Dr Kathleen Reardon

* Dr Kathleen Reardon:

"Skillful negotiation rarely has anything at all to do with giving in, giving up, going along or being taken for a ride. Why? Because truly competent negotiators know their bottom line, --the point at which they're better off walking away, if just for a while. They think in terms of what they most want but always have in mind contingencies to circumvent loss. They estimate the potential gains of each, consider what they can give away without suffering - often things they don't need or want anyway - and then they do something George Bush arrogantly and ignorantly refuses to do - they talk.

There is a vast difference between acquiescence and skilled negotiation, which is about seeing what you can get while giving what you can afford to let go. George Bush and all the short-sighted, puffed up, barely functioning around him are oblivious to the fact that skilled negotiation more often than not results in outcomes far superior to not negotiating. In other words, it's more frequently a process of gaining than of losing. When skillfully done, there may be accommodations but not the capitulation, acquiescing, and humiliation this administration keeps erroneously and gratuitously associating with negotiation.

This is how truly skilled negotiators think about a problem. They don't try one way and leave in disgust or call the other side "evil" and walk away.
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Emphatically and repeatedly asserting that the U.S. will not negotiate with world leaders unless and until they first do as they're told is not only a policy of extraordinary arrogance but also one of paralyzing myopia. And that's a nice way of saying it.

As R.J. Eskow pointed out, it does indeed take brains and guts to negotiate. It isn't the weaker choice with a hostile adversary; it's the far wiser one. Somebody needs to explain this to George Bush. Someone needs to tell him to stop designating who is evil - to stop throwing stones from his glass house. And they'd better do it before he and the pompous and egocentric advisors around him take this world to the brink or over into an unimaginable war."

* Dr Kathleen Reardon:

"Power exists to the extent that dependencies exist. Such dependencies lead to networks - glue-like in substance - that support nodes of abusiveness. With each successful scam, those involved become more powerful, and more capable of feathering their nests while sacrificing ours. They no longer seek our trust because they no longer believe it's needed.
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If you want to change "leaders" who've fallen en masse into the black hole of contemptuousness, you have to extricate them from all the trappings that have made their malevolence possible. Hence the following plan.

We need to move the seat of government every eight years like we move the Olympics every four.
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We could try moving them every four years. But you get the idea. It's time to regularly move around these guys and gals who supposedly "lead" us. Elections clearly aren't enough. Break down their power edifices. Keep them on their toes - unsure of whom to trust. Put a dent in their comfort zone, rip out the putrid power nodes and give America a chance to be itself again. What do you say? I say we start tomorrow."

i heart kathleen.