rate was 97.5%, corporate taxation was punitive, and business was stifled or went underground. Were I to move from New York City to Mumbai today, my personal tax rate would drop, as would every other rate, from corporate to capital-gains taxes. (The long-term capital-tax rate in India is zero.) Singapore now ranks as the No. 1 country for ease of doing business, with a top tax rate of 20%. I know permanent residents working in the U.S. who are thinking of giving up their green cards to move to Singapore. To an Indian of my generation, this would have been unthinkable. The green card was a passport to the American Dream. But for young Indians, there are many new dreams out there, and new passports.

But there are reasons for optimism. The U.S. faces huge challenges, but it also has enormous advantages. "I've always been bullish on America," says Coke's Kent. "It's the largest, richest market in the world. Look at the demographics alone. North America is the only part of the industrialized world that will be growing in people. It now has a higher birthrate than Mexico, for the first time in history." Or listen to Alcoa's German-born Klaus Kleinfeld, previously the head of Siemens: "I know the things that America has that are unique. The openness, the diversity, the dynamism — you don't have it anywhere else. If you keep all these things, build on them, I still believe in the American Dream."

The term American Dream was coined during the Great Depression. The historian James Truslow Adams published The Epic of America in 1931, in an atmosphere of even greater despair than today's. He wanted to call his book The American Dream, but his publishers objected. No one will pay $3.50 for a book about a "dream," they said. Still, Adams used the phrase so often that it entered the lexicon. The American Dream, he said, was of "a better, richer and happier life for all our citizens of every rank, which is the greatest contribution we have made to the thought and welfare of the world.

That dream or hope has been present from the start. Ever since we became an independent nation, each generation has seen an uprising of ordinary Americans to save the American Dream from the forces which appear to be overwhelming it."

Today, those forces really do look overwhelming. But challenges like them have been beaten back before — and can be again.


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Sources: TIME, Google Maps