The Prayer You Didn't Hear

The opening prayer at the Lincoln Memorial event yesterday by openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson was not seen or heard on television. It was given a couple of minutes prior to the opening of the event. It contains many good thoughts and deserves to be heard by as many as possible. It's unfortunate that this was not broadcast since we will all hear Rick Warren deliver his prayer tomorrow.




Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...

Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O
good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he
might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

The Audacity of Hopelessness

This article by Erica Heller, from the Huffington Post is worth reading and forwarding. It is well-written, brief, and full of truth. It's the kind of article you read and think, "I wish I had said that."

It's getting harder these days to be cranky, to stay curmudgeonly.

It can still be done, of course, it's just that right now, it requires much more of an effort than usual. And curmudgeons resent that, in fact, that's an integral part of being a curmudgeon.

But really, who could possibly have taken a single glance at the Obama family earlier this week, touring the Lincoln Memorial, cool and crisp in their in their perfect January toggery, and remained stoic? (Not to mention the fact that only a monster with a heart of steel or stone could not have missed the fact that Michelle looks better than anyone has a right to in a white, quilted down jacket, when even the most lithe and anorectic supermodels look like fullbacks in the same winter wear.)

With the inauguration only a scant 3 days and 6 minutes away, hope is in sight. Relief, regardless of how long it takes and how it arrives, is on the way. It's hard not to beam like human klieg lights, to be so proud of the way we have comported ourselves, sending a fickle fellow back to the Senate and an incompetent couture-grabber back to Alaska, while sending the best of the best on to Washington to do a job that makes the patience of Job (and the feats of Jobs) look like kindergarten.

Still, if I want to experience even a brief frisson of the old rage and familiar, mind-numbing, incomparable despair, I have only to watch Bush's last babbling, Cheney's last televised snooze, and realize and remember how much death and destruction they have caused, the colorful riot of catastrophe they have painted again and again around our country and the world. And the fact that odds are, they and their cronies are not headed for war crimes trials in The Hague but rather to cushy retirements, the lecture circuit, lucrative book deals; memoirs conceived through the clouded, tinted lenses of smarmy narcissism, revisionist history and the most stupendously alarming, stubborn kind of reality-defying psychosis.

Snarky cynic, curmudgeon or not, I find that unbridled glee can indeed coexist with a sickening wave of rage. It's a delicate balance indeed but no, the past eight years can be neither forgotten nor forgiven.

Even if it's unseemly, some things may just be worth staying angry about, even as we pat ourselves on the back, smile broadly at tomorrow and exuberantly turn the page.

A Classy Cultured President

John Stewart doesn't know what to make of a president who treats others with respect and dignity.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

President Goofus and President Gallant - Peer Pressers

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Ann Coulter and Al Franken - Odd Couple

Ann Coulter would be one of those people who might fit the description of an attractive nuisance if she weren't so damn unattractive in every imaginable way. She is without a doubt the most vapid, mean-spirited, small-minded, ridiculous right-winger out there. She even surpasses Rush Limbaugh in her stupidity and meanness, but that's her shtick. That's how she makes money, and it's a sad commentary that she is able to sell books and get air time to discuss her wacky views.

So, it's always pleasing to see someone take her down a notch or two, which isn't hard to do, but in this short clip, Al Franken does it in elegant fashion. In one brief sentence, he exposes the superficiality of Ann Coulter.

Two-minute Review of 2008

Bill and Hillary

Last Christmas, my son Shawn gave me the Hillary Nutcracker. This year, he completed the set with the Bill Clinton Corkscrew. Who could ask for anything more!

Protest at Red Lobster on Sunday

It seems to me that if you're going to discriminate against a whole class of people, like the Mormon church, Rick Warren and the other Prop 8 supporters did in California, you should be required to apply a little intellectual rigor to your argument, especially if you're basing your argument on God's wishes as stated in the Bible.

According to "God," a "man lying with another man" is an abomination. I haven't completed my research yet, but I don't believe he had any objections to women lying together. He also said that eating shellfish is an abomination. If we're going to discriminate against a very large class of people to the extent that we deny them the right to express one of the most basic needs of human nature, their love for another person, based on one or two short lines in the Bible, why aren't we picketing Red Lobster? These people are denying homosexuals the right to marry, then going off to Sunday dinner at Red Lobster! As much as I love shrimp and lobster, I think they should be outlawed. If the religous right is going to deny homosexuals the right to marry based on "God's word" then we should deny them the right to eat shrimp and lobster based on "God's word." It just seems fair and intellectually honest. What do you think?

Obama's Leadership

It's a joy to watch Obama putting his vision together in a calm, rational way that attempts to bring everyone together. Read the about his latest initiative:

President-elect Barack Obama, in a message being emailed out on Wednesday, is calling on supporters, as well as those who likely didn't back him in the election, to use the day prior to his inauguration to volunteer en masse for local community causes.

The National Day of Service, as it is being called, will fall on Martin Luther King Day -- itself a federally designated day for community volunteerism. But it's easy to imagine how this upcoming January 19th will be historic in the scope of participation.

For starters, Obama is soliciting partnerships from both ideological allies and adversaries -- from MoveOn.org to Focus on the Family -- as well as groups regularly engaged in community service and others that have never done it before.

Moreover, the approach, an aide says, will be very much bottom up: prospective volunteers will be asked to sign up for the project of their choice, regardless of whether or not it directly corresponds to Obama's political agenda. Finally, the president-elect is bringing to the table the type of organizing tools that make these enterprises work; in addition to an email being blasted out to his massive email list on Wednesday, the inaugural committee is launching a website sometime after the New Year that will help visitors network and instruct them about opportunities in their local neighborhoods.

It is the type of social interaction that buoyed Obama's primary and presidential candidacies, only this time applied to service, not politics.


Read his letter here.

Don't Flush While Seated on Toilet

Garrison Keillor is always good for a smile, profound insights into life, and even poetry. However, in this article, he offers a bit of practical advice that could help you avoid unnecessary delays if you're flying during this holiday season.

Read it here.

Do You Think This Will Make Her Feel Better?

After Ameneh Bahrami turned down his marriage proposal, Majid Movahedi attempted to change her mind -- by stalking her and threatening to kill himself. When those approaches didn't win over his unrequited love, the spurned stalker approached her in a busy public park in Tehran and poured a bucket of acid on her head. "It felt like my head was stuck in a bowl of boiling water," Bahrami told the Washington Post. "I bent forward to allow the stuff to drip off my face, but the pain was intolerable. I fell on the pavement, screaming for help." Despite a series of surgeries, the 31-year-old was left blind and disfigured.

Her attacker confessed to the acid attack, explaining that he did it "so that she would be mine forever," and was jailed -- but Bahrami refused to accept the usual monetary remuneration for the crime. Instead, she asked for eye-for-an-eye retribution. "[The head of Iran's judiciary] really pressed me to demand blood money instead of retribution. He explained that such a sentence would cause lots of bad publicity for Iran. But I refused," she said. Last month, an Iranian judge sentenced Movahedi to five drops of acid in each of his eyes.

The Post, which does a nice job of profiling Bahrami, reports that "the implementation of corporal punishments allowed under Islamic law, including lashing, amputation and stoning, has often provoked controversy in Iran, where many people have decried such sentences as barbaric." But this case has received an unusual outpouring of sympathy, and "protest has been muted because people have been moved by Bahrami's story."

Some, including Bahrami, believe that this punishment will prevent future acid attacks. She says: "At an age at which I should be putting on a wedding dress, I am asking for someone's eyes to be dripped with acid. I am doing that because I don't want this to happen to any other women." Somehow, I seriously doubt that Movahedi's punishment will accomplish that.

It's also worth taking note of Movahedi's response to his sentencing: He "said that he still loved Bahrami but that if she asked for his eyes to be taken out, he would seek the same punishment for her." As they say about eye-for-an-eye...

Tracy Clark-Flory
Salon.com

Hooray for Newt Gingrich

Never thought I'd have anything nice to say about Newt Gingrich, but he went way up in my estimation with this letter to the Republican National Committee. Maybe acting like a grown-up will catch on!

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich sent a rather scathing letter to Mike Duncan on Tuesday, accusing the RNC chairman of engaging in "a destructive distraction" by attempting to tie Barack Obama to Rod Blagojevich. In particular, Gingrich hit the RNC for putting out a web ad that made it seem as if the President-elect was hiding a nefarious chapter of his personal history with the embattled Illinois Governor.

"The RNC should pull the ad down immediately," Gingrich writes.

I was saddened to learn that at a time of national trial, when a president-elect is preparing to take office in the midst of the worst financial crisis in over seventy years, that the Republican National Committee is engaged in the sort of negative, attack politics that the voters rejected in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles.

He Speaks for Many of Us

This is the guy who threw his shoes at Bush in Iraq. He has become a legend, and he's now known as the Shoe Thrower. While we should never condone any form of violence, don't you secretly admire this guy!

Here's What They Do When You're Not Looking

Congress wanted to guarantee that the $700 billion financial bailout would limit the eye-popping pay of Wall Street executives, so lawmakers included a mechanism for reviewing executive compensation and penalizing firms that break the rules.

But at the last minute, the Bush administration insisted on a one-sentence change to the provision, congressional aides said. The change stipulated that the penalty would apply only to firms that received bailout funds by selling troubled assets to the government in an auction, which was the way the Treasury Department had said it planned to use the money.

Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts. In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives.

The rest of the story.

One Thing Bush Can Do Well

He can duck! This was quite a graceful move. I'm impressed.

Obama Keeps it Cool

Bill Moyers and Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald talked with Bill Moyers Friday night about the rule of law and how it was perverted by the Bush administration. Here is an excerpt from that interview. The full interview can be seen here, and like all of Bill Moyers' interviews, it's worth a 30-minute investment. Greenwald is an articulate and intelligent person who can help you see past the sound bytes that form our opinions about what's going on.

You'll also find a link to an excellent three-minute clip by Naom Chomsky explaining how mainstream television's demand for "concision" -- which shapes how the overwhelming majority of Americans receive their "news" -- precludes any meaningful examination or challenging of prevailing political orthodoxies.

BILL MOYERS: To be fair, you make a strong case in here that we have to stand up to extremism but that we have to protect our own constitutional principles while we do. And as I read both of these books, it is the sense that out of this Manichean view there came this whole notion that you say is alien to America, this unitary executive powers of the presidency. Have I stated that right?

GLENN GREENWALD: You have. Let’s just quickly describe in the most dispassionate terms, as few of euphemisms, as possible, where we are and what has happened over the last eight years. We have a law in place that says it is a felony offense punishable by five years in prison or a $10,000 fine to eavesdrop on American citizens without warrants. We have laws in place that say that it is a felony punishable by decades in prison to subject detainees in our custody to treatment that violates the Geneva Conventions or that is inhumane or coercive.

We know that the president and his top aides have violated these laws. The facts are indisputable that they’ve done so. And yet as a country, as a political class, we’re deciding basically in unison that the president and our highest political officials are free to break the most serious laws that we have, that our citizens have enacted, with complete impunity, without consequences, without being held accountable under the law.

And when you juxtapose that with the fact that we are a country that has probably the most merciless criminal justice system on the planet when it comes to ordinary Americans. We imprison more of our population than any country in the world. We have less than five percent of the world’s population. And yet 25 percent almost of prisoners worldwide are inside the United States.

What you have is a two-tiered system of justice where ordinary Americans are subjected to the most merciless criminal justice system in the world. They break the law. The full weight of the criminal justice system comes crashing down upon them. But our political class, the same elites who have imposed that incredibly harsh framework on ordinary Americans, have essentially exempted themselves and the leaders of that political class from the law.

They have license to break the law. That’s what we’re deciding now as we say George Bush and his top advisors shouldn’t be investigated let alone prosecuted for the laws that we know that they’ve broken. And I can’t think of anything more damaging to our country because the rule of law is the lynchpin of everything we have.

Obama's Weekly Address

Sick Meryl Streep

Every once in a while, we see genuine, spontaneous humor on TV. This clip from David Letterman's show is hilarious if you followed his response to McCain's cancellation during the campaign.

Blogoyevich's Seat

Conan O'Brien had a great line last line. He said that Illinois Governor, Rod Blogoyevich was arrested for trying to sell Obama's seat to the highest bidder. Now he's going to prison where his seat will be sold to the highest bidder!

Remember These Names

Corker, Shelby, and DeMint are three far-right lawmakers from the Deep South who are responsible for blocking the auto bailout. Remember the Deep South? That's where the only slash of red remained after the election.

They continued their opposition in spite of White House support for the bail-out and Cheney's admonition that failure to support the bill would label them the "Herbert Hoover Party."