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Van Jones At Power Shift 2011: ‘While They’re Stuck On Stupid In DC, Your Generation Is Rising’
In a passionate keynote address, green jobs leader Van Jones exhorted the 10,000 youth climate activists at the Power Shift conference in Washington DC to “shift the power” and lead the clean power revolution. He argued that both parties need to be held accountable for their failures, and that activists must explain that the climate movement isn’t just about “hippie power” but that it is a vision of liberty and justice for all.
Van Jones speaks to the young climate activists gathered at the Power Shift conference in Washington, DC. Jones argued that President Obama is like the friend who has the potential to be an A-plus student, but is only getting C’s and D’s. (Photo by Josh Lopez) Van Jones had harsh words for the national political establishment. “You have to be wise enough to hold both parties to high standards,” he said:
While they’re stuck on stupid in DC, your generation is rising.
Van Jones also discussed President Barack Obama, who hired him as a green jobs adviser but then let him go after Jones’ politics and person came under a relentless barrage from Fox News’ Glenn Beck. Jones argued that President Obama is like the friend who has the potential to be an A-plus student, but is only getting C’s and D’s. Jones told the assembled youth from campuses around the nation they can be a “hero for making sure your friend gets an A-plus on his presidency.”
Van Jones described how we have a civilization “fueled by death” — fossil fuels from plants and animals that died millions of years ago:
We pull out of the ground death. We burn death in our power plants. Why do we get shocked when we get death in our sky as global warming, death in our oceans as oil spills, death in our children’s lungs as asthma and cancer?
The strongest moments of his speech came when he discussed America’s basic principles, in the context of arguing with “your uncle Joe” who watches Fox News at the Thanksgiving table. “Don’t you believe in liberty?” Van asked. “Shouldn’t we have the right as Americans to be energy producers?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we have the right and liberty to be free from energy companies who dictate how much we pay, what air we breathe?” Coal and oil companies try to divide us with cultural stereotypes and political ideology, when a green economy is actually the truly American economy:
The stereotype is that solar power is just hippie power. But it’s also cowboy power, farmer power, rancher power, and Appalachian mountain power!
Van Jones addressed the Tea Party movement that sees him as a “terrorist” and “communist.” “I’m glad our sisters and brothers in the Tea Party are talking about liberty,” he said. However, he said, they’re missing something important. The Pledge of Allegiance doesn’t just talk about liberty being integral to our nation:
The Pledge of Allegiance says liberty and justice for all!
With his voiced raised to the diverse crowd, Van Jones said “justice for all” includes justice for minorities, justice for women, justice for gays, and justice for the poor.
“Shift the power!” Van Jones concluded to thunderous applause.
61 Comments so far
Show AllPoor Van Jones, still hoping Obama will wuvvv him again someday. Get in line behind Jeremiah Wright, Van. Ain't gonna happen.
its not about Obama it's about us. getting together to make a better world and Mr Jones knows the way along with millions of us. Local energy production, clean and safe. Hammer GE. Take it to the streets.
Mr. Jones's list of enemies is woefully incomplete. It should include some of the folks in his "friends" category. So, no, he doesn't know the way, if that way just leads to further co-opting by the bipartisan power oligarchy.
Rico and his ilk are brainwashed by Jones - similar to the Jim Jones cult that drank the poison "kool aid." Hammer GE? Take it to the streets? Thuggery will get you nowhere. You'd be better off hammering your own head on the street - maybe it'll knock some sense into you all.
You are both obnoxious and wrong.
People power in the streets is essential to progressive change and it does work in proportion to the militance of the demonstrators.
You condemn thuggery and then proceed to create a thouroughly violent and fascist imagery of busting heads and knocking sense into them.
Clearly there is no hope that a fascist mind like yours will ever be on the side of the people.
Go back to Stormfront you disgusting thug.
I don't think Van Jones is hoping Obama will wuvw him again. Van Jones knows Barack Obama and they are coming from very different places.
I would like to see Van Jones REPLACE Obama as a President of the people. Van Jones would stand for liberty and justice FOR ALL OF US.
Nor should it.
We can always count on Ho to be wrong!
Talk about "stuck on stupid"--Barry fucked Van Jones after Faux News turned up the criticism of his policies. Jones implores us to make Barry do the right thing; clinging to the notion that Barry gives two shits about him or any of us worker bees. Don't these guys ever get it?
We need more leaders like Van Jones!!
I suppose you think that we need more leaders like Obama as well.
"i love that man"...van jones on oourprez at the commonwealth club...
Wow! Stuff that was said fifty years ago is new again!!!!
We've come a long way, baby........(old tv commercial for women's special cigarettes from when i was a kid.)
I am tired of saying this, but, all these guys have is the tea party to make themselves look good. And, CD, i hope this isn't part of a run up to your support of obama again in 2012!
What a HACK!!! People......stop caving to GREAT WORDS....and start listening to people who WALK THE TALK......Van Jones should have been far more critical of Obama not about leaving his job as a result of slander (but that should have been some criticism after he left) but he isn't at all critical enough of Obama and the Dems and Van isn't credible in my book as a result. I don't listen or work w/ people who are pandering and give GREAT SPEECHES with NO real solutions using TACTICS.....it isn't enough to be mad....it is time for specific actions to DEMAND NO NUKES......NO TAXPAYER FUNDING NUKES AND NO MORE "CLEAN" COAL AND OTHER STUPID NON-GREEN TECHNOLOGY! VAN JONES AND AL GORE ARE JUST TALKERS!!! I HAVE NO NEED FOR TALKERS ANY MORE!!! They just waste my precious time!!
Sorry to disagree, freethinker68. There's a difference here on the speechifying. Gore stuck through two terms of the Clinton administration, fronted by an "environmental" book, and made absolutely zero environmental progress over eight years. Van Jones promoted a direction for the country and wasn't backed up by the Obama administration. His talk referenced in this article calls Washington "stupid." It's a criticism of the Obama administration's environmental policies. Kind of a no-brainer in that respect.
Van Jones has no power, but he's not a bad guy. The bad guys give PR speeches while carrying out contradictory policies. It's true that more than just a few good words are needed to shift priorities, but that calls for getting a different party than the Dems in power. If there's any mistake on Van Jones' part, it was teaming up with the Dems. People who care about the environment should just work to support the Green Party and forget about the Dems. The Repugs of course would sooner serve their kids radioactive spinach than shift from their demonic corporate-loving ways.
Shifting the country into producing technologies that leverage renewable energies is exactly what's needed. It could easily be funded by taxing oil sales, which would also shift personal consumption patterns.
T-I-A: I'm with you! In a national climate that's only inches away from outright witch- hunts, for Van Jones to speak these important truths publicly reflects intelligence, courage, and basic decency. He has a lot of potential in the way of leadership... it must have broken his heart to recognize that Obama dumped him off the bus because his advisors warned it would lead to problems in having someone with any genuine Progressive or sane environmental ideas on his team.
With so few leaders on the Left, Van Jones is playing it as cool as he can. He obviously cares about humanity, likely starting with his own family, and has not been blind to the very real threat posed by climate change, as direct result of the burning of fossil fuels. His analogy of our culture (and energy products) to death was interesting. Not long ago a Pope (I can't recall which one) spoke of America as a death culture. Boy was that a right-on assessment!
Smart guy that Mr. Jones! Very refreshing.
And hava nice day!
While it's easy to be cynical, I don't mind "hoping" that the Power Shift represents a genuine people's movement for a better future. I'm glad that CD is covering this conference.
I don't get why it's up to young people to fix the problems - even though they are the ones who will suffer the most - that the old people made.
I truly hope human beings find a way out of the technological nightmare we have made. It may even be possible to clean up radioactivity.
I have to say, though, I got the creepiest feeling when I watched recent movies, The Road and The Book of Eli, both post-apocalyptic horror-drama films. Not because we haven't had such films before. I mean, there was Road Warrior quite a while ago, and others.
But these were big budget. Somehow it felt different. Not quite so fringe anymore.
Much as I admire Van Jones, I feel even he is still not "getting it". True, we are extremely foolish not to have weaned ourselves from fossil fuels long ago. However, our very first and most critical strategy should be, individually and as communities, learning to live with much less energy. Beyond conservation, we must begin curtailment in earnest. By far, most of the energy we use is unnecessary and wasteful. AND as we are powering down, we must also be building a local energy infrastructure according to what makes the most sense in our region.
Oil is not only comprised of, and causing enormous suffering and death, it is getting increasingly difficult to find and extract- i.e. more expensive and more dangerous environmentally. But it is misleading to imply we can maintain our current consumer standards with "green"energies. Once you factor in the massive amounts of fossil fuels that would be necessary to find, extract, process, ship, manufacture, ship again, package, install, maintain any alternative energy systems, the color fades once again to black.
If we don't collectively accept and acknowledge that we can't continue consuming as we have, that economic growth is stalled and will (at best) slowly decline on a bumpy plateau, and that we must quickly reverse our energy footprint - then scenarios like "The Road" certainly seem more believable.
Well said, blueskykate1. No matter what action we take, conservation and drastic reduction in our use of energy should be at the top of the agenda. The party is over and it's time to sober up.
BLUE SKY: Right on! There have been several "Happiness Studies" that pretty much state that happiness levels do NOT rise, once a certain income threshold is reached. That threshold is pretty close to basics, with perhaps a bit of fluff added. (There is nothing sane about the levels of wealth being allowed to congeal at the top of an unbalanced pyramid.)
Another study (by Robert E. Lane, Professor Emeritus from Yale or Harvard) indicated that people value close, loving relationships OVER material well-being.
Repeating the message often shared by SHADOW DANCER, there was a lot to be said for how the tribes once lived on the American continents.
I think it's INEVITABLE that people will be living with less, scaling back, learning to care for one another again, and emulating some of the communal life-styles of the Indigenous, "Less is more," style.
The Earth Changes are speeding up. There was a quake in New Zealand a day or so ago, Japan's fault line is still moving around, and the US South had a major tornado outbreak.
The natural world cannot take what human beings are doing... the assaults are coming from multiple directions, from the awful radiation wound in Japan, to the poisons destroying the food chain (and mammals) in The Gulf of Mexico, added to the constant burning of fossil fuels. Weather systems that took eons to build are coming asunder, and will take harvest cycles along for a rocky ride.
This is not a question of IF, but when... therefore those who learn to live simply, learn to recycle, to make some of their own preserved foods, and grow others, have much better odds.
Although the Japanese are obedient and trained to show self-control far more than Americans, in their tragedy they did NOT turn on one another. Wasn't there a study that showed how people generally work together in hard times so that all can survive? The Hollywood depiction of every man out for himself (in some dystopian setting) may well be another Mars-rules fallacy.
I'm operating under a useful philosophy and people should hear about it. It's better to solar daylight one room (candles are oil-based light) than to curse the darkness.
1. Waiting for Godot to invent better power is not the way to live your life. Our community needs some of you to invent. God's work must truly be our own, not Exxon's, and not Harvard's. Harvard, MIT and Stanford get all the fat grant money but the truth is, all of their professors are vastly overworked and so they never wake up with any great ideas. So, you should be the ideas that you want to see in the world. Say to yourself, I'm going to be the right thing. Punt corporate-owned multinational America over the crossbars if necessary, you didn't really want to live in downtown Hades anyway. Then be something new today, and be the same thing tomorrow, and get good at it.
2. If you really can't invent, realize that the guy next to you can invent. If you were in a band and you realized you couldn't play slide guitar or be a frontman/frontwoman, you could only play keyboards, you'd get good at keyboards. So it is with business. Be one of the people that the inventor can't be, because solo acts don't do as well as bands.
3. If you can't do any of that but you were born courageous and with a fire in the belly to inhibit climate change, be an inventor's first customer.
PaulK, there is one other thing that people can and should do, besides inventing and supporting inventors:
That is, to take a good, hard look at our own consumption of energy and other resources and the amount of trash and carbon emissions that our lifestyle produces, and see what's the minimum we need to live a decent, healthy life. This is apart from and in addition to any political action that we may participate in to change the system and to impose limits on emissions on a national and global level.
As part of this taking stock, people need to get used to numbers. For example, burning gasoline produces 2.4 kg of CO2 per liter (20 lbs of CO2 per gallon). So, just about 420 liters (or 110 gallons) of gasoline burned will produce a ton of CO2.
1 kWh of electricity produced in a coal power plant and by the time it gets to the consumer would have been responsible for about 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of CO2.
1 kg of beef takes about 15,000 liters of water (1,800 gallons per pound of beef) on average.
Oh, btw, the USA gets over 40% of its electricity from coal power plants about 20% from nuclear power plants. From a climate change and ecological point of view, coal is the bigger culprit and should go FIRST. So, closing down on coal and nuclear would take away 60+ % of power generation capacity, which needs to be made up by alternative sources AND conservation. Conservation would really mean cutting out all non-essential usage, not just at the household level, but at the commercial level, especially for wasteful "entertainment" that uses lots of energy.
Learning to get comfortable with numbers (and the units too - as, unfortunately there's both metric and the other thing that Americans use) is important. Numbers that have to do with individual consumption as well as national consumption. And the emissions and pollution that go with this consumption. Just as citizens need to know the details of fiscal budget, they need to get familiar with the energy budget too. These are not normal times.
"From a climate change and ecological point of view, coal is the bigger culprit and should go FIRST."
I'd say there are a few million Japanese who would disagree.
Really? How do you know?
Japan is an island country, and is likely to face the effects of climate change sooner than others inland in big landmasses. Japan is caught in an unsustainable system, and the only real, long term security for Japan will come from moving to a sustainable system. And not just for themselves, but actually in joining the worldwide fight to avert disaster - because it's a collective threat. Continuing to import coal is not going to give them that security. And they will have to import this coal, if you haven't noticed that Japan does not have coal reserves of its own, other than in negligible amounts.
Managing without coal and without nuclear power will not be easy. But when faced with a question of survival and when another round of imperialist conquest is ruled out, I would say that the Japanese people are capable of arriving at a suitable system.
This would, of course, be assuming that other imperial countries would allow such countries to mind their own business, and on that point, I don't have a complete answer to the question as to how nations can defend themselves from predatory forces from outside. Such as Commodore Perry's gunboat "diplomacy" in the 19th century that forced open a nation that was largely minding its own business and living within its ecological means (such as Cuba is mostly doing today). Whatever feudalism they might have had back then was none of outsiders' business, I should add here. But that's a different issue.
If forced to choose between nuclear and coal, I would back coal. Both are dangerous
but nuclear energy is a clearly a catatrophe waiting to happen.
Are you really trying to claim that at this point the Japanese would prefer nukes?!
I understand your focus on climate change, but going soft on nuclear is not the answer.
Saying that coal power plants should go FIRST does not mean going soft on nuclear. Yes, I am NOT saying that nuclear should go first. At the same time, I am not supporting the building of any new nuclear power plants either.
If it is agreed that both coal power plants and nuclear power plants should be phased out, and this phasing out has to be done in an orderly manner so that basic demand for electricity can still be met while alternative power sources come online, along with drastic conservation measures to reduce demand are brought in, then I am convinced that coal power plants should not only go FIRST, but FAST, as well.
I do not want to ignore warnings of climate tipping points and I don't believe in empty sloganeering. Those who say "no nukes" should clarify if they mean "no new nuclear plants", or "no nuclear plants at all!" including the existing ones. If they want to shut down even existing plants, then they should clarify if they want to do it before shutting down the existing coal power plants with their massive carbon emissions. Also they should clarify if they are against building new coal power plants such as in China, India and even the planned ones in Germany. If they want the nuclear power plants to go first, before coal power plants, they should present an alternative plan to bring atmospheric CO2 to below 350 ppm in the next few years. If they put all their "hopes" on renewable power, once again they should show how they plan to meet the 1000's of terawatt-hours (that's billions of kWh) that come from coal and nuclear power plants in the USA alone. Or they should admit that they don't really give a damn about the warnings from people like James Hansen regarding climate tipping points.
>>"If forced to choose between nuclear and coal, I would back coal. Both are dangerous but nuclear energy is a clearly a catatrophe waiting to happen."<<
That may be your choice, but it cannot be justified if one accepts that atmospheric CO2 levels should be brought below 350 ppm urgently to avoid disaster.
>>"Are you really trying to claim that at this point the Japanese would prefer nukes?!"<<
I suppose that the Japanese people would prefer the truth, and in the absence of any absolute truth, then the most honest assessment that's possible, given the current level of scientific knowledge. I do agree that Japan is a special case due to the much larger seismic activity there and the recent tragedy and disaster is still ongoing. Once again, it will come down to numbers. If the Japanese are going to phase out all their nuclear power plants, then they should either do without the roughly 14 - 15% of the electricity coming from these plants at present, or replace them with renewable power. And if they are to meet their obligations to reduce carbon emissions, they will have to start closing down their coal power plants too, and once again replace them with renewable or reduce their demand. For a country that basically sells its labor and innovation (unlike some other countries that sell their natural resources, agricultural products, weapons and carry out massive banking and financial manipulations so as to cream off the fruits of other people's labor), the choice will not be easy. And being caught in the globalized system, the choice will indeed be agonizing. Unless they decide to go the route of Cuba, decide to accept a much lower, but still decent standard of living, and hope that they would be left alone.
Jones for President
Good thought, but Van Jones, like Obama, would fail in ways that would displease many of us here, as others that were held up as shining examples, like Kuchinich, have done. He's needed far more in doing what he's doing - educating the youth to what they face, and how they might fix it. We need many more like him doing the same. Our youth may be the only salvation this country has, and you can bet the right is hard at work teaching theirs in the way they will go. It's too bad we didn't have the Van Joneses, and yes, even the Al Gores in our day to open our eyes to the way our world was heading. Had there been, we might not be in the mess we find ourselves in today.
No, the only salvation to this country will be that Jones moves to a communist country like Cuba that agrees with his nonsense - and that the youth GROW UP to realize Jones is a communist and does not love America.
And you are a neo-McCarthyite fascist asshole!
Van Jones tells the TRUTH. But will Obama rise to the A+ level? Or will caution and bipartisanship determine?
I just read the Al Gore article, and the comments thread, then posted my own comments. After that, I read this article and it makes the same, most important point...it is now all about the youth.
My comments were, however, colored by the intense negativity of the comments I found there and find all over Common Dreams increasingly in recent months and years. Understandable but equally unhelpful and perhaps just another part of the problem, albeit of a different 'note'.
I am just going to re-print my comment from that thread here, with the disclaimer that I am happy to see there are some positive and intelligent responses here in this thread. Note; just replace the name Al Gore with Van Jones and the point remains the same. What follows is my duplicate post, pertinent in equal measure to both articles and directed at all the worthless ranters and old smart asses who just want to show everybody they know so much when they actually failed to save anything.
Common Dreams has devolved, into a gathering place for nihilistic rants, full of sarcasm, cynicism, name calling and foolishness. So I am now in the 'cross hairs' of many of you for saying so, fine. That doesn't change the fact that it is true.
Whether you hate Al Gore or not, whether you believe in his brand of anything or not, the most important point of what he is saying IS TRUE. And that point is this; that it will be up to the youth to solve the problem. Sad, tragic, unfair, yes. True, most definitely YES.
Obviously, the generations over thirty have abdicated their right to be in control by their (our) complete and utter lack of accomplishment and our having driven the world to the brink of destruction, either on purpose or by doing too little.
So, if you are over thirty, shut the fuck up with you snarky, sarcastic name calling and support the young people. Your ideas are outdated and the young people will need your help.
And, if all you get out of this article is another 'opportunity' to rant and think the main point is something about Al Gore, it just proves that you are of no help and are utterly clueless. Forget Al Gore, he is not the point. He does not have the solutions. No one his age does. So, there is some dirt surrounding the jewel. Are you gonna rant and rave and complain about the dirt, or are you going to see the jewel. The jewel is that simple truth that, like it or not, fair or not, ego busting or not, it IS going to be up to the young people. FFS, wake up and support young people by giving them the keys to your house.
Spuds,
Just stop sweating those folks.
They are ALWAYS around when one wishes to discuss sustainability or "green" issues.
It is holdover from the '60s Campus Left.
Ignore them. They are meaningless.
I'll mess with them for all of us. ;)
-matti.
Thanks matti...you got yourself a deal ;-) I'll leave them alone, because that's where they belong anyway.
This ageist rant is much worse the second time around.
And which Gore jewel would that be?
Some young people deserve the keys and others do not. Paul Ryan deserves "the keys" but YOU do not. Grow up.
See spuds?
Now you are an "ageist" who does not "deserve" the "keys" and in need of growing up!
I trust you are DEVASTATED! ;)
Green politics -especially Green PARTY politics- in this sad land is the last refuge of the tired, wannabe Marxist Revolutionaries (3rd Generation), for strange reasons of history involving the opening of eco-awareness in conjunction with the half-century-old Campus Left movement.
Anytime folks want to go Green, voices will appear out of the woodwork to castigate them for not going Red -in the way imagined and discredited in 1968 by the Politburo's reaction to the "Prague Spring".
My humble opinion is that feeling beholden to people who can only retain their worldview by squinting their eyes at the failure of it 53 years ago is -to put it mildly- a mistake.
What the Youth -and everybody else, for that matter- need to focus on is Liberty, Democracy, Sustainability! From the City Council and the local co-op to the UN and the halls of crumbling Empire!
As I've said, I'll take it upon myself to forestall the folks who are still looking to overthrow the Kaiser in 1905! ;)
-matti.
The not deserving the keys comment comes from a virulent right winger, but still you continue your close minded rant against marxism.
Both you and spuds are defenders of the wealthy and hollow bourgeoisie liberals.
And you call yourself an anarchist! What a joke!
Keep Shifting...
FREE AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY (DIRECT) DEMOCRACY
See. I knew this thread would be better!
Magic, ain't it?
Here's to Power Shift 2011!
Getting something done is getting something done.
-matti.
Van Jones may be lesser than the best, but he is far from the lesser of two Evils. I'd even be happy to see him go for President: But only Puppets get publicity, so if he made it on the MSM, we would have a lot to be suspect about, now wouldn't we? I am more pro Vermont and Oregon seceding from the union. And then maybe I would come back for a visit, but probably not.
As for the young people taking the torch of liberty; I'd love to see it, but mostly I hear from my Kids "Dad why should I try and change something I can't do anything about?" I want to say things like well maybe you should learn to swim before the next tidal wave hits, but I don't because I imagine them saying "who wants to swim in a sea of shit". Ditto, we sink because we think we are smart, but actually we think therefore we are stupid. Sinking Stinking Thinking, Time to meditate and remove that delusion of the delusion. I already feel better not thinking about it.
' 0oh Lord will you buy me a empty head,
My children are floating on a sea bed,
Here comes a wave of radiation to spread,
Hope their ship ain't made of lead.'
Power to the people young and old.
I have a better idea -- peterpeacenik: Rather than seceding from the union, why don't you all pack up and ship yourselves over to Libya or Cairo? I'll pay for your trip.
Unfortunately, this is the least academically competitive demographic in two generations of Americans! What might that mean for this "Power shift"?
While so many are not academically competitive, there is a strong and rather large number of super intelligent kids who are entirely capable and working on ways to bring about change that comes from way outside the box. On average, IQs increase by one full point every three years new children are born. That means that the kids today are, on average, ten full points higher in IQ than their parents who may be, give or take, thirty years older. That is a lot. You think you're smart?
The non competitive kids have just been given a bad deal. They are smart but the choices they have been given are crap choices...and they know it. No wonder so many of them are depressed. No wonder they choose entertainment. What's the other choice they have been given?
We are now quite decidedly already into the future, as far as technology is concerned. Youtube (as just one simple example) has only been in existence for a few years and look at what has happened from that so quickly....and the speed of change is occurring so rapidly, it is almost impossible to imagine how things will change over the next five years, let alone ten or twenty. And, by the way, anyone who thinks youtube is just another form of entertainment is remarkably non perceptive. The young geniuses of today will be the ones to bring about change in ways that older folks (over thirty now) can't even imagine. It's moving that fast. And, like it or not, it isn't going to go backwards. Face the facts folks, it's about technology, the future, and KIDS.
While there are a lot of bored and lost kids now, there are enough brilliant and motivated young kids who can and are doing things to cause change...again, in ways that we don't even imagine. If the older people don't completely destroy everything in the next two to three years, the kids will be successful.
I am in my fifties, and I spend almost ALL of my time with people under thirty...helping them, advising them, and supporting them, but letting them be the ones with the ideas for the future. And they are brilliant and utterly genius.
The change that can and must happen will come from these kids. They need our support, not our ideas.
And to all the old school naysayers, proponents of old ideas, and complainers...you are just depressing and not helping anyone.
Cynicism and Success have nothing in common...and the kids of the future deserve better. Give them our support but not our old ideas. Your kids are much smarter than you are, however much your ego hates to admit it. No wonder they are depressed, they can see through the nonsense. Can we? Thankfully, not all of them are lost or depressed. They will save the world if it can be saved. Help them with your money, confidence, love, and tools. And if you still think you're the smart one, read Moby Dick again Captain.
Virginia, very nice to get a handel on your potato Spuds, I hope my Kids are smarter than myself. But as you have said before " IQ don't mean shit": awareness is key: What I look forward to seeing, is for my Kids to realize that they can and do make a difference. Believing that they can't leaves little room to move. And so I push them to pay attention and turn off Fox news and CNN. And occasionally speak some truth to power. Every little bit helps. And thank you for the come back; you and Rebecca Solinet bring me some peace of mind every time. And I am on a Ferry now. But not the captain.
Sounds like you're a racist to me.
Hussein indeed.
Go away, Tea Party Hack!
Its his middle name, as far as I know.
Otherwise, what's your point, other than being racist?
What does Obama's middle name have to do with the topic of this thread?
There is enough anti-arab bigotry in the US without jackwads like you fanning the flames in an arbitrary and unconcerned manner.