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Obama is making ripples, and he should be making waves.
This “diary” is just an invitation for commenters to riff on a theme…
Obama is making ripples, and he should be making waves.
What does it mean to you?
(…even if you think Obama should be making even smaller ripples, or even if you think he has already produced a tsunami of progressive reform.)
Jacob Freeze
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An example of ripples instead of waves...
May 21, 2009 12:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe something a little less "modest" would have been better.
May 21, 2009 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know. Waves crash. Ripples are continuous and infinite and they affect an ever-expanding area.
So I'd rather Obama make ripples--but whether he makes waves or ripples won't matter if members of congress do nothing to help him.
If Democrats do nothing, and continue to fold on principle, then nothing will change.
They are in a position to take his lead, or if necessary, to push him to take grander steps.
And so are we.
We shouldn't look to Obama as the single solitary source of change.
It's not a government of one.
May 21, 2009 1:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ripples erode rock as much as waves do. However the work of ripples just seems to go quietly unnoticed. Waves scare folks into building sea walls to keep the waves out and to keep the landscape from changing.
May 21, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Surf that ripple, dude!
But seriously...
There's something very tao about your comment, Foxie!
May 21, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know Rootie, I am starting to really like you.
May 22, 2009 2:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Likewise, Saladin.
But it ain't about Rootie...
It's about the rootie-tootie truth.
May 22, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves."
Bruce Lee
May 21, 2009 3:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or maybe it's more like Nero fiddling while Rome burned...
(There were no fiddles in 1st-century Rome.)
May 21, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
No need for me to comment. I like your comment as it stands, because while it seems basically good, it's vague enough that I can project all kinds of ideas onto it--even contradictory ones.
I'm half kidding, so I guess that makes my comment a ripple, not a wave.
May 21, 2009 5:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
That sounds like one of those meta-comments to me!
Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to post this limerick...
May 21, 2009 6:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I knew that limericks typically had double entendres, but I never knew a limerick about them--that's perfect!
May 21, 2009 9:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Waves swamp boats which then sink.
May 21, 2009 5:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
waves take time to build. maybe we were spoiled because the stimulus tsunami crested so fast and so high.
fixing healthcare, climate crisis, and education is hopefully going to be policy that affects the next 50 years at least. it seems like that type of transformation is going to take some time to build up.
ripples in the meantime are good, as long as there a few big big waves in the next 6 - 18 months.
May 21, 2009 5:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Medicare was a wave. A tax credit next year to help pay a health insurance policy premium and all the deductibles due today is a ripple.
May 21, 2009 8:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
ripples don't begin to address the tidal waves that Bush made.
The problem is Democrats are always trying to make ripples, tentatively. It seems they hardly believe in anything other than running scared from Republican bluster.
Bush admin was RADICAL, no-holds barred making waves. To effectively undo anything substantial, waves must be made.
I don't see that happening, only sound waves.
My day trader buddy told me yesterday how fucked we are as a country - a trader telling me: we haven't done anything to fix financial problem: no changes to CEO pay, no breaking up big banks, no new regulations, nothing has changed. He was complaining that we have given billions and billions of dollars in ZERO interest loans, and done nothing at all to prevent a recurrance.
You know it's bad when a day trader is complaining about that type of stuff....
May 22, 2009 12:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm remind of Redd Foxx mixing Ripple with Pink Champagne to get "Pipple". Will the piffle people notice? Will they drink it anyway?
May 22, 2009 1:08 PM | Reply | Permalink