Sunday, January 21, 2007

She's In!

Although some people have said it would make more sense for Hillary Clinton to stay in the Senate and be powerful there for the next few decades (as opposed to be president for 8 years & then retire and do what?) I've had a feeling for quite a while that she was going to run, and today it's official.

I've been excited by the prospect of a Hillary Clinton candidacy for years - and I don't believe for a second that she "can't" win. As pollster Mark Penn said, "Of course she can."

I absolutely believe that the extent to which people support her is the extent to which they believe women are really equal to men. I will be very interested to see how this race shakes out generationally - will younger voters be more progressive, more willing to back a candidate with extensive experience, knowledge and skills, despite the fact that she's female? Or will the core of Hillary's support come from the generation that did the heavy lifting on women's rights in the 70's?

I don't think there will be a ton of people who will vote for her BECAUSE she's female, the way people will vote for Barak Obama because he's black. With Hillary, there is no "all other things being equal" comparison because no one else in the race comes close to her in terms of experience or expertise. It's not like there are 3 candidates who are all great, so then you pick the female just for progress.

Think about it - leaders around the globe know and respect her. No one else in the country - save Bill Clinton - could ascend to the presidency with as much global clout as she has right now, and we know that's something the presidency is desperately in need of. She is not one of the crowd in this race - there is Hillary, and then there is the crowd.

As she said in her announcement video: "I have a feeling it will be very interesting." No doubt! :)

Check it out: http://www.hillaryclinton.com

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Untitled

Last week, driving a student home after a school event, I asked which street I should take from where we were, as in – which one is more direct & has fewer stop signs? He replied: “I don’t know, I don’t walk around here.”

Tonight, at another school event, I started to roll my eyes at one more student-written song about the tough street life, and had a realization… if I get sick of hearing poems, songs & stories about the “thug life” and such, how much more must my students be sick of living it?!?!?

Sunday, January 14, 2007

The More Things Change...

I enjoyed an interesting conversation this weekend at the DFL inaugural ball with Mary Cathryn Ricker, the current 30-something president of the St Paul Federation of Teachers, and Liz Rose, the daughter of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers past president Bob Rose.

Listening to stories of the past and of the future, I was struck by the juxtaposition of old-school and contemporary politics. It sounds like Mary Cathryn relied primarily on the tried-but-true method of actually going out to schools & meeting with teachers to introduce herself and ask for their vote. Although she was up against two older, more experienced (male) opponents, she won just by getting her ideas and her self out there. I think it's great that such old-school politics worked to elect the younger candidate. (
The more things change... the more they stay the same... :)

The pundits are saying that the 2008 presidential campaign will involve the Internet and other new ways of reaching voters more than ever before - it will be interesting to see what the results of that shift will be!

This Isn't China... Right?

"The connection was refused when attempting to contact www.unitedforpeace.org"

My browser is working fine - I can surf quickly to different sites - EXCEPT the one with info about the big peace march in Washington planned for later this month.

I'm no conspiracy theorist - but I think it's amusing that I am not able to access a government-protest site.

What's that about?

Head for DC - Jan 27

There is a peace march scheduled for Saturday, Jan 27 in Washington DC.

Not sure why winter is the best time to have a huge outdoor rally, but I'm not on the planning committee, so no one asked me! (ha ha) Of course DC isn't as cold as MN in January, so maybe it's not a concern.

I have to admit I'm torn. On the one hand, Id' love to go - just for the history-making aspect of it. It would be a cool experience for my 18-year-old daughter. But while other major marches have had influencing the president (or congress) as their goal - hence doing it in DC - this administration won't listen to Americans, and both houses of Congress are now under new leadership, so I don't see what's going to change in policy because of thousands of folks marching on the Mall.

And I'm not a cynic, I swear! :)


Sunday, January 07, 2007

Bangkok, Berlin, Chile, Spain…

When I first started writing this blog, I loved to hit the “next blog” link at the top and surf randomly through the other blogs. Many are lame, but enough are interesting to make it worth the time…

I haven’t tried it in months, but I did today, and was surprised at how many of the blogs are in other languages! It feels like a change from just a year ago, and that’s intriguing to me. Several were in languages I didn’t even recognize, sad to say!

It makes the world feel a little smaller, in a good way.

University Upgrade

The StarTribune says today that it's "more than a football stadium" and I suppose they are right. The University of MN is not only building a new stadium - back on campus where it belongs - but this is part of building a better university for the next century.

http://www.startribune.com/561/story/918627.html

It's hard while paying $2,000 per class to swallow some of the spiffy new improvements to campus (and the millions that the fired football & basketball coaches just walked way with) but overall I do believe that excellence begets excellence, and attitude is everything!
I appreciate that President Bruiniks has an optimistic vision for the U of MN's future and is making positive things happen.

I wonder where Gen X is in all this. Grad students are mostly commuters with careers and lives off-campus. How many 30- or 40-year-olds were at the last Gopher football game? I went to a Gopher hockey game last week & was impressed by how many 20-year-olds were there, but otherwise felt surrounded by older folks. If nothing else, we're paying a larger share of taxes every year - are we paying attention?