If only everyone would do this:
Here’s the backstory:
Sarah donated 148,270 for this video to several charities (see the list here) rather than using that money to produce the video. To me, the main point is in two parts: 1 - wow, $150,000 can do a lot of good, especially in poor countries. 2 - wow, it costs that much to make a video!!? Actually, that’s no surprise now that I’ve been working at a publishing/media company. The amount of money spent on building quality programming is astounding.
Don’t you wish that more companies would do this with their products or stars? Great idea Sarah!!
Wednesday night, for the first time in years, I felt hope for our country.
We need a leader, not just any leader, but a great leader, to unite this country. It won’t happen overnight, nor do I expect that our country will ever completely rid itself of division, but for years we’ve been moving in the wrong direction. Wednesday night I felt change in the air.
Wednesday night when Barack Obama stepped to the podium after winning the Iowa caucus, I felt that I might be witnessing a defining moment for our country, for our world. His speech was exciting, filled with positive, uniting words.
As an independent Mormon, I have paid particular attention to Mitt Romney and have been disappointed. While I like his fiscal experience and his moral standing (and respect him immensely for his ability to raise respect and awareness for Mormons), I dislike his positions on things like Guantanamo Bay and the environment. Hillary is simply, predictably, looking out for herself and churning along with her machine to “make change” with “35 years of experience,” two things that seem to me to be somewhat mutually exclusive. We don’t need another Clinton or another Bush, we need something different.
Some say that Obama is inexperienced (yet he obviously has the necessary skills). But this “inexperience” is, to me, one of his most appealing traits. But I would not call it inexperience, I would call it freshness. He is a man untainted by years of memorizing the party line.
Now that I’ve lived in DC for a while, I’m starting to see how the system works from the inside. Republicans and Democrats have canned, prepared answers to certain problems and they use those positions to lob rocks at each other. It’s a necessary evil, a bicameral system that has worked well for years because, in years past, we recognized the need to compromise, to move to the middle. But our world has changed. We seem to have lost the ability to compromise. We don’t need to lob rocks to protect our positions, we need to find common ground.
Then came the horrible events of September 11th and the following mis-behavior of the current administration. The election of 2004, like none before it, showed a nation divided quite literally–we can all picture the map peppered with red and blue. Our country has moved apart and individuals (and groups) have become more entrenched in our positions. We are scared, defensive (or, in military terms: offensive). We feel uneasy with our country’s direction, fearing that our neighbors will make wrong decisions if given too much power. So we put up defenses and start lobbing rocks.
But Mr. Obama is the one viable candidate that can help us turn this corner. Yes, the other candidates say it, but he believes it. Because “we are not a collection of Red States and Blue States, we are the United States of America; and at this moment, in this election, we are ready to believe again.”
