Did anyone on this list achieve an unqualified success? How many achieved little or nothing at all?

This kind of punky, self-righteous essay is what I've come to expect from Professor Reich, a man I used to admire.

But if one has something extensive and substantive to say, why not advocate that position, defend it, support it with the logic and reason and evidence at your command in space which is provided to do it?

Alternately dismiss this as pure bullshit...your choice, after all, not mine.

Here's what the Nobel Committee is Celebrating:

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

I'm celebrating those aspirations with them, and hoping that the recognition lines people of good will behind the effort, pushing as hard as they can.

But then you may hold more weight with others than the Nobel Committee does. Why not go rant at them on your own blog?

We're using three of Franklin's books, his autobiography, Mirror to America, his 1976 Jefferson Humanities lecture Racial Equality in America and a book of his essays covering 50 years, Race and History. All three are good reads, and Racial Equality is the American experience in 100 incredible pages. The fact that southern university presses published the last two of the three is a sign that things are slowly changing.

For those who don't know Franklin, you can watch Charlie Rose interview him at the mere age of 90.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=849841564172613745&hl=en&emb=1#

(Those who do know him are permitted to watch as well).

He lived to see the election of Barack Obama, and his words following the election sre powerful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpUTRbXTRos&feature=related

Friday we told a lot of stories about things we did--saran wrap on the bowl in the women's john, we caught the algebra teacher with that one--the pass the hum game in Miss Berg's typing class.

At Saturday's brunch the alumni director said today's kids would never get away with what we did. We winked at each other and said "poor them".

Forty years ago marks a civil rights milestone. On June 10, 1964, the Senate voted to end a five-months-long debate on what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Between February and June, Senate opponents of the bill had proposed over 500 amendments designed to weaken the measure. Yet after 534 hours, 1 minute, and 51 seconds, the longest filibuster in the history of the United States was broken. Pekin's Everett McKinley Dirksen, then Senate Minority Leader, provided the votes that made cloture, the procedure for ending debate, possible. It was his greatest moment as a legislator.

http://www.dirksencenter.org/print_basics_histmats_civilrights64_cloturespeech.htm

Those conducting the filibuster were southern democrats (we call them Republicans now). Ev Dirksen would be disowned by his party today, except I think he would disown them first.