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  • “Klee Under Foot” – Paul Klee in America

    Kleetwitterf00033(The Twittering Machine, Paul Klee 1922, MoMA)

    Last Thursday, on a beautiful, crisp autumn day in Houston, a friend and I visited the Menil Collection where some eighty of Paul Klee’s colorful, delicate and small sized paintings are currently on display. All the paintings are from American collections. Born in Switzerland in a musical family, Klee was set to become a violinist but changed his mind to pursue a career in art instead. A contemporary of Wassily Kandinsky on the faculty of the Bauhaus School in Germany, he made the following awe filled declaration after a trip to the sunny north African nation of Tunisia.

    "Color possesses me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has taken hold of me forever. That is the significance of this blessed moment. Color and I are one. I am a painter."

    And it shows. His paintings of school houses, masks, sun rise, sun set, circus, north African gardens and domes, country fairs, fish, birds, harlequins and clowns are splashed with color on varied surfaces. I had never seen so many of Klee’s works under one roof before. The exhibit is delightful and highlights a cross section of the vast output of a prolific artist who was also amazingly versatile. Surrealism, Dadaism, cubism, pointillism and straightforward portraits and still lifes were all part of Klee’s technique. It is very hard to imagine why this exuberant and sometimes childlike art would end up as part of Hitler’s infamous exhibition of "Degenerate Art", unless according to the Nazis, all creative work of Jewish artists qualified as such. 

    A write up of the Menil exhibition from the October 20, 2006 edition of Houston Chronicle.

    "Color possesses me," 36-year-old Paul Klee declared in 1915. "I am a painter." He painted with a rainbow of watercolors and oils, then described geometric and imaginary figures mostly as line drawings in black against the luminous grounds.

    Nearly 80 of his magical little paintings dated 1921-1939 make up the exhibit Klee and America at the Menil Collection. Curated by Menil director and Klee expert Josef Helfenstein, the exhibit — and its hefty catalog — trace the artist’s acceptance by collectors in the United States and his impact on other artists. Klee, Mexican artist Diego Rivera wrote, "is one of the wisest painters and one of the greatest child/poets of the world." In the 1920s, Paris celebrated Klee as one of the fathers of Dada and Surrealism; recognition was slower in America. Leading critics in the United States mostly dismissed him, though he had powerful supporters — among them Katherine Dreier, a founder of the Society of Independent Artists, and Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

    By the early 1930s, however, when the Nazis declared his art degenerate, Klee’s reputation had spread in this country. The Klee Foundation in Bern, Switzerland, estimates some 1,150 works, about 10 percent of his total oeuvre, are in U.S. collections. An iconic example is the 1922 Twittering Machine owned by MoMA. The radiant background is an aqueous pale blue, transparent rose and violet. Black lines describe a gathering of four oddly mechanical insectlike creatures. Stick legs balance them on a wire and their oval heads point in different directions. One faces up, its black, daggerlike "tongue" protruding from its open mouth. (Did Picasso steal this for the screaming mother in Guernica, 15 years later?)

    Man of Confusion was painted in 1939, the year before Klee’s death from scleroderma, a progressive disease that destroys tissue. The vibrantly colored composition describes a dismembered figure. Body parts float about in an indeterminate space of rich red to orange tones. The head, suspended near the upper right corner, is strawberry pink with an L for a nose somewhere in the middle but nostrils floating away closer to the cheekbone. One leg is a pink biomorph paralleling the lower edge, its disconnected red "shoe" pointing down. A red hand pins the left edge.

    Color possessed Klee even in the saddest moments."

    See some of Paul Klee’s paintings on the web here.

  • “A Land Where There Were No Laws”

    What does the reactionary, authoritarian, torture loving, war mongering  Bush-Cheney administration have to hide from us?  Whatever it is, we will probably find out and  we won’t be surprised.

    "The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.

    The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.

    The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him.

    The government, in trying to block lawyers’ access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees’ experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public.

    Captives who have spent time in the secret prisons, and their advocates, have said the detainees were sometimes treated harshly with techniques that included "waterboarding," which simulates drowning. Bush has declared that the administration will not tolerate the use of torture but has pressed to retain the use of unspecified "alternative" interrogation methods.

    In a separate court document filed last night, Khan’s attorneys offered declarations from Khaled al-Masri, a released detainee who said he was held with Khan in a dingy CIA prison called "the salt pit" in Afghanistan. There, prisoners slept on the floor, wore diapers and were given tainted water that made them vomit, Masri said. American interrogators treated him roughly, he said, and told him he "was in a land where there were no laws."

    Americans will go to the polls next Tuesday (some like me, have already voted – without a paper record). If there is no change in leadership after November 7, it will be for one of two reasons:

    • The American public has become so corrupt, fearful or ignorant that it is willing to live with the Stalinist Creep-up in our political system. (Think Germany in the 1930s)
    • Diebold will have worked its magic again.

  • Rats On A Sinking Ship

    Some of the loudest cheer leaders for the Iraqi invasion have turned their backs on Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld. These despicaple opportunists do not regret that they aided and abetted a criminal enterprise – just that the glorious neo-con dream of world domination has been crushed due to the "incompetence" of their former hero George Bush and his administration.

    For example, Ken Adelman the superhawk who sat on Bush’s secretive Defence Policy Board, lamented,"the idea of using our power for moral good in the world," has lost its credibility with the public and after Iraq, "it’s not going to sell."  Adelman was also the confident braggart who had predicted that liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Several other warmongers have deserted Bush’s leaky warship and are busy rehabilitating their own reputations.(After Iraq, will that sell?) Here is what some other neo-cons who had lionized Bush and were instrumental in destroying Iraq and causing world wide turmoil, are saying:

    Richard Perle: "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn’t get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly," Mr Perle told Vanity Fair, according to early excerpts of the article. "At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible."

    Asked if he would still have pushed for war knowing what he knows now, Mr Perle, a leading hawk in the Reagan administration, said: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, ‘Should we go into Iraq?’, I think now I probably would have said, ‘No, let’s consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists’."

    Kenneth Adelman: "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent," Mr Adelman said.

    "They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the postwar era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

    He too takes back his public urging for military action, in light of the administration’s performance. "I guess that’s what I would have said: that Bush’s arguments are absolutely right, but you know what, you just have to put them in the drawer marked ‘can’t do’. And that’s very different from ‘let’s go’."

    Mr Adelman, a senior Reagan adviser at cold war summits with Mikhail Gorbachev, expressed particular disappointment in Mr Rumsfeld, who he described as a particular friend. "I’m crushed by his performance," he said. "Did he change, or were we wrong in the past? Or is it that he was never really challenged before? I don’t know. He certainly fooled me."

    Michael Rubin: Michael Rubin who worked on the staff of the Pentagon’s office of special plans and the coalition provisional authority in Baghdad, accused Mr Bush of betraying Iraqi reformers.

    The president’s actions, Mr Rubin said, had been "not much different from what his father did on February 15 1991, when he called the Iraqi people to rise up and then had second thoughts and didn’t do anything once they did".

    David Frum: Mr Frum, who as a White House speechwriter helped coin the phrase "axis of evil" in 2002, said failure in Iraq might be inescapable, because "the insurgency has proven it can kill anyone who cooperates, and the United States and its friends have failed to prove that it can protect them". The blame, Mr Frum said, lies with "failure at the centre", beginning with the president.

    How is it that some of us non-experts along with the Dixie Chicks, knew from the very start that invading Iraq was an immoral and disastrous undertaking?  We were vilified as cowards and traitors by the likes of those who are now backtracking to save their own hide. And Bush?  He continues to act the brave warrior with his empty bravado and delusional claims of a "complete victory" in Iraq for the benefit of his own bruised ego and the right wing voting bloc.  Asked about the article in Vanity Fair on Bush’s turncoat friends, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, "We appreciate the Monday-morning quarterbacking, but the president has a plan to succeed in Iraq and we are going forward with it."

    How can he not? The two biggest rats are still on board.

    Bellnew512ready

    (cartoon by Steve Bell of Guardian Unlimited: click to enlarge)

  • Links to Weekend Reading

    01military_190(Leaked classified military chart showing where Iraq stands on the Peace – Chaos spectrum)

    A Work of Art: On a day when violence continued unabated, a US general compared Iraq to a "work of art in progress" in order to play down the deteriorating situation.  I am not sure if the general just has a macabre taste in art or if the military is under pressure by the Bush administration to prettify the Iraqi situation for the upcoming midterm elections.

    "An American general in Baghdad called Iraq a "work of art" in progress yesterday in one of the most extraordinary attempts by the US military leadership to put a positive spin on the worsening violence.

    On a day in which 49 people were killed or found dead around the country, Major General William Caldwell, the chief military spokesman, argued that Iraq was in transition, a process that was "not always a pleasant thing to watch.

    "Every great work of art goes through messy phases while it is in transition. A lump of clay can become a sculpture. Blobs of paint become paintings which inspire," Maj Gen Caldwell told journalists in Baghdad’s fortified green zone."                          

    World10a Between Osama and Kim: George Bush’s poll numbers are dismal at home. But he managed to garner high numbers in a public opinion polls abroad. The honor is dubious – it puts him smack dab in the center of an axis of evil. In a survey conducted among US allies, Bush is outranked only by Osama Bin Laden as the greatest danger to world peace. N. Korean president Kim Jong Il and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are considered less of a threat than Bush.

    "America is now seen as a threat to world peace by its closest neighbours and allies, according to an international survey of public opinion published today that reveals just how far the country’s reputation has fallen among former supporters since the invasion of Iraq.

    British voters see George Bush as a greater danger to world peace than either the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, or the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both countries were once cited by the US president as part of an "axis of evil", but it is Mr Bush who now alarms voters in countries with traditionally strong links to the US.The survey has been carried out by the Guardian in Britain and leading newspapers in Israel (Haaretz), Canada (La Presse and Toronto Star) and Mexico (Reforma), using professional local opinion polling in each country.

    It exposes high levels of distrust. In Britain, 69% of those questioned say they believe US policy has made the world less safe since 2001, with only 7% thinking action in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased global security.  The finding is mirrored in America’s immediate northern and southern neighbours, Canada and Mexico, with 62% of Canadians and 57% of Mexicans saying the world has become more dangerous because of US policy. Even in Israel, which has long looked to America to guarantee national security, support for the US has slipped."

    061102seafoodthreat_170No fish by 2048:  Overfishing has depleted edible marine life to a degree that may make availability of seafood scarce to nil in less than fifty years.  So says a new study to appear in today’s issue of the journal Science.

    "Unless humans act now, seafood may disappear by 2048, concludes the lead author of a new study that paints a grim picture for ocean and human health.

    According to the study, the loss of ocean biodiversity is accelerating, and 29 percent of the seafood species humans consume have already crashed. If the long-term trend continues, in 30 years there will be little or no seafood available for sustainable harvest. The research also found that biodiversity loss is tightly linked to declining water quality, harmful algal blooms, ocean dead zones, fish kills, and coastal flooding.

    "Biodiversity is a finite resource, and we are going to end up with nothing left … if nothing changes," said Boris Worm, an assistant professor of marine conservation biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada."

    Image2146235gGive him "the bird" in the voting booth: A school bus driver in Seattle has been fired after she made an obscene gesture at George Bush when his motorcade was passing the bus. The driver has lodged a complaint of wrongful termination with the employee’s union. A spokesperson for the school district has said the firing was not politically motivated.

    "A school bus driver fired after she reportedly made an obscene gesture at President Bush has filed a union grievance in an attempt to get her job back.

    The 43-year-old driver, whose name was not released, was driving middle school children back to school after a zoo visit on June 16 when the president and Republican Rep. Dave Reichert drove slowly by in a motorcade.

    From the bus, the children waved; with the windows down in their car, Bush and Reichert waved back. That’s when the driver gave the president the finger, according to Reichert and Issaquah superintendent Janet Barry.

    "The congressman hadn’t seen it, but the president turned to him and said, ‘That one’s not a fan,’" said Reichert spokeswoman Kimberly Cadena.

  • Wrestling the Republican Straw Man

    Less than a week before the midterm elections, with everything going in their favor, the Democrats might mess things up again.  It will be an amazing feat . But the bumbling Dems, with their uncanny ability to keel over before capricious lies and smears (a special talent of Republicans), might find themselves caught flat footed once more. It is a bit like this – funny and sad, but one expects it.

    Take for example the latest brouhaha about the joke that John Kerry flubbed. For almost forty eight hours now, we have heard about John Kerry insulting our "brave men and women in uniform" when in reality, what Kerry attempted to do was to insult our not so brave president.

    Here is what Kerry meant to say to a group of students in California: "Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy?" Kerry was to say. "You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

    This is what he did say: "Education — if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well.  If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq."

    The fact that his statement came just after he had said that "Bush once lived in Texas but now lives in a state of denial," leaves no doubt as to where Kerry wanted to go with his punch line. But he garbled it and now he has become the punching bag for gleeful right wingers.  Bush, Cheney, Tony Snow, Rush Limbaugh (who must be relieved to see the Michael J. Fox story move out of the headlines) and even the beleaguered Hastert have come out swinging to pummel Kerry for his supposedly elitist put down. The corrupt war in Iraq and the violation of national trust by Republicans have taken a backseat to this poor joke. Even his own party has demanded that Kerry apologize so that Republicans can no longer flog this non-issue right up to election day. This time Kerry has "swift boated" himself. The question is whether he has also swift boated the chances of a Democratic gain in the elections. I doubt it but one never knows.

    Here in my own district, not exactly a bastion of Democratic political power, things may not go as well as I had hoped a few months ago when Tom DeLay bowed out in disgrace. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, the Republican write-in candidate has almost caught up with Nick Lampson, her much more experienced Democratic opponent who has a better name recognition and an impressive war chest. Why?  Because while Lampson, a very nice man, has been telling his feel good life story mostly to an already converted Democratic base, Sekula-Gibbs has flooded the air waves, TV, phone lines and mail boxes with positive literature about herself and negative ones about Lampson. Lampson has not been seen on TV or anywhere else for that matter.  Once again, a competent Democratic politician, rather than take the initiative in defining the corrupt legacy of the terrible Mr. DeLay, has allowed a clever Republican machinery to define him in sleazy terms.

    Houston also happens to be a city where conservative businessman enrich themselves by employing undocumented immigrant workers in booming businesses ranging from construction work to  landscaping, restaurants and janitorial work. In turn they fill the campaign coffers of Republican politicians in Texas and nationwide. But see what is posted in front of an early voting location in my neighborhood.

    Can the Democrats work up enough presence of mind and discipline to torch the straw man of Republican dirty politics?  I am not holding my breath.

  • Haunting Melody

    Library

    (Ideson Library, Houston)

    What good is Halloween without a true blue ghost story?  So here is one from Houston about a long dead man whose music lives on – at least, so claim some Houstonians.

    (Check out the photo gallery on the right for more photos of the Ideson Library.)

    "On a dripping, windless night, darkness swamped a jewel-box ceiling high above the Ideson Library’s top floor. Forty windows, each with eight panes glowing like opal in moonlight, crowned the walls.

    Downstairs, a dead girl gazed morosely from a framed photograph on the wall. In a portrait in the hall, a librarian gone from this life for 60 years sternly surveyed her domain.

    In its early years, the Ideson, named in honor of the city’s first librarian, was home to Jacob Frank Cramer, an elderly man of uncertain past who worked as night watchman, gardener and handyman. In his leisure hours, he played the violin.

    Cramer and his German shepherd, Petey, resided in a spacious if Spartan basement apartment. In the evenings, the old man, Petey at his heels, would labor up the stairs to the top floor. Then, positioning himself near the balustrade of the library’s inner court, he would serenade the building he loved.

    One morning in November 1936, librarians found Cramer, thought to have been 79 years old, dead, the victim of a lung hemorrhage. Days later, he was buried in Hiawatha, Kan.

    There are some, though, who swear he never left.

    Library patrons claim to have heard the tick-tick-tick of dog nails tapping across the library’s polished tile floors. Others report seeing ghostly orbs or finding sheet music, normally kept in a locked room, scattered in unexpected places.

    Most unnerving, visitors and library employees say, Cramer returns to pay his respects and play his tunes, filling the cavernous building once again with the beautiful waltzes of Strauss."

  • Moral Compass: It’s In Our Genes

    Moral_compass Religion may have been reinventing the wheel all this while (and causing traffic fatalities in the process).  It appears that we are hard wired from birth to know right from wrong.

    "Who doesn’t know the difference between right and wrong? Yet that essential knowledge, generally assumed to come from parental teaching or religious or legal instruction, could turn out to have a quite different origin.

    Primatologists like Frans de Waal have long argued that the roots of human morality are evident in social animals like apes and monkeys. The animals’ feelings of empathy and expectations of reciprocity are essential behaviors for mammalian group living and can be regarded as a counterpart of human morality.

    Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, has built on this idea to propose that people are born with a moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution. In a new book, “Moral Minds” (HarperCollins 2006), he argues that the grammar generates instant moral judgments which, in part because of the quick decisions that must be made in life-or-death situations, are inaccessible to the conscious mind."

    Rest of the article here.

  • Child Slavery in Africa (Joe)

    Africa’s World of Forced Labor, in a Six-Year-Old’s Eyes, by Sharon LaFraniere, for the New York Times.  (Be sure to watch the narrated slide show.)

    Children, forced into slavery.  Beaten, sometimes killed.  It’s nominally illegal, but it’s illegal to drive over the speed limit here–everyone still does it.

    KETE KRACHI, Ghana
    — Just before 5 a.m., with the sky still dark over Lake Volta, Mark
    Kwadwo was rousted from his spot on the damp dirt floor. It was time
    for work.

    Mark Kwadwo, 6, in the small dark room, where he sleeps on the dirt
    floor and rises before dawn to work on Lake Volta, a two-day trek from
    his family home. “I don’t like it here,” he whispered to a visitor, out
    of earshot of his employer.

    Poverty forced Efua Mansah to sell her son, Kwabena, when he was 7. “It
    was hunger, to get a little money,” she said at home in Aboadzi.

    Indentured children as young as 5 and 6 sustain the fishing trade in Kete Krachi, without schools or basic necessities.

    Shivering in the predawn
    chill, he helped paddle a canoe a mile out from shore. For five more
    hours, as his coworkers yanked up a fishing net, inch by inch, Mark
    bailed water to keep the canoe from swamping.

    He last ate the
    day before. His broken wooden paddle was so heavy he could barely lift
    it. But he raptly followed each command from Kwadwo Takyi, the
    powerfully built 31-year-old in the back of the canoe who freely deals
    out beatings.

    “I don’t like it here,” he whispered, out of Mr. Takyi’s earshot.

    Mark
    Kwadwo is 6 years old. About 30 pounds, dressed in a pair of blue and
    red underpants and a Little Mermaid T-shirt, he looks more like an
    oversized toddler than a boat hand. He is too little to understand why
    he has wound up in this fishing village, a two-day trek from his home.

    But
    the three older boys who work with him know why. Like Mark, they are
    indentured servants, leased by their parents to Mr. Takyi for as little
    as $20 a year.

    Until their servitude ends in three or four
    years, they are as trapped as the fish in their nets, forced to work up
    to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, in a trade that even adult
    fishermen here call punishing and, at times, dangerous.

    Mr.
    Takyi’s boys — conscripts in a miniature labor camp, deprived of
    schooling, basic necessities and freedom — are part of a vast traffic
    in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries,
    cocoa and rice plantations and street markets. The girls are domestic
    servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart
    pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines.

    By no means
    is the child trafficking trade uniquely African. Children are forced to
    race camels in the Middle East, weave carpets in India and fill
    brothels all over the developing world.

    The International Labor Organization, a United Nations
    agency, estimates that 1.2 million are sold into servitude every year
    in an illicit trade that generates as much as $10 billion annually.

    . . .

    Kofi, 10, said his mother had told him his earnings would feed their
    family. But he suspects another motive. “They didn’t like me,” he said
    softly.

    Read the whole thing.  Parent’s often sell their children because they cannot afford to feed their families.  Or sometimes they believe their children will be given educations–they won’t–and that they will be able to live better lives because of it–again, they won’t.

    Life isn’t supposed to be like that.

    Is it wrong for me to be worked up about things that are so inconsequential?  Gay marriage; Sam Alito; the dishonesty and corruption of the Bush Administration.  Daily Kos wants us to care about the differences between some idiot Democrat and some idiot Republican in Pennsylvania, and we will, even though we all know they’re basically the same person, and the election of one over the other will have a negligible effect on the real lives of real human beings.

    Dick Cheney.  Hillary Clinton.  John McCain, Condi Rice, Lincoln Chaffee and Joe Biden–who are these people, and why should we care?  They’re rich (see also John Kerry), and the biggest difference we see between them is that McCain will probably support slightly lower taxes than Chaffee.  George W. inherited the presidency from George H.W.  Okay, so our government is incompetent, and harbors some anti-democratic tendencies.  Is it really a big deal that Secretary Rice referred to some man’s boyfriend’s mother as his "mother-in-law?"  That Republicans will use "marriage is between a man and a woman" rhetoric to try to win the election, and then promptly return to taking advice from their gay staffers?  That Hillary Clinton is sitting on the fence about the Iraq War, but promises not to be as incompetent as President Bush?  Isn’t this all kind of like where for Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees, winning (or not winning, as it were) the World Series is the biggest deal in the world, but really, it doesn’t matter, it’s just not that important?

  • Books? – Baloney! (Sujatha)

    When Sen. ‘Macaca’ Allen accuses his Democratic opponent Jim Webb of writing a book with lurid descriptions, it smacks of being just a tactic to deflect the growing voices  criticizing Allen’s own  shortcomings  (racism, concealment/repudiation of Jewish heritage,  etc., etc.).

    "Allen told reporters after a campaign stop in Harrisonburg that Webb’s books are demeaning to women. "My opponent hasn’t been in public office," he said. "But he talks about the books he’s written and his creative writing, his novels. Those are some of his writings. . . . People can make that judgment."

    …

    Webb said the graphic scenes in his novels, many of which are set in wartime, are taken out of context and do not accurately reflect the books or their content: combat. He said he has written about disturbing scenes that he witnessed on the battlefield or as a journalist in Southeast Asia.

    "It is an observation about how the human species lives," Webb said after Mark Plotkin, the radio show’s host, read one of the more lurid passages, prompting objections from the candidate.

    Webb told Plotkin that listeners should read a book by Allen’s sister, Jennifer, who described her brother’s harsh physical treatment toward her. He also shot back that Vice President Cheney’s wife, Lynne, wrote a novel, "Sisters," which contains scenes of rape and a lesbian love affair. "You can read Lynne Cheney’s lesbian love scenes if you want to get graphic on stuff," he said."

    Lynne Cheney in a relatively belligerent interview by the normally unctuous Wolf Blitzer defended her own writings and declared Webb to be "full of baloney", denying writing sexually explicit scenes in her novel  ‘Sisters’.

    It’s election time, silly! That’s why these politicians are clobbering each other’s heads with books the opposition wrote, pulling out any whiff of sex in each and every book.The readers know that it was put in primarily to make the books salacious and saleable. Dull treatises may be all very well for the pol’s public image, but sex sells!

  • Hypocrisy: A Right Wing Affliction

    Rush Limbaugh has a problem with Michael J. Fox’s condition. He thinks Fox is faking his illness.  Fox suffers from Parkinson’s disease, a progressive neurological disorder for which there is no known cure. He is endorsing political candidates who favor stem cell research, seen by some as the only possible hope for cure of Parkinson’s and many other chronic and progressive diseases. Fox has appeared in political TV ads in which he is seen in the full throes of his affliction. The tremors, writhing and uncontrollable contortions, all hallmarks of an advanced state of Parkinson’s, are visible on the ads. Limbaugh first accused Fox of faking his symptoms or appearing on the campaign commercials after foregoing his medication in order to exaggerate the symptoms.  When the reaction to his boorishness was angry and swift, even from some Republicans, he backtracked somewhat and claimed that Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited for political gain.

    "Possibly worse than making fun of someone’s disability is saying that it’s imaginary. That is not to mock someone’s body, but to challenge a person’s guts, integrity, sanity.

    To Rush Limbaugh on Monday, Michael J. Fox looked like a faker. The actor, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease, has done a series of political ads supporting candidates who favor stem cell research, including Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin

    "He is exaggerating the effects of the disease," Limbaugh told listeners. "He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. . . . This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting."

    Limbaugh, whose syndicated radio program has a weekly audience of about 10 million, was reacting to Fox’s appearance in another one of the spots, for Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill, running against Republican Sen. James M. Talent.

    But the Cardin ad is similar. It is hard to watch, unless, for some reason, you don’t believe it. As he speaks, Fox’s restless torso weaves and writhes in a private dance. His head bobs from side to side, almost leaving the video frame.

    "This is the only time I’ve ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has," Limbaugh said. "He can barely control himself."

    Later Monday, still on the air, Limbaugh would apologize, but reaction to his statements from Parkinson’s experts and Fox’s supporters was swift and angry.

    After his apology, Limbaugh shifted his ground and renewed his attack on Fox.

    "Now people are telling me they have seen Michael J. Fox in interviews and he does appear the same way in the interviews as he does in this commercial," Limbaugh said, according to a transcript on his Web site. "All right then, I stand corrected. . . . So I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong, and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act."

    Then Limbaugh pivoted to a different critique: "Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democratic politician."

    Exploiting an illness?  Shilling for politicians?  All cynical ploys, I agree. But coming from Limbaugh, it is more like the devil quoting the scriptures. It is important to note that while Parkinson’s disease plays havoc with the body, it does nothing to a patient’s mind. Michael J. Fox is fully in control of his mental faculties. He has undertaken the political campaign for stem cell research of his own volition and with considered judgement. He is not a witless shill for anyone. He is educating the public about the ravages of Parkinson’s disease through these ads, not exploiting it. Unlike the sad case of the helpless brain dead woman in Florida a year and a half ago, whose private suffering was beamed across TV screens all over the world by others. Republican politicians descended like vultures to gain political mileage out of her misery. I don’t remember Limbaugh crying foul on that egregious exploitation.

    Limbaugh has one thing right. Going off prescription meds does magnify symptoms of chronic conditions, including the congenital tendency to be a tasteless jerk. I hope someone is able to slip Limbaugh some OxyContin without the Feds knowing. Perhaps that will calm him down and take the edge off his viciousness a bit. But I doubt it. Rush Limbaugh is beyond cure.

    Note: Michael J. Fox’s campaign video for Claire McCaskill (D-MO) here.

  • The Unbearable Lightness of His Mind

    Bush_bookupsidedown

    (be sure to click for enlargement!)

    In a comment to a previous post, I wondered about George Bush’s reading habits or even whether he has one. If we are to believe White House presidential aides, Bush is a regular book worm and an erudite one at that. The presidential reading list put out for public consumption is impressive and eclectic – lots of biographies, some baseball, a couple of great epidemics and even a glimpse into the world of Muslim women .  Here are the titles of some books that G.W.B. has purportedly burnt the midnight oil reading. 

    • Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky
    • American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin (a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, an inventor of the atomic bomb)
    • Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero by David Maraniss (about the late all-star Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder)
    • Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Richard Carwardine
    • Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural by Ronald C. White Jr.
    • Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
    • Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks
    • Polio: An American Story by David Oshinsky (discussing how polio affected the United States in the mid-20th century)
    • The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth by Leigh Montville
    • The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History by John M. Barry
    • Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky
    • The Stranger by Albert Camus

    Very interesting — if true. We have heard that Bush exercises for 3-4 uninterrupted hours daily and goes to sleep by 9pm. In between he runs the country (also Iraq and Afghanistan) and goes on campaign trips. I find it hard to believe that he reads much. Or may be he is a speed reader. But the most important reason why I think that he hasn’t read the above books or too many others for that matter, is when I hear something like this: (I heard this on the NBC News with Brian Williams – October 23, 2006)

    "President Bush said he sometimes uses Google’s satellite mapping program to transport him back to his ranch in Crawford, Texas.  In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo, Bush was asked a question on many of our minds: “I’m curious, have you ever Googled anybody? Do you use Google?”

    According to CNBC’s unofficial transcript, he replied: “Occasionally. One of the things I’ve used on the Google is to pull up maps. It’s very interesting to see that. I forgot the name of the program, but you get the satellite and you can — like, I kind of like to look at the ranch on Google, reminds me of where I want to be sometimes. Yeah, I do it some.” He added: “I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. I don’t want to receive emails because, you know, there’s no telling what somebody’s email may — it would show up as, you know, a part of some kind of a story, and I wouldn’t be able to say, `Well, I didn’t read the email.’ `But I sent it to your address, how can you say you didn’t?’ So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.”

    I had heard that Bush does not read newspapers but likes to get his news "unfiltered" from his official advisors. We are told that he only watches the Weather Channel and baseball on TV. No news, no commentary -just the weather (I wonder what he was watching during Katrina) and sports.  Now he reveals that he uses the internet to look at the Google map of his ranch in Crawford and not much else. Why would anyone spend time staring at the map of one’s place of residence as a pastime?  More likely, "Uncurious George" uses Google to search for the next easy place to bomb.