But Enough About You …

(Please note that included in this is a video interview with the author

by Stephen Colbert - worth watching!)

What is narcissistic personality disorder, and why

does everyone seem to have it?

By Emily Yoffe

The narcissists did it. Some commentators are fingering them as the culprits of the financial meltdown. A Bloomberg columnist blamed the conceited for our financial troubles in a piece titled "Harvard Narcissists With MBAs Killed Wall Street." A Wall Street Journal op-ed on California's economy suggested that Gov. Schwarzenegger's desire for voter's love ("It's classic narcissism") helped cause the state's budget debacle. A forthcoming book, The Narcissism Epidemic, says we went on a national binge of I-deserve-it consumption that's now resulting in our economic purging.

This is the cultural moment of the narcissist. In a New Yorker cartoon, Roz Chast suggests a line of narcissist greeting cards ("Wow! Your Birthday's Really Close to Mine!"). John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.) New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote of journalists who Twitter, "it's beginning to look more like yet another gateway drug to full-blown media narcissism." And what other malady could explain the simultaneous phenomena of Blago and the Octomom?

More: http://www.slate.com/id/2213740/pagenum/all/

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Compassion is the radicalism of our time. ~ HH the Dalai Lama

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole. ~ Vaclav Havel

Compassion is a foundation for sharing our aliveness and building a more humane world. ~ Martin Lowenthal

Hopebroken and Hopesick: A Lexicon of Disappointment

Warm greetings... I felt moved today to share three important articles by three people I have a great deal of respect for: Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, and Thom Hartmann. This piece by Naomi Klein is brilliant. Peace & blessings ~ Molly

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Published on Friday, April 17, 2009 by The Nation

by Naomi Klein

All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.

Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.

This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.

The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.

Hopeover. Like a hangover, a hopeover comes from having overindulged in something that felt good at the time but wasn't really all that healthy, leading to feelings of remorse, even shame. It's the political equivalent of the crash after a sugar high. Sample sentence: "When I listened to Obama's economic speech my heart soared. But then, when I tried to tell a friend about his plans for the millions of layoffs and foreclosures, I found myself saying nothing at all. I've got a serious hopeover."

Hoper coaster. Like a roller coaster, the hoper coaster describes the intense emotional peaks and valleys of the Obama era, the veering between joy at having a president who supports safe-sex education and despondency that single-payer healthcare is off the table at the very moment when it could actually become a reality. Sample sentence: "I was so psyched when Obama said he is closing Guantánamo. But now they are fighting like mad to make sure the prisoners in Bagram have no legal rights at all. Stop this hoper coaster-I want to get off!"

Hopesick. Like the homesick, hopesick individuals are intensely nostalgic. They miss the rush of optimism from the campaign trail and are forever trying to recapture that warm, hopey feeling-usually by exaggerating the significance of relatively minor acts of Obama decency. Sample sentences: "I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. A few hours later, when I heard that the Obama administration was boycotting a major UN racism conference, the hopesickness came back hard. So I watched slideshows of Michelle wearing clothes made by ethnically diverse independent fashion designers, and that sort of helped."

Hope fiend. With hope receding, the hope fiend, like the dope fiend, goes into serious withdrawal, willing to do anything to chase the buzz. (Closely related to hopesickness but more severe, usually affecting middle-aged males.) Sample sentence: "Joe told me he actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions. What a hope fiend!"

Hopebreak. Like the heartbroken lover, the hopebroken Obama-ite is not mad but terribly sad. She projected messianic powers on to Obama and is now inconsolable in her disappointment. Sample sentence: "I really believed Obama would finally force us to confront the legacy of slavery in this country and start a serious national conversation about race. But now whenever he seems to mention race, he's using twisted legal arguments to keep us from even confronting the crimes of the Bush years. Every time I hear him say ‘move forward,' I'm hopebroken all over again."

Hopelash. Like a backlash, hopelash is a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related. Sufferers were once Obama's most passionate evangelists. Now they are his angriest critics. Sample sentence: "At least with Bush everyone knew he was an asshole. Now we've got the same wars, the same lawless prisons, the same Washington corruption, but everyone is cheering like Stepford wives. It's time for a full-on hopelash."

In trying to name these various hope-related ailments, I found myself wondering what the late Studs Terkel would have said about our collective hopeover. He surely would have urged us not to give in to despair. I reached for one of his last books, Hope Dies Last. I didn't have to read long. The book opens with the words: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."

And that pretty much says it all. Hope was a fine slogan when rooting for a long-shot presidential candidate. But as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth, it is dangerously deferential. The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it - in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence.

Political scientist Sam Gindin wrote recently that the labor movement can do more than protect the status quo. It can demand, for instance, that shuttered auto plants be converted into green-future factories, capable of producing mass-transit vehicles and technology for a renewable energy system. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," he wrote, "and putting it in the hands of workers."

Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.

Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/17

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To read all her latest writing visit www.naomiklein.org

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Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I still believe in Hope - mostly because there's no such place as Fingers Crossed, Arkansas. ~ Molly Ivins

It's Official: Obama Will Not Prosecute CIA Torturers

Published on Thursday, April 16, 2009 by RebelReports
by Jeremy Scahill

Obama strikes a deal with CIA torturers not to prosecute them.
This is a victory for Bush’s lawyers who justified torture.

The White House has announced that CIA operatives, including contractors, who followed Bush guidelines for torturing prisoners will not be prosecuted for these actions, regardless of the Obama administration’s position on the legality of the techniques they used. “[I]t is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution,” President Obama said in a statement released today. This seems to be part of a deal struck with the CIA over the release of several torture memos today and it is a victory for Bush administration lawyers who sought to provide legal cover for US government torture.

The Washington Post also reported:

A file photo of a guard leaning on a fencepost as a Guantanamo detainee jogs inside the exercise yard at Camp 5 detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. US President Barack Obama has assured CIA agents involved in tough terror interrogations they will not be prosecuted as he released graphic memos detailing methods approved by the Bush White House. (AFP/Pool/File/Brennan Linsley)For the first time, officials said that they would provide legal representation at no cost to CIA employees in international tribunals or U.S. congressional inquiries into alleged torture. They also said they would indemnify agency workers against any possible financial judgments.

“It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

The ACLU was quick to shoot back at Obama’s announcement. “President Obama’s assertion that there should not be prosecutions of government officials who may have committed crimes before a thorough investigation has been carried out is simply untenable. Enforcing the nation’s laws should not be a political decision,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU.

This comes as the White House released the three “Bradbury” memos, drafted in 2005, detailing CIA ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques and torture. The administration has also reportedly released a 2002 memo written by Justice Department lawyer John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee. The New York Times described that memo as “a legal authorization for a laundry list of proposed C.I.A. interrogation techniques.”

The Bradbury memos are named for Steven Bradbury, the former acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under Bush.

The decision apparently came “after a tense internal debate,” culminating with a “final round of deliberations” Wednesday night over the release, which was fiercely opposed by the CIA, which said their release would threaten national security. The administration faced a deadline of today for the release of the documents under a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Bybee memo was put on the table April 2 as part of a negotiation between the ACLU and the White House after the Justice Department asked for a delay of two weeks to make a decision on releasing the Bradbury memos.

“These memos provide yet more incontrovertible evidence that Bush administration officials at the highest level of government authorized and gave legal blessings to acts of torture that violate domestic and international law,” said Romero.

There has been much speculation in recent days that the White House may release

redacted versions of the memos, which sparked protests from the ACLU and other civil liberties groups and activists. Refusing to release the memos was also opposed by some administration officials, including Attorney General Holder, who reportedly supported a more complete release. In releasing the documents, Obama cited “exceptional circumstances” compelling him to release them and a desire to correct “erroneous and inflammatory assumptions” about US actions.

The White House released the memos with redactions, but apparently not on a scale some in the administration—and certainly the CIA—had originally wanted. The release, therefore, appears to be a victory. But, the apparent deal not to prosecute CIA torturers makes it a very sour victory. As the ACLU’s Romero said, “There can be no more excuses for putting off criminal investigations of officials who authorized torture, lawyers who justified it and interrogators who broke the law. No one is above the law, and the law must be equally enforced. Accountability is necessary for any functioning democracy and for restoring America’s reputation at home and abroad.”

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The Real Boston Tea Party was an Anti-Corporate Revolt

Published on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org
by Thom Hartmann

CNBC Correspondent Rick Santelli called for a "Chicago Tea Party" on Feb 19th in protesting President Obama's plan to help homeowners in trouble. Santelli's call was answered by the right-wing group FreedomWorks, which funds campaigns promoting big business interests, and is the opposite of what the real Boston Tea Party was. FreedomWorks was funded in 2004 by Dick Armey (former Republican House Majority leader & lobbyist); consolidated Citizens for a Sound Economy, funded by the Koch family; and Empower America, a lobbying firm, that had fought against healthcare and minimum-wage efforts while hailing deregulation.

Anti-tax "tea party" organizers are delivering one million tea bags to a Washington, D.C., park Wednesday morning - to promote protests across the country by people they say are fed up with high taxes and excess spending.

The real Boston Tea Party was a protest against huge corporate tax cuts for the British East India Company, the largest trans-national corporation then in existence. This corporate tax cut threatened to decimate small Colonial businesses by helping the BEIC pull a Wal-Mart against small entrepreneurial tea shops, and individuals began a revolt that kicked-off a series of events that ended in the creation of The United States of America.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/15-10

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Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Finally - a conspiracy I am happy to be a part of!

A SPIRITUAL CONSPIRACY

On the surface of the world right now there is
war and violence and things seem dark.
But calmly and quietly, at the same time,
something else is happening underground
An inner revolution is taking place
and certain individuals are being called to a higher light.
It is a silent revolution.
From the inside out.
From the ground up.
This is a Global operation.
A Spiritual Conspiracy.
There are sleeper cells in every nation on the planet.
You won't see us on the TV
You won't read about us in the newspaper
You won't hear about us on the radio
We don't seek any glory
We don't wear any uniform
We come in all shapes and sizes, colors and styles
Most of us work anonymously
We are quietly working behind the scenes
in every country and culture of the world
Cities big and small, mountains and valleys,
in farms and villages, tribes and remote islands
You could pass by one of us on the street
and not even notice
We go undercover
We remain behind the scenes
It is of no concern to us who takes the final credit
But simply that the work gets done
Occasionally we spot each other in the street
We give a quiet nod and continue on our way
During the day many of us pretend we have normal jobs
But behind the false storefront at night
is where the real work takes place
Some call us the Conscious Army
We are slowly creating a new world
with the power of our minds and hearts
We follow, with passion and joy
Our orders come from the Central Spiritual Intelligence
We are dropping soft, secret love bombs when no one is looking
Poems ~ Hugs ~ Music ~ Photography ~ Movies ~ Kind words ~
Smiles ~ Meditation and prayer ~ Dance ~ Social activism ~ Websites
Blogs ~ Random acts of kindness...
We each express ourselves in our own unique ways
with our own unique gifts and talents
Be the change you want to see in the world
That is the motto that fills our hearts
We know it is the only way real transformation takes place
We know that quietly and humbly we have the
power of all the oceans combined
Our work is slow and meticulous
Like the formation of mountains
It is not even visible at first glance
And yet with it entire tectonic plates
shall be moved in the centuries to come
Love is the new religion of the 21st century
You don't have to be a highly educated person
Or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it
It comes from the intelligence of the heart
Embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings
Be the change you want to see in the world
Nobody else can do it for you
We are now recruiting
Perhaps you will join us
Or already have.
All are welcome
The door is open

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Great necessities call out great virtues. ~ Abigail Adams

For Easter...

Beware of identity theft this Easter

Caution! It appears there are Easter Bunny and other impostors

on the loose, so be on the lookout....

http://daily-chuckle.blogspot.com/2009/04/beware-of-identity-theft-this-easter.html
http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/4712

Thank you to my Michigan friend Dawn for sharing! :-)

Peace ~ Molly

* * *

There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful. ~ Howard Thurman

A 3-year-old tells all from his mother's restroom stall.

If you’ve had children, or taken care of them, this is hilarious and too cute!

Thank you to my friend and co-worker Erin for sharing...

A 3 year old tells all from his mother’s restroom stall -

By Shannon Popkin

My little guy, Cade, is quite a talker. He loves to communicate and does it quite well. He talks to people constantly, whether we’re in the library, the grocery store or at a drive~thru window. People often comment on how clearly he speaks for a just turned 3 year old, and you never have to ask him to turn up the volume; it’s always fully cranked….

There have been several embarrassing times that I’ve wished the meaning of his words would have been masked by a not so audible voice, but never have I wished this more than last week at Costco. Halfway through our shoppingtrip, nature called, so I took Cade with me into the restroom….

If you’d been one of the ladies in the restroom that evening, this is what you would have heard coming from the second to last stall… ‘Mommy, are you gonna go potty? Oh! Why are you putting toiwet paper on the potty, Mommy? Oh! You gonna sit down on da toiwet paper now? Mommy, what are you doing? Mommy, are you gonna go stinkies on the potty?’

At this point, I started mentally counting how many women had been in the restroom when I walked in. Several stalls were full. 4? 5? Maybe we could wait until they all left before I had to make my debut out of this stall and reveal my identity…. Cade continued, ‘Mommy, you ARE going stinkies, aren’t you? Oh, dats a good girl, Mommy! Are you gonna get some candy for going stinkies on the potty? Let me see doze stinkies, Mommy! Oh, Mommy! I’m trying to see in dere. Oh, I seedem! Dat is a very good girl, Mommy. You ARE gonna get some candy!’ I heard a few faint chuckles coming from the stalls on either side of me. Where is a screaming new born when you need one? Good grief. This was really gettingembarrassing. I was definitely waiting a long time before exiting….

Trying to divert him, I said, ‘Why don’t you look in Mommy’s purse and see if you can find some candy. We’ll both have some. ‘No, I’m trying to see doze more stinkies. Oh! Mommy!’ He started to gag at this point. ‘Uh oh, Mommy.I fink I’m gonna frow up. Mommy, doze stinkies are making me frow up!! Dat is so gross!! As the gags became louder so did the chuckles outside my stall….

I quickly flushed the toilet in hopes of changing the subject. I began to reason with myself: Okay, there are four other toilets. If I count four flushes, I can be reasonably assured that those who overheard this embarrassing monologue will be long gone. ‘Mommy! Would you get off the potty, now? I want you to be done doing stinkies! Get up! Get up!’ He grunted as he tried to pull me.

Now I could hear full-blown laughter…. I bent down to count the feet outside my door. ‘Oh, are you wooking under dere, Mommy? You wooking under da door? What were you wooking at, Mommy? You wooking at da wady’s feet?’ More laughter. I stood inside the locked door and tried to assess the situation. ‘Mommy, it’s time to wash our hands, now. We have to go out now, Mommy.’ He started pounding on the door. ‘Mommy, don’t you want to wash your hands? I want to go out!!’

I saw that my ‘wait ‘em out’ plan was unraveling. I sheepishly opened the door, and found, standing outside my stall, twenty to thirty ladies crowded around the stall, all smiling and starting to applaud. My first thought wascomplete embarrassment, then I thought, ‘Where’s the fine print on the motherhood contract’ where I signed away every bit of my dignity and privacy?’ But as my little boy gave me a big, cheeky grin while he rubbed bubbly soapbetween his chubby little hands, I thought, ‘I’d sign it all away again, just to be known as ‘Mommy’ to this little fellow.’

Shannon Popkin is a freelance writer and mother of three.

She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a7849935/too_cute

A Poem

Warm Greetings

This poem, and the following post written by Derrick Jensen, were both shared with myself and the other women who gathered one week ago for a weekend of being in ceremony and close to the Earth. Each touched my heart.

Peace & Blessings ~ Molly

* * *

We've been reading it wrong.

It's a story of how we took

nature down with us all right,

but not because we're such

important hot shots that what

we decide goes for everybody,

or the Creator is such an abusive

s.o.b. that he punishes the innocent

for the crimes of the guilty if

the guilty are godly enough.

We are a twisted species.

We bend our view of the universe

around ourselves as center cog.

By our distortion we have injured Eden.

We haven't a clue.

Complexity grants that the least
significant events or choices
affect everything to infinity --
microbes on pear trees, and
the honey bee as well as
human beings.

Our infant species dreamed it was

above its elders, beyond its betters,

the high-chair tyrant entitled to rule

the rest, and worse -- granted this

by a god. We named the others and

proclaimed them Other, ourselves

what counts, holier than them.

We threw ourselves out of Eden.

Injured by us but alive,

it's still here all around us.

We have only to return to our senses,

wake from our hubris, sit down

with our creature kin and humbly ask

by what name each knows itself,

and listen, without denial or defense,

for the names they have been saving up

to call us.

Once that's over we can negotiate

everything and start again

with what's left.

Then --

In the beginning . . .

The Rev. Alla Renee Bozarth

Poet and priest, Wisdom House, Oregon

From Prayers For a Thousand Years

There is a Language Older Than Words

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, of gesture, of symbol, of memory. We have forgotten that it exists. If we are to survive, we must remember this language. We must relearn how to think like a planet.

I remember walking into a cold January afternoon several years ago. My breath hung white in the air, and two dogs danced at my feet. I heard in the distance the clamor of geese, then stood speechless to watch a huge V fly low overhead. I opened my mouth to say something - I didn't know what it would be - and heard my voice say three times, "Godspeed." Suddenly, and for no reason I could understand, I burst into tears. Then I ran into the house.

Walking back outside later and staring into the now empty sky, I realized that in speaking not only had I been wishing the geese well for their journey south, but they had been using my voice and my breath to wish me just-as-well on my own just-as-difficult journey - this journey of opposition to the culture that is destroying life on the planet. The tears, it came clear to me, had been neighter from sorrow nor joy, but from homecoming, like a sailor who has been toolong at sea, and who spontaneously bursts into sobs on feeling those tentative first steps back on solid ground, back at home.

If we are to survive, we need the planet's help, just as it needs ours. To dismantle the walls we've so laboriously constructed to constrict our broken hearts, we must step away from our isolation from the rest of the world. There is a whole world waiting for us, ready to welcome us home. They have missed us as sorely as we have missed them. It is time. Return.

Godspeed.

Derrick Jensen

Environmentalist, California

From Prayers for a Thousand Years

Thousand-Hand Guan Yin

Warmest Greetings

My friend Sharif just sent me this while doing work in Sri Lanka.

It is Amazing, Beautiful, Extraordinay.

And Sharif shares that "all of the young dancers are COMPLETELY DEAF.

You can see the people in the 4 corners of the screen,

giving them their visual cues."

I know Guan Yin, or Kuan Yin, as the Goddess of Compassion

and have been deeply drawn to Her for years now.

For more information, please go here:

http://www.taoism.net/guanyin/home.htm

This is the amazing video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgHmSdpjEIk

Enjoy!

Brightest Blessings,

Molly

* * *

Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbing -- resistance to experiencing our pain for the world and other beings.

~ Joanna Macy

Compassion is the radicalism of our time.

~ HH The Dalai Lama

When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless, that it doesn't have any resolution, that this heart is huge, vast, and limitless. You begin to discover how much warmth and gentleness is there, as well as how much space.

~ Pema Chodron