Presidential Prayer Breakfast

I take the 16th street bus to work and then head west walking towards Connecticut Ave, where my office is. The roads were all blocked off with police vehicles, especially outside the Washington Hilton, which is directly across from my building on T street. It didn't occur to me until reading through the White House blog postings that arrive in my Google Reader that President Obama and the First Lady Michelle and hundreds of others were there for the National Prayer Breakfast.

His speech is wonderful. It really calls on us to recognize and cling to our commonalities, no matter our faith backgrounds, so that our nation and our world can truly benefit from it. this is a nice segment from the speech....

"There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all.

But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to "love thy neighbor as thyself." The Torah commands, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." In Islam, there is a hadith that reads "None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

It is an ancient rule; a simple rule; but also one of the most challenging. For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue. Sometimes, it asks us to reconcile with bitter enemies or resolve ancient hatreds. And that requires a living, breathing, active faith. It requires us not only to believe, but to do – to give something of ourselves for the benefit of others and the betterment of our world.

In this way, the particular faith that motivates each of us can promote a greater good for all of us."

I'm excited to hear how our new President is going to leverage well established faith-based organizations during his administration to work for change. He's announced an Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to get this going.

Keep up to speed with daily happenings in the Obama administration here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/

Not me, WE

My mom and I, along with many others who'd replied to an e-mail announcement and received free tickets from MoveOn.org, showed up downtown for a major speech on global climate change by Nobel winner and former vice president Al Gore . I spent a swelteringly hot hour yesterday waiting outside the DAR (the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution) in a blob of progressives (along with some right wingers who think global warming is a hoax) surrounding the building and in the streets, many of whom don't know how to form lines and proceeded to get rude and yell at each other about who was actually at the front of the line. Where's the unity, change, and hope for us in that kind of behavior!? Ugh. It would have been a much more pleasant wait had my kindergarten teacher been there to straighten everyone out.

But we got in and the auditorium was air conditioned - hallelujah!



Essentially the speech was Gore's challenge to the nation to be 100% energy independent using renewable energy and carbon-free sources. Quite an ambitious goal, I think, but he did a spectacular job explaining the premise for his challenge and presenting the reasons why such a goal is attainable. Being the dork that I am, I actually took notes throughout and I would just love to share them with you. But then again, why reinvent the wheel? I just received this e-mail from MoveOn.org with the key quotes from the speech

"Like a lot of people, it seems to me that all these problems are bigger than any of the solutions that have thus far been proposed for them, and that's been worrying me...

Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges—the economic, environmental and national security crises.

We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change...

But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we're holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.

Can we really get all our electricity from sources like solar and wind in 10 short years?

Scientists have confirmed that enough solar energy falls on the surface of the earth every 40 minutes to meet 100 percent of the entire world's energy needs for a full year. Tapping just a small portion of this solar energy could provide all of the electricity America uses.

And enough wind power blows through the Midwest corridor every day to also meet 100 percent of US electricity demand.

And of course, all this means more good jobs to re-power our economy:

When we send money to foreign countries to buy nearly 70 percent of the oil we use every day, they build new skyscrapers and we lose jobs. When we spend that money building solar arrays and windmills, we build competitive industries and gain jobs here at home.

With all the political posturing on high gas prices and drilling, it's amazing to hear someone being so honest:

It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that our government so often adopts a so-called solution that has absolutely nothing to do with the problem it is supposed to address? When people rightly complain about higher gasoline prices, we propose to give more money to the oil companies and pretend that they're going to bring gasoline prices down. It will do nothing of the sort, and everyone knows it...

However, there actually is one extremely effective way to bring the costs of driving a car way down within a few short years. The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 per gallon gasoline."

If you'd like to see the entire speech, check it out on the link below:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3945&id=13269-7914041-TAFNyXx&t=

Gore's goals are further explained in the "we campaign," also known as We Can Solve It, which is working to promote awareness of the threat to our global and national climate, government, and economy, and to mobilize the American people to take action.

I've got some commentary of my own on the event, but I'll share that in another post later.

Good morning metro

My commute from Rockville to Dupont Circle took an hour instead of 30 minutes this morning. Apparently there was a power outage at Metro Center and that of course affects the entire Red Line. We finally get to Dupont the whole tunnel is dark, save a few emergency lights, and b/c the power is out I can't swipe my card to exit. I exited a metro station through a handicapped stall after someone else and I found the next morning that my SmartTrip card wasn't recognized when I swiped it. so money wasn't taken off the card. In order to enter the metro station that morning I had to request the station manager reset my card. What's going to happen tonight if the power is back on and everyone heads back home? Is there going to be a traffic jam line to get the station manager's to fix the cards?

(photo by erika and petra)

Another result of this power outage is that the escalator turned into massive stairs. As some know, Dupont Station is deep underground and it's escalators seem an eternity away from daylight and fresh air. I usually walk up the escalator when it's moving and it gets the blood flowing and wakes me up. But man, today was a challenge. I'm proud to say that I made it up the entire height without stopping for once. Thank you, legs! What about the disabled commuters? No power means no elevators. What impact did this have on their morning?