The War on Terror, so called. Five years after 9/11, experts ponder, have we made ourselves any safer?
Experts?
Any child learns that waging a war against somebody who is mad at you only makes them madder, you madder, and matters worse. The fabled Hatfields and McCoys never learned, their families fought each other until long after we could remember why. But they were hillbillies.
Are you thinking that you’ve seen this helmet before? You’ve seen it on Nazis, you’ve seen it on Darth Vader. Space Balls’ Lord Dark Helmet was nothing but Rick Moranis in an oversized Nazi helmet.
In WWII the German helmet became the ubiquitous black hat. It was also regarded as perhaps the best designed military helmet. Maybe there’s a correlation to Hitler’s Volkswagen. The VW design was so utilitarian its lines are seen today in countless cars. The Nazi helmet may be said to have been similarly evolved, but no one has dared duplicate it because of its visual stigma. I guess until now.
Our modern Kevlar helmet follows the same lines as the German M35. While the armies of other nations have emulated the original GI or Soviet models, the US adopted a new helmet with the side skirt and squared top of the prototypical Nazi headgear. I’d like to postulate that this design was not chosen for the intimidating deaths-head symbolism. The Nazi/US helmet offers superior protection at the expense of a soldier’s peripheral view. I think this is purposeful.
Nazi paratroopers and elite shock troops wore a more practical helmet, a decidedly ordinary straight bowl. Their helmet resembles what today’s motorcyclists refer to as a shorty, which offers the minimal protection acceptable by state motorcycle helmet laws. Riders prefer shorties because they can see more.
The majority of military helmets appear to offer the more egalitarian view of the field. It’s hard to picture Yanks getting a lay of the land, excercising their American ingenuity, and maintaining their bearing in anything more encumbering.
The infamous German helmet kept their infantrymen’s eyes forward, unquestioning, in the direction they were ordered.
I spotted this panhandler at a nearby offramp. Is she really a veteran? I’m not sure her age matches the Gulf War camo. Itinerants do confess that WILL WORK FOR FOOD gets more support when you say you’re a vet. Of course, as a result the public begins to look at “homeless veterans” with cynicism.
The pretend-vet ruse obscures the fact that an enormous proportion of homeless men have always come from the wars, and they are already emerging from this last.
Much was made of Uday’s wrath when athletes on the Iraqi soccer team would return untriumphant. If a player made a gaffe, Saddam’s evil son Uday would send him off to the front. The Iran-Iraq Front at that time.
Americans are familiar with the lingo. It was a running joke on Hogan’s Heroes and became a timeless adage. Displease Der Fuhrer, you’re sent to the Russian Front.
Well now, where do suppose members of America’s military sports teams go if they fail to deliver the goods? If you are cut from the Army football team, or baseball team, or volleyball team, or basketball team, or any of the four branches of our military’s athletic self-promotion programs? Where are our soldiers sent if they are not playing for the home team?
We even send members of the military bands there. Our Eastern Front.
I’ve got an idea whose time has come… I keep wishing. I was watching TV and just grew so tired of the insolent lies. Condi was lying to Larry King, King being disingenuous, Condi was making preposterous statements, later McCain was making more things up, so were the other pundits and correspondents and anchors, all of them lying.
It made me yearn for that happy day when they will be made to atone. Which clearly isn’t about to happen now. And I despair if they’re going to weasel out of responsibility later. “I didn’t hmm. I had no idea. Who would have guessed.” Gosh.
If you think any of these cretins is so stupid, you haven’t thought about it enough. All knew better. In a better world it will be the penal system for all of them.
In the meantime there’s the TV Noose.
Here’s how it works: Make a noose or cut out a facsimile. Affix it to the top of the television, above the screen, so that it hangs down over the screen. Now you can imagine the cretin hanging before you. Visualize it. Make it happen. Will it to happen. Savor it. And practically everyone on TV who will grace your noose will actually have it coming.
Maybe it can lower your blood pressure and lessen your anxiety about whether the criminals will ever meet justice.
They think the end is coming. They’re even smiling about it. Are these the people we want to have in charge when we discuss matters of global stewardship or keeping the peace in the Middle East?
In fact there are probably FCC regulations which would forbid these types from broadcasting their hate-mongering over the public airwaves. Something like pulling the fire alarm, or yelling fire in the theater or inciting a riot or encouraging the commission of a crime.
Activists have been protesting the trend toward trans-national globalisation since before the rest of us knew what was coming. The WTO is an unelected governing body with the authority to overrule any locally chosen laws or covenants.
Citizens can elect rulers, and rulers can make laws, but the World Trade Organization can undo those laws if they are deemed to restrict free trade. Environmental regulations, labor protections, health safeguards, all can mess up some corporation’s right to unlimited profits, and the WTO will strike those laws down.
When the WTO wants something, such as uniform labor codes, a nation’s ruler sometimes has to hold a referendum to ask its citizens for their approval.
When you’ve heard the press report that such and such referendum was a success or embarrassing failure for that ruler, did you wonder to whom that ruler had to deliver his success? Did you wonder with whom that ruler need feel embarrassed?
Who has lost hope that the artist behind Calvin and Hobbes is only on a temporary hiatus? Here’s an album cover Bill Watterson made for his brother’s band. Click on the image to look for updates on his whereabouts.
What a scenic view. This is the prison just outside Buena Vista. Too bad all the cells face inward. The vista is for us.
Driving by this lovely compound, I had to think about how easily we accept the need for prisons. They’re perfectly natural parts of society. There’s always going to be crime, just as there will always be unemployment. There’s a magic constant, a percentage. And that’s probably true.
But that wouldn’t explain why the percent of the American population living behind prison walls has been growing exponentially, and is the highest in the world. That’s not natural. In fact, it suggests that the incarceration rate is not related to the crime rate.
This is not the photograph I wish I had taken. I was in Snowmass for the Aspen Jazz Festival, Labor Day weekend. Crossing from Aspen to Snowmass we drove by the airport. Several evenings, past Gulfstreams and other private jets gleaming in the moonlight. More tailfins than you could count.
The point being, these weren’t Cessnas or twin-engine Bonanzas or even Lear jets. These were miniature passenger jets, parked higgledy-piggedly at both ends of the airport runway. The point being, wealth in abundance, overflowing the confines of their taxpayer funded playpen, for all to see, and only see.
This picture was taken at the weekend’s close, when the most of the jetset had flown.
Doing some wiki research I learned not enough about yellow journalism.
You and I know about yellow journalism, the subject rose through the cracks of our otherwise expurgated American history texts. Yellow Journalism. Jingoist press rousing the rabble to war. Leading example, REMEMBER THE MAIN! rallying us to fight Spain and liberate her colonial possessions, Cuba and the Philippines. Chief villainous yellow barron, William Randolph Hearst.
We all know about Hearst and his newspaper empire. We know of Marion Davies, Xanadu -I mean San Simeon Castle, Fallen heiress Patty Hearst. We believe Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane was about Hearst, and thus we have a vague notion that Hearst suffered a tragic fall. But did he?
What I was hoping to learn about yellow journalism wasn’t there. History records nothing about a reprimand. Hearst may have lost his childhood Rosebud, but not his media empire and blood-soaked gains. In fact the other chief Yellow miscreant was Joseph Pulitzer. His name is lionized because of the newspaper award that bears his name. A Pulitzer represent integrity in reporting. Isn’t that ironic? It’s akin to Alfred Nobel the father of modern explosives being remembered for peace. Nothing unusual really. Rockefeller and Carnegie are remembered for philanthropy.
Unfortunately we’ve got similarly omniscient barrons today who are blazing new onslaughts with their brazen yellow banners. Rupert Murdock and the xenophobes at Disney have taken Hearst and P.T. Barnum several adages further. Leave no sucker alone.
I’d like to propose that Congress at long last address the villainy of Yellow Journalism. Let our lawmakers consider a proclamation, nay condemnation, a posthumous censure of William Hearst for his unpatriotic, bilious fearmongering with the intent to provoke war.
Let’s propose that should anyone BE TRYING it again, let them face fines and civil liability the likes of which will bankrupt their empires. Let State Reservists sue them for lost resources, let class action suits represent survivors and victims.
War profiteers must be made to turn over their ill-gotten billions to the victims of their yellow-baited wars. The military-industrial complex is guilty, but so too is its mouthpiece the MSM.
Bush’s attempts to try his “unlawful combatants” in military tribunals were cut down, finally, by the Supreme Court. So what’s our Judge Roy “Dubya” Bean to do?
Bush wants to have Congress redesignate his kangaroo courts as something other. As what? Wallaby courts? Wallaroos?
Wikipedia defines a Kangaroo Court as:
A kangaroo court is a ‘judicial’ proceeding that denies proper procedure in the name of expediency; a fraudulent or unjust trial where the decision has essentially been made in advance, usually for the purpose of providing a conviction, either going through the motions of manipulated procedure or allowing no defence at all.
Wallabies are just short kangaroos. But that won’t do, will it? Wallabies and wallaroos can leap over bothersome barriers, just like Kangaroos. But minor prerequisites like Habeas Corpus and Due Process do not require shorter leaps. If the Gitmo kangaroo tribunals couldn’t do it, why does Bush think another marsupial can?
Is there no penalty for assailing our constitution with the same challenge? There are laws against frivolous lawsuits, why not frivolous laws? And by frivolous I do not mean inconsequential. Civil rights are abridged, innocent people are imprisoned and laws are effectively flouted.
Thus do Bush & Co laugh all the way to the bank, and back, filling their pockets to and fro. Laws do not protect anyone if the perps have all the lawyers.
Bush lied. Is that news?
Bush admits to existence of clandestine extrajudicial prisons. Bush admits to condoning torture. Bush admits to authorizing domestic surveillance program. Bush admits Iraq had no WMDs. Bush admits Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
We knew all this already. That’s not the story. Bush lied. And we knew that all along too. That’s not the story.
Is there anything more to ask Mr. Bush? We’re only ever going to get a lie and we know that already. Was Bush complicit in 9/11? Is Bush running up the deficit on purpose? Are we in Iraq for oil, for Halliburton? We know it already.
The question needs to be posed to the media: why do we keep looking to the president to tell us what he’s doing?
The president is lying., not about having an affair in the White House, about everything. About everything to do with our civil rights, our treasury, the lives of our sons and daughters. Bush has his hands around the neck of our democracy and our media can only ask, are your intentions, sir, honorable?
Bush has got to laugh at our deferential timidity. Who do we think he is, Urkel? Bush has never portrayed himself as anything but the brush-clearing, fun loving frat boy. Asphyxiation, date rape, mumble, mumble, what an absurd accusation.
Only when the bruise marks are irrefutable will Bush admit he got a little rough. He might argue that calling attention to what he’s done will only impede his efforts to continue. He might argue that the assault was consensual. With regard to the media, he’d be right. I don’t believe Bush will admit what he and the Neocons are doing until the marks are permanent and the Grand American Experiment is a corpse, with its coin purse gone.
Across the US political spectrum it is now widely understood that the US government does aggressively intervene in Latin America, no matter whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House. So no matter what political stripe your average Joe and Jane neighbor may be here in Colorado Springs, you are not too likely to have one deny that the US has historically intervened South of The Border in some form or another; militarily, economically, and culturally. The neighbor leaning Left might say that this has been negative for those countries, while the Rightist will most probably sing interventionism’s praises. The memory of Reagan’s Central American wars of the ’80s remains strong, because some of these wars were so widely covered in the press.
There is one caveat to mention here. The belief that the US is intervening, and has intervened in the past in Latin America, is mostly confined within opinion by the American public, that this is so only south of Mexico. Why? The answer is in that the US press as a whole, treats mention of US interventionism in Mexico and its politics as its grand taboo. Despite the fact that Mexico is a huge and populous country and is where the Third World meets the US to our South, the US press does all it can to keep Americans just as ignorant about Mexico as they can be made.
As one example, just how many non Hispanic Americans can name the Mexican states that border the US? How many of these same Americans know that Mexico is divided into states even? But how many of these same folk yet have strong and basically uninformed opinions regarding immigration from that country? The sum total of belief the US non Hispanic public has been taught by the English language US press, is that Mexico is poor and that many want to live here because of that. Further information is kept back, and the widespread Anglo public view is that Mexicans run their own country and the US has nothing to do with that. Unfortunately, that perception is totally false.
To illustrate the point that the US in fact has a major role in directing Mexican life, let me just mention a few facts about Walmart in Mexico. This American company is Mexico’s largest private employer with over 100,000 employees and over 800 stores there. It now is entering into the countries banking structure as a major player, too. It is just ridiculous to imagine that the Walton family of Arkansas is just standing to the side when political and economic decisions are being made, whether in Spanish, or not.. They have an agenda, and push it just as hard in Mexico as they do in the US. Their agenda, in short, is to make profits in that country and to move those billions to Bentonville, USA.
I don’t want to pick on Walmart here. They are just one of many prominent examples of US presence in Mexico, and exploitment of it. They have high level company officials, as other US companies and the US government itself do, that interact with the Mexican elites themselves to maintain a ‘good business climate’. What existed before the year 2000, was the longest running one-party dictatorship in the world. Both Mexican and US elites decided was that this was not good for business at that time. Previously, they had agreed that this dictatorship was absolutely just the thing for business and US government support for the PRI dictatorship was kept solid. And the US press’s silence about this ran solid for decades, too.
In the last 2 US presidential elections, the results left many believing that fraud had carried Bush into office twice. At any rate Bush received less votes (called popular votes, as if that made them insignificant) than Al Gore did in 2000, and yet got the office! Gore realized that though he had won the vote count and that the Republicans had fraudently purged voter lists of largely eligible Black voters, that he was not as popular amongst the US elite as Bush was at the time. So he laid down his claim for the presidency, and conceded without a struggle! And America has been as it has, ever since.
Mexico had its presidential election about 10 weeks ago. News of it was kept quiet in the US daily press, as if it was of no real concern to Americans. Pretty strange behavior for what bills itself as the ‘free press’, but not real shocking if we consider how the US press has been largely lap dogs in support of Bush’s multiple invasions, occupations, and wars. Not much coverage of Bush in Haiti these days, neither. How much real examination has there been of whether the Israeli invasion of Lebanon had roots in the White House?
But what came out of this election south of us was a fraudulent result that will possibly impact the US as much as Iraq now does. After all, the US and Mexico are intertwined on the North American continent, and neither country will ever become an island into itself,no matter how hard it is tried. I could go into the many details of why the results were fraudulent, something that is now being denied in US daily editorial after another. That would seem arcane and boring to most readers though. What counts, is that about half of the Mexican population is certain that the results are fraudulent and the official president stands with little legitimacy in their eyes. And the US supports that man, as do the Mexican church, government, and economic elites that have long impoverished that country.
What really is fearful to the US media, is that the official ‘loser’ of the Mexican presidential race, Antonio Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), has chosen a path completely in contrast to that of our US loser of the past, Al Gore. He has decided to struggle against the fraud rather than to meekly surrender to it. Despite the effort to reconstruct Gore’s image amongst the US public as Mr. Ecology, he will probably go down in history as the goat that led to the construction of the Bush Administration. Mexico’s ‘loser’, AMLO, may well go down to being seen as a hero in the struggle against US control of his country, and the destruction of its national integrity.
The situation in Mexico now is quite complex. The country’s highest court just put a man in office, that even with fraud in his favor, gathered less than 40% of the votes! The south of the country went for AMLO, and the north went more to Calderon, now the official ‘president’. About 30% of the country stuck with the PRI, party of the no supposedly defunct one-party dictatorship of the past. Fact is, that both Calderon’s party and the PRI have been acting in conjunction with each other, as if they were but 2 wings of one corporate party. Does this ring a bell for some Americans?
Our government and institutions should not fall into line accepting Mexican electoral fraud as they are now doing. The fact that they have done so bodes poorly for our own embattled system. Neither country can afford to continue where only elites make decisions that effect all of us. Neither country needs Tweedle-Dee/ Tweedle-Dumb governance. That way leads to national insecurity for both nations.
Hmm. Another bad sign.
I saw CNN running a promo for its election season coverage, a teaser purporting to remind us to stick with CNN when the election is upon us.
At face value, is that not odd? Wouldn’t we be judging our news source based on its reporting of today’s news, instead of its relative foresight of tomorrow’s excitements? Also, are we not already CNN watchers if we are seeing the ads? This is not like advertizing one TV show to viewers of another. It’s like promoting the second half of the Superbowl during the first half. Pointless, I’d say, unless we have something to spin with the promotion.
CNN’s election 2006 hook? The CNN tagline was “Election 2006: How close will it be?”
How close will it be?
Has anyone said it will be close? At present the GOP is getting a trouncing. All the Republican yahoos have egg on their faces and the public wants to run the bums out. It’s happening all over, if not so widely celebrated on mainstream news.
Nevertheless, someone thinks the election in November will be close. Who? My guess it’s Diebold.
I’m guessing that Diebold would like to pave the way for an election result they can live with. To do this they first have to create an anticipation that the election will be close. Too close to call in fact. Then it won’t be such a surprise when the winners are… Republicans! By a nose!
When our media anchors began to report that the Mexican election was going to be very close, the fix was in. How chilling it was to hear. Until then everybody’s favorite Obrador had been leading throngs of supporters through the streets of Mexico City, leading a peaceful revolution against the entrenched pro-US corruption government. Mexico was following the populist flow of the Latin American justice and equality movement.
Then apparently the election was looking to be close. What, were there suddenly just as many entrenched corrupt bureaucrat voters as there were oppressed masses? Where would that voter parity come from, if not electronic ghost votes?
And now the Mexican election is being decided by their supreme court. Sound familiar?
To quote the late Herbert Sommers, who wrote about his childhood in turn of the century Colorado Springs, about Teddy Roosevelt’s visit to the city on August 10, 1901. Roosevelt was then Vice President of the country and within less than a month would succeed William McKinley after his assassination.
Theodore Roosevelt’s visit was an enormous bally-hoo and preceded his famous hunt in which he spared what became his namesake teddy bear.
In the 1900 election the Republican party was not popular in Colorado Spings, but Sommers wrote about the aftermath of Rooselvelt’s momentous visit:
If you do not think that this event gave life and character to every boy in Colorado Springs, then you do not know boys. Every boy became a Republican and all became active readers of our daily paper, the Colorado Springs Gazette. The Evening Telegraph was also a Republican paper at that time and it, too, had an increase in reader support.
This weekend’s Gazette reported that Colorado Springs ranked 16th among America’s brainiest cities.
Although that may not be saying much in light of the US intelligence quotient these days, I still find the story hard to believe.
Other indicators: driving aptitude
According to local traffic systems professionals, the traffic lights at Colorado Springs intersections are adjusted by CDOT to a very slow rate. This setting provides for longer yellow lights in general as well as a longer gap between stop and go. They do not call this a remedial measure, but it is the lapse from when one direction is given red to when the perpendicular direction is given green, basically the space of time during which both directions sit simultaneously before a red light. Engineers set the timing according to local driving proficiency. Perhaps it’s just me linking that factor to IQ.
Colorado Springs level of idiocy is reflected in other local regulatory agencies. Although the area receives considerable revenue from Pikes Peak or Bust tourism, residents oversee everyday the ongoing destruction of their mountain view, their single natural resource.
Visual reflex impairment
The Snake Canyon Quarry continues to deepen and widen, within everyone’s focal range of their famous single peak. The Springs even has an older depleted mine, a similarly shaved mountain a couple foothills north which is tersely called “the scar.” It’s supposed to be a reminder of what we don’t want to do again. But Snake Canyon continues to dust our furniture and pit our windshields yet we refuse to seek our simple aggregate elsewhere. Other cities don’t have mountains to appropriate to sand their streets in the winter. They have to dig discrete pits at the outskirts of town instead. Apparently we don’t mind looking at our open pits. It’s more expensive to dig than it is to shave.
Likewise, El Paso is the only county in Colorado which permits building on mountain ridgetops. Ridgetop homes create erosion problems for everyone beneath, from the silting of the creeks to landslides to flash floods to lost vegetation. And it spoils the Pikes Peak viewshed. Within plain sight.
Foresight
Colorado Springs residents have also accepted recent cuts to their parks services. Park toilet facilities have been boarded or demolished and replaced with Port-a-let plastic outhouses because they’re cheaper to maintain. So are latrine trenches, but would we abide them? Well, maybe.
City officials have also decided they cannot afford to maintain the boulevard medians. They are selling the opportunity to local businesses in exchange for a posting “maintained by” advertisement. This at the same time the city utility overpays its executives and installs televisions in their elevators.
Impaired empathy
Colorado Springs has demonstrated its simplemindedness to the nation at large. We’re famous for our idiocy, though your judgement might depend on your politics. Our city was the epicenter of the Amendment Two debacle. This was where religious extremists attempted to deprive homosexuals of their right to minority protection. The measure was overturned in state court, but it got its healthy start here.
We are home to Dobson’s child spanking doctrine, Ted Haggard’s military-theocracy incubator, and multiple christian fundamentalist publishing houses. Anyone can open these books or tune into the TV broadcasts to sample our inanity. Again I’m equating inanity to IQ.
Cuckoldry
Colorado Springs is also staunchly Republican. We excuse this to mean Conservative, but Bush’s run of things in DC has put the lie to that claim. Colorado Springs’ Republican representatives have supported the most cockeye, transparently thieving policies that our corporate lobbyists have concocted. Colorado Springs voters are dumb, perhaps the percent that vote are not the percent winning accolades for being brainy.
To be accurate, I should admit that by “brainiest,” the Gazette meant the most educated. They were citing a CNN Money Magazine study based on census records which ranked cities of over 250,000 by the percentage of their populations which held Bachelors Degrees. Maybe this doesn’t indict Colorado Springs exactly. Maybe this says something more about the accreditation of our colleges, I’d guess the Colorado party schools. Go in dumb, come out dumb too. Of that, Colorado Springs is proof.
Israel bombs Lebanese power plant, unleashes oil spill over the coasts of Lebanon and Syria, an environmental disaster greater than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
What does our media report? John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
The last couple hours before it must adhere to the cease fire, Israel pulls back its troops and litters southern Lebanon with thousands of anti-personnel cluster bombs.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
Israel shifts its military energies to increase raids and assassinations in the Occupied Territories of Palestine.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
In violation of the cease fire, Israel conduct raids against the Hizb’Allah who are trying to help Lebanese recovery.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
The US Iraq death toll climbs faster, for civilians and American soldiers.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr. John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
A friend of mine is a filmmaker and I’d like to crow about him a little. His name is Brent Green and I came to know him through the local filmmaker festival, The Pikes Peak Passion Film Festival.
Brent Green
Brent was from the East and settled in Colorado Springs for a while as he worked on his animated short films. He passed VHS copies through my mailbox with notes saying “please return asap this is my only copy.”
I was not impressed by the note and postponed having a look until he called me up and asked for them back. I told him I was having a public screening that night, did he want to join us? I felt my hand a little forced, but what the hell.
What the hell were my friends’ and my literal words when we saw Brent’s Susa’s Red Shoes. Amazing!
Brent featured prominently in the next two Passion Festivals and has since moved on to not surprisingly greener pastures. Grants, artists wanting to collaborate, shows in Chelsea galleries, a screening at the MOMA, a FilmMaker magazine profile, and a retrospective at UCLA. Brent’s third short Hadacol Christmas showed at Sundance this year. He told me it was incredible to watch a theater of 1000 people watch your film. I anticipated his fourth short to show at multiple festivals around the world, but Paulina Hollers has lapped the festival circuit. Its premier will be at the Getty. Yes. The Getty.
I’m relating this story, an indulgence obviously, not simply because it is invigorating and inspiring to me, but because of something I read recently in local art news. I read that our Fine Arts Center, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, has just announced that it has paid artist Dale Chihuly two millions dollars for yet more of his glass objects d’ crap. Their Chihuly show last year broke attendence records and they’d like to see more of that.
Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly makes giant glass tchotchkes which are just too ludicrous to behold, on pedestals even! He’s a performance artists too, chucking large glass balls into the sea (minus the traditional suspended fishing nets), as if it’s not industrial littering, and he hangs large bound glass droppings by iron exoskeletons over canals in Venice, a sight so superbly crass and dim-sighted. Then he can say his works have shown in Venice. Like Hasselhoff, big in Germany.
Christo, another single-named impresario, drapes landscapes but doesn’t pretend that the plastic wrap is the art in itself. He doesn’t sell pieces of it to provincial Fine Art Centers for two million dollars.
Dale Chihuly is an art director showoff who hires glass blowers to do his work and then sues them if they produce pieces of blown glass on their own. What? He’s copyrighted extruded glass? He’s trademarked giant hanging paperweights? This is fine art that someone thinks he’s patented. It’s a miserable waste of attention. And our city’s chief art center is wallowing in it.
My up and coming, once local, friend is at the Getty. We’re left with Chihuly.
A few years ago, our FAC was criticized for having sold off its choice Native American pieces in what appeared to have been an underhanded insider raid on its unmatched collection. We lost many irreplaceable pieces but the upside was that the FAC got some cash in exchange.
Now we see how they’re spending it. On Carnival glass. Do you remember why it was called Carnival Glass? Because it was all sparkly but wasn’t worth much. Carnival Glass was produced during the Great Depression when folk didn’t have much to spend. It was the poor man’s crystal. At least the price was right.
I don’t know, I got the same feeling before the last election…
In 2004 Bush was messing up. It was becoming plain as day what a smug, incompetent shyster he was. A landslide for anybody-but-Bush seemed virtually assured. And yet-
And yet you’d hear that Bush was still raising money, finding backers, hosting dinners for rich people ready to bet Bush was going to win again.
Who puts money on a losing horse? Especially people who know how to handle money. It wasn’t a good portent.
What do you think nowadays when you hear that Bush still raises thousands at a fundraiser? Are people giving money to the GOP as a thank you for the job Bush has done? The huge tax break for the rich for example, or the defense contracts, or the oil revenue windfall?
Really? Do you think so? They paid for those favors the last go-round. The GOP hasn’t backed a single bit of legislation that wasn’t for constituents who weren’t already big GOP contributors.
More certainly Bush is still able to raise money because the rich are angling for new mega-billion dollar favors to come. These people know that to earn money you have to spend money.
The most disquieting aspect about this fund-giving to the GOP is that the rich are counting on further GOP victories. They’re not in the business of throwing their money away. They’re not betting that the GOP will stay in power, they’re anteing up. If they thought the Democrats would be winning in November the rich would register their bribes with the Democratic party.
That Bush is holding closed-door affairs while on the public payroll is the least of his offenses. Throughout his presidency, Bush cannot have acted with more discourtesy toward our Constitution. He is guilty of impeachable offenses and it doesn’t take a judge to see it. Every solitary person who hosts a fundraiser for him, or who gives him money, is behaving so selfishly un-American, I’d call it treason.
It’s graft, it’s undemocratic, and it’s cynically counting that you and I will not be able to see through the media blackout on the issues, the rigged voting system, and the false two-party choice.
Are the fundgivers scared? It appears not a whit. That scares me. Big win for the Democrats in November? They don’t think so.
