Ode to Sean Hannity
Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You're a profanity
Hannity
A Poem by John Cleese
Everybody wants to be enlightened, but nobody wants to change.
Everybody wants eternal life and they do not know what to do on a rainy afternoon.
Dharma
Shashi Tharoor, Stephen Colbert: Obama's Nobel
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| War of Peace - Shashi Tharoor | ||||
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That Nobel Screams: 'Out of Afghanistan & Go for Solartopia!'
by Harvey Wasserman
Above the din, the Nobel message screams: "U.S. OUT OF AFGHANISTAN, & GO FOR SOLARTOPIA!" I
It's now up to US to use that Nobel to win that dual prize. This award never went to two of the most critical peacemakers of the 20th Century: Mahatma Gandhi, who pioneered the successful use of mass non-violence; and Eleanor Roosevelt, feminist godmother of the New Deal's social programs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has not gone (yet) to the embattled Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi. Or to Cesar Chavez, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Thich Nhat Hanh, Paul XIII and so many more. But yes it did to Barack Obama. Why?
Right now we have no choice but to defer to the committee that took the plunge. Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland explained that "It could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now we have an opportunity to respond---all of us." Respond to what? "We couldn't get around these deep changes that are taking place" under Obama. ARE taking place? Or WILL take place? Or MIGHT take place if somebody plays this card right.
Say you're a committee member desperate for peace and a solution to climate chaos. Maybe you're a gambler. You remember giving the Prize to Desmond Tutu for fighting apartheid before it was abolished. You say: "This new kid talks a great game. He's made a green and peaceful nod or two. But the generals and fossil/nukers are at his throat. "Let's box him in. Let's hang this Nobel around his neck....and over his head. Let's DARE him to do right." Or, as Jagland has actually put it, the award will give Obama "encouragement" and "support in producing concrete results" for the "vision of a nuclear-free world" among other things.
Now let's say you're an American activist. You're desperate to stop the worst mistake America could make since Lyndon Johnson's 1965 escalation of the Vietnam War---a murderous, suicidal escalation of the war in Afghanistan. We all know this would shred the last fiber of a failing society, utterly decimating any chance for an American moral, ecological or economic recovery. But the long knives of Pentagon junta are out in force.
We also know without a massive Solartopian push for renewables and efficiency, the global climate is doomed. Nuclear power must be excluded and fossil fuels phased out. Now this glib young prez, who must stand up to the generals and King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes, Gas) is given--or shall we say, stuck with---the Nobel Prize. Pasted to his back now are the words of Alfred Nobel lauding "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."
Obama rightly says he does not deserve "to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who've been honored by this prize." But the Committee, which cited Afghanistan, climate change and nuclear disarmament in its decision, is clearly betting this marker might help him---FORCE him---to get there. Obama could, of course, use it as cover---Henry Kissinger style---to do the wrong things.
But this gift is not to Obama. It's to US, as a tool to MAKE him go where we must. The spotlight has now been amped. The focus is on Aghanistan and a green-powered, nuke-free Earth. The Nobel is a mandate---a sacred trust---to push this president into the pantheon with Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, not to mention Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi. Ready or not, we have our opening to make Barack Obama rise to their standard.
====== Harvey Wasserman's is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org.
"The one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and what could be again. Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."
-W. P. Kinsella, James Earl Jones as Terence Mann, in the movie "Field of Dreams" 
The good Earth: we could have saved it - but we were too damn cheap and lazy." -Vonnegut
Tears of Mother Nature: The image of a crying face looming from an icy cliff wall was taken at the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. The picture was captured by marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan while on an annual voyage to observe the glacier and its surrounding wildlife.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1210706/Caught-camera-...
Tears of Mother Nature: The image of a crying face looming from an icy cliff wall was taken at the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. The picture was captured by marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan while on an annual voyage to observe the glacier and its surrounding wildlife.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1210706/Caught-camera-...
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"Mrs. Palin is an inspiration to working mothers everywhere because she bailed on her job right before Fourth of July weekend. You are living my dream. Thank you, Mrs. Palin."
”Edna St. Vincent Millay - Conscientious Objector
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
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