This past Thursday, at approximately 1:30 pm Cairo time President Barack Obama achieved something no other president before him ever did. In a speech directed at healing relations between the US and the Muslim world, Obama quoted the Koran on several occasions, calling it “holy” and showing respect for Islam by saying “may peace be upon them” when speaking of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad.
Obama touched upon many points , including Muslim extremisim, Women’s Rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however the center of his message was clear: The United States is open for dialogue between nations so long as they are democratic, peaceful, and do no harm to their citizens. Furthermore, he made a clear distinction between the vast majority of middle-eastern Muslims who seek peaceful discourse, and the “small but potent” minority of violent extremists who have sought to exploit them.
“The sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions if Islam.” he explained, “Violent extremists have exploited these tensions.”
Back in March, Rep. Anthony Weiner announced that he was reconsidering his run for Mayor. Since then there has been a good deal of speculation regarding whether or not he’ll run. Nobody else is reporting on it, but I think he might be announcing his decision tomorrow or next week.
Earlier today I got a call from the Friends of Anthony Weiner campaign office inviting me to a speech he’s giving tomorrow. The subject? Transperancy in the NYC and Federal Budget. The location? Out of his Queens/Brooklyn district, in midtown Manhattan.
When I informed the campaign staffer that I could not attend, he told me that Weiner would also be giving another speech next week, on the 18th, and asked me to bring friends.
These speeches come right after Weiner has gotten a lot of good press regarding his role in reopening the crown of the Statue of Liberty. If he is running, he might be trying to ride the good publicity wave into his announcement.
There’s plenty of reason to believe that these are just speeches and nothing more–the Facebook event page lists Weiner’s Congressoinal e-mail address as a contact number. But he is at least using his campaign office to invite people via phone, and one has to wonder about the timing, the fact that the event is outside of his district, and the fact that he continues to discuss City issues if he has decided not to run.
Of course, a lot of this could be coincidence, but if you can’t do some unfounded speculation on a blog, where else can you do it? Also, it’s important to note that I’m not saying that if he announces tomorrow that he’ll be announcing his entry into the race–he may be announcing that he won’t run this year. The profile of Weiner in the latest edition of New York Magazine seems to indicate that he won’t run this year, but who knows?
If anyone wants to go see Weiner announce his decision (or not announce his decision), here are the event details:
City Hall and Congress Without Walls
Tomorrow, Tuesday, May 12
CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Avenue, 9th Floor Conference Room
Note: I volunteered at the firm that does fundraising for Weiner in February and March, but I did no work for the campaign and I no longer volunteer for the firm. I know nothing more than I have written here, which isn’t a lot.
In times of great growth for our organization, leadership is critical to our sustained expansion on campus. From Participate ’08, to the election of Barack Obama, and now looking forward to our state-wide convention, our organization has developed much more than I ever could have imagined. Now, as I hand our organization over to a new executive board, I know that we need good leaders both in our organization, as well as in Student Government. Student Government has proved to be a great asset to us, but has also created several challenges. We need to a Student Government who can work with our new executive board; who can talk with us and not at us. It is under this principle that we proudly support P.R.I.D.E. for the 2009 Student Government Elections. After a stellar debate performance last night, the P.R.I.D.E. ticket exemplified the personal leadership we need. With a platform, creating a new liaison program putting the floor representatives to work, and creating an “Organization of the Month” program to provide an incentive for extraordinary organizational performance, we believe that the P.R.I.D.E. ticket will best serve the student organizations and the entire student body.
With the annoucement finally here James Gennaro’s campaign sent out this statement.
Dear Friend:
2008 was an exciting and most historic year for politics in America, and I’m proud we were a part of it. All across the country and here in Queens, people cried out for change, and I’m proud that our campaign brought the promise of change to tens of thousands of doorsteps in a way unseen in four decades.
I’m proud that almost 100,000 people voted in the 11th Senate District, and that half of those voters believed in and supported us. I’m proud that we ran an issue-based campaign, educating the public about my opponent’s voting record, especially with regard to women’s health and rights, and proposing fresh new ideas like building a green economy and protecting New York City’s drinking water supply. I’m proud that we also enlightened voters to some of the serious problems that need addressing in Albany, like the billions of New York City taxpayer dollars that go to Albany to be distributed to other parts of our State and leave New York City struggling to pay for basic services. And I’m proud that we ran a campaign of complete inclusion, uniting a wide range of supporters of all ages, ethnicities, religions and walks of life who collectively represent a new 11th Senate District, one of the 21st Century.
Little did I know, however, that another, even more significant campaign was to commence after Election Day. For three months that succeeded, our opponent and his Republican Party lawyers used every resource at their disposal to wage a systematic and sustained effort to either disqualify or deny the consideration of perfectly valid ballots. As important as any local election is, the right to vote and have that vote count is of paramount importance. This became our new focus – to fight our opponent’s attempts to disenfranchise voters and to ensure that every valid ballot would be identified and counted. And, while we did not prevail in the election, we won a great victory: about 1,000 voters – Democrats, Republicans and Independents – who cast perfectly valid ballots in this most historic election – will now have their votes for President, U.S. Representative, State Senate, State Assembly and Supreme and Civil Court counted rather than discarded.
I take this opportunity to thank in a special way my wonderful and supportive family, inspired and relentless staff, energetic and spirited volunteers, loyal and generous supporters and all the voters of the 11th Senate District, who by participating in this election demonstrated their personal commitment to our community and our great country. It has been a great honor and a privilege for me to serve the public for the last 26 years in government and for the last seven years as a Councilman. I pledge to continue to fight for and serve the people of Northeast Queens. There is serious work to be done in fixing our economy, preserving our communities, protecting our environment and making sure that the world we leave our children is a better one than the one our parents left us.
I’m so grateful to you for your generous support, and I look forward to seeing you soon! Of course, please feel free to send me a message any time at Jim@JimGennaro.com.
Today the Illinois State Senate voted in a 59-0 vote to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich and swear in the Lt. Governor. After spending the last week on a media blitz to profess his innocence to America, the legacy of Mr. Blagojevich has finally come to an end. Perhaps one of the most memorable lines from the hearings on CSPAN was Illinois State Senator Meeks who ended his remarks with,
We’ve got this thing called impeachment and its bleepin’ golden!
Blagojevich went to the trial insisting that he had done no wrong doing, however the evidence was too strong against him for the state senate. Blagojevich said earlier, ““You haven’t proved a crime — and you can’t, because it hasn’t happened. How can you throw a governor out of office with incomplete or insufficient evidence?” President Obama offered his insight saying that he was working forward to working with Gov. Quinn and that this moment “ended a painful moment for Illinois”
Now that we have a new Democratic President, it has become increasingly evident that Fox News is not all that happy. From the story of the “Terrorist Fist Jab” to Sean Hannity’s crusade to inform Americans that Barack Obama is actually Satan himself, it is sad that Fox is still followed by the word “News”.
Recently, Fox has begun the following theory:
Making fun of President Bush = Unpatriotic
Making fun of President Obama = Our only chance of survival
Fox, I think it’s time you began to refer to yourself as to what you really are; propaganda. When you’ve given Karl Rove, Sean Hannity and Mike Huckabee their own television shows and still claim to be Fair and Balanced there is something terribly wrong. Thanks but no thanks Sean. He’s been under scruntiny for the past 2 years while he was running for President and is now under a non-stop barage of press as President, will you please stop trying to tell us who the real Barack Obama is? Fear mongering is disgusting. Fear mongering is un-American. The price of living in a democracy is having to accept it when your candidate does not win.
So to everyone at Fox, in the words of Bill O’Reilly: “Whether you like it or not he is the President of the United States, attacking him is unpatriotic”
As one of his first acts as President, Barack Obama has suspended all arrests for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for 120 days. The President has said that this time will be used to review the practices at Guanatanamo Bay with the ultimate goal of ending torture tactics. Obama and Gates made a direction to the military courts to suspend 21 trials until a full comprehensive review of the tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.
This news comes hours before President Obama signed his ethics reform conference, where he set high standards for his staff including a ban on gifts from lobbyists, a ban of lobbyists from working for the government in their field, and a pay freeze for the White House Staff.
Listening to Barack Obama’s inauguration speech was awe inspiring. With 18 minutes worth of speaking, there were plenty of moments that made people laugh and cry.
One of my most favorite lines was
The world has changed; and we must change with it.
Granted, this speech semeed to lack that “There is nothing to fear” moment as FDR gave us, but his speech was exactly what this nation at this time.
What were some of your favorite lines that you will be able to recite verbatum to your children?
It is truly remarkable how far we have come as a nation in the past two years. When I reflect upon my part in the historic events that led to the election and inauguration of the first black president in our nation’s history it fills me with joy to know that I was there when it all began (for me) one late October night in 2006. Myself, and three others went into Seattle (on a school night!) to attempt to scalp tickets to see Barack Obama, a mostly unknown junior senator from Illinois give a talk about his book and perhaps have a chance for him to sign a book of ours. We were incredibly lucky to even get four tickets out of the line, and to get them at face value (five dollars). We made friends with people that were close to the front of the line and waited to get in with them. Already the spirit of togetherness was overtaking common citizens! We sat in the first row allowed for those with our sort of ticket. Then one of us asked if we could move all the way to the front, which we were allowed to do. Watching him enter from my left side was crazy and even then it blew my mind. His talk touched upon the fundamentals that he would eventually utilise to run for President. I was terribly impressed by how (mostly) non-partisan he was. It was truly refreshing. Afterward we all waited patiently for our group to be called to have our books signed. One of us had bought an extra book for our AP Government professor which was my ticket into the line. Eventually it was my turn to walk up and get the book signed. I handed him my book and he signed it and then I asked him, “I don’t know if this is kosher but could you sign my ticket stub?” He smiled and said yes and I shook his hand. We left Benaroya Hall walking on air at the experience. Looking back upon it now it seems like it was in a different time.
I always thought from then on that he was the right man for the job. I was just waiting on everyone else to realise what I already had. Then the movement began slowly and showed itself in Iowa, in South Carolina, and so on and so forth. We stand here today perched on the precipice of the kind of history that our generation has never been witness to. Yes, we did watch in horror as the towers fell in smoke and ash under the pressure of terrorism and hate. Yes, we did watch our nation go to war. Yes, we did watch our economy sink to depths none of us could have imagined. Yes, we were told our opinions did not matter. This however, is the kind of moment that will forever live in all our memories as one that is a happy memory, one that reminds us that even though we have witnessed and grown up during some of the toughest times this country has ever faced, we can and did rise up and send a message to the world that we are a generation of change. That we are a generation that refuses to allow others to tell us what we cannot achieve. With that sort of resolve, inspired by a man with a funny name and big ears, we can achieve anything.
And now, we turn ourselves to bear witness to the day Martin Luther King dreamed of when he made his address on the Lincoln Memorial over 40 years ago. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That day, is January 20, 2009. Let us enjoy it.
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