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<div><font style="background-color: transparent;" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks, Jaime.</font></div>
<div>Ellie</div>
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<div style="color: black; font-family: arial,helvetica; font-size: 10pt;">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Jaime R Vergara <svesjaime@aol.com><br>
To: oe <oe@lists.wedgeblade.net><br>
Sent: Thu, Feb 14, 2013 2:51 pm<br>
Subject: [Oe List ...] Fwd: ST Monday OpEd: President's Day<br>
<br>
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<div style="clear: both;">j'aime la vie
<div style="color: black;"><br>
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<div><i style="background-color: white;"><font color="#000080"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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<br>
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<div style="color: black; font-family: helvetica,arial; font-size: 10pt;">-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Jaime R Vergara <<a href="mailto:jrvergarajr2031@aol.com">jrvergarajr2031@aol.com</a>><br>
To: jayvee_vallejera <<a href="mailto:jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com">jayvee_vallejera@saipantribune.com</a>>; mark_rabago <<a href="mailto:mark_rabago@saipantribune.com">mark_rabago@saipantribune.com</a>>; editor <<a href="mailto:editor@saipantribune.com">editor@saipantribune.com</a>><br>
Sent: Fri, Feb 15, 2013 4:36 am<br>
Subject: ST Monday OpEd: President's Day<br>
<br>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><b>The humanity of US
Presidents</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">It is Presidents’ Day.
Top ten on a survey list: 1) Abe Lincoln abolished slavery, 2) FDR got
working America back on its heels, 3) George Washington created a citizen
president, 4) Thomas Jefferson doubled US size with Louisiana purchase, 5)
common man Andrew Jackson proved humble beginnings hinders no one, 6) trust
buster TR v. corrupt business, also committed deeply to conservation, 7)
Woodrow Wilson led America out of isolation, 8) Harry Truman made hard
decisions including the use of the A-bomb, 9) James K. Polk acquired CA, NM,
OR, as manifest destiny, and 10) Ike Eisenhower presided over America’s
post-WWII economic prosperity.<b><span style="color: rgb(38, 38, 38); font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;"></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">In the topography of consciousness, we delineate three sides
of the same reality. One is the social
process perspective that engages economic support of human existence, the
political organization of decision-making, the cultural significance and
meaning of every human endeavor, and to balance the process that impacts and
determines actions and deeds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Science of late has been pushing the second perspective, a
planetary one that zeroes in on ecological state and well being of the earth,
metaphorically rendered as the global brain in Gaia’s journey. Since the blue orb created the celebrated
image of the earthrise, this perspective has gained common currency. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">E.g., groups of Christian faithful are engaged this Lent
season in carbon fast, a conscious curtailing of carbon emission by prudent
individual practices. With an Easter
resurrection theme, measures like collaboratively planting trees are undertaken
to create natural carbon-catching processes.
In our own thinking, we refer to the social and planetary part of the
trichotomy as eco-democracy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The third category is the human, a ten thousand year journey
in the backdrop of a 4.5 billion year old evolving planet, where the sense,
feelings, thoughts, and resolve of a unit of consciousness has entered the
discourse of history, sociology, and psychology.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">Enuff of the theoretics!
Tuesday evening in America, President Barack Obama delivered SOTU
2013. How human is our President? He began with a JFK quote: <i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">“the Constitution makes us not rivals for power, but partners for
progress… It is my task to report the state of the union. To improve it is the
task of us all.”</span></i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">The president who spent most of his first term dealing with
a recalcitrant and gridlocked Congress, he continued on a forceful and
consistent “Yes, we can” theme.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">In
a literary cadence, now familiar to many, he declared: <i>It is
our generation’s task, then, to reignite the true engine of America’s economic
growth: a rising, thriving middle class.</i>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">It is -- it is our
unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country, the idea
that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no
matter where you come from, no matter what you look like or who you love.</span></i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">It is our unfinished task
to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many, and not just the
few, that it encourages free enterprise, rewards individual initiative, and
opens the doors of opportunity to every child across this great nation.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> </span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then in a facilitative as well as prescriptive leadership style that
excites many, and infuriates not a few, he romped with a Fix-it-First program on
public works, a slew of advances on deficit reduction and tax reform, the need
for urgent immigration measures and the revitalization of the middle class ,
early learning and technical-vocational education, gun legislation and private
sector collaboration, the paycheck and women’s rights, <i>et al. </i>Coming from nowhere, he hit a well aimed surprise homerun
with an invitation for Congress to raise the minimum wage to $9 from its
current level of $7.25. (I imagined some
tremor from weaker knees in the Marianas Trench!)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He touched on a wide range of issues including extremist groups (al
Qaeda) and counterterrorism, the end of US presence in Afghanistan (though he
failed to mention, in our view, a grave moral contradiction, the use of the
drone), reduction of nuclear arsenals (Russia), inhibiting others from gaining
one (Iran), and preparing for those who threaten to use one (the hermit kingdom
of DPRK).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The adrenalin flow of the night was, however, the highlighted presence
of many folks mentioned in the speech, including those affected by violence
victimized by gun violence, not the least of whom was one of the audience’s
former member, assassination incapacitated survivor Gabrielle Gifford of
Arizona. Obama did not push for a
particular legislation; only that legislation already in docket deserves a
vote. On the note, the SOTU almost
turned into a participative Rock Festival!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Now’s the time to do it. Now’s the time to get it done, </span></i><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">he thundered again and
again. </span><span style="font-family: ;">The speech is a tour de force, at once, presidential
and impassioned speech, a confident human resolve of
imaginative proportions. We are partisan on
record on this one. But it is not that
the President is human. It is that we
are invited to be human in the same vein.</span><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"></span></div>
<br>
<div style="clear: both;"><a style="font: lighter 10px/normal Verdana, Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"><img border="0" align="absmiddle" src="http://presence.mail.aol.com/mailsig/?sn=jrvergarajr2031"></a> <font color="black" size="2" face="arial">j'aime la vie
<div><br>
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<div><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, </b></font></i><i><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#ff0000"><b>Celebrate!</b></font></i></div>
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