I've been struggling with some kind of flu and so was unable yesterday to give Obama's Nobel Acceptance speech its due. It's a remarkable address - Niebuhr made manifest. What strikes me about it most of all - and I do not mean this in any way as a sectarian or non-ecumenical statement - is that it was an address by a deeply serious Christian. It was not Christianist. It did not seek to take sacred text or papal diktat to insist on a public policy or to declare that the president of the United States is somehow the instrument of God or good or that America is somehow more divinely favored than any other nation. It was written and spoken in such a way to reach anyone of any faith or none. It translated a deeply Augustinian grasp of history into a secular and universal language. It was an expression of tragic hope.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/the-tragedy-of-hope.html
Norway clips
http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/nyheter/spill/verdi/117947
" Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland
We are not awarding the prize for what may happen in the future but for what he has done in the previous year. We would hope this will enhance what he is trying to do...He has created a new international climate...One of the first things he did was to go to Cairo to try to reach out to the Muslim world, then to restart the Mideast negotiations and then he reached out to the rest of the world through international institutions...The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons...Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play And further,
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2009/10/obamas_nobel_likely_to_drive_r.php
The problem with normal sex is that it leads to kissing and pretty soon you’ve got to talk to them. Once you know someone well the last thing you want to do is screw them. I like to give, never to receive; to have the power of the host, not the obligation of the guest. I can stop writing this and within two minutes I can be chained, in the arms of a whore. I know I am going to score and I know they don’t really want me. And within 10 minutes I am back writing.
What I hate are meaningless and heartless one-night stands where you tell all sorts of lies to get into bed with a woman you don’t care for. The worst things in life are free. Value seems to need a price tag. How can we respect a woman who doesn’t value herself? When I was young I used to think it wasn’t who you wanted to have sex with that was important, but who you were comfortable with socially and spiritually. Now I know that’s rubbish. It’s who you want to have sex with that’s important. In the past I have deceived the women I have been with. You lie to two people in your life; your partner and the police. Everyone else gets the truth.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/10/inside-the-mind-of-a-prostitution-connoisseur.html#more
How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/9/16/783113/-HOW-LONG
Billionaires for Wealthcare is a grassroots network of health insurance CEOs, industry lobbyists, talk-show hosts, and others profiting off of our broken health care system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1I9xsV-g9Y&feature=player_embedded#t=59
FRANK: I don‘t think it‘s a big deal. Look, I think free speech—you know, heckling is a tradition, obviously, in the British parliament. They even have mikes that come down to hear the heckles.
I think what we should take it as—it is unusual—it‘s a sign of how effective the president was. These guys just couldn‘t handle it. I looked at John Boehner and he looked about as glum and as dour as—as possibly he could be.
So what Joe Wilson did was just scream out in frustration because the president was nailing it. So we‘ve got to be very clear, Wilson lied when he said the president lied. And he talked about illegal immigrants. It‘s clearly excluded from the bill.
So I would say what Wilson did was a mark of their frustration. And Barack Obama is a big boy. I think, I must say, to any Republicans particularly like Joe Wilson who want to get into a debate with Barack Obama is tugging on Superman‘s cape and pulling the Lone Ranger‘s mask. But if that‘s what he wants to do, free country.
Tusker: Makes Us Equal.Has No Equal.
"President Obama's ability to shape the debate on health care appears to be eroding,"
Perhaps a military metaphor would better inspire the White House to greater heights of determined animation; let's say, the 1944 unbowdlerized words of Gen. George Patton to his troops: "I don't want to get any messages saying, 'I am holding my position.' We are not holding a goddamned thing. Let the [reactionaries] do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose, like shit through a tin horn."
Great pics Obama abroad
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/sets/72157621218519789/show/
