I did not even have to use my AK.
Great interview with Toby Webb of “The Ethical Corporation”, coming to a podcast near you. Toby runs a business intelligence company cum business incubator for the under 25 set. A wonderful energy when you enter the place; young aspiring entrepreneurs manning their work stations, engaged in heated conversations. Tony pitched me curves, hardballs, and the occasional slider: state of the microfinance industry, what’s happening with FINCA, and suggested that I came off, at times, as “ruthless” in my book. En mi defensa propia: FINCA took on a life of its own, and made demands on all of us to raise our game on a daily basis. No one was exempt.
Obama appears to have grown a spine over the past few days and issued an en-tu-cara challenge to the Republicans no-revenue-side-solutions-what-do-you-not-understand-about-that? position on the deficit,proposing a number of tax increases on the rich. Boehner deftly paried with: “Pitting one group of Americans against another is not leadership.” My first thought was: “Wow, he’s admitting that he’s not a leader?” Because, after all, it was first Richard Nixon, then Lee Atwater, then Karl Rove, who came up with the GOP’s brilliant “Southern Strategy” (later know as “wedge strategies”) of getting Americans of one class/ethnic group to hate the other and turn it into electoral gold. But then I realized: “Oh, he’s talking about Obama!”
I read Obama’s book “Dreams from my Father”, and I thought then that he had the makings of a great President, a man who combined white and black America, who had lived in the Third World and so understood that, and could possibly lead us into the next century. I think he still can, but he has to show more of the steel of his convictions. He has to understand that the reason the Republicans have him on the run is that they NEVER worry about appealing to anyone but their hard core, radical base. If it’s been working for them, maybe it can work for him. The “independents” — whoever they are — will sort themselves out at the last minute, making a calculated decisions as to who is the lesser evil. Let them worry about that. The one thing Americans deplore above all else is weakness in their leader. Obama needs to takes some calculated risks, and throw his adversaries off base with some gutsy moves and decisions.
Bring back the man who bagged Bin Laden.
Rupert