'Still I Am a Marxist'

Makes you wonder why the Marxists at the White House treated him so shabbily?

TIBETAN spiritual leader the Dalai Lama says he's a Marxist, yet credits capitalism for bringing new freedoms to China, the communist country that exiled him.

"Still I am a Marxist," the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived today with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures.

"(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits," the Dalai Lama, 74, said.

However, he credited China's embrace of market economics for breaking communism's grip over the world's most populous country and forcing the ruling Communist Party to "represent all sorts of classes".

"(Capitalism) brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people's living standards improved," he said.

The Dalai Lama, giving a series of lectures at the Radio City Music Hall in central Manhattan until Sunday, struck a strikingly optimistic note in general, saying that he believed the world is becoming a kinder, more unified place.

Goodbye, Dalai

The always classy Barack Obama sends his guest out the back door.

Yes, that’s the Dalai Lama leaving the White House Thursday afternoon via the back door – into a mound of trash. His Holiness had just finished his meeting with President Obama and was heading out to the “stakeout area,” where a crush of reporters awaited him. That’s what the Dalai Lama is pointing at.

A shame The Lama isn't a member of SEIU or ACORN.

Obama's creditors aren't happy.

Will Obama Be Bowing?

If he bows to the mayor of Tampa you have to wonder what he might do when he says hello Dalai.

President Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama is on -- a week from today, Feb. 18, in the Map Room at the White House.

China will not be happy.

But Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president recognizes the Dalai Lama as a global religious figure, and "looks forward to an engaging and constructive dialogue."

'Hello Dalai!'

 
It's come to this, doing fists bumps with the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama has been welcomed to Memphis with a fist bump and the greeting "hello Dalai."

It happened as the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader met interim Memphis Mayor Myron Lowery on Tuesday.

WPTY-TV reported the Dalai Lama appeared confused by the fist gesture until Lowery took his hand and showed him how to return it. Lowery then said he had always wanted to say "hello Dalai," a reference to the 1960s Broadway musical and movie "Hello Dolly."

The station reported the holy man appeared amused by both the gesture and the joke.

Me, I always liked this riff on Dalai Lama.

How Long Until Obama Throws the Dalai Lama Under the Bus?

You know if push comes to shove, a putative President Obama won't do a damn thing to help the Tibetans, though he's at least paying lip service.

He pretends to be sorry for missing the Dalai Lama when he was in the U.S. last week, but he had the Egobama World Tour of Self-Glorification to take care of.

US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has sent a letter to the Dalai Lama backing the rights of the "people of Tibet", a spokesman for the exiled Buddhist spiritual leader said.

"I wanted to take the opportunity to reassure you of my highest respect and support for you, your mission and your people at this critical time,'' Obama said in the letter, whose receipt was confirmed by the Dalai Lama's office yesterday.

Obama's Republican presidential rival John McCain met the Dalai Lama to discuss Tibet last week in Aspen, Colorado, where the spiritual leader addressed a Tibetan cultural seminar.

Obama, who has been on a whirlwind foreign trip meeting world leaders, expressed regret in the letter that "our respective travel schedules will prevent us from meeting" during the Dalai Lama's visit to the United States.

But he said he hoped the letter and the meeting with McCain "will make clear that American attention to and backing for the people of Tibet is widespread and transcends the divisions of our political contest''.

The Secretary of the Dalai Lama Chhime R Chhoekyapa confirmed the Dalai Lama received Obama's letter sent on July 24 but declined to make any comment.