| Wednesday, June 11, 2003 |  |
| Swami for President! | 4 comments |
| 11 Jun 2003 @ 18:37 Swami for President! “Happy Medium” Tosses Turban Into the Ring Wake Up Laughing SAN FRANCISCO -- Swami Beyondananda is not a serious candidate for the Presidency .. and that is precisely why he is tossing his turban into the ring and asking for your vote. After all, look where the serious candidates have gotten us. Says the Swami: “We’re faced with a scary dictator protected by an Elite Republican Guard who has threatened to use weapons of mass destruction -- and now we’re dealing with Saddam too!” The problems may be serious, says the Swami, but maybe the solutions are humorous. “A lot of people have gotten the feeling that there’s definitely something funny going on. Well, who better than a comedian to deal with it? Hey, sometimes it takes a clown to catch a clown.” In a political climate filled with snarling dogmas, the Swami presents himself as just what he is -- a happy medium. Running on the Right-To-Laugh Party (“one big party, everyone is invited”), the Swami hopes to use the magic of laughter to shine a light on those poorly-lit corridors of power -- and promote “laugh, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- unless happiness is a warm gun, in which case some restrictions may apply.” “I have taken the political pulse in this country,” the Swami says, “and I have good news. We still have one. Barely. Because the body politic has suffered a series of serious power seizures, and our Constitution has been weakened.” Swami blames “laugh-threatening seriousness” which has caused fear to cloud our thinking and cause “truth decay.” Among the truths that seem to have atrophied, the Swami claims, are the truths that our Founding Fathers found self-evident -- that government rules only by the consent of the governed, and serves at the pleasure of the people. “And many people aren’t pleased,” the Swami says, “because they see a lot of self-serving servants serving themselves first, their cronies second, and the people last. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, do you know what he’d say? Well, first thing he’s say is, ‘Boy, do I feel old! Geez, I must be 260 by now!’ Second thing he’d say -- radical that he was -- is ‘Let’s fire those servants and hire new ones .. and if we really want to protect people from terror, we should strip search the government too.’” While the Swami’s slant is decidedly progressive, he insists that he is strictly middle-of-the-road -- but, “middle of a very different road ... a road less traveled ... where people with different points of view actually listen to each other and find common solutions. We need more forums, and fewer againstums.” The Right-to-Laugh party seeks to bring together all political points of view in laughter, explains the Swami, “because only when we lovingly laugh at our foolishness can we seriously change things for the better.” Swami’s basic message is the same alternative he poses to spending billions on the war on drugs -- “Improve reality!” When reality is improved to the point where people choose to laugh instead of criticize, the Swami says, “we will achieve the uncritical mass needed to bring about Nonjudgment Day. That is where everyone wins beauty contests.” Swami claims to have had a vision of what Nonjudgment Day might be like -- all of the world leaders at the United Nations beginning their sessions with the Hokey Pokey, “and instead of Armageddon, we’ll have Disarmaggedon. The more we can visualize this, the more likely we are to step into a future of our own design -- and believe me, that beats what we’ve been stepping into recently.” Indeed, one of the keynotes of Swami’s message he calls “Tell-Vision.” The key to changing the current programming, he explains, is “turn off your TV and tell a vision instead. As my own beloved guru Harry Cohen Baba used to say, ‘Life is like a good deli. If enough people order something, they have to make it.’” More > |
| Bush Proposes Universal Time Zone | 1 comment |
 11 Jun 2003 @ 18:23(C) 1999-2003 BBspot LLC BBspot is a satirical news and comedy source and meant to be funny. If you are easily offended, gullible or don't have a sense of humor we suggest you go elsewhere. BBspot World News Tuesday, May 20 12:01 AM EDT By Brian Briggs New York, NY - At the United Nations today President George W. Bush announced a proposal to unify all the world's time zones into a single Universal Time Zone (UTZ), formerly known as the Eastern Time Zone. [time_zone.gif] The Future? "It's unfair to the United States that other countries have the advantage of being in tomorrow while the US is stuck in today," said Bush. "If it's 9 PM in Washington D.C., it's already tomorrow in London or Paris. That patently unfair." Bush continued, "Right now, Americans are losing jobs to other countries whose workforce can give overnight service during their normal daylight hours. We'll level the playing field and keep more jobs in the US with the UTZ." If all countries agree it would make jet lag a thing of the past, and international callers wouldn't have to worry about waking someone up. Experts have agreed the the current system is confusing. Some areas use Daylight Saving Time. Others are shifted by a half an hour. It causes unnecessary confusion and is estimated to decrease worldwide GDP by a half of a percent every year. "Under the Bush UTZ plan, countries could either keep their current schedules and just adjust their clocks, or they could change their whole society to match the new time. But Bush warned against the former option, "It would be very risky for countries to eat lunch at a different time than the US. You are either with us or against us on this." Britain immediately supported the US plan. "If it means sleeping in broad daylight then we'll stick with our allies," said Tony Blair, "Of course there's never broad daylight in the UK, so it's not much of an issue." Opponents of the plan, which include many prominent biologists, said that it will throw off the normal circadian rhythms that humans have, and that "species with almost human intelligence like dolphins and lawyers will be unduly traumatized by the clock shift." France, another opponent of the plan, claimed it is too Anglocentric, and should be based on French time. President Chirac did concede that "it wouldn't affect us too much because all our workers stop working at noon anyway." Whether or not the rest of the world implements the UTZ, Bush plans to have UTZ in place by October in the US. "I get confused when I go from DC to the ranch. I can't remember what time it is. Is it ten? Is it eleven? Under my plan everyone can watch The West Wing at the same time, and those lazy Californians can get up at a decent hour like the rest of us." More > |
| Bill Moyers' Presidential Address | 0 comments |
 11 Jun 2003 @ 18:14Bill Moyers' Presidential Address 06/09/2003 @ 10:27am Democratic presidential candidates were handed a dream audience of 1,000 "ready-for-action" labor, civil rights, peace and economic justice campaigners at the Take Back America conference organized in Washington last week by the Campaign for America's Future. And the 2004 contenders grabbed for it, delivering some of the better speeches of a campaign that remains rhetorically -- and directionally -- challenged. But it was a non-candidate who won the hearts and minds of the crowd with a "Cross of Gold" speech for the 21st century. Recalling the populism and old-school progressivism of the era in which William Jennings Bryan stirred the Democratic National Convention of 1896 to enter into the great struggle between privilege and democracy -- and to spontaneously nominate the young Nebraskan for president -- journalist and former presidential aide Bill Moyers delivered a call to arms against "government of, by and for the ruling corporate class." Condemning "the unholy alliance between government and wealth" and the compassionate conservative spin that tries to make "the rape of America sound like a consensual date," Moyers charged that "rightwing wrecking crews" assembled by the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies were out to bankrupt government. Then, he said, they would privatize public services in order to enrich the corporate interests that fund campaigns and provide golden parachutes to pliable politicians. If unchecked, Moyers warned, the result of these machinations will be the dismantling of "every last brick of the social contract." "I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States of America," said Moyers, as he called for the progressives gathered in Washington -- and for their allies across the United States -- to organize not merely in defense of social and economic justice but in order to preserve democracy itself. Paraphrasing the words of Abraham Lincoln as the 16th president rallied the nation to battle against slavery, Moyers declared, "Our nation can no more survive as half democracy and half oligarchy than it could survive half slave and half free." There was little doubt that the crowd of activists from across the country would have nominated Moyers by acclamation when he finished a remarkable address in which he challenged not just the policies of the Bush Administration but the failures of Democratic leaders in Congress to effectively challenge the president and his minions. In the face of what he described as "a radical assault" on American values by those who seek to redistribute wealth upward from the many to a wealthy few, Moyers said he could not understand "why the Democrats are afraid to be labeled class warriors in a war the other side started and is winning." Several of the Democratic presidential contenders who addressed the crowd after Moyers picked up pieces of his argument. Former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun actually quoted William Jennings Bryan, while North Carolina Senator John Edwards and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry tried -- with about as much success as Al Gore in 2000 -- to sound populist. Former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt promised not to be "Bush-lite," and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean drew warm applause when he said the way for Democrats to get elected "is not to be like Republicans, but to stand up against them and fight." Ultimately, however, only the Rev. Al Sharpton and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich came close to matching the fury and the passion of the crowd. Kucinich, who earned nine standing ovations for his antiwar and anti-corporate free trade rhetoric, probably did more to advance his candidacy than any of the other contenders. But he never got to the place Moyers reached with a speech that legal scholar Jamie Raskin described as one of the most "amazing and spellbinding" addresses he had ever heard. Author and activist Frances Moore Lappe said she was close to tears as she thanked Moyers for providing precisely the mixture of perspective and hope that progressives need as they prepare to challenge the right in 2004. That, Moyers explained, was the point of his address, which reflected on White House political czar Karl Rove's oft-stated admiration for Mark Hanna, the Ohio political boss who managed the campaigns and the presidency of conservative Republican William McKinley. It was McKinley who beat Bryan in 1896 and -- with Hanna's help -- fashioned a White House that served the interests of the corporate trusts. Comparing the excesses of Hanna and Rove, and McKinley and Bush, Moyers said "the social dislocations and the meanness of the 19th century " were being renewed by a new generation of politicians who, like their predecessors, seek to strangle the spirit of the American revolution "in the hard grip of the ruling class." To break that grip, Moyers said, progressives of today must learn from the revolutionaries and reformers of old. Recalling the progressive movement that rose up in the first years of the 20th century to "restore the balance between wealth and commonwealth," and the successes of the New Dealers who turned progressive ideals into national policy, Moyers told the crowd to "get back in the fight." "Hear me!" he cried. "Allow yourself the conceit to believe that the flame of democracy will never go out as long as there is one candle in your hand." While others were campaigning last week, Moyers was tending the flame of democracy. In doing so, he unwittingly made himself the candle holder-in-chief for those who seek to spark a new progressive era. |