Obama's second inaugural speech

The following is a transcript of President Obama’s second inaugural speech.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/us/politics/obamas-second-inaugural-speech.html
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For anyone who wants something shorter, The Times has condensed the speech in a way that keeps its main themes:

Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:
 “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it – so long as we seize it together. For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. So we must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, and reach higher. We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.

We do not believe that in this country, freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us, at any time, may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other – through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security, – these things do not sap our initiative; ,they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth. It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity,y; until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for, and cherished, and always safe from harm.

That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Llife, and Lliberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life;. I it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, – but it does require us to act in our time. For now decisions are upon us, and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect

Scott Momaday

 An interview to N Scott Momaday
on the website Academy of Achievement
 When I published The Way to Rainy Mountain , someone who was writing a review -- or interviewing me -- said to me, "You know, you're very lucky to know who you are, with respect to your grandparents, your great-grandparents, five generations back. You know about that. I don't know that about myself, or my people." And that came as a surprise to me, because I hadn't thought about it, you know. And I had taken it for granted. But I sometimes think that the contemporary white American is more culturally deprived than the Indian, in that sense. Because very few people know about their ancestry, going back even a generation. I'm always appalled by students who -- you know, I say, "Well look, you've got an oral tradition. You've got a family oral tradition, if nothing else. Tell me about your grandparents." And sometimes they just don't know about their grandparents, and I find that very sad, and alarming, but it's true. It's true.
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mom0int-5#

To a child running with outstretched arms in Canyon de Chelly

To a Child Running With Outstretched Arms in Canyon de Chelly

Navarro Scott Momaday

You are small and intense
In your excitement, whole,
Embodied in delight.
The backdrop is immense;

The sand drifts break and roll
Through cleavages of light
And shadow. You embrace
The spirit of this place.

House made of Dawn

House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday

Dypaloh. There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around. […]

The Canyon is a ladder to the plain. […]

Man came down the ladder to the plain a long time ago. It was a slow migration, though he came only from the caves in the canyons and the tops of the mesas1 nearby. There are low, broken walls on the tabletops and smoke-blackened caves in the cliffs, where there are metates2 and broken bowls and ancient ears of corn3, as if the prehistoric civilization had gone out among the hills for a little while and would return; and then everything would be restored to an older age, and time would have returned upon itself and a bad dream of invasion and change would have been dissolved in an hour before the dawn. For man, too, has a tenure in the land; he dwelt upon the land twenty-five thousand years ago, and his gods before him.

1. altopiano          2. pietra usata per macinare il grano            3. pannocchie di mais

Obama vs Romney

The White House candidates 2012: What they stand for

Obama Vs Romney on Prezi

Occupy this album, music for the movement

 

99 tracks by 99 artists in favour of 99% of the people

 http://musicforoccupy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/MFO-Poster-195x300.jpg

How companies learn your secrets, Charles Duhigg

The New York Times Magazine, February 16 2012

 

Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ” [...]

Specifically, the marketers said they wanted to send specially designed ads to women in their second trimester, which is when most expectant mothers begin buying all sorts of new things [...]

the company’s primary goals is convincing customers that the only store they need is Target. [...]

Read the article on The New York Times Magazine website, and see how companies study your habits (recording what, when, where you buy) and use the data in their marketing strategies. The case of Target, a retailer company.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html 

The Declaration of Independence

Read and commented by Matt Damon

The Gettysburg Address

Interview with Mario Monti

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1441566061001_2106444,00.html

Elizabeth Warren - US Senate candidate on OWS

Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is running for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts as a Democrat, revealed that she was a Republican until the 1980s, and she came out in strong support of the Occupy Wall Street protests

Thw Wasington Post on Zuccotti Park

Zuccotti Park was cleared of Occupy Wall Street protesters overnight by the order of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

While there are plenty of livestream videos and reports on the scene now (see Melissa Bell’s liveblog here), that wasn’t the case a few hours ago. Continuous firsthand media accounts of the process during the park’s clear out were largely lacking. If you read carefully, you can see a 3 1/2 hour gap in the timeline from the AP’s report otherwise

Declaration of the Occupation of New York

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members

http://www.nycga.net/resources/declaration/

Occupy Wall Street (OWS)

Today an Occupy Wall Street initiative called ‘Occupy the Highway’ arrives in Washington DC, having marched from New York City. Two weeks ago, Occupy Wall Street participants in Manhattan embarked on the epic journey. Their goals were to make the new movement visible in more communities, to connect with other occupations along the way, and to further a national dialogue about how to reclaim our democracy.

http://occupywallst.org/

Jill Abramson, 1st Lady of the 'Gray Lady'

Jill Abramson is the 1st woman to direct the New York Times (called the Gray Lady) in its 160 years of history. Watch the interview on CNN.

Bob Kennedy on GNP, ethics in economy

Robert F. Kennedy
University of Kansas
March 18, 1968

"Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

Movies by Michael Moore

Roger & Me
Moore first became famous for his 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors.

Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint
(1992) is a short (23-minute) documentary film that was aired on PBS. It is based on the feature-length film Roger & Me (1989) by Michael Moore. The film's title refers to Rhonda Britton, a Flint, Michigan, resident featured in both the 1989 and 1992 films who sells rabbits as either pets or meat.[citation needed]

Canadian Bacon
In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, Canadian Bacon, which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove.) The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "... a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars."

The Big One
In 1997, Moore directed The Big One, which documents the tour publicizing his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.

Bowling for Columbine
Moore's 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Bowling for Columbine won the Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival[22] and France's Cesar Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record now held by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11). It was praised by some for illuminating a subject slighted by the mainstream media, but it was attacked by others who considered it inaccurate and misleading in its presentations and suggested interpretations of events.

Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Fahrenheit was awarded the Palme d'Or, the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people, preferably on television, by election day. Since November 2 was less than nine months after the film's release, it would be disqualified for the Documentary Oscar.[clarification needed] Moore also said he wanted to be supportive of his "teammates in non-fiction film." However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book Fahrenheit 451 about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, Fahrenheit 9/11 remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in over US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of almost US$120 million.[3]
Sicko
Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies—Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline—ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore.[23][24][25] According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas – and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on 29 June 2007.[26] The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the third highest grossing documentary of all time[3] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.[27]
Captain Mike Across America
[28] Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election.[29][30] The film was later re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising.

Capitalism: A Love Story
On September 23, 2009, Moore released a new movie titled Capitalism: A Love Story, which looks at the financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the U.S. economy during the transition between the incoming Obama Administration and the outgoing Bush Administration. Addressing a press conference at its release, Moore said, "Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore

I have a dream, Martin Luther King, Jr

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident: that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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.
I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day down in Alabama with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the south. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that one day we will be free.
This will be the day this will be the day when all God's children will be able to sing with new meaning "My country, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring. " And if America is to become a great nation this must become true.
So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped peaks of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all God's children, black men and white men Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of an old black spiritual: "At last we are free! At last we are free! Thank God almighty we are free at last!"

www.google.com

www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm