Somewhere In Utah

NYC photography

2010-04-22T15:05:00.004-04:00

the hint of a larger-scale photo project are in the works.

trying to get some quality portraits taken in NYC. as well as other pretty found objects...

a teaser here.

Somewhere In Utah: P90x

2009-10-26T21:11:00.000-04:00

Somewhere In Utah: P90x

P90x

2009-10-26T19:13:00.001-04:00

fall

2009-10-23T12:18:00.005-04:00

So last night, I drove home...in Atlanta. Temperature was around 66 degrees. Balmy for some here, deep in October...

I was listening to BEIRUT and suddenly... I was transported to NYC.

specifically a long long night out in NYC. You know, one of those really good ‘long nights’...out with your peeps til 4am walking a dead-end street someplace in Brooklyn that you think you ‘know’, but in reality you’ve really never been in.

that mustardy-orange glow of the streetlights illuminating your unforgettable pre-dream memories.

that pre-chill in the air, telling you that Gotham is about to lose its leaves.

I love the fall.

I relish the fall.

I don’t think fall anywhere compares to fall in the city. ‘the city’ is NYC FYI...

fall in NYC to me growing up was always the same staccato rhythm;

Mom’s bday in September - always at the cousins in Astoria and dinner at Angelo’s in Little Italy

pre-Halloween Shopping - Chinatown or FAO Schwartz by the park - Two-fold cause my birthday was a week after Halloween and it was both getting halloween costume supplies AND test marketing b-day toys.

Nov 7 - The Actual Bday - again cousins in Astoria...and once, I think, roaming the halls of Nat. History Museum...with the leafy park there, the old buildings, and TR’s statue out front, it’s possibly my favorite group of blocks on the planet.

Thanksgiving - Parade watching or pre-parade watching all the balloons get inflated in the freezing night air...Big bright neon caricatures illuminating the dark of Central Park West and the History Museum.

Christmas - the shop windows rolling over to showcase the extravagance of excess and snow snow snow...i know it's not 'fall' but all fall you get inundated with Xmas propaganda about how how tied to NYC the holiday is...movies that take place there seem to cement that notion. it's practically a City Holiday that the rest of the free world has adopted. so growing up in the shadow of this Christmas-laden goliath was kind of myth-making. Santa was more tangible, 'miracles' (whatever those were) were easier to swallow on 34th Street or beyond, and the air just tasted like snow.

so the fall has always been this month by month and event filled build up to winter. there was always something to look to, something to circle on a calendar, something to prepare for. i miss some of that. it's still ever present, but it's not the same without all those places and those people.

I’m jealous of you Gothamites.

...but I got a small taste of it last night. just for a minute the air was there, the sound of the wind was there, the leaves fell and gave the air just a hint of winter.

go out and enjoy that city of yours. keep her safe for me.

so...what would you little maniacs like to do first?

2009-08-16T22:58:00.008-04:00

it's been a while since i last posted something on here. strangely enough, the item that drew me back was John Hughes' passing. so much have been said about his death and his work in the last few weeks that, in reality, there isn't much left to say. but for me, as a writer and a filmmaker, that's not good enough. i make no bones about my insignificance in these fields compared to him, just that i owe the man a lot.

as a kid, i loved movies. i acted out movies. i made movies...1st with GI Joes and a VHS camera, then graduating to actual human stars in terrible parody or bizarre riff on some sort of pop culture subject. i think i always would have gravitated towards movies, but without the works of John Hughes i don't think i ever would have seen myself working or striving to succeed in that field.

the 1st film of his i saw was Sixteen Candles and i didn't get it. it was a funny movie with a lot of 'grown up' things for a kid of 10 to grasp...but again, on the base level, it was funny...i think part of it was the dorky kid reminded me of myself...

the rest of his films came in rapid succession as my adolescence approached...
Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off...This core of his early work really had an effect on me. again, in the beginning, they were simply funny. nothing more. then some became part of my family's video library, and heavily rotated on HBO or Showtime, and quoted by my friends at school and i. that latter part, without knowing what 'pot' was or why Anthony Michael Hall would need/want a girl's underpants at 10 or 11 made for hilarious jumps in logic by our brains.

anyway...i say all of this to provide scope.

these films as well as his others; Planes, Trains, & Automobiles, She's Having a Baby, and Uncle Buck, plus the ones he Produced: Some Kind of Wonderful, Pretty in Pink, and The Vacation Films, they did something drastically different than anything i had seen before...they took kids seriously. they made the stories of people just older than me dramatic. they allowed for levity and gravity. they put these kids in the real world, albeit with some heavy-handed nomenclature 'jocks, dweebs, etc'...but in all seriousness...as bizarre and weird as Weird Science gets, in the end it's about two kids who are trying (desperately so) to understand and engage members of the opposite sex. man's quest from that moment of puberty til the last foot enters the grave.

Hughes had a way of choosing the characters and stories that helped illuminate different ages and angsts for those ages...i mean even though i loathed it...Home Alone has some moments in it that Culkin really shines.

But finally, on the screen, you had high school kids who weren't stupid, horny, or nerdy. you had what felt like actual people who were in high school. he never put kid gloves or 'stupid goggles' on for the audience and for that we (as a generation of moviegoers) owe him a debt of gratitude.

"Set in a senior high school class, J.J. (Michael J. Fox) pursues the girlfriend of a rival from a higher clique which culminates in a race at the end of the movie between the two rivals in this light comedy."

that is the description of the 1983 'classic' High School USA starring Micheal J. Fox, Nancy McKeon, and Todd Bridges. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085679/ for complete memory lane flashbacks)

now look...i have fond memories of this film...what i vaguely remember is that Todd Bridges (nerd) helps his buddy Michael J. Fox (would-be cool guy) win the heart of a girl Nancy McKeon (popular girl) from Anthony Edwards (rich douche). this all culminates with some 'race' for the grand finale...and i think that Bridges' pet robot (yes, a robot) gets sacrificed to supe up whatever vehicle needs it to take team Fox over the top. um...what?

i mean they really made movies like this...they cranked them out in fact. put teens in glorious romp and BAM...teen comedy. don't get me wrong, i have a huge soft spot for any of these films, but i'm trying to address what Hughes did for film on larger scale than his own work.

John Hughes changed the game.

Hughes took young people from the trash heap of pop culture and actually had them talk to each other AND listen. he allowed them to have feelings in front of each other and to talk about those feelings to boot. in short, the guy wrote films for younger actors...not teen movies.

when i wrote my application to film school, I cited John Hughes and Cameron Crowe as my two biggest inspirations as a filmmaker and it was something (in the interview AND once accepted) that i was made to defend vehemently because Hughes didn't direct Citizen Kane or Rashomon or The Godfather Part III (it goes both ways).

i still fell like his work sits in a genre of its own. 'teen movies' have been and will always been around and be profitable...but 25 or so years later, Hughes' films are genuinely 'watchable'. dated? sure they are, but they succeed where other films fail in that they make a total and complete film. those others never sat down and tried to be anything different than an excuse to give young actors pocket money to blow all over Hollywood in the 80's. (High School USA i'm looking at you)

i will miss John Hughes.

i'll miss his talent but also i will miss him for very selfish selfish reasons too. i won't ever get to meet him. i won't get to talk to him. about his career and about his life and times within it.

yes, pipe dreams, but the guy is one of the few people who's simple eloquence in the work he left behind truly impresses me. in a film world largely filled with drivel and insensitive visual stimulation where douches like Sommers and Bay still live, it's a sin that John Hughes went home without the recognition he deserved.

sure, everyone knows his films...but their place in the pantheon should be more pronounced in my opinion. i know that he changed the game with his work and not everyone changed with him (see High School Musical...or rather DON'T)...but SOME changed with him and others grew from the seeds he planted.

Rest in peace John Hughes and thank your sensibilities, thank you for the work you did, and thank you for the work you made possible.

----------------------------------------------
Below is an article by David Sirota who stretches and reaches to tie Hughes to politics...(and fails in my opinion)...but it's funny that a guy like Sirota is using Hughes and his characters after all these years. they're just that real and relevant i s'pose.

jp

Truthdig - Reports - Don’t You Forget About John Hughes
Posted on Aug 13, 2009

By David Sirota

Confidence is a strange and elusive thing. As a nation, we clearly have it in this post-Vietnam age of chest-thumping invasions and flag-pin patriotism. But as humans, we are each, well, human. In our minds’ most secret caverns—those shadowy places that stiff upper lips, Botox and sports cars obscure—aplomb is often just a fleeting relief from more constant fear and loathing.

A country of human self-doubt birthing a nation of superhuman hubris—it’s not the paradox it seems. After all, the popular culture sustaining this oxymoronic reality revolves around exalting the impossibly gifted virtuoso, the against-all-odds champion, the Mount Rushmore-size megastar—in short, the larger-than-life individuals from Michael Jordan to Lance Armstrong to Ronald Reagan whom we know we cannot be.

While such deification drums up national pride, it also evokes the ugly feelings associated with personal insecurity, which is why I think so many mourned last week’s passing of John Hughes. The filmmaker, most well known in the 1980s, was one of the only contemporary artists who found success providing an uplifting antidote to those darker emotions—an antidote that is more relevant today than ever.

While Hughes’ works were marketed as one-off parables about teenage angst, they really make up a single catalog extolling something bigger—something that today’s infotainment teaches us to ignore: the intrinsic worth of the regular person.

Hughes created “National Lampoon’s Vacation”—a classic so intent on honoring the typical buffoonish-yet-loving father that its poster featured Clark Griswold as a Herculean colossus. With “Pretty in Pink,” “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” “Uncle Buck” and “Some Kind of Wonderful,” Hughes made films whose paladins weren’t aristocratic perfectionists, but working-class and decidedly flawed commoners. Even when Hughes went sitcom conventional with “She’s Having a Baby” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” he still produced plots forcing picket-fence protagonists to make do with—rather than magically transcend—their weaknesses.

Certainly, the demography of Hughes’ on-screen world was whiter and wealthier than the country he aspired to portray. And even devoted fans admit he occasionally dabbled in offensive stereotypes (examples: “Vacation’s” redneck caricature, Eddie, and its minstrel-show depiction of the inner city).

Yet, for all his blemishes, Hughes accomplished the seemingly impossible: At the very moment America was being conquered by the cult of the celebrity superhero, he ascended through films insisting that the rest of us mere mortals are not as weird, alienated or worthless as we’ve been implicitly led to believe.

This is a big reason why Hughes’ work remains as embedded in the American psyche—and therefore politically significant—as any recent cultural product. That includes even those ubiquitous Barack Obama T-shirts because in many ways, Hughes’ themes are central to today’s epic battle between hope and panic.

As economic crises compel us to confront debates about taxes, health care and the common good, the enduring hyper-individualist conservatism of the 1980s now chafes against a president with a very different vision. He asks us not to trust only in his individual skills and not to obsess over society’s differences, but instead to be confident in our own problem-solving talents and to remember that we all are in this together.

We are, indeed, watching Obama channel his fellow Chicagoan, Hughes. As if ordering the band to substitute “Don’t You Forget About Me” for “Hail to the Chief,” the president implores us, as “The Breakfast Club” said, to understand that “each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, and a princess, and a criminal”—that is, each one of us, however flawed, is of value.

The only question now is whether we will run with that Hughes ethos, or simply walk on by.

David Sirota is the best-selling author of the books “Hostile Takeover” (2006) and “The Uprising” (2008). Find his blog at OpenLeft.com or e-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com

© 2009 Creators.com

Obama Wins

2008-11-07T22:51:00.001-05:00

20081105_Chicago_IL_ElectionNight1765, originally uploaded by Barack Obama.

I can't express the numbness I feel post-2008 Election.

It has been a long long road and frankly I'm exhausted.

Tuesday night, American took it's 1st steps into adolescence and elected the best man for the job regardless of color, creed, or prejudice. I'm not naive...there was plenty of prejudice out there.

Prejudice disguised or wrapped in 'simple' critiques or flat-out statements from folks that I pity in the long run. Take 'Charles' for instance.

'Charles' is a guy who I went to middle / high school with...He was gregarious and loud, always quick with a pun at someone's expense, and generally treated people who were different like total shit.

'Charles' is the 1st kid my age in middle school who used the word 'nigger' where I could hear it and understand its context. Now I'm sure I'd heard it in movies or in music but this was face to face. And it was in reference to our 7th grade teacher who was African American.

Recently upon reconnecting through one of those nostalgia social networking sites, he and I became 'friends'. I honestly can't understand why we 'befriended' each other...When we parted company at age 18 for college and whatever the hell he did with his life we weren't friends. We had 'mutual friends' but we had nothing for each other. It was a two-way street. As bigoted and ignorant as he was, I offered him nothing appealing in the friend department I'm sure.

So we 'friend' up on the site and political debate ensues as the election nears. His anti-Obama views were and are centered on race but he's either too smart to admit it out loud, or too ignorant to know what he's so upset about. I'd lobby for a healthy mix of the two, leaning towards the former.

It just ginned up a whole lot of resentment and feeling about how the kids in my area were raised...Meaning devoid of experience, culture, perspective. It's dangerous. It bred a generation of willfully ignorant and braggadocios blowhards.

But although I had no chance of getting out of my youth without falling in line with this type of short-sightedness...I did. I made it. And others did too, here and there.

And Tuesday we put Hope in the office of the President.

I'm no historian but as Dan Carlin would say, I'm a fan. The Civil Rights era has always been a central point to understanding the cultural and economic plight of blacks in the south. My congressman is John Lewis...I mean how much better can you get? (John Conyers maybe, but screw living in Michigan)

So I've always been someone who took it upon himself to learn more about what people endured just to go to a shitty public school near their home instead of being bused across town to the black school, or the psychological effect of having the Governor of your state BLOCK THE DOOR so you can't attend college because of the color of your skin.

The problem with this arm-chair Conservatives is that they blame people for systemic problems inherent in society that have been against them for generations. Education, equality in the workplace, and general discrimination on all fronts. Hurdles as opposed to the relatively smooth track that me and my Classmates had to navigate. We went to good schools. We came from good economic backgrounds. We could afford higher education to better ourselves.

And when others didn't or couldn't meet those standards and couldn't go the same routes we did, the failure is on THEM.

Not the system, but THEM.

It's preposterous and whenever I hear someone like 'Charles' talk the GOP talking points and feign like it's an original thought it saddens me. Not for any other reason than this person is willfully or systemically ignorant. And if they weren't, oh the places we could go with them on board the American experiment.

I'm just tired and exhausted.

Tired of the doom, tired of the gloom, and tired of the blame being put on the people who want progress.

"We shouldn't free the slaves, it will ruin the economy and our way of life" - WRONG

"We shouldn't let women vote, they're the fairer sex" - WRONG

"We shouldn't let negros vote" - WRONG

Historically this rhetoric has been applied to every major progressive benchmark. Doom and gloom...until it eventually happens. Then what? Does the world go up in smoke? Does the country implode into itself?

No.

Chicken Little once thought the sky was falling.

But it doesn't.

And we grow up and put away our childish things.

Barack Obama is President of the United States.

Here's to hoping that people can act their age and treat him with the respect of the office and not their bigoted view based on the color of his skin.

jp

ps - he's 1/2 white...does he at least get some extra credit for that?

finally Gervais is funny

2008-09-22T14:45:00.001-04:00

HA...Go Tweety Bird

2008-09-17T20:45:00.003-04:00

worth watching the who thing just for the Matthews' last line.

"Next time you quote Harry Truman Congressman Cantor, remember what he said, 'The Buck stops here'..."

-Chris Matthews, aka 'The Only Journalist in America'

the boss

2008-08-24T22:24:00.001-04:00

DSC_3667_filtered, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

we all know who the brains in the operation is...right?

They Live

2008-08-02T15:30:00.001-04:00

i can't imagine the degree to which i would shit my 7-year-old pants if i saw this in person...

nancy grace...oh how pathetic she is...

2008-07-30T13:21:00.001-04:00

if you 'love' nancy grace like i do, then you'll LOVE this...

your boy

2008-07-22T22:38:00.002-04:00

the absolute OPPOSITE of Bush...right

R.I.P. Jesse Helms...COCKSUCKER

2008-07-04T20:32:00.007-04:00

the wonderful bigot and all-around stereotype for what's wrong with our country, Jesse Helms, died together.

truly the only way i could be more relieved is if Jerry Falwell died...

wait? he did? yay!

taken from an article over at HuffPost...but i felt it was sorta lame, so i'm just giving you the quote from the dead guy...

he deserves NO positive affirmations of his 'legacy'...he's a cocksucker, and his god is having a field day with him right now.

so, if you wonder how i can be 'excited' about someone's death, then read these quotes:

(And yes, he actually uses the word 'beaner'...what a maroon)

"White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories?" (1950)

"The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (1963)

"Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced." (1981)

"The University of North Carolina (UNC)... the University of Negroes and Communists..." (1995)

"Blacks, gays and lesbians are responsible for the proliferation of AIDS"

"There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (1988)

"All Latins are volatile people." (1986)

"The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."

"The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct." (1995)

"Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here [Fort Bragg]. He'd better have a bodyguard. " (1994)

"What is really at stake is whether or not America will allow the cultural high ground in this nation to sink slowly into an abyss of slime to placate people who clearly seek or are willing to destroy the Judaic-Christian foundations of this republic." (1990)

"I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers." (1985)

"I have tried at every point to seek God's wisdom on the decisions I made, and I made it my business to speak up on behalf of the things God tells us are important to Him."

Rest In Peace...In Hell you bastard.

10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

2008-07-02T02:19:00.001-04:00

this rules...

check out this piece from over there at the AlterNets

The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

bond 2.0 #2 - looking tight

2008-06-30T22:36:00.000-04:00

slo-mo baby=awesome

2008-06-18T17:11:00.000-04:00

Empire or Democracy: Are We Ready for the Fall?

2008-06-17T00:08:00.002-04:00

came across this on HuffPo...and being 1/2 Italian, I've always had a sick fascination with Roman history and politics.

(if you are, get these podcasts ASAP, they're great.)

i tend to agree with the Hedges idea that we are smack dab in the middle of our fall based on one note he points out; the lack of intellectual curiosity.

how do the likes of George Bush, Rick Santorum, and Luella and Joe-Bob in Who-Gives-A-Fuck, TN get the right to tear down MY nation?

enjoy

-j

John W. Whitehead: Empire or Democracy: Are We Ready for the Fall?
from HuffingtonPost.com by John W. Whitehead

"There was once an ancient city. The ancient city fell."
-- Virgil, The Aeneid

Increasingly, parallels are being drawn between the Roman Empire and the current American Empire. Yet while some may look to Rome as an inspiration, others believe it casts a dark shadow over us and our supposedly imperial aspirations.

Indeed, the comparisons to the Roman Empire are rarely favorable. For example, Cullen Murphy, author of Are We Rome? (2007), argues that the most alarming parallels are "the blinding, insular culture of our capitals; the debilitating effect of corruption; the paradoxical issue of borders; and the weakening of the body politic through various forms of 'privatization.'" Murphy sees the eventual decline of the American Empire as inevitable, describing three possible scenarios for the future: there is the "Fortress America" scenario, where everything revolves around national security and the power of the president expands to near dictatorial strength; the "city-state scenario," where the central authority weakens and city-states emerge; and finally the "boardroom scenario," where corporations privatize all crucial functions of the government and essentially rule -- what is commonly called fascism.

David Walker, former comptroller of the United States, has also drawn daunting comparisons between America and Rome. Walker believes that the American economy is standing on a "burning platform" of "unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments." Today, America is in a "$53 trillion hole," which translates to $455,000 per household.

Undeniably, spending is out of control. This irresponsible spending has resulted in the devaluing of the dollar and untold damage to the economy. As acclaimed historian Chalmers Johnson points out, America's misguided economic policy, with its emphasis on frequent wars and military spending, has led to the decline of vital domestic areas, including the education system, manufacturing capabilities and health care. At the same time, the Department of Defense's planned spending for 2008 is "larger than all other nations' military budgets combined and will exceed $1 trillion for the first time."

With more than 500,000 military service people stationed abroad in more than 130 countries, America has become what Johnson describes as a foreign imperialist. This poses its own dangers, such as massive standing armies, an almost constant state of war, an increasing dependence on the "military-industrial" complex, the dramatic economic drain of military spending and an excessive military budget. If left unchecked, these will lead to the eventual decline of democracy. And as resources are drained, the republican nature of American government will break down, and the principles inherent in a democratic society will necessarily be compromised by what is needed to sustain such a militaristic empire.

The breakdown is already underway. Until recently, David Walker served as the head of the Government Accountability Office, Congress' chief investigative and audit arm which investigates waste and fraud in government programs and also details the long-term budget problems facing the government. Walker warns that "declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government" all helped to contribute to Rome's downfall and are prevalent in America today.

One of the worst contributors to today's problems is what Walker calls "a leadership deficit" where today's leaders are shirking their responsibilities. They are concentrating on providing political quick fixes for the present, while giving little thought to how to create a better tomorrow. And with such irresponsible spending, America is "mortgaging the future of our country, our kids and our grandkids" and leaving a legacy of a future of "lower standards of living and with some major, major financial burdens."

Moreover, we face "a growing intellectual bankruptcy that is one of the symptoms of a dying culture," writes author Chris Hedges.

"In ancient Rome, as the republic disintegrated and the Caesars were deified, as the Roman Senate became little more than an echo chamber of the emperor, the population's attention was diverted by a series of frontier wars and violent and elaborate spectacles in the arena. The excitement of entertainment consumed ancient Rome's emotional and intellectual life. It poisoned civic and political discourse. Social critics no longer had a forum in which to speak. They were answered with ridicule and rage. It was not the prerogative of the citizen to think."

But we are not Rome -- at least, not yet, and it is still our prerogative to think and to act. In this regard, we have been woefully negligent. One of the most untenable political positions for a nation is in its attempts at preserving a domestic democracy while promoting a foreign empire. Additionally, vast resources are required to maintain an empire, as we are learning the hard way, to the detriment of our domestic economy.

"We the people" have not held our government accountable and have been content to lose ourselves in television, the Internet, cell phones and the technological gadgets that distract us from reality. We have, in the words of author Nicholas von Hoffman, become "bobbleheads in bubbleland."

Clearly, America is at a crossroads. Thus, we have a decision to make: Do we want a democracy or do we want an empire, because as history has shown, it's not possible to have both.

John McCain, as classy as Hillary...

2008-06-17T00:04:00.001-04:00

Dammit Jim!

2008-06-04T18:54:00.001-04:00

So, my guy...Jimmy Carter, The Man From Plains...Officially endorsed Obama Tuesday night...

Question?

Why so late?

I can't find any answers to that. I wish he got off his ass and did it MONTHS ago...

(CNN) — A host of prominent Democrats are pushing for an Obama-Clinton unity ticket — but Jimmy Carter isn't one of them.

The former president, who publicly endorsed Barack Obama shortly before polls closed Tuesday in the final two primary states, told a London newspaper that a joint ticket between the two former rivals would be "the worst mistake that could be made."

"That would just accumulate the negative aspects of both candidates," Carter told the Guardian, saying that both candidates' vulnerabilities could overshadow that the ticket if the two team up together.

"If you take that 50 percent who just don't want to vote for Clinton and add it to whatever element there might be who don't think Obama is white enough or old enough or experienced enough or because he's got a middle name that sounds Arab, you could have the worst of both worlds," he said.

This is not the first time the former president has expressed doubt in the success of a unity ticket. Speaking at a Houston event late last month, Carter called the prospect "highly unlikely," and said other potential picks could better serve the Illinois senator.

"I think it would be highly unlikely for Obama to ask her to take it," he said then. "Because I don't see how it would help his ticket. I think he needs somebody like a [former Georgia Sen.] Sam Nunn, but I won't name others. But I think if he asked her, she would take it."

Carter largely stayed on the sidelines during his party's prolonged presidential nomination fight, though the Georgia Democrat had long hinted his preference for Obama. Speaking with Sky News last month before he made his endorsement, Carter said that once the final two contests had been held June 3, it would be time for Clinton to give up her presidential bid.

Fire at Universal Studios

2008-06-02T16:57:00.006-04:00

i caught the news this week that there was a horrible fire at Universal Studios in California.

i fondly remember hitting up that tourist trap in the height of Back To The Future popularity and saw the clock tower, and the delorean, and the King Kong, and the Jaws...and mostly the Cylons from the (then defunct...LONG defunct) original Battlestar Galactica...

So, a lot of that history burned this week...Some of it is a shame, some of it was total crap...but all of it was a part of cinema history, for better or worse.

here is a little blog post from WOOT.com that touches on that 'magic'...

13 Movie Mementoes Lost In the Universal Studios Fire That Nobody Will Miss
by Toon, Lydon, & Rutledge Monday June 2, 2008 2:30 PM
News

The fast-moving, early morning blaze destroyed several movie sets and the King Kong exhibit..."Fortunately, nothing irreplaceable was lost," said Ron Meyer, chief operating officer of Universal Studios. - CNN.com, June 1, 2008

1. The next-to-last Starfighter
2. Granny Klump’s prosthetic breasts
3. The pie from American Pie
4. Sting’s codpiece from Dune
5. Jim Belushi
6. Howard the Duck’s copy of Playduck magazine
7. The new cut of American Graffiti featuring an all-CGI Wolfman Jack more in line with the original vision of George Lucas
8. The rarely seen Satanic cauliflower from Veggie Tales
9. Body glitter washed off of Michael Beck after shooting Xanadu
10. Nick Nolte’s accent from Lorenzo’s Oil
11. The X-rated footage cut from Problem Child 2
12. An extensive collection of various vials, syringes, and scraps of scorched aluminum foil recovered from Robert Downey, Jr.’s trailers over the years
13. All prints of the secretly completed surprise sequel to Firefly

"Don't get saucy with me Bernaise"

2008-05-30T09:53:00.001-04:00

I grew up watching the Carol Burnett Show and Mel Brooks classics like Blazing Saddles and History Of The World Part 1 so this guy was one of my pillars of knowledge.

I think you owe it to yourself to Netflix (used as a verb) his work ASAP if you aren't fluent in 'Corman'

Harvery Corman, an American Classic

2008-05-30T09:48:00.001-04:00

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to "The Carol Burnett Show" and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in "Blazing Saddles," died Thursday. He was 81.

Korman died at UCLA Medical Center after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said. He had undergone several major operations.

"He was a brilliant comedian and a brilliant father," daughter Kate Korman said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "He had a very good sense of humor in real life. "

A natural second banana, Korman gained attention on "The Danny Kaye Show," appearing in skits with the star. He joined the show in its second season in 1964 and continued until it was canceled in 1967. That same year he became a cast member in the first season of "The Carol Burnett Show."

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks' 1974 Western satire, "Blazing Saddles."

"A world without Harvey Korman _ it's a more serious world," Brooks told the AP on Thursday. "It was very dangerous for me to work with him because if our eyes met we'd crash to floor in comic ecstasy. It was comedy heaven to make Harvey Korman laugh."

On television, Burnett and Korman developed into the perfect pair with their burlesques of classic movies such as "Gone With the Wind" and soap operas like "As the World Turns" (their version was called "As the Stomach Turns").

Another recurring skit featured them as "Ed and Eunice," a staid married couple who were constantly at odds with the wife's mother (a young Vicki Lawrence in a gray wig). In "Old Folks at Home," they were a combative married couple bedeviled by Lawrence as Burnett's troublesome young sister.

Korman revealed the secret to the long-running show's success in a 2005 interview: "We were an ensemble, and Carol had the most incredible attitude. I've never worked with a star of that magnitude who was willing to give so much away."

Burnett was devastated by Korman's death, said her assistant, Angie Horejsi.

"She loved Harvey very much," Horejsi said.

After 10 successful seasons, Korman left Burnett's show in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. "The Harvey Korman Show" also failed, as did other series starring the actor.

"It takes a certain type of person to be a television star," he said in that 2005 interview. "I didn't have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. ... Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I'm fine."

Brooks tapped Korman's kinetic comic chops often, including roles in "High Anxiety," "The History of the World Part I" and "Dracula: Dead and Loving It."

"I gave him tongue twisters because I knew he was the only one who could wrap his mouth around them," Brooks said. "Harvey was such a good solid actor that he could have done Shakespearean drama just as well and easily as he did comedy."

Brooks described Korman as a "dazzling" comic talent.

"You could get rock-solid comedy out of him. He could lift the material. He always made it real, always made it work, always believed in characters he was doing," he said.

Korman's other films included two "Pink Panther" moves, "Trail of the Pink Panther" in 1982 and "Curse of the Pink Panther" in 1983; "Gypsy," "Huckleberry Finn" (as the King), "Herbie Goes Bananas" and "Bud and Lou" (as legendary straightman Bud Abbott to Buddy Hackett's Lou Costello).

In television, Korman guest-starred in dozens of series including "The Donna Reed Show," "Dr. Kildare," "Perry Mason," "The Wild Wild West," "The Muppet Show," "The Love Boat" and "Burke's Law."

Korman and "Carol Burnett" co-star Tim Conway continued working together into their '70s, touring the country with their show "Tim Conway and Harvey Korman: Together Again." They did 120 shows a year, sometimes as many as six or eight in a weekend.

Korman had an operation in late January on a non-cancerous brain tumor and pulled through "with flying colors," Kate Korman said. Less than a day after coming home, he was re-admitted because of the ruptured aneurysm and was given a few hours to live. But he survived for another four months.

"He fought until the very end. He didn't want to die. He fought for months and months," said Kate Korman.

Harvey Herschel Korman was born Feb. 15, 1927, in Chicago. He left college for service in the U.S. Navy, resuming his studies afterward at the Goodman School of Drama at the Chicago Art Institute. After four years, he decided to try New York.

"For the next 13 years I tried to get on Broadway, on off-Broadway, under or beside Broadway," he told a reporter in 1971.

He had no luck and had to support himself as a restaurant cashier. Finally, in desperation, he and a friend formed a nightclub comedy act.

"We were fired our first night in a club, between the first and second shows," he recalled.

After returning to Chicago, Korman decided to try Hollywood, reasoning that "at least I'd feel warm and comfortable while I failed."

For three years he sold cars and worked as a doorman at a movie theater. Then he landed the job with Kaye.

In 1960 Korman married Donna Elhart and they had two children, Maria and Christopher. They divorced in 1977. Two more children, Katherine and Laura, were born of his 1982 marriage to Deborah Fritz.

In addition to his daughter Kate, he is survived by his wife and the three other children.

___

Associated Press Writers Alicia Chang and Raquel Maria Dillon contributed to this report.

No Country For Gay Men

2008-05-27T08:23:00.000-04:00

No Country For Gay Men from Lawrence Scaduto on Vimeo.

Happy Memorial Day

2008-05-25T17:36:00.006-04:00

On this Memorial Day weekend it's good to invoke two things that we are taught as children to help our minds grow.

The lost art of memory.

And how to 'connect the dots'

I heard about this 'little soundbite' when it happened, and quickly disregarded it as the 'news cycle' quickly flushed it IN and then OUT.

But then it resurfaces...Just look at the headline; "Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links"

Now we should try and invoke the two things i mention at the top

MEMORY..1st, remember the event, the loss of life, the political climate;

George W. and Cheney and co. want war with Iran so their big-dollar firms all get a piece;

Weaponry
Rebuilding
Feeding and resupplying the Armed Forces

CONNECT THE DOTS...2nd we try and put this new report of Israeli/US links with a bombing into the 'bigger picture'. Now, as I read the article, it sounds an awful like we are trying to destabilize as legit nation into A. War or B. Takeover.

What the fuck is wrong with America where on Memorial Day I can read this tidbit and see full-frontal deception and war mongering...Even as I watch Ken Burn's epic love letter the noble sacrifices of the Greatest Generation, the country's 'worst generation' are plotting to put our noble boys in the Armed Forces potentially BACK into harm's way.

It really is maddening and heartbreaking.

Please read, remember, and connect the dots. They're counting on you NOT doing so.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links: report

Fri May 23, 1:46 PM ET

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's chief prosecutor said bombers who caused a deadly blast at a mosque in Shiraz had confessed of links to Israel and the United States, the ISNA student news agency reported on Friday.
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"Those responsible for the attack against the Shiraz mosque have confessed to having links to worldwide oppression, in particular the United States and Israel," Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was quoted by the agency as saying.

They also admitted carrying out "one or two minor operations," the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.

The April 12 blast in the southern city left 13 people dead and more than 200 wounded. Authorities subsequently announced the arrest of 15 people.

Earlier Friday, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami said people had also plotted attacks in the holy city of Qom, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tehran, and at a book fair held in the capital.

Iran has already accused Britain and the United States of training and financing those behind the bombing. In the past it has also blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.

The strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran's Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.

Olbermann speaks to Hillary's Assassination Comments...

2008-05-24T00:57:00.003-04:00

why say it at all when Olbermann is around.

praise to allah that this dude is around to do something right on the news...

do yourself a favor, take the 10 minutes and watch this thing. Keith wraps up the case against Hillary pretty effectively here when he talks of her 'forgiveness' over the course of the campaign.

fuck her, racist, elitist pig. she's the problem. she (and her ilk) are the boulders in the path of true progressivism. i bet she 'cries' in about two days from now in an effort to 'humanize' her.

Hillay Sucks...More...She's truly a class act

2008-05-23T17:27:00.001-04:00

Clinton Brings Up Assassination in Campaign Talk
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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton greets a crowd at an appearance at Sundshine Foods in Brandon, S.D. on Friday.

Addressing the issue of whether or not she should drop out of the presidential race—and if so, when—Sen. Hillary Clinton pointed to the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June 1968 as one example of why she believes it’s crucial that she keep campaigning until the nomination is settled once and for all.

The New York Post:

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

Obama’s camp immediately fired back.

“Sen. Clinton’s statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign,” Obama campaign spokesman said in a statement.

Clinton made her comments at a meeting with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader’s editorial board while campaigning in South Dakota, where she complained that, “People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa.”

See it here:

Hillary Death Watch...

2008-05-21T09:09:00.001-04:00

...NICE

Grand Pappy the Appeaser

2008-05-20T17:09:00.001-04:00

dickWeed recently made headlines when he had the balls to call out 'others' about appeasement of Hitler-types in front of the Israeli Knesset. In case you missed it here it is.

What's ironic, that NOBODY talks about is that his grandpappy helped Hitler and the boys keep the swastika-shaped wheels moving...

Enjoy, and please tell two friends to read this;

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president

* Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
* The Guardian,
* Saturday September 25 2004
* Article history

About this article
Close
This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday September 25 2004 . It was last updated at 23:59 on September 24 2004.
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

Tantalising

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.

Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.

The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.

The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.

A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".

Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.

In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.

One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.

The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.

August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.

By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.

Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.

In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.

There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.

There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.

Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.

Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.

Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.

The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.

Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.

Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.

The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."

But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.

"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.

Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.

Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".

Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."

Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.

In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.

The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.

The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."

The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.

Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."

The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.

In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.

"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.

"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.

"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."

"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."

Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."

What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.

The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.

In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".

Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".

Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.

Biography

Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.

The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.

The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".

In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."

The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.

However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".

The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."

However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.

More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.

a face only an adulterer could love

2008-05-20T09:55:00.002-04:00

i fucking HATE this woman, and by extension her whole family. the campaign she's run (and at this time is still running) has been a polluted nest of lies and double-talk and frankly, i've had enough of that with W in office.

McCain/Clinton '08

2008-05-19T00:27:00.002-04:00

finally, someone who is up to Hillary's standards...they should run together...

never have i wanted to punch someone more than...

2008-05-14T03:12:00.003-04:00

...the woman in the yellow shirt in this video.

she smugly delivers this line...

"my opinion is thati think the United States of America should be run by somebody from the United States of America..."

Interviewer - "but he's from the US, he was born here, he was raised here..."

Nimnutz - "He's muslim"

Oh my fucking god. how low of a reading level do you have to possess to believe this crap.

what a nimnutz state. fuck them. if you know someone from west virginia and they're this dumb, disown them. they're forsaken.

wow

2008-05-13T13:14:00.001-04:00

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

The Jackals Strike

2008-05-03T00:38:00.003-04:00

if you haven't read John Perkins' tell-all book, CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN, about the lifestyle of a right-wing money-monger, you really must go out and get it.

he lays it out how it is when the people who make money kill those who stand to make them lose money.

well, this story stinks of that kind of shenanigans.

jp

Voting Machine Company Co-Founder Killed in Small Plane Crash in Caracas

from The BRAD BLOG by Brad Friedman

A small plane, carrying the co-founder of Venezuelan voting machine company Smartmatic, crashed earlier this week shortly after take off from the Caracas airport, killing two employees of the company, and several others on board and on the ground. The initial reports from a foreign paper, indicated that the cause of the crash may have been the unusual failure of both engines on the small plane.

Smartmatic has been named as a subject in several recent exclusive, investigative reports here at The BRAD BLOG, surrounding questions of the Venezuelan firm's apparent continuing control over the American e-voting company, Sequoia Voting Systems.

Reports of Monday's crash also indicate that several highly-placed Venezuelan officials were, interestingly, among the first to respond after the plane crashed.

Here's the lede from yesterday's English-language coverage in the Miami Herald:

Voting system creator dies in plane crash

A founding partner of the Smartmatic voting system, headquartered in Boca Raton, was killed this week in Venezuela when a private plane he was traveling in plummeted into a home near the Caracas airport.

Alfredy Jose Anzola Jaumotte, 34, one of the creators of the voting system program, died at an area hospital Tuesday.

Also killed in the accident were the pilot, Mario Jose Donadi, a convicted drug-trafficker in both the United States and Venezuela; Smartmatic employee Eduardo Ramirez and two residents of the home that was struck by the falling aircraft at about 10 a.m. Monday

Smartmatic is the once-owner and --- as a very recent series of investigative reports from The BRAD BLOG has revealed (see, most notably: here, here and here) --- the still-controlling parent company to Oakland/Denver-based Sequoia Voting Systems, which is currently amidst a hostile takeover imbroglio with competitor Hart InterCivic of Austin, TX.

Despite claiming to have sold Sequoia to a management-led buyout team last November, and thus divested of all control of the company under pressure from an investigation by the U.S. Treasury Departments Commission of Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), our recent exclusive investigative reports here have revealed that Smartmatic still holds direct and/or indirect control over several key aspects of Sequoia's operation, including ownership of the intellectual property (IP) rights for Sequoia's voting machines and tabulator software, and the right to negotiate where Sequoia may or may not compete in foreign markets...

Smartmatic also controls the $2 million loan note used by the former management team, calling themselves SVS Holdings, Inc., to purchase Sequoia from Smartmatic last year. That purchase effectively ended the CFIUS investigation which had been looking into the ties of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez' government in the ownership and control of Sequoia, which currently owns some 20% of the American "election industry" market.

Court documents unearthed during the course of our reporting, also reveal that Smartmatic will continue to retain licensing rights over Sequoia software whether or not Hart takes over the company, or even if SVS Holdings is able to stave off the takeover. The cash poor owners of SVS/Sequoia are currently scrambling (so far unsuccessfully) to find financing partners prior to May 15th, when the deal with Hart --- or SVS, if they are able to match Hart's proposal --- is scheduled to close.

El Universal's Spanish-language coverage of the small plane crash which killed Smartmatic's co-founder, indicated that the pilot of the small plane had radioed back to the airport that one engine had failed, just minutes after takeoff. Though he signaled his intention to circle back for an emergency landing, he did not issue an SOS call.

El Universal's report, as translated for The BRAD BLOG by a Spanish-speaking colleague, who also happens to be very familiar with the Smartmatic/Sequoia story, included a graf charging:

Other sources in the investigation revealed that the first clues suggest the plane lost its second motor while returning to the Maiquetía international airport.

A few more key points of note from El Universal's coverage, as translated by our colleague, beyond the matter of the reported second engine failure:

Also killed were Mario Donadi, the plane's pilot, passenger Eduardo Ramírez (59), of the Finance Department of Smartmatic and the shareholder of that company Alfredo Anzola, co-pilot of the plane, who died last night before being transfered to Caracas.
...
"It was seen that the [Venezuelan] Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín rushed to the [hospital] to check on the status of the co-pilot, Alfredo Anzola, who apparently is a relative of his.

Our colleague also notes that, "other news reports say that Jorge Rodriguez, the former head of the electoral commission and former vice president of Venezuela, also visited the hospital."

Such reports would seem to underscore the close relationship that Smartmatic continues to have with the government of Venezuela, even while Smartmatic retains such important control over the software, intellectual property, and financial business of Sequoia Voting Systems here in the United States.

Last week, The BRAD BLOG reported that Sequoia/SVS CEO and President Jack Blaine announced to employees during a company-wide conference call, convened to answer questions after our initial exclusive report of the attempted hostile takeover of Sequoia by Hart (still unreported by any other media source, beyond ComputerWorld where we ran a short, greatly condensed version of our report) that his company does not have claim to the intellectual property of Sequoia's e-voting systems.

"It doesn't matter really whether we have the IP or not," Blaine told his employees during the call. "I didn't particularly want the IP," he admitted, when discussing the terms of last year's still-confidential purchase agreement between SVS and Smartmatic for "ownership" of Sequoia.

Sequoia currently controls some 20% of the election industry in the United States, while the attempted takeover of the company by Hart InterCivic, which controls some 8% of that market, would create a new e-voting powerhouse in this country, second only to Omaha-based Election Systems and Software, Inc. (ES&S).

In related news, as Blaine is increasingly panicked over the impending hostile takeover, while he and other company executives in Denver frantically seek financing to save themselves, The BRAD BLOG has learned from several sources that Sequoia's recently hired general counsel, and head of human resources, Lina George, abruptly resigned this week without notice. We've not yet been able to learn the reasons given for her departure. Company VP, part-owner and spokesperson Michelle Shafer, the only one officially allowed to speak with the media, according to a recent email missive she sent to all employees following one of our recent reports, continues to refuse to answer our queries.

The BRAD BLOG will continue to follow developments, and expects to have still more exclusive news on this matter next week.

what an ass

2008-05-02T09:13:00.000-04:00

i'd have voted for Bush if this were really him...

2008-04-14T14:53:00.000-04:00

progress in iraq

2008-04-10T22:22:00.002-04:00

whenever you hear some neocon nutjob or right-wing shill say 'we're turning the corner in Iraq' try to imagine that this is the street that they mean we're turning onto...

Headline of the week: "A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida’s Navy"

2008-04-03T22:33:00.000-04:00

A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida’s Navy

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080401_a_submarine_to_fight_al_qaidas_navy/

Posted on Apr 1, 2008

By Robert Scheer

A trillion dollars here, a trillion dollars there, and soon you’re talking real money. But when it comes to reporting on what the Bush war legacy has cost American taxpayers, the media have been shockingly indifferent to the highest run-up in military spending since World War II. Even the devastating defense spending audit released Monday by the Government Accountability Office documenting the enormous waste in every single U.S. advanced weapons system failed to provoke the outrage it, and five equally scathing previous annual audits, deserved.

This is not about the waste of taxpayer dollars—already pushing a trillion—in funding the Iraq war, which, while reprehensible enough, pales in comparison to the big-ticket military systems purchased in the wake of 9/11. In the horror of that moment, the floodgates were lifted and the peace dividend promised with the end of the Cold War was washed away by a doubling of spending on ultra-complex military equipment originally designed to defeat a Soviet enemy that no longer exists, equipment that has no plausible connection with fighting stateless terrorists. Example: the $81-billion submarine pushed by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, presumably to fight al-Qaida’s navy.

That’s the huge scandal the media and politicians from both parties have studiously avoided. But as the GAO’s authoritative audit details, the costs are astronomical. The explosion of spending on expensive weaponry after 9/11 had nothing whatsoever to do with the attacks of that day. The high-tech planes and ships commissioned for trillions of dollars to defeat an enemy with no navy, air force or army, and using $3 knives as its weapons arsenal, were gifts to the military-industrial complex that will go on giving for decades to come.

The Iraq war may end someday, but rest assured that major weapons systems, once commissioned, have a life-support system unmatched in any other sector of public spending. Rarely does the plug get pulled on even the most irrelevant and expensive war toy. Not while both Democratic and Republican politicians feed at the same trough, and when so much is at stake in the way of jobs and profit.

Just how expensive and wasteful this is was marked in the GAO’s audit: “Since 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) has roughly doubled its planned investment in new systems from $790 billion to $1.6 trillion in 2007, but acquisition outcomes in terms of cost and schedule have not improved.” Pentagon cost overruns, always a huge problem, have mushroomed. As the GAO reported, “Total acquisition costs for major defense programs in the fiscal year 2007 portfolio have increased 26 percent from first estimates, compared with 6 percent in 2000.”

I know eyes glaze when government budgets are discussed, but keep in mind that defense spending accounts for more than half of all the federal government’s discretionary spending. In short, funding for all the other stuff we argue about—science research, education, Arabic translators, insuring uninsured children—is minor compared to the waste on these military boondoggles that go unexamined.

Yet nothing else the federal government does involves such waste because we are talking about weapons systems shrouded in secrecy and protected from unwelcome scrutiny by the Teflon coating of “national defense.” Credit the GAO for providing a rare glimpse into the most egregious waste of taxpayer dollars, concluding in its exhaustive, 205-page report:

“Of the 72 programs GAO assessed this year, none of them had proceeded through system development meeting the best-practice standards for mature technologies, stable design, or mature production processes by critical junctures of the program, each of which are essential for achieving planned cost, schedule, and performance outcomes.”

That’s a grade of zero for every major weapons system. Let’s take just one, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program estimated to be worth $300 billion in sales to its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, the nation’s biggest defense contractor and most generous donor to lobbyists and politicians’ campaigns. The program to build what Lockheed boasts is “the most complex fighter ever built” is also the most expensive, with estimated acquisition costs having increased a whopping $55 billion in just the last three years.

Lockheed need not worry about future profits, because the procurement schedule on this troubled plane has been stretched out to the year 2034. As the GAO says, “currently unproven processes and a lack of flight testing could mean future changes to design and manufacturing processes.” Hey, no problem, Lockheed will just add that to the taxpayer tab. Maybe by 2034, the plane will be ready to go take out Osama bin Laden. Or not.

AP photo / Carol Phelps

A U.S. Navy Virginia-class submarine.

Boo!

2008-03-30T23:14:00.000-04:00

this clip gives me hope for humanity...

Christians should pay attention...

2008-03-23T23:04:00.005-04:00

it's easter for some. i took it upon myself to make my parents dinner tonight...it was lovely. then we saw In Bruges with Colin Ferrell...I recommend it.

well, it is easter and i take this opportunity to ask a question of religious hypocrites...Hypothetically of course since i'm the only one who reads this...

why does our country have homeless people if we're a 'christian nation'? it's a fundamental question that why, if our nation is so great at following the lead of the J-man, why are we allowing so many to just suffer and rot?

poverty and homelessness are our number one sins in this country, and they should be the cornerstone of the Progressive movement in my opinion.

any way, here's this...

Christians seek to follow Jesus on homeless retreat

Seven men accept challenge to live among disadvantaged in effort to grow spiritually.

By Eileen E. Flynn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, March 23, 2008

It begins on Palm Sunday evening at Wooldridge Park under a sky so heavy they can smell the rain. It will end here, too, on a gusty, bright Wednesday afternoon.

Each year during Holy Week, which began a week ago on Palm Sunday and concludes today on Easter, Alan Graham, 52, a co-founder of the homeless ministry Mobile Loaves & Fishes, leads a group on a three-day retreat on the streets, an opportunity for Christians to connect with God. To strip away the comforts of home and the assurances of a full wallet and clean clothes. The participants leave behind their money and cell phones and set out with a knapsack and a sleeping bag.

In this year's seven-person group are a formerly homeless man, a philanthropist, a theologian, a father and his 20-year-old son, an avid outdoorsman and a business owner. They are struggling to live out Jesus' call to love others and to understand the sacrifice he made on the cross. They're not expecting a grand revelation, but, they say, they feel they must walk among the poor as Jesus did. Doing so, they say, gets them closer to grasping the power of the resurrection.

"It's kind of a strange thing to do for spring break," said Te'Paul Gautier, who uses the Cajun nickname when around his father, Paul.

His dad, who has been on four retreats, had called him at school and invited him to participate during his Holy Week spring break from the University of Dallas, a Catholic school. In his backpack, Gautier carries "Imitation of Christ," the 15th century book on spirituality by Thomas a Kempis, which he decided was "more food for the soul than the smutty John Updike novel I'm reading."

His father, 46, who runs an investment bank in Austin, says he's driven by a primal yearning to connect with God, though he doesn't have specific expectations. "I can't control how God reveals himself to me," he said.

The seven gather at the well-worn green space next to the jail and the county courthouse on Guadalupe Street in downtown Austin. It's a popular gathering spot for homeless people and, this week, for a group of Christians making a street retreat, a spiritual trek along society's fringe.

Remembering meaning of Lent

As they discuss what might lie ahead for them, the Mobile Loaves & Fishes truck is wrapping up its nightly food delivery. Some of the people who have gathered at the park are playing a radio and drinking beer. There's a festive spirit here.

A sun-burned woman with dirty feet approaches Graham, who is known and loved by people on the streets, to talk about her boyfriend getting arrested.

Te'Paul Gautier hangs back and talks with a quiet intensity about the symbolism of the penitential Lenten season, when Christians are called to reflect on their sins. "We're made aware again just how much of a chasm there is between who we are and who we could be," he says, adding that Holy Week is the last buildup, the last leg of the journey to the cross.

Before he can continue, a white sport-utility vehicle from a group called Food Not Bombs drives over the sidewalk and down the grass banking to the park's gazebo. The retreaters line up with the homeless people for rice, lentils, vegetables and fresh fruit that will be served from the gazebo.

The homeless people recognize Graham and some of the other retreaters — who volunteer with Mobile Loaves & Fishes —and welcome the group like old friends.

Frank Morris, 48, a business owner who attends St. Austin Catholic Church, sits on the steps of the gazebo with his plate.

For him, this is a perfect way to begin Holy Week, the days leading up to Easter when Christians reflect on Jesus' last days. Morris, a father of five, wants to "see Jesus in the faces of people who live here permanently."

Since doing the retreat two years ago and experiencing a detachment albeit a temporary one — from materialism, he said, he sometimes "feels like standing on a mountaintop and shouting 'Don't you see where the peace is?' "

After they eat, they take a Capital Metro bus east of the city to a homeless camp where they spend the night.

Understanding God's work

On Monday, Graham lies on his back under a gray sky at Wooldridge Park, rosary beads wrapped around his fingers. The retreaters, including John Nicklos, a rugged outdoorsman who is a Protestant and unfamiliar with this Catholic tradition, begin to pray the rosary, a series of traditional prayers and meditations on the mysteries of the faith. As they recite the Hail Marys, late afternoon traffic grinds away on Guadalupe Street. A man in a too-heavy coat sleeps like a shipwreck on a nearby bench. A meter reader writes tickets. More homeless people trek in like pilgrims with their gear and sink down under a tree to rest.

"Oh, my Jesus," the men continue praying, "forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls into heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy."

When they finish and get up to stretch, a man in biker shorts seems to recognize Graham. Patting him on the shoulder, he warns, "You're out here with the cannibals."

The retreaters shrug off the comment.

Graham, who says he rarely encounters problems on the streets, believes all people have an ugly sinfulness inside, whether they're crack heads or the founders of Mobile Loaves & Fishes. That, he says, is what makes the Christian story so powerful — that God would, in spite of that, love him and the crack head equally.

Bill Penn, 68, a retired theology professor with curly white hair and a wide smile, has been thinking about that lately, about the randomness of his situation versus the situation of the person he will sleep next to tonight.

"You meet people in the world who are really powerless," he says, pausing. "The shoe could be on the other foot."

He says Mother Teresa, the late nun and Nobel Peace Prize winner, talked about Christ "in his distressing disguise. ... What more important way to think about Holy Week and Good Friday than to share in that, in the intimate way (Jesus) shared in the human condition?"

Seeking shelter in a storm

On Tuesday, the skies unleash a whopping rain.

The men huddle under the awning of the Faulk Central Library on Guadalupe Street. When the skies clear, they catch a bus downtown with passes Graham has provided and get out at the New York Avenue Christian Center at the buzzing corner of 12th and Chicon streets in East Austin. This is a ministry and shelter for street people.

The retreaters are in good spirits. Some of them made ponchos out of garbage bags. Morris carries an umbrella. Penn wears a heavy-duty red jacket. They talk outside with people from the street. Eventually, the wet chill pushes them inside, where they eat meatloaf. The shelter is packed tonight. The cook runs out of food.

After dinner, the retreaters take seats in the prayer hall. The room is open with chairs scattered about. Duane Severance, who runs the Christian center, stands on a stage, strumming his guitar and praying in a soothing voice. He wears a shirt with a red, white and blue Jesus fish and the message "Jesus saves."

A man in a wheelchair with an air of urine slaps himself and calls out responses to Severance's prayer.

"God doesn't hate you," Severance tells the crowd. "He's not going to kick you to the curb if you don't get it yet. He loves you with an everlasting love."

The retreaters nod enthusiastically.

Learning and looking ahead

On Wednesday, the group reconvenes at the park to go home.

John Nicklos, a first-timer, relates a story about trying to score some food from a restaurant where he has connections. Without money, he discovered he was not welcome. The others nod knowingly.

The group encounters Severance, who is returning from visiting an inmate at the jail, and Patrick Hagger, the cook from the shelter.

Hagger moved to Austin last year and serves as a spiritual leader in a homeless camp where he lives. He says Graham inspired him to pursue his own ministry and to show people God loves them "no matter where they came from."

Graham announces he has accepted Severance's offer to minister to them in the park.

"I'm tired; I'm dirty," Penn jokingly whines to Graham. "I've done my penance, brother."

They've been out here for almost 72 hours. What's a little more time? This, Penn says, is part of the ongoing pilgrimage toward Easter.

For him and the others, there has been no defining moment in the past three days that they think changed their lives forever. It's all part of the road toward understanding Jesus.

"Faith," he says, "isn't just putting a coin in a machine and you're done."

eflynn@statesman.com; 445-3812

Betty White is the 'man'

2008-03-23T12:39:00.000-04:00

nice...keep an eye on these guys...or we win nothing in '08

2008-02-11T23:22:00.000-05:00

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5681

BLOGGED BY Brad Friedman ON 2/11/2008 12:05PM

WA GOP Chair, Esser the Suppressor: 'To win the election, we have to keep as many of these loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats away from the polls as possible'

The Man Who Stopped Counting GOP Caucus Votes...in His Earlier Days...

Huckabee Today: 'This is Not What We do in American Elections...That's How They Used to Conduct it in the old Soviet Union'

Wow. An amazing find by HorsesAss. Here's Washington state GOP Party chairman Luke Esser --- he who unilaterally stopped counted votes from Saturday's Republican Caucus at 87%, once McCain finally took the lead from Huckabee by just 250 votes --- from his earlier days as an aspiring vote-suppressor...

Like any sport worth its salt, in politics you have adversaries, opponents, enemies. Our enemies are loudmouth leftists and shiftless deadbeats. To win the election, we have to keep as many of these people away from the polls as possible.

Now your average leftist loudmouth is a committed individual and can almost never be persuaded to ignore his constitutional rights. The deadbeats, however, are a different matter entirely. Years of interminable welfare checks and free government services have made these modern-day sloths even more lazy. They will vote on election day, if it isn’t much of a bother. But even the slightest inconvenience can keep them from the polling place.

Many of the most successful anti-deadbeat voter techniques (poll taxes, sound beatings, etc.) that conservatives have used in the past have been outlawed by busybody judges.

The only means of persuasion left available to us are Acts of God, who we know is exclusively on our side. I’m talking about seriously inclement weather. I want Biblical floods and pestilence. I will settle for rain, sweet rain. The deadbeats won’t even go out in the rain for their welfare checks (they send one of their social workers to pick it up). There’s no way they’ll vote if it’s raining.

That 'splains a bit, don't it?

Thus was the Republican party's now de rigeur "win"-at-all-costs atmosphere created by Esser over the weekend, leading Huckabee to say this morning on CNN: "That is not what we do in American elections... Maybe that's how they used to conduct it in the old Soviet Union, but you don't just throw people's votes out and say, 'well, we're not going to bother counting them because we kind of think we know where this was going.'"

Think again, Huck.

Be sure to factor all of the above in the next time you the hear the wingnuts tell you about "Democratic voter fraud" in the razor-thin Washington state Gubernatorial election eventually won by the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire. They will tell you there was massive fraud in the race, though if you bother to look up what really happened, you'll learn the GOP never alleged fraud in their court case, which was thrown out and not even appealed, after no evidence of fraud was ever presented by them.

(Hat-tip TPM)

UPDATE 2/11/08 7:14pm PT: Seattle's NBC affiliate reports "inconsistencies" in votes as reported by Snohomish County. ALSO: Esser the Suppressor's ties to McCain's state campaign chairman.

you're momma's so fat, her belt size is "equator"...

2008-02-05T23:54:00.000-05:00

these guys rule. keep up with them.

two best things of the week...three in fact

2008-01-31T01:27:00.000-05:00

First thing...
Sophie and I in the same spot, same age...

Second...

The Rudy has finally succumbed to his own pathetic-ness...

and Last but surely NOT least...

A new progressive voice dawns...And Vladimir Putin hates them already, so you know it must be good...

http://moblogic.tv/

goodness gracious

2007-12-12T15:15:00.000-05:00

uncle mitt is a true believer...

shouldn't that count for something?

i mean, i don't want my brothers out there who are way too into comic book/d&d role-playing that close to the big red button either...

i don't know what got into me, really...

2007-12-04T18:24:00.000-05:00

i really really don't do this...

But today i read an article that basically teased one of the seventeen hosts of THE VIEW for being grossly ignorant.

The perpetrator was one Sherri Shepherd

You can find her wonderfully thrilling bio here.

You may remember her from her earlier flap about stating something vaguely retarded about Earth may be flat...She doesn't really know. Here's her latest quip about the concept of B.C. in relation to judgment and measure of time.

I can't help but be frightened by this type of gross ignorance. People always tell me that I should 'relax' about it, but i find this type of stupidity as potentially dangerous as drunk driving...This woman speaks (stupidly) to an audience of millions each morning on THE VIEW and they may 'Amen sister' her all morning for reaffirming their own stupidity.

I find that absofuckinglutely horrifying.

I found myself choked on my own horrification that I was compelled to write ABC.

Ha!

Oh well, here's the letter:

I find it horrifying that you can allow someone as ignorant and uninformed as Sherri Shepherd to draw a paycheck and posture her inarticulate views on your show, The View.

I recently watched a clip of your show where she postured the theory that "I don't think anything predated Christians." in a discussion about the concept of B.C. time and cultures that lived in that era.

This woman, who previously brought back the Dark Ages theory of a 'flat' Earth and non-belief in the fact of evolution. How in the world do you deem this person as some sort of spokesperson for your network? Indeed she takes up that mantle since she is one the five voices that hosts your show The View. It's this type of blatant ignorance and intellectual laziness that breeds contempt in your viewers for the type of show you produce.

Please, at the very least, send this ignorant beast to night school or get her an on-set tutor or simply buy a subscription to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Jason Piccolo

The moral (to me anywho) is that there are tons and tons of Right-wing morons who are just as uneducated who call in, write, email, and blog-rant about things they deem 'morally wrong' in the world of entertainment.

Well, why aren't we, the informed and enlightened, and (dare I say) evolved members of the LEFT making strides to complain about something just as morally reprehensible...

Ignorance

Lack of Truth

Racism

Sexism

Please do yourself a favor and try to write someone a letter in the spirit of this thesis. We should not be deemed 'crazy' for wanting more from people...like a basic grasp of history lest we be doomed to repeat it...

On the lighter side, she is now only the host of THE VIEW...At best she'll host some obscure game show in a few years and then end up blowing Ron Jeremy on the Surreal Life Uncensored Edition.

UPDATE - I have added this to Sherri's website too...

FDR is A-OK!

2007-11-15T18:39:00.000-05:00

Bridgette and I headed to Warm Springs, GA for a 'presidential recharge' to see what the New Deal was all about...

You know, it wasn't all commie horsepoop?

take a gander...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clermonthound/sets/72157603183560626/

they were here first...right?

2007-09-15T08:49:00.000-04:00

AlterNet
One Student Holds Out at California's Only Tribal College
By Shadi Rahimi, Indian Country
Posted on September 14, 2007, Printed on September 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/62516/

Special Tthanks to Utne's Short Takes for resurfacing this article.

Chris Yazzie lives alone on a quiet stretch of land where he tends to his modest corn crop, planted with blue corn seeds from his Arizona reservation.

He left his Navajo family at 19 to attend the only tribal college in California, D-Q University, formed in 1971 after young Natives occupied a parcel of land in Davis.

Yazzie, now 25, has chosen to join that tradition of resistance. As the only student left at the troubled college, which closed abruptly in January 2005 after its accreditation was revoked, he is now the unofficial caretaker of its 643 acres, living in a single dorm room and relying on food donations and visits from the local Native community.

He is the last holdout of a group of students who had resisted the administration's order to go home until the college rectified its problems. All the students eventually left, many enrolling elsewhere.

Now, as a new school year approaches for students across the country, Yazzie is still awaiting an eventual return by Native students and faculty.

''This is very important for all Native people; a lot of people sacrificed everything for this school,'' Yazzie said. ''Just because a few people messed it up, it shouldn't reflect on the whole community.''

But it has. With mention of D-Q University often comes discussion of past mismanagement, rumors and quizzical remarks including, ''Is it still there?''

When a board member recently approached a tribe for donations, she was told, ''D-Q? I don't think so.''

But a new board formed in the summer of 2005, and several former students are now working to address many of the reasons the university lost its accreditation from The Western Association of Schools and Colleges and its BIA funding -- including a Native population that was below the 51 percent required. The rest of the student body was half Latino and some white. The premise of the school was to unite Indians from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, hence the name: Deganawidah-Quetzalcoatl University.

Among the concerns outlined by WASC in its report was the school's lack of leadership. Students also accused the administration of embezzling financial aid funds. The administration denied the claims.

The school's seven-member board is now inviting people to submit applications to join the board. It needs nine more members according to college bylaws, although it has never met that requirement.

''We are pretty much a new board and we're trying to do everything by the book because that's why we lost accreditation,'' said new board member Calvin Hedrick, 40, a Mountain Maidu who is the youth program director of Inter-Tribal Council of California.

Among the changes the board has introduced includes a policy against ''handshake agreements,'' which has upset some who say it is behaving ''as a Western entity and not Indian,'' Hedrick said.

But it needs to be done, he said, when as recently as this summer people did not pay them after they hosted their sobriety pow wow on school grounds, he said.

In a recent meeting, board members discussed funding ideas, outstanding legal fees from a court case that determined the legitimacy of several boards that had sprung up (estimated at $70,000), and holding D-QU-sponsored workshops outside the school -- ''To show we're still here,'' said board member Bernadine Whipple.

Discussion turned briefly to past indiscretions the board has inherited.

''I'd like to go after the people who ripped off D-Q, the land, the money, whatever,'' said board member Margaret Hoaglin, an alumna of the first graduating class of D-QU. ''We have so much corruption that went on,'' added site manager Susan Reece.

Although the school remains closed, Yazzie and a few other students have continued to invite volunteer instructors to hold trade courses including agriculture and silk-screen printing. Educational programs are required to keep the school's federal trust land.

''We're just showing people how to learn a skill; a trade they can take home,'' said former student Greg Irons, 27. Their half-acre garden contains corn, beans, squash, gourds and pumpkins.

Hedrick and former students said they also hope to launch vocational and alternative energy programs that would draw more people to the college, and help make ''D-Q an entirely green campus,'' Hedrick said.

Yazzie came to D-QU in an attempt ''to get off my rez.''

''Everyone was drinking, partying, and I didn't want that,'' he said. ''I wanted to get out of there.''

He has been living alone at D-Q since December of last year, keeping occupied by maintaining the site, recording rock music, reading and hosting drum circles, sweats and gardening classes.

He left his job as an ironworker, working on Bay Area bridges and buildings in Oakland.

He and other former students have created MySpace pages about the college and are focusing their efforts on recruiting board members, meeting the requirements for accreditation and rebuilding community support.

They and the board hope a fund-raising dinner they have scheduled for Sept. 22 at the college will help reunite the community.

''All that happened in the past caused a split between people; we didn't know who to trust, and it caused fractions in the community,'' Yazzie said. ''People are afraid to work with each other and we have to rebuild that relationship.''

Interest around the college has peaked recently, since word got out that it is scheduled as a stop on the route of the 30th anniversary of the Longest Walk, Irons said. The walk will depart from Alcatraz Island in February of 2008 and end in Washington, D.C.

In the meantime, some are hoping that another accredited university, like the University of California at Berkeley or Los Angeles, will temporarily take D-Q on under its accreditation umbrella.

''It's a struggle,'' Yazzie said. ''But hopefully those people who lost faith will see that we are persevering -- that young people are stepping up.''

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/62516/

sophie tells it like it is...

2007-09-12T18:04:00.000-04:00

here's a glimpse of my current favorite video ever...

worst thing i've heard all day

2007-09-07T18:28:00.000-04:00

Plain(s) politics

We opened yesterday's mail to see that Academy Award-winning actor and director Robert Duvall and his fourth wife, Luciana, will host a high-end cocktail party at their country home in The Plains, Va., later this month to benefit Republican presidential candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The invitation to the Sept. 20 gala requests a campaign contribution of $2,300 per guest, which gets you a photo with the candidate (and maybe even the celebrated actor). Others can fork over $1,000 ($500 if you're younger than 35) to mingle about the Middleburg-area estate and listen to Mr. Giuliani's remarks.

Mr. Duvall, who is a descendant of both Robert E. Lee and George Washington, announced his support for Mr. Giuliani earlier this week.

alex orr told me this was the best...

2007-08-23T15:42:00.001-04:00

go buy BLOOD CAR the DVD, here...on November 6th

But for now, watch this...

Find me this film...

2007-08-16T11:21:00.001-04:00

The Sanest Republican...in 1994

2007-08-13T16:05:00.001-04:00

The Most Trusted Name in News...

Listen here as tricky Dick explains our Iraq policy as it should have happened...in 1994

the maestro

2007-08-13T11:57:00.000-04:00

G.O.B. for President '08

2007-08-03T12:48:00.001-04:00

do you have the crazy.com

2007-07-05T10:25:00.001-04:00

9.7.07

go

more FALWELL hits keep coming...

2007-05-16T20:18:00.000-04:00

READ horrible things that Falwell has said over time...

SEE Christopher Hitchens properly eulogize Jerry Falwell

to quote the man himself..."Thank God"

2007-05-15T19:01:00.000-04:00

To me...Our nation lost probably Public Enemy # 1

Or #2, depending on what Pat Robertson has said that day...

Today we bid farewell to the man who said;

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.' "

You can download the man himself say this and more, here...That is if you can sit through 1:52 of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

https://home.comcast.net/~joe.grabko/falwell.mp3

Now if you're reading this (which you aren't) keep in mind that i am sincere when i say that the world is a better place without Jerry Falwell. It really is.

He was a bigot and a misogynist that wrapped himself in the shroud of Turin to make his horribleness untouchable...Like a blind kid giving you the finger...What are you gonna do? He's blind...You're the asshole, right?

Falwell said ignorant things to rattle the cages of the ignorant who took his 'reverence' for Jesus at face value. He was a bully and a blowhard who abused people's sincere relationship with their god for money and political influence, that's all.

I'm also sincere about this notion;

Think of what an arm for social change a guy like Falwell could have been...

Seriously...

I mean try and swallow that last few decades worth of bad taste in your mouth and think about it....What would the 80's have looked like had he been a thinking, progressive, religious leader a la Dr. Martin Luther King, who used Jesus' teachings, not misquotations and redirections?

What if Jerry Falwell was MLK?

Ugh...Putting that bloated racist in the same sentence as MLK makes me feel dirty.

Go here and cleanse my conscience; CLICK ME

Just something to think about...The power of religious manipulation.

I will not be an apologist for being negative about Jerry Falwell. The only 'positive' thing I'll say is this; My heart goes out to the family that loved him.

and Pat Robertson is next.

courtesy of;

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 - 12:00 AM

DAVE MARTIN / AP

The Rev. Jerry Falwell speaks at a rally on the steps of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery. Ala. in August 2003. Falwell was found unconscious in his office today and taken to the hospital.

Televangelist Jerry Fallwell dies at 73

By Sue Lindsey
The Associated Press

LYNCHBURG, Va. — The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who founded the Moral Majority and built the religious right into a political force, died today shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.

Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell "has a history of heart challenges."

"I had breakfast with him, and he was fine at breakfast," Godwin said. "He went to his office, I went to mine, and they found him unresponsive."

Falwell had survived two serious health scares in early 2005. He was hospitalized for two weeks with what was described as a viral infection, then was hospitalized again a few weeks later after going into respiratory arrest. Later that year, doctors found a 70 percent blockage in an artery, which they opened with stents.

Falwell credited his Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, electing Ronald Reagan and giving Republicans Senate control in 1980.

"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," Falwell said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

The fundamentalist church that Falwell started in an abandoned bottling plant in 1956 grew into a religious empire that includes the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, the "Old Time Gospel Hour" carried on television stations around the country and 7,700-student Liberty University. He built Christian elementary schools, homes for unwed mothers and a home for alcoholics.

He also founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, which began as Lynchburg Baptist College in 1971.

Liberty University's commencement is scheduled for Saturday, with former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich as the featured speaker.

In 2006, Falwell marked the 50th anniversary of his church and spoke out on stem cell research, saying he sympathized with people with medical problems, but that any medical research must pass a three-part test: "Is it ethically correct? Is it biblically correct? Is it morally correct?"

Falwell had once opposed mixing preaching with politics, but he changed his view and in 1979, founded the Moral Majority. The political lobbying organization grew to 6.5 million members and raised $69 million as it supported conservative politicians and campaigned against abortion, homosexuality, pornography and bans on school prayer.

Falwell became the face of the religious right, appearing on national magazine covers and on television talk shows. In 1983, U.S. News & World Report named him one of 25 most influential people in America.

In 1984, he sued Hustler magazine for $45 million, charging that he was libeled by an ad parody depicting him as an incestuous drunkard. A federal jury found the fake ad did not libel him, but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. That verdict was overturned, however, in a landmark 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held that even pornographic spoofs about a public figure enjoy First Amendment protection.

The case was depicted in the 1996 movie "The People v. Larry Flynt."

With Falwell's high profile came frequent criticism, even from fellow ministers. The Rev. Billy Graham once rebuked him for political sermonizing on "non-moral issues."

Falwell quit the Moral Majority in 1987, saying he was tired of being "a lightning rod" and wanted to devote his time to his ministry and Liberty University. But he remained outspoken and continued to draw criticism for his remarks.

Days after Sept. 11, 2001, Falwell essentially blamed feminists, gays, lesbians and liberal groups for bringing on the terrorist attacks. He later apologized.

In 1999, he told a evangelical conference that the Antichrist was a male Jew who was probably already alive. Falwell later apologized for the remark but not for holding the belief. A month later, his National Liberty Journal warned parents that Tinky Winky, a purple, purse-toting character on television's "Teletubbies" show, was a gay role model and morally damaging to children.

Falwell was re-energized after moral values issues proved important in the 2004 presidential election. He formed the Faith and Values Coalition as the "21st Century resurrection of the Moral Majority," to seek anti-abortion judges, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and more conservative elected officials.

The big, blue-eyed preacher with a booming voice started his independent Baptist church with 35 members. From his living room, he began broadcasting his message of salvation and raising the donations that helped his ministry grow.

"He was one of the first to come up with ways to use television to expand his ministry," said Robert Alley, a retired University of Richmond religion professor who studied and criticized Falwell's career.

World Shocked That Wolfowitz Has Girlfriend

2007-04-20T23:54:00.000-04:00

a headline so grand, that I wished I wrote it myself...

if you don't know who Paul Wolfowitz is, you need to read more.

If you haven't been following his underhandedness at the World Bank, you need to read more...Start now!

World Shocked That Wolfowitz Has Girlfriend

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/world_shocked_that_wolfowitz_has_girlfriend/

Posted on Apr 20, 2007

By Andy Borowitz

Amid the controversy swirling about World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, millions of people today reacted with shock to what is universally considered the most improbable aspect of the story: that Paul Wolfowitz could have a girlfriend.

All over the world, from Wall Street to Main Street, reactions to the news about Mr. Wolfowitz ranged from “Who would date Wolfowitz?” to “Wolfowitz has a girlfriend? You have got to be kidding me.”

At the World Bank, work ground to a halt as colleagues of the organization’s controversial president staggered about in disbelief, searching for theories to explain such an impenetrable mystery.

"I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would go out with the Wolf-man,” said one World Bank employee on condition of anonymity. “He may be the second-least sexy man to come out of the Bush administration—right after Karl Rove.”

Another World Bank employee, who admitted that he was “dumbfounded” by the news about Mr. Wolfowitz, offered one possible explanation: “Maybe she figured that because he’s president of the World Bank, he’ll always pick up the check.”

The University of Minnesota’s Davis Logsdon, who studies the dating habits of World Bank presidents, says that the world “shouldn’t be surprised” by Mr. Wolfowitz’s apparent “magic touch” with the ladies.

"Convincing someone to go out with him is no big deal for a man like Paul Wolfowitz,” Mr. Logsdon said. “Remember, this is the same guy who convinced President Bush to invade Iraq.”

Elsewhere, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he has “nothing to hide,” according to an exclusive interview published today in Yeah, Right magazine.

Award-winning humorist, television personality and film actor Andy Borowitz is author of “The Republican Playbook.”

Damian is all conference

2007-04-17T11:44:00.001-04:00

DD All Conference.bmp, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

dug this out of the photoshop archive...from what i remember, we took this at the Poultry Science building (or something similarly titled) at GSU.

dancing in the park

2007-04-16T02:24:00.001-04:00

sophie's got the step, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

ed and sophie put down a Breakin'-type dance contest in the ATL this weekend.

they tore it up, put it back together and then destroyed it...

our forthcoming war with Iran...

2007-04-03T18:27:00.000-04:00

our next war will be a doozy...especially since they're leaving this
nugget out when they're banging their war drums...

From the Independent.co.uk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2414760.ece

---------------------------------

The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis

By Patrick Cockburn

Published: 03 April 2007

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.

In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.

Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.

The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.

"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.

Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second, high-ranking Iranian official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary Guard]," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office) of President Talabani in Baghdad. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil, where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party.

The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. There is no doubt that Iran believes that Mr Jafari and Mr Frouzanda were targeted by the Americans. Mr Jafari confirmed to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he was in Arbil at the time of the raid.

In a little-noticed remark, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, told IRNA: "The objective of the Americans was to arrest Iranian security officials who had gone to Iraq to develop co-operation in the area of bilateral security."

US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.

The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President George Bush making an address to the nation on 10 January in which he claimed: "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops." He identified Iran and Syria as America's main enemies in Iraq though the four-year-old guerrilla war against US-led forces is being conducted by the strongly anti-Iranian Sunni-Arab community. Mr Jafari himself later complained about US allegations. "So far has there been a single Iranian among suicide bombers in the war-battered country?" he asked. "Almost all who involved in the suicide attacks are from Arab countries."

It seemed strange at the time that the US would so openly flout the authority of the Iraqi President and the head of the KRG simply to raid an Iranian liaison office that was being upgraded to a consulate, though this had not yet happened on 11 January. US officials, who must have been privy to the White House's new anti-Iranian stance, may have thought that bruised Kurdish pride was a small price to pay if the US could grab such senior Iranian officials.

For more than a year the US and its allies have been trying to put pressure on Iran. Security sources in Iraqi Kurdistan have long said that the US is backing Iranian Kurdish guerrillas in Iran. The US is also reportedly backing Sunni Arab dissidents in Khuzestan in southern Iran who are opposed to the government in Tehran. On 4 February soldiers from the Iraqi army 36th Commando battalion in Baghdad, considered to be under American control, seized Jalal Sharafi, an Iranian diplomat.

The raid in Arbil was a far more serious and aggressive act. It was not carried out by proxies but by US forces directly. The abortive Arbil raid provoked a dangerous escalation in the confrontation between the US and Iran which ultimately led to the capture of the 15 British sailors and Marines - apparently considered a more vulnerable coalition target than their American comrades.

The targeted generals

* MOHAMMED JAFARI

Powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, responsible for internal security. He has accused the United States of seeking to "hold Iran responsible for insecurity in Iraq... and [US] failure in the country."

* GENERAL MINOJAHAR FROUZANDA

Chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the military unit which maintains its own intelligence service separate from the state, as well as a parallel army, navy and air force

Homelessness...the lost America

2007-04-02T22:13:00.000-04:00

i have nothing really to add except that this is an issue that all of America, LEFT and RIGHT, has forgotten or deleted off of their radar...

but we still have plenty of high style lofts sitting empty in the ATL...(and all over the US).

how can this country be allowed by the CHRISTIAN RIGHT to have this much abject poverty?

Read it...

America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters

By Chip Ward, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 2, 2007, Printed on April 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50023/

Ophelia sits by the fireplace and mumbles softly, smiling and gesturing at no one in particular. She gazes out the large window through the two pairs of glasses she wears, one windshield-sized pair over a smaller set perched precariously on her small nose. Perhaps four lenses help her see the invisible other she is addressing. When her "nobody there" conversation disturbs the reader seated beside her, Ophelia turns, chuckles at the woman's discomfort, and explains, "Don't mind me, I'm dead. It's okay. I've been dead for some time now." She pauses, then adds reassuringly, "It's not so bad. You get used to it." Not at all reassured, the woman gathers her belongings and moves quickly away. Ophelia shrugs. Verbal communication is tricky. She prefers telepathy, but that's hard to do since the rest of us, she informs me, "don't know the rules."

Margi is not so mellow. The "fucking Jews" have been at it again she tells a staff member who asks her for the umpteenth time to settle down and stop talking that way. "Communist!" she hisses and storms off, muttering that she will "sue the boss." Margi is at least 70 and her behavior shows obvious signs of dementia. The staff's efforts to find out her background are met with angry diatribes and insults. She clutches a book on German grammar and another on submarines that she reads upside down to "make things right."

Mick is having a bad day, too. He hasn't misbehaved but sits and stares, glassy-eyed. This is usually the prelude to a seizure. His seizures are easier to deal with than Bob's, for instance, because he usually has them while seated and so rarely hits his head and bleeds, nor does he ever soil his pants. Bob tends to pace restlessly all day and is often on the move when, without warning, his seizures strike. The last time he went down, he cut his head. The staff has learned to turn him over quickly after he hits the floor , so that his urine does not stain the carpet.

John is trying hard not to be noticed. He has been in trouble lately for the scabs and raw, wet spots that are spreading across his hands and face. Staff members have wondered aloud if he is contagious and asked him to get himself checked-out, but he refuses treatment. He knows he is still being tracked, thanks to the implants the nurse slipped under his skin the last time he surrendered to the clinic and its prescriptions. There are frequencies we don't hear -- but he does. Thin whistles and a subtle beeping indicate he is being followed, his eye movements tracked and recorded. He claims he falls asleep in his chair by the stairway because "the little ones" poke him in the legs with sharp objects that inject sleep-inducing potions.

Franklin sits quietly by the fireplace and reads a magazine about celebrities. He is fastidiously dressed and might be mistaken for a businessman or a professional. His demeanor is confident and normal. If you watch him closely, though, you will see him slowly slip his hand into the pocket of his sports jacket and furtively pull out a long, shiny carpenter's nail. With it, he carefully pokes out the eyes of the celebs in any photo. Then the nail is returned to his pocket, a faint smirk crossing his face as he turns the page to pursue his next photo victim.

Scenes from a psych ward? Not at all. Welcome to the Salt Lake City Public Library. Like every urban library in the nation, the City Library, as it is called, is a de facto daytime shelter for the city's "homeless."

Where the Outcasts Are Inside

In bad weather -- hot, cold, or wet -- most of the homeless have nowhere to go but public places. The local shelters push them out onto the streets at six in the morning and, even when the weather is good, they are already lining up by nine, when the library opens, because they want to sit down and recover from the chilly dawn or use the restrooms. Fast-food restaurants, hotel lobbies, office foyers, shopping malls, and other privately owned businesses and properties do not tolerate their presence for long. Public libraries, on the other hand, are open and accessible, tolerant, even inviting and entertaining places for them to seek refuge from a world that will not abide their often disheveled and odorous presentation, their odd and sometimes obnoxious behaviors, and the awkward challenges they present to those who encounter them.

Although the public may not have caught on, ask any urban library administrator in the nation where the chronically homeless go during the day and he or she will tell you about the struggles of America's public librarians to cope with their unwanted and unappreciated role as the daytime guardians of the down and out. In our public libraries, the outcasts are inside.

"Homeless" is a misleading term. We have homeless people in America today, in part, because we have no living wage, no universal healthcare, disintegrating communities, and a large population of working poor who can end up on the street if they lose one of their part-time jobs, experience an illness or an accident, or have a domestic crisis. For them, homelessness is generally temporary, probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There is little to distinguish such people from the rest of us and we usually do not notice their presence among us. Programs to help people in such circumstances may be inadequate -- and it is a shame they are needed at all -- but they usually work. For the people we point to on the street or in public places and normally identify as homeless, however, homelessness is a way of life and our best attempts to rescue them continually fail.

We commonly refer to them as "street people." We see them sleeping in parks, huddled over grates on sidewalks, resting or sleeping on subway cars, passed out in doorways, or panhandling with crude cardboard signs. Social workers refer to them as the "chronically homeless." Although they make up only about 10% of the total number of people who experience homelessness in a given year, they soak up more than half the dollars we spend on programs to address homelessness. There are at least 200,000 people across the nation living more or less permanently on the street, enough to fill a thousand public libraries every day.

Drunk as a Skunk

The term "chronically homeless" is also inadequate when it comes to describing these individuals -- it only tells you that their homeless state is frequent. It neither indicates why they are homeless and stay that way, nor says anything about their most salient characteristic: Most of them are mentally ill. The published data on how many homeless are considered mentally ill by those who study them varies widely from 10% to 70%, depending on whether all the homeless, or just the chronically homeless, are included (and depending on how you define illness or disability). How, for example, do you categorize alcoholics and drug addicts?

When Crash is sober, for instance, he reasons like you or me, converses normally, and has a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, he is rarely sober. In one of his better moments, he petitioned me to let him stay in the library even though he was caught drinking -- an automatic six-month suspension. "You know I'm a good guy and I don't bring that stuff into the library," he pleads. "C'mon, give me another chance."

Crash is sitting in his wheelchair in the foyer outside my office where I serve as the library's assistant director. It's hard for me to address Crash without staring at the massive scar on his face -- a deep crease that neatly divides it down the middle from scalp to chin. Unfortunately, his nose is also divided and the sides do not match up, giving him an asymmetrical appearance like a Picasso painting on wheels.

"Alcoholics pass out in the library's chairs," I explain, "and if we can't wake you up we have to call the paramedics. If you piss your pants or puke, the custodians have to clean that up and they hate that. You guys fall down and knock things over. You're unpredictable when you drink. You disrupt others. Public intoxication is against the law..."

"Okay, okay," he interrupts me, "I get it. Hey, just thought I'd try and get back in is all -- no hard feelings, man."

No hard feelings I assure him. He smiles and we shake hands. I wish I could cut him some slack -- after dozens of confrontations with angry and threatening drunks, I appreciate a cheerful drinker like Crash -- but I can't afford to establish a precedent I can't keep. The rule is clear: no drinking in the library and no exceptions. As he waits for the elevator doors to open and take him down, I venture a question I've been holding onto for awhile. "I know it's none of my business, but how did you get that scar?"

"Car accident," he replies, "same one as put me in this wheelchair. That's why they call me Crash."

"Were you drinking?" I ask.

He shakes his head and sighs. "Drunk as a skunk ... drunk as a skunk." As the elevator descends I think about just how hard it must be to be both wheelchair-bound and homeless. I wonder about the commonly held notion that alcoholics must "hit bottom" before they can rebound. Is there such a thing as bottom for guys like Crash? Is he any more capable of controlling his urge to drink than Ophelia can control the voices in her head?

Our condemnation of transient-style alcoholism is both hypocritical and snobbish. If you are unhappy and caught without a prescription in America, you self-medicate. Depressed lawyers do it with fine scotch. An unemployed trucker might turn to beer or meth. Anxiety-ridden teachers or waitresses might smoke pot or order just one more margarita. Indigent people who want relief from their demons drink whatever is available and affordable or swallow whatever pills come their way. Dr. Tichenor's mouthwash is a popular choice for street alcoholics and "Doc Tich," as the brand is commonly known, doesn't offer a pinot noir.

What Library School Didn't Cover

The strong odor of mouthwash on the breath of transient alcoholics who shelter with us is often masked by the overwhelming odor of old sweat, urine-stained pants, and the bad-dairy smell that unwashed bodies and clothes give off. It can take your breath away long before you can smell theirs.

The library wrestles with where to draw the line on odor. The law is unclear. An aggressive patron in New Jersey successfully sued a public library for banning him because of his body odor. That decision has had a chilling effect on public libraries ever since. When library users complain about the odor of transients, librarians usually respond that there isn't much they can do about it. Lately, libraries are learning to write policies on odor that are more specific and so can be defended in court, but such rules are still hard to enforce because smell is such a subjective thing -- and humiliating someone by telling him he stinks is an awkward experience that librarians prefer to avoid. None of this was covered in library school.

It's a chicken-or-egg world for the mentally-ill homeless. Are they on the street because they are immobilized by severe depression or is deep depression the consequence of being on the street? Any tendency towards a psychological problem is aggravated and magnified by the constant stress, social isolation, loss of self-esteem, despair, and relentless boredom of street life. Imagine the degradation of waiting an hour in the cold rain to get into a soup kitchen for a meal; the hassle of hunting endlessly for an unpoliced spot to sleep; the constant fear of being robbed or attacked by other street people; or the indignity of defecating in a vacant lot. It's a combination that would probably drive a mentally healthy person to psychosis and substance abuse. Street people, who suffer serious psychological disorders, are often substance abusers, too, and the drug that a psychotic person prefers, often matches the psychosis. I have learned, for example, that bi-polar users prefer cocaine when in their manic phases and schizophrenics gravitate, naturally enough, to hallucinogens.

Alcohol and drugs mix with depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and paranoia in complex ways, so it is hard to pull any given disorder apart and understand just who this person in front of you, cursing or pleading or thrashing on the floor, may be. Public librarians, of course, are not trained to do this. We deal with behaviors that are symptomatic without understanding why someone is suffering or what we can do about it. And even if we did understand and had been trained for such situations, healing the homeless is not our mission. Taxpayers expect us to provide library services and leave the homeless to social workers. They give us resources only for one mission, not two.

What about those social workers then? They turn out to be too few, under-funded, over-worked, and overwhelmed. My initial unsuccessful attempts to get the social workers who operate the "homeless van" to stop in and assess a "regular" homeless patron who, we suspected, had suffered a stroke, reminded me that they had more pressing priorities. In the dead of winter, they struggle to get people sleeping in alleys or passed out on sidewalks indoors so they don't freeze to death. Theirs is an everyday "life or death" race. If a homeless guy is inside the library, then, "Hey, mission accomplished."

Navigating the Archipelago of Despair

A workshop I attended on treating Native Americans for alcoholism compellingly described how incorporating sweat lodges, healing ceremonies, and other elements from Native American culture into established treatment methods can improve their effectiveness for Native American patients. Of course, the social worker added, it's essential to provide a halfway-house option between rehab and release and that remains a huge problem. Typically, he told us, his clients wait three to six months to get into a halfway-house after rehab.

"And where do they go while they wait?" I asked, naively enough.

He shrugged and sighed. "Back with their drinking buddies in the park, under the bridge, wherever."

The inadequacy of existing resources and the absurdity of the conditions they endure are just part of the landscape, a given for social workers. Public librarians can cooperate with (and learn from) them, but we understand that they are overwhelmed and often unavailable. So, like it or not, we are ushered into the ranks of auxiliary social workers with no resources whatsoever.

Local hospitals are also uncertain allies. They have little room for the indigent mentally ill for whose treatment they often can't get reimbursed. So they deal with the crisis at hand, fork over some pills, and send the hopeless homeless on their way.

A manager at a shelter-clinic told me that he keeps a stash of petty cash handy because sometimes a taxi arrives at his door from one of the city's hospitals, carrying an incoherent patient without ID or any possessions other than the hospital gown he or she is wearing. When that happens, clinic workers are instructed to rush for the cab before it can unload its passenger and pay the driver to return to the hospital, puzzled cargo still in hand.

Throughout the fragmented system of healthcare for homeless people, from rehab to hospitals to jails, there are few ground rules or protocols for discharging the mentally ill and next to no communication between healthcare providers, police, social workers, and shelter managers in this archipelago of despair. Public librarians are out of the loop altogether; our role in providing daytime shelter for the homeless is ignored. When, in an attempt to build my own useful network, I attended conferences on homeless issues, I was always met with puzzlement and the question: "What are you doing here?"

"Where do you think they go during the day?" I would invariably answer.

"Oh, yeah, I guess that's right -- you deal with them, too," would be the invariable response, always offered as if that never occurred to them before.

Paramedics are caught in the middle of this dark carnival of confusion and neglect. In the winter, when the transient population of the library increases dramatically, we call them almost every day. Once, when I apologized to a paramedic for calling twice, he responded, "Hey, no need to explain or apologize." He swept his arm towards the other paramedics, surrounding a portable gurney on which they would soon carry a disoriented old man complaining of dizziness to the emergency room. "Look at us," he said, "we're the mobile homeless clinic. This is what we do. All day long, day after day, and mostly for the same people over and over."

Sanitizing Gels and Latex Gloves: Plying the Librarian's Trade

The cost of this mad system is staggering. Cities that have tracked chronically homeless people for the police, jail, clinic, paramedic, emergency room, and other hospital services they require, estimate that a typical transient can cost taxpayers between $20,000 and $150,000 a year. You could not design a more expensive, wasteful, or ineffective way to provide healthcare to individuals who live on the street than by having librarians like me dispense it through paramedics and emergency rooms. For one thing, fragmented, episodic care consistently fails, no matter how many times delivered. It is not only immoral to ignore people who are suffering illness in our midst, it's downright stupid public policy. We do not spend too little on the problems of the mentally disabled homeless, as is often assumed, instead we spend extravagantly but foolishly.

And the costs could grow far beyond the measure of money. If an epidemic of deadly flu were to strike, if an easily communicable strain of tuberculosis or some other devastating disease emerges, paramedics will be overwhelmed by their homeless clients who are at high risk for such illnesses. People who drink until they pass out tend to aspirate and choke, and people who sleep outdoors at night breathe cold, damp air. People who sleep in crowded shelters breathe each other's air.

Serious respiratory problems among the chronically homeless in a shelter are as common as beer guts at a racetrack. If an epidemic strikes, the susceptibility of the homeless will translate into an increased risk of exposure for the rest of us and, eerily enough, our public libraries could become Ground Zeroes for the spread of killer flu. Librarians are reluctant to make plans for handling such scenarios because we do not want to convey the message that America's libraries are anything but the safe and welcoming environments they remain today.

But here's the thing: It's not just about libraries. The chronically homeless share bus stops, subways, park benches, handrails, restrooms, drinking fountains, and fast-food booths with us or with others we encounter daily, who also share the air we breathe and the surfaces we touch. When sick or drunk, they vomit in public restrooms (if we are lucky). Having a population that is at once vulnerable to disease and able to spread microbes widely to others is simply foolish -- and unnecessary -- public policy, but in the library we focus on more immediate risks. We offer our staff hepatitis vaccinations and free tuberculosis checks. We place sanitizing gels and latex gloves at every public desk. Who would guess that working in a library could be a hazardous occupation?

In Place of Snake-Pit Hospitals, Snake-pit Jails

Ultimately, the indigent mentally ill are criminalized. If their presence in our libraries is a common and growing problem that we librarians would like the rest of society to be aware of, acknowledge, and commit themselves to helping us solve, here is a secret we would like to keep to ourselves: We are complicit. No matter how conscientiously and compassionately we try to treat our mentally disturbed users -- and at the Salt Lake City Public Library we work very hard to be fair, helpful, and tolerant -- librarians often have no good choices and, in the end, we just call the cops.

Take, for example, the case of a young man who entered the library fuming and spitting racial and ethnic slurs. He loudly asked some Hispanic teenagers, who were doing their homework, when they crossed the border and they reported his rude behavior. When a security guard approached, the young man started yelling obscenities and then took a swing at him. To his credit, the guard backed off and tried to calm him; but, on the next lunge, the guard took the kid down, cuffed his hands behind his back, and called the police. They recognized him. He had been let out of jail just two days earlier. Putting him back there, staff members argued, obviously wasn't going to make a difference. Shouldn't he be taken to a hospital for treatment?

The police pointed out that he was simply too strong and violent to be handled at a hospital, so he would have to go to jail. While waiting to be taken away, the kid turned some corner in his mind and left sobbing.

His behavior was not a measure of his character or even of his civility, but of how severe his psychosis had become without treatment and under the stress of prison. The man was sick, not bad. If we accept that schizophrenia, for instance, is not the result of a character flaw or a personal failing but of some chemical imbalance in the brain -- an imbalance that can strike regardless of a person's values, beliefs, upbringing, social standing, or intent, just like any other disease -- then why do we apply a kind of moral judgment we wouldn't use in other medical situations? We do not, for example, jail a diabetic who is acting drunk because his body chemistry has become so unbalanced that he is going into insulin shock, but we frequently jail schizophrenics when their brain chemistries become so unbalanced that they act out, as if punishment were the appropriate and effective response to a mental disorder.

And the police aren't happy about their role either. Cities are responding to such problems with mental health courts and the like for sorting out the mentally disturbed from other prisoners. Salt Lake City now has a model program, but nationally there is a long way to go.

According to the Department of Justice, there are about four times as many people with mental illnesses incarcerated in America today as under treatment in state mental hospitals. Some jails devote entire wings to the mentally ill.

Jails, of course, are intended to control, intimidate, and humiliate. Such a dehumanizing environment can be especially devastating for the mentally ill. I am particularly wary when dealing with street people who are recently out of jail because they are likely to be in an especially agitated state. Of course, cops and jailers are no better trained or prepared than librarians to handle people with serious psychological problems. This is a bond we share -- our unacknowledged charge and our inevitable failure to meet it.

In the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, the discharged mentally ill began to be "deinstitutionalized" from crowded hospitals with "snake pit" conditions where they got inadequate treatment. They were supposed to be integrated into local communities and cared for by local clinics. That was the dream anyway, but such humane alternatives to indifferent hospitalization failed to materialize.

The clinics were never built and the communities that were supposed to embrace the mentally ill didn't get the memo. The safety net that was to catch them proved to be chockfull of holes. Instead, they migrated to urban psychiatric ghettoes -- alleys, parks, abandoned buildings, vacant lots, and flophouses. As housing became more competitive and costly in the 1990s, they were further compressed into the margins of society where their suffering festered like an open wound. Now, it is up to the police to re-institutionalize them -- but this time in snake-pit prisons where they generally receive no treatment at all. So, in the last couple of decades, we have exchanged revolving doors to padded cells for revolving doors to jail cells with steel bars.

The cost of keeping a mentally-ill person in jail is not cheap. In Utah, it turns out to be the yearly equivalent of tuition at an Ivy League college. For that kind of taxpayer money, we could get our mentally ill off the streets and into stable housing environments with enough leftover for the kinds of support services most of them need to stay off the street. Again, the right thing to do for them may also be the most practical choice for us. We could solve the problem for less than it costs to manage it. In the meanwhile, they will cycle between the jail and the library. Is it any wonder that they crave a calm and entertaining environment after weeks, months, or years of fear and noise in jail? From a taxpayer's perspective, however, it seems cheaper to warehouse them in the library, between stints in jail -- or simply to pay no attention to where they are at all.

Refusing Treatment

Even if treatment options were not so scarce and inadequate, many of the mentally ill would not get treatment because they refuse to be treated. Paranoia is rampant on the street and paranoid people do not willingly submit to strange doctors and nurses who might "implant" something in them -- or worse. The cops, paramedics, and social workers can't take a person to the hospital just because he is ranting incoherently. He has to be a danger to himself or others.

Committing the mentally ill, homeless or otherwise, to treatment facilities against their wills is a civil liberties conundrum. As a political activist with controversial ideas, I am sensitive to the issues raised when citizens are forced into treatment. Images of Soviet dissidents getting dragged into psych wards and drugged come immediately to mind. But when a person is hallucinating and clearly upset, it is hard to accept, as I have often heard from social workers and the police, that "nothing can be done."

Sid was in his twenties when he came to us -- a tall, lanky, blond kid with a scraggly beard who walked around rumpled and slump-shouldered, his head hung in a beaten-dog kind of way. He avoided eye-contact and was very quiet most of the time. He liked to read graphic novels and comic books. Occasionally, though, he would jump up and move quickly outside where he would shout and twitch uncontrollably. He seemed to sense when his Tourette's Syndrome would strike and wanted to spare us.

On his worst days, he was troubled by hallucinations and voices he would answer in exasperated whispers. The police told me he had been raped by other transients -- a common occurrence on the street, bound to aggravate and complicate existing psychological disorders. When addressed directly, Sid was unfailingly polite and soft-spoken. Sometimes, we saw him eating scraps from garbage receptacles. The library staff worried about him, replaced his clothes when they fell apart, and bought him food when he grew thin and pale.

Sid, however, refused treatment. The case could be made that Sid was a danger to himself. After all, he often wasn't coherent enough to acquire food for himself. But nobody made that case. One day Sid disappeared. Staff members looked for him on the street and asked other homeless patrons if they had seen him. No one knew a thing and we never saw him again. I often wonder what happened to him. I like to imagine that he was rescued by family members who had been looking for him. It's far more likely that Sid's demons led him to a bus and that he's wandering the margins of another alien city where "nothing can be done."

We see so much despair of Sid's sort among the lost souls who shelter at the library that, by winter's end -- our "homeless season" -- we often find ourselves hard put to cope with our own feelings of depression and frustration. As one library manager told me, "I struggle not to internalize what I experience here, but there are days I just go home and burst out in tears." She is considering leaving the profession.

Another colleague started out in social work and transitioned to a library career when she found she couldn't handle the emotional stress of dealing with her down-and-out clients. Imagine her surprise to rediscover her feelings of despair while working in the library. "I deal with the same clientele," she told me one day, "but now I have no way of making a difference. I still go home feeling sad and discouraged that, in a nation as rich and powerful as ours, we abandon mentally ill people on the streets and then resent them for being sick in public."

There is hope, however. After decades of studies by various task forces, followed by experiments by local governments, a consensus has emerged that the most effective way to help chronically homeless people is to stabilize them in housing first and then offer treatment. Social scientists and policy-makers have concluded, logically enough, that it is hard to "get better" while living in a stressful, demeaning, and unstable environment and easier to recover when one feels safe and secure.

This "housing first" strategy isn't cheap, but it is far more realistic and effective than requiring people to get better as a prerequisite for housing -- and it costs much less than failing the way we do now. Salt Lake County, like many local governments, has created a ten-year plan to end homelessness based on housing-first principles. The wheel of reform is moving slowly, however, and many people who need help now will suffer and die on the street before things can turn their way (if they ever actually do). And the librarians at the City Library and the good citizens of Salt Lake will watch them struggle daily, while waiting for saner policies to take hold.

Gaining the World and Losing Each Other

In the meantime, the Salt Lake City Public Library -- Library Journal's 2006 "Library of the Year" -- has created a place where the diverse ideas and perspectives that sustain an open and inclusive civil society can be expressed safely, where disparate citizens can discover common ground, self-organize, and make wise choices together. We do not collect just books, we also gather voices. We empower citizens and invite them to engage one another in public dialogues. I like to think of our library as the civic ballroom of our community where citizens can practice that awkward dance of mutuality that is the very signature of a democratic culture.

And if the chronically homeless show up at the ball, looking worse than Cinderella after midnight? Well, in a democratic culture, even disturbing information is useful feedback. When the mentally ill whom we have thrown onto the streets haunt our public places, their presence tells us something important about the state of our union, our national character, our priorities, and our capacity to care for one another. That information is no less important than the information we provide through databases and books. The presence of the impoverished mentally ill among us is not an eloquent expression of civil discourse, like a lecture in the library's auditorium, but it speaks volumes nonetheless.

The belief that we are responsible for each other's social, economic, and political well-being, that we will care for our weakest members compassionately, should be the keystone in the moral architecture of a democratic culture. We will not stand by while our fellow citizens are deprived of their fellowship and citizenship -- which is why we ended racial segregation and practices like poll taxes that kept disenfranchised Americans powerless. We will not let children starve. We do not consign orphans to the streets like they do in Brazil or let children be sold into prostitution as they do in Thailand. We are proud of our struggles to meet people's basic needs and to encourage inclusion. Why, then, are the mentally ill still such an exception to those fundamental standards?

America is proud of its hyper-individualism, our liberation from the bonds of tribe and the social constraints of traditional societies. We glorify the accomplishments of inventors, innovators, entrepreneurs, pioneers, and artists. But while some individuals thrive and the cutting edge of our technology is wondrous, the plight of the chronically homeless tells me that our communities are also fragmented and disintegrating. We may have gained the world and lost each other.

The Penan nomads of Sarawak, Borneo, members of an indigenous and primal culture, have no technology or material comforts that compare with our mighty achievements. They have one word for "he," "she," and "it." But they have six words for "we." Sharing is an obligation and is expected, so they have no phrase for "thank you." An American child is taught that homelessness is regrettable but inevitable since some people are bound to fail. A child of the Penan is taught that a poor man shames us all.

Ophelia is not so far off after all -- in a sense she is dead and has been for some time. Hers is a kind of social death from shunning. She is neglected, avoided, ignored, denied, overlooked, feared, detested, pitied, and dismissed. She exists alone in a kind of social purgatory. She waits in the library, day after day, gazing at us through multiple lenses and mumbling to her invisible friends. She does not expect to be rescued or redeemed. She is, as she says, "used to it."

She is our shame. What do you think about a culture that abandons suffering people and expects them to fend for themselves on the street, then criminalizes them for expressing the symptoms of illnesses they cannot control? We pay lip service to this tragedy -- then look away fast. As a library administrator, I hear the public express annoyance more often than not: "What are they doing in here?" "Can't you control them?" Annoyance is the cousin of arrogance, not shame.

We will let Ophelia and the others stay with us and we will be firm but kind. We will wait for America to wake up and deal with its Ophelias directly, deliberately, and compassionately. In the meantime, our patrons will continue to complain about her and the others who seek shelter with us. Yes, we know, we say to them; we hear you loud and clear. Be patient, please, we are doing the best we can. Are you?

Chip Ward recently retired as the assistant director of the Salt Lake City Public Library System to devote more time to political activism and writing. He's the author of Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50023/

Zach's parents hate him

2007-04-01T14:39:00.001-04:00

Zach's parents hate him, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

if you think these parents don't beat or inappropriately touch their 'zach' you're horribly mistaken.

ted

2007-03-28T12:23:00.001-04:00

ted, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

Eddie snagged this candid shot of the infamous Ted Turner oil painting. he's been very close several times, but at last a shot of it...

his shirt collar is comprised of Satellite dishes

Ochopee Post Office

2007-03-27T19:30:00.001-04:00

Ochopee, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

From the historic marker...

"Considered to be the smallest post office in the United States, this building was formerly an irrigation pipe shed belonging to the J. T. Gaunt Company tomato farm. It was hurriedly pressed into service by postmaster Sidney Brown after a disastrous night fire in 1953 burned Ochopee's general store and post office...."

have you seen this man?

2007-03-01T15:38:00.001-05:00

have you seen this man?

it's all in the words

2007-02-21T11:20:00.000-05:00

This is a really good summation of what is wrong with our commander in chief and his minions in regards to COMMUNICATION.

They want to be at war...

---------------------------------------------------
Say What?
Four bewildering remarks from the Bush administration.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2007, at 6:19 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2160225/

The world might be less stressful if the president of the most powerful nation didn't so frequently convey the impression that he has no idea what's going on.

Here are three recent examples of his bewildering remarks, plus one from his secretary of state.

1. "If we leave [Iraq] before the mission is complete, if we withdraw, the enemy will follow us home."

This was from a speech by George W. Bush in Lancaster, Pa., last Aug. 16. That's not so recent, but the comment was repeated just this month by Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by Ohio Republican Rep. John Boehner; so someone up high still seems to think it's true or at least catchy.

In fact, it makes no sense whatever. First, it assumes that "the enemy" in Iraq consists entirely of al-Qaida terrorists, when they comprise only a small segment of the forces attacking U.S. troops. Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias are not likely to "follow us home."

Second, if terrorists wanted to attack American territory again (and maybe they do), their ability to do so is unaffected by whether we stay in or pull out of Iraq. It's not as if they're all holed up in Baghdad and Anbar province, just waiting for the fighting to stop so they can climb out of their foxholes and go blow up New York. If al-Qaida is a global network, its agents can fight in both places.

Third, this is a hell of a thing to say in front of the allies. It's a crudely selfish message, suggesting that we're getting a lot of people killed over there in order that nobody gets killed back here. What leader of a beleaguered nation, reading this remark, would seek America's protection?

2. "What we do know is that the Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. … And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. … What we don't know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did. But here's my point: Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse—that the government knew or that the government didn't know?

There are two things worse—that the U.S. government doesn't know whether the Iranian government knew, and that the American president doesn't seem to care.

This may be unfair; he probably does care. So, what's really worse—judging from this passage from Bush's Feb. 14 press conference—is that he doesn't seem to be doing much to find out.

One way to find out might be to open up talks with Iran. Many former officials, of both parties, have urged the Bush administration to engage with Iran on a number of issues, for a number of reasons affecting national security. Here's one more. If these particularly lethal IEDs known as "explosively formed penetrators" are being supplied with the Iranian government's knowledge, maybe a deal can be struck to stop the flow; if they're being supplied without high officials' knowledge, maybe a deal can be struck to crack down jointly on the rogue agents.

One thing is clear from this: The Bush administration doesn't want to talk with the Iranians on principle. Maybe the Iranians don't want to talk with us, either. It wouldn't kill us to find out. (It didn't kill us to find out, finally, with the North Koreans.)

3. Speaking of not talking to nasty regimes, here's a remark by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at House hearings on Feb. 16:

"We don't have an ideological problem with talking to Syria. … [T]here just isn't any evidence that they're trying to change their behavior."

Rice was responding to a heartfelt plea from Republican Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia. "I beg of you," he said, "if we're going to ask a young man or woman in our military to go to Iraq three different times, it's not asking too much … to send somebody to engage with … the Syrians."

The secretary's response was a replay of Bush's response to a similar question at a press conference last August: "We've been in touch with Syria," he replied. "Colin Powell sent a message to Syria in person. Dick Armitage talked to Syria. … Syria knows what we think. … The problem is that their response hasn't been very positive."

He was referring to a trip that his former secretary of state took to the Middle East back in 2003—and, though Bush didn't mention this, Syria's response was positive. Ariel Sharon, then Israel's prime minister, had asked Powell to get Syrian President Bashar Assad to crack down on Hezbollah—and Assad did, for a little while, anyway.

Then, as now, a follow-up question might have been: How do you know what the Syrians are willing to do until you talk with them and offer them some incentives?

Again, maybe the Syrians don't want to talk with Bush. Maybe they figure that this lame-duck American president shows no sign of changing his behavior, that he has nothing useful to offer them.

4. "George Washington's long struggle for freedom has also inspired generations of Americans to stand for freedom in their own time. Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life."

On Feb. 19, to celebrate George Washington's birthday, President Bush gave a speech at Mount Vernon comparing himself to the father of our country and the Iraqi war to the Revolutionary War.

In the past, George W. Bush has likened himself to Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.

He should stay away from historical analogies. The crises and wars that he's invoked don't really correspond to his predicaments, or to the extent that they do, the comparisons tend not to flatter him. Washington is particularly ill-cast as a Bush stand-in.

"On the field of battle," Bush said at Mount Vernon, "Washington's forces were facing a mighty empire, and the odds against them were overwhelming. The ragged Continental Army lost more battles than it won" and "stood on the brink of disaster many times. Yet George Washington's calm hand and determination kept the cause of independence and the principles of our Declaration alive. … In the end, General Washington understood that the Revolutionary War was a test of wills, and his will was unbreakable."

Sound familiar? It's obviously meant to, but it shouldn't. Here's an awkward question: By Bush's own description, which side in the Iraq war most resembles the "ragged Continental Army" and which side the "mighty empire"? I don't mean to draw moral (or any other sort of) equivalences, because there is nothing at all equivalent about those two wars, or these two presidents, and it degrades the serious study of history to pretend there is.

But dragging Washington into Iraq is especially perverse because it's hard to imagine a war that he would have found more dreadful. Bush quotes him as having once said, "My best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever in any country I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom."

Yet Bush leaves out the context in which Washington made this remark. It was when the French foreign minister presented him with France's new tricolor flag. That is, it was in celebration of the French Revolution.

It was not, in any way, an endorsement of going to war to "spread freedom" around the world. To the contrary, in 1793, during France's subsequent war with much of Europe, Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, forbidding American citizens from taking any action that would help one side or another.

Nor did Bush say anything about Washington's Farewell Address of 1796, in which the first president, stepping down from two terms, elaborated his views still further. Washington urged his fellow citizens to avoid "overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty." He cautioned against "excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another." And he advised, "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible."

At the conclusion of his Mount Vernon speech, Bush said of Washington, "His example guided us in his time; it guides us in our time; and it will guide us for all time."

Does Bush really believe that, or was he just yakking? And, as he might put it, what's worse?
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2160225/

Copyright 2007 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Right Wing Christianity v. Fascism...

2007-02-08T19:41:00.000-05:00

Got this doozy from alternet.org
Since my early musings with the Catholic Church (albeit a very very liberal group within that group) i've always been weary of religion and it's morality and rules. Through my historical journeys in high school and at university, the rise of power in Nazi Germany was something that always fascinated me.

We read the book Badenheim, 1939 in one of my Holocaust classes and it was a piece that always stuck with me, as did a question; "How could a people blindly throw their fellow man into the jaws of the Holocaust?"

Badenheim attempts to paint that portion of the portrait, telling the tail of the beginnings of the Jewish purge under Nazi rule. It drifts into it...It doesn't plop 3,000 residents onto a train for Birkenau after a declaration of war on an ethnic people...It creeps up on the reader, as it did to those poor people in life and in this piece of fiction. Read the book if you haven't.

Why do i bring up Badenheim, 1939? Well, this article by Chris Hedges really reminds me of the feeling I got as I learned more and more about the BEGINNING of the Holocaust. The much publicized 'end' of the Holocaust everyone knows...Trains, camps, showers, ovens, graves, crematorium...But before that, there was fear. Before that there was anguish and hardship that fed fear...That poverty and economic fall of Germany help seed what would eventually grow into the Holocaust.

And here we are in America. From what I hear from a lot of the Right Wing Bobbleheads, America is a "Christian Nation"...And the masses that flood evangelicals like my main man Ted "Crystal Meth" Haggard think that we're in a Christian America. This article vocalizes a lot of what I've been thinking about the heart of this malcontent that rests on the shoulders of this great country of ours...

So take a read and repost if you can...
jp

-----------------------

The Rise of Christian Fascism and Its Threat to American Democracy

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on February 8, 2007, Printed on February 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47679/

Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age -- he was then close to 80 -- we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He had been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States. It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolf Hitler placed over the contents of his suitcases to hide the rolls of home-movie film he had taken of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied the Nazis, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the tops of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Führer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black-and-white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge.

Adams understood that totalitarian movements are built out of deep personal and economic despair. He warned that the flight of manufacturing jobs, the impoverishment of the American working class, the physical obliteration of communities in the vast, soulless exurbs and decaying Rust Belt, were swiftly deforming our society. The current assault on the middle class, which now lives in a world in which anything that can be put on software can be outsourced, would have terrified him. The stories that many in this movement told me over the past two years as I worked on "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" were stories of this failure -- personal, communal and often economic. This despair, Adams said, would empower dangerous dreamers -- those who today bombard the airwaves with an idealistic and religious utopianism that promises, through violent apocalyptic purification, to eradicate the old, sinful world that has failed many Americans.

These Christian utopians promise to replace this internal and external emptiness with a mythical world where time stops and all problems are solved. The mounting despair rippling across the United States, one I witnessed repeatedly as I traveled the country, remains unaddressed by the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, like its Republican counterpart, for massive corporate funding.

The Christian right has lured tens of millions of Americans, who rightly feel abandoned and betrayed by the political system, from the reality-based world to one of magic -- to fantastic visions of angels and miracles, to a childlike belief that God has a plan for them and Jesus will guide and protect them. This mythological worldview, one that has no use for science or dispassionate, honest intellectual inquiry, one that promises that the loss of jobs and health insurance does not matter, as long as you are right with Jesus, offers a lying world of consistency that addresses the emotional yearnings of desperate followers at the expense of reality. It creates a world where facts become interchangeable with opinions, where lies become true -- the very essence of the totalitarian state. It includes a dark license to kill, to obliterate all those who do not conform to this vision, from Muslims in the Middle East to those at home who refuse to submit to the movement. And it conveniently empowers a rapacious oligarchy whose god is maximum profit at the expense of citizens.

We now live in a nation where the top 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, where we have legalized torture and can lock up citizens without trial. Arthur Schlesinger, in "The Cycles of American History," wrote that "the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense -- not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide."

Adams saw in the Christian right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists rise under the guise of religion to dismantle the open society. He despaired of U.S. liberals, who, he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil or the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand-wringing by Democrats, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me, I suspect half in jest, that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." But this too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.

Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the House before the last elections earned approval ratings of 80 to100 percent from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups -- the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council. President Bush has handed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to these groups and dismantled federal programs in science, reproductive rights and AIDS research to pay homage to the pseudo-science and quackery of the Christian right.

Bush will, I suspect, turn out to be no more than a weak transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck -- who also used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19th century and launched "Kulturkampf," the word from which we get culture wars, against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck's attacks, which split Germany and made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse, paved the way for the Nazis' more virulent racism and repression.

The radical Christian right, calling for a "Christian state" -- where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens -- awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity. This movement -- the most dangerous mass movement in American history -- will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance.

The unchecked rape of America, which continues with the blessing of both political parties, heralds not only the empowerment of this American oligarchy but the eventual death of the democratic state and birth of American fascism.

Chris Hedges is the former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and the author of "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning."

new direction

2007-01-30T22:13:00.000-05:00

so i sit here wondering why people blog...and I've come up with an idea.

no one knows. the best blog online, rather...the only blog i go to consistently each and every day is about nothing of consequence, yet i get so very much out of it. it's genius in many ways.

so, if there's anybody out there, i want to rededicate my blog to being something that may lead people to think when they choose to 'tune in'...currently it's funny notes about my daughter and idle prattle.

i dunno if i have the energy for much more, but i'd like to think that these things are worth something. i'd like to think that by posting something out here in the ether, that someone, somewhere will read it and think about. i'd especially like that focus to be politically or socially progressive in nature. that's my goal, i guess...

i dunno...it's just the internet...it's not like it's for real, right?

and now...presenting the news item of the day that you most likely missed...like this...

Newsflash; GULF COAST STILL FUCKED

Louisiana residents pull back from coast

By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press WriterTue Jan 30, 6:29 AM ET

More than 16 months after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced an unprecedented exodus from the Louisiana Gulf Coast, tens of thousands of homeowners have decided not to rebuild or have yet to make up their minds, an Associated Press analysis found.

The AP looked at applications to the federally funded Louisiana Road Home program, which dispenses up to $150,000 per homeowner to rebuild or sell out to the state. Nearly 98,000 people have applied so far.

Two-thirds of all applicants said they want to rebuild their damaged properties, while more than a quarter have indicated they want out or can't decide what to do.

But in dozens of towns and neighborhoods, particularly those closest to the coast, the percentages of homeowners on the fence or on the way out are higher than average, with as many as two out of three homeowners not committed to rebuilding. The areas, 31 ZIP codes in all, include several heavily damaged New Orleans neighborhoods such as Lakeview and the Ninth Ward.

Michael Kurth, a McNeese State University economics professor who has done research for the Louisiana Recovery Authority, said he is not surprised.

"With the scale of destruction that occurred in those coastal areas, it wasn't a matter of `Let's return in a month or in two months,'" Kurth said. "In a lot of cases, you couldn't go back to what was there before. It's just not there."

Homeowners who remain undecided could still rebuild their destroyed homes. But by now, many are resettled in new homes, schools and jobs. Louisiana demographer Elliott Stonecipher said it is safe to assume that those who were going to commit themselves to rebuilding would have done so by now.

As many as 123,000 homeowners may be eligible for Louisiana Road Home aid. The program dispenses grants not only to rebuild damaged homes, but also to fortify undamaged ones by raising them off the ground or installing hurricane shutters.

Applicants must indicate whether they want to rebuild; sell and move in-state; sell and leave the state; or are undecided. Thousands of homeowners can still apply for assistance, and those who have already applied can change their minds on whether to rebuild or leave.

"The folks in south Louisiana whose houses were flooded by Katrina and Rita are necessarily going to be a little gun-shy," LRA executive director Andy Kopplin said. "There are some areas that are more vulnerable than others."

In Arabi, Chalmette and Meraux — all in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish, downriver from New Orleans — roughly two-thirds of applicants want to move out or are still uncertain about whether to rebuild.

"My old neighbors won't be back. She went to Covington. This one went to Tennessee," said Gerald Perry, a 59-year-old Chalmette man, pointing to the abandoned properties on either side of his newly fixed home. "They let a little water scare them."

In some cases, there is nothing to go back to.

Karen Ritter, 45, said the home she shares with her 80-year-old mother in Arabi is on the verge of collapse.

Other homeowners are old and have "lived here all their lives. They had everything they lived for in their houses. If they don't have children to help them, there's nothing for them to do" but give up and move out, Ritter said.

St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez called the pullback from coastal areas a "knee-jerk reaction." He predicted residents eventually will be lured back: "People are infatuated with water. They love to be near water."

soph and the quest for the holy doschers...

2007-01-30T17:36:00.000-05:00

about...hmmm...Lemme count...i guess it was 11 years ago my high school buddy JD and I took a road trip to Charleston, SC via Statesboro, GA (to pick up the Ensign)...

While there, we were awed by the sight of a grocery store named for a feminine hygiene product. Doschers...aka "Douchers" was one of our favorite sites in the city. now, 11 years later, I sit with my 3 year-old daughter in that parking lot to pick her sister up from the bus.

weird.Also, i still have this commemorative pee cup in my car, sophie just finished using it and is dumping it out here...

The Signal is Received at Sundance!

2007-01-24T10:24:00.000-05:00

There's nothing better than waking up for a lousy corporate gig stuck out in the country of South Carolina and seeing Scott Poythress' beautiful face and the words "$2.3 million" under it.

This years' Sundance Film Festival featured the arrival of PopFilms' "The Signal". A 3-part horror film helmed by David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Pops' own Jacob Gentry.

Click these links to check some press on the whole affair and be sure to peep the film's MySpace page.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/parkcity/archives/012279.html
The Peeps speak for themselves here…

http://www.doyouhavethecrazy.com/
Official site - Do you have the crazy or not?

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/31335
Ain't It Cool News' write up

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/8018
Interviews with the Directors Jacob and Dan, and a comparison to PJ's 'Bad Taste'...Quite the compliment!

Congrats guys...You've earned every bit of your success.

Brilliant piece @ AlterNet - Please RE-Post - Finally, Alpharetta Explained!!!!

2007-01-20T00:48:00.001-05:00

The Radical Christian Right Is Built on Suburban Despair

By Chris Hedges, AlterNet
Posted on January 19, 2007, Printed on January 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46908/

The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.

This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker's paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.

During the past two years of work on the book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, I kept encountering this deadly despair. Driving down a highway lined with gas stations, fast food restaurants and dollar stores I often got vertigo, forgetting for a moment if I was in Detroit or Kansas City or Cleveland. There are parts of the United States, including whole sections of former manufacturing centers such as Ohio, that resemble the developing world, with boarded up storefronts, dilapidated houses, pot-hole streets and crumbling schools. The end of the world is no longer an abstraction to many Americans.

Jeniece Learned is typical of many in the movement. She stood, when I met her, amid a crowd of earnest-looking men and women, many with small gold crosses in the lapels of their jackets or around their necks, in a hotel lobby in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. She had an easy smile and a thick mane of black, shoulder length hair. She was carrying a booklet called "Ringing in a Culture of Life." The booklet had the schedule of the two day event she is attending organized by The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. The event was "dedicated to the 46 million children who have died from legal abortions since 1973 and the mothers and fathers who mourn their loss."

Learned, who drove five hours from a town outside of Youngstown, Ohio was raised Jewish. She wore a gold Star of David around her neck with a Christian cross inserted in the middle of the design. She stood up in one of the morning sessions, attended by about 300 people, most of them women, when the speaker, Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, asked if there were any "post-abortive" women present. Learned ran a small pregnancy counseling clinic called Pregnancy Services of Western Pennsylvania in Sharon, where she attempted to talk young girls and women, most of them poor, out of abortions.

She spoke in local public schools, promoting sexual abstinence, rather than birth control, as the only acceptable form of contraception. And she had found in the fight against abortion, and in her conversion, a structure, purpose and meaning that previously eluded her. The battle against abortion is one of the Christian Rights's most effective recruiting tools. It plays on the guilt and shame of woman who had the abortions, accusing them of committing murder, and promising redemption and atonement in the "Christian" struggle to make abortion illegal, in the fight for life against "the culture of death."

Her life, before she was saved, was, like many in this mass movement, chaotic and painful. Her childhood was stolen from her. She was sexually abused by a close family member. Her mother periodically woke Learned and her younger sister and two younger brothers in the middle of the night to flee landlords who wanted back rent. The children were bundled into the car and driven in darkness to a strange apartment in another town. Her mother worked nights and weekends as a bartender. Learned, the oldest, often had to run the home. Her younger sister, who was sexually abused by another member of the family, eventually committed suicide as an adult, something Learned also considered. As a teenager she had an abortion.

She was taking classes at Pacific Christian College several years later when she saw an anti-abortion film called The Silent Scream. "You see in this movie this baby backing up trying to get away from this suction tube," she said. "And, its mouth is open and it is like this baby is screaming. I flipped out. It was at that moment that God just took this veil that I had over my eyes for the last eight years. I couldn't breathe. I was hyperventilating. I ran outside. One of the girls followed me from Living Alternative. And she said, 'Did you commit your life to Christ?' And I said, 'I did.' And she said, 'Did you ask for your forgiveness of sins?' And I said, 'I did.' And she goes, 'Does that mean all your sins, or does that mean some of them?' And I said, 'I guess it means all of them.' So she said, 'Basically, you are thinking God hasn't forgiven you for your abortion because that is a worse sin than any of your other sins that you have done.'"

The film brought her into the fight to make abortion illegal. Her activism became atonement for her own abortion. She struggled with depression after she gave birth to her daughter Rachel. When she came home from the hospital she was unable to care for her infant. She thought she saw an 8-year-old boy standing next to her bed. It was, she is sure, the image of the son she had murdered.

"I started crying and asking God over and over again to forgive me," she says. "I had murdered His child. I asked Him to forgive me over and over again. It was just incredible. I was possessed. On the fourth day I remember hearing God's voice. 'I have your baby, now get up!' It was the most incredibly freeing and peaceful moment. I got up and I showered and I ate. I just knew it was God's voice."

In the United States we have turned our backs on the working class, with much of the worst assaults, such as NAFTA and welfare reform, pushed though during President Clinton's Democratic administration. We stand passively and watch an equally pernicious assault on the middle class. Anything that can be put on software, from architecture to engineering to finance, will soon be handed to workers overseas who will be paid a third what their American counterparts receive and who will, like some 45 million Americans, have no access to health insurance or benefits.

There has been, along with the creation of an American oligarchy, a steady Weimarization of the American working class. The top one percent of American households have more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. This figure alone should terrify all who care about our democracy. As Plutarch reminded us "an imbalance between the rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

The stories believers such as Learned told me of their lives before they found Christ were heart breaking. These chronicles were about terrible pain, severe financial difficulties, struggles with addictions or childhood sexual or physical abuse, profound alienation and often thoughts about suicide. They were chronicles without hope. The real world, the world of facts and dispassionate intellectual inquiry, the world where all events, news and information were not filtered through this comforting ideological prism, the world where they were left out to dry, abandoned by a government hostage to corporations and willing to tolerate obscene corporate profits, betrayed them.

They hated this world. And they willingly walked out on this world for the mythical world offered by these radical preachers, a world of magic, a world where God had a divine plan for them and intervened on a daily basis to protect them and perform miracles in their lives. The rage many expressed to me towards those who challenge this belief system, to those of us who do not accept that everything in the world came into being during a single week 6,000 years ago because it says so in the Bible, was a rage born of fear, the fear of being plunged back into a reality-based world where these magical props would no longer exist, where they would once again be adrift, abandoned and alone.

The danger of this theology of despair is that it says that nothing in the world is worth saving. It rejoices in cataclysmic destruction. It welcomes the frightening advance of global warming, the spiraling wars and violence in the Middle East and the poverty and neglect that have blighted American urban and rural landscapes as encouraging signs that the end of the world is close at hand.

Believers, of course, clinging to this magical belief, which is a bizarre form of spiritual Darwinism, will be raptured upwards while the rest of us will be tormented with horrors by a warrior Christ and finally extinguished. This obsession with apocalyptic violence is an obsession with revenge. It is what the world, and we who still believe it is worth saving, deserve.

Those who lead the movement give their followers a moral license to direct this rage and yearning for violence against all those who refuse to submit to the movement, from liberals, to "secular humanists," to "nominal Christians," to intellectuals, to gays and lesbians, to Muslims. These radicals, from James Dobson to Pat Robertson, call for a theocratic state that will, if it comes to pass, bear within it many of the traits of classical fascism.

All radical movements need a crisis or a prolonged period of instability to achieve power. And we are not in a period of crisis now. But another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, a series of huge environmental disasters or an economic meltdown will hand to these radicals the opening they seek. Manipulating our fear and anxiety, promising to make us safe and secure, giving us the assurance that they can vanquish the forces that mean to do us harm, these radicals, many of whom have achieved powerful positions in the Executive and legislative branches of government, as well as the military, will ask us only to surrender our rights, to pass them the unlimited power they need to battle the forces of darkness.

They will have behind them tens of millions of angry, disenfranchised Americans longing for revenge and yearning for a mythical utopia, Americans who embraced a theology of despair because we offered them nothing else.

Chris Hedges, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and former Pulitzer-prize winning foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

UPDATE!!!!! Sophie was in studio in January... UPDATE!!!!

2007-01-10T11:18:00.001-05:00

sophie's always been 'hands on' in the recording process, originally uploaded by clermonthound.

so, over the new year week, we set out to Ben and Vera's house in Avondale Estates to record Sophie's long awaited 1st album, Monkey Crazy.

It was a long session, but with the help of her talented background singers we got it down.

UPDATE/UPDATE/UPDATE

CLICK HERE TO HEAR THE LONG AWAITED TRACK!!!!!!

it begins...

2006-12-30T01:35:00.000-05:00

it begins...
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

the beard began it's quick descent into drain fodder today after sophie made a passing comment about it scratching her.

i wasn't in love with the beard...but it felt good to grow.

i had good times with it, but in the end, i want my daughter to look forward to kisses from her dad.

Sophie luvs Mac

2006-12-27T18:55:00.000-05:00

The monster luvs using the photobooth function on the new lapper...

mac attack

2006-12-25T21:13:00.000-05:00

so, the mac has landed. still trying to get my brain around the concept that i have a mac. it was my xmas present from the 'rents'...

i have no idea what i'm doing...except this photo. i can do this all day.

well worth the price, i'm sure.

merry christmas

You can watch Arrested Development online!!!

2006-12-11T16:43:00.000-05:00

Best news of the Day

Recently, I've become infatuated with the short-lived series, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.

It chronicles the antics of the Bluth family as their crooked patriarch (played by Jeffrey Tambor) goes to jail, and cuts off their extravagant lifestyle. Cast includes Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and David Cross.

If you didn't fall in love with the show when it was out...Then go out and click this link...

MSN Video - Watch Arrested Development on MSN

Enjoy!

Saturday December 9, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. and Sunday December 10, Noon-6 p.m.

2006-12-05T13:50:00.000-05:00

Ron Hughes runs a great gallery in Candler Park, at the corner of McLendon and Oakdale. It's a modest space that always showcases a high quality of work in its regular shows. I have the good fortune to have some of my work for sale at his location.

His two shows up now are brilliant work from the ground in Iraq and the ground at home in the war of dissent. Some really killer stuff.

Please pop in and see this tremendous work and get to know Ron. Stop in and pick up that elusive Holiday gift for that choosy art-snob relative/friend/loved one you have on your list. The prices are good, and the selection is ecclectic and varied showcasing several different Artists.

Happy Holidays and go support art.

jMp

From Ron...

-----------------------------------
Hi all. Please come out for the Composition Gallery Holiday Print and Gift Sale this weekend. We're featuring work by local photographers as well as items from A Greater Gift, a nonprofit alternative trade and development organization, offering hope and justice with every purchase.

Also, I am very privileged to have recently met Kael Alford, acclaimed photojournalist and one of the contributors to the book "Unembedded: Four Independent photojournalists on the War in Iraq".
She's been kind enough to bring by some signed copies of the book for our sale this weekend, as well as a catalog of her work from which limited-edition prints can be ordered.

So please come out and take a look at the book that New Yorker correspondent Jon Lee Anderson called "an unforgettable, in-your-face reminder that there is more to the war in Iraq than what most Americans see on the nightly news."

Saturday December 9, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. and Sunday December 10, Noon-6 p.m.

Thanks very much,
Ron Hughes
Composition Gallery
1388 McLendon Ave.
Atlanta, GA 30307
678-982-9764

Ed's attempt at a swan...

2006-11-28T17:50:00.000-05:00

Ed's attempt at a swan...
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

here's Ed hard at work...

a far cry from his job at Creative Research, eh?

me and sophie

2006-11-20T01:59:00.000-05:00

holding hands ONLY out of warmth
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

holding hands RULES!!

PARIS, MO still rolling thru production...

2006-11-15T13:01:00.000-05:00

This past week, I got a solid 3 days worth of production on the forthcoming PARIS, MO.
Everything went very smoothly...and we were very pleased with the results...

check out production stills here...

more to come.

the crime

2006-10-26T21:57:00.000-04:00

the crime
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

recently paid a ticket for this offense...blogging it so i can one day run for office...

painting the inside of the hole

2006-10-26T21:54:00.000-04:00

painting the inside of the hole
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

Sophie enjoys a fervent paint session at the Charleston Children's Museum. The colors here just kill me they're so pretty. She painted that hole for about 10 minutes...

@ the museo del puppetry arts

2006-10-17T02:26:00.000-04:00

@ the museo del puppetry arts
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

gumby and pokey were a childhood favorite...

in fact, the gummi candy versions play a part in the long and storied history I have with my old friend Leigh...

the weirdest thing about them (G & P i mean) is that they interacted effortlessly with the likes of founding fathers and historical / fantasy figures, and nobody called Gumby on being a stick of gum.

weird.

Ben Franklin, you'd think he'd notice...

'you got it all!'

2006-10-09T11:37:00.000-04:00

'you got it all!'
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

have you seen this man?

the infamous B.PB.B

2006-09-26T09:11:00.000-04:00

the infamous B.PB.B
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

i now what you're thinking...it's plate of bacon-wrapped scallops...

sigh

no, sadly it's the latest in dessert technology from Ensign Enterprises.

The B.PB.B.

Banana, Peanut Butter, Bacon (turkey)

and it was brought out to celebrate Ed's 30th

light reading

2006-09-21T11:04:00.000-04:00

Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

this was kindly left for public consumption on the marta platform today. while on the train, i spotted the fellow who placed it. since i had thumbed through it, i felt that he was sizing me up for recruitment. i got off at the next stop.

Lewis and Clark

2006-09-20T00:33:00.000-04:00

Just getting excited about the America i learned about in books. The reading kind.

if you ever make to Montana...

located @ N45 59'43.91 W108 00'18.63 for all you Google-earthers...

you can see details here, in this random guy's trip there;

Ed @ Ted's

2006-09-08T13:44:00.000-04:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clermonthound/237763175/
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

ed started the day the text message...'Face lunch' and ended it with the 'fantasy' of a Mexican Burger...

next thing we knew, we were at Ted's Montana Grill and he's pushing a New Mexico Burger past his 'stache...

the walk to work does you good

2006-09-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

walking home (albeit via MARTA) really really excited me yesterday. stopped for dinner at an Atlanta institution for the express purpose of getting some sunset shots. beauty eh?

take MARTA, it's sMARTA.

taking the train to work

2006-09-06T10:47:00.000-04:00

bye bye Southie
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

it's easy, fast, and efficient...take a look

Composition Gallery

2006-09-06T00:36:00.000-04:00

inside the gallery looking out
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

the weekend of August 26th, the same as the GP Shade Fest, one of my photos was also exhibited at the Composition Gallery in Candler Park. click the photo to view a snippet of the show.

be sure to stop by and see Ron and catch their upcoming show, Continuum.

Grant Park Shade Festival has come and gone!

2006-08-28T15:26:00.000-04:00

Here's a shot of the set-up, and many thanks to those of you who made it out to the park.
It sure was a hot one out there.

The biggest news came from Derek and Sarah Robertson who brought young Reid Robertson into the world instead of coming out to support me!!!! Selfish jerks!

So one festival down, and many more to follow...Stay tuned to the blog for info and updates.

Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

art dawg

2006-08-23T11:15:00.000-04:00

art dawg
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

i don't know how Brent would feel about this

1st use of a credit card by yours truly at waffle house

2006-08-22T15:15:00.000-04:00

1st use of a credit card by yours truly at waffle house
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

NEWSFLASH!!!!

I know it's probably old hat to those of you who already know...but Credit Cards are now welcome at the HOUSE...

GET OUT THIS WEEKEND

2006-08-21T09:55:00.000-04:00

hey there, you got two choices for your weekend...see some art or be some art!

for the SEE
Grant Park Summer Shade Festival

August 26-27th will be the 4th annual Grant Park Summer Shade Festival...Somewhere In Utah photography will make it's 2nd festival appearance...wish me luck! Check them out at the Grant Park conservancy site. And more importantly, if you're in the area, come out and see us!
http://www.summershade.org/

and for the BE
Composition Gallery
i will be hanging a piece in their Velcro Show on August 26th and you should too!!! swing by and meet Ron and check out the gallery. Get him your pieces by August 25th!!

http://www.compositiongallery.com/about.php

so get out and DO this weekend.

bag end

2006-08-14T01:37:00.000-04:00

bag end
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

found this photo of Sophie from last summer...it just cracks me up.

she was trying out for the Lord of the Rings prequel, the Hobbit.

sadly, she didn't have the foot hair.

delta art cow

2006-08-08T23:25:00.000-04:00

delta art cow
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

another of brent's favorites

wow

2006-08-08T23:24:00.000-04:00

wow
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

These are protocols for military reaction to flight plan deviations...up in some guy's cube.

our pa wouldn't take this for me...i wanted it.

the pigeon whisperer

2006-08-02T23:13:00.000-04:00

the pigeon whisperer
Originally uploaded by clermonthound.

Mike Brune' - The Aquaman of Pigeons

Somewhere In Utah

NYC photography

Somewhere In Utah: P90x

P90x

fall

so...what would you little maniacs like to do first?

Obama Wins

finally Gervais is funny

HA...Go Tweety Bird

the boss

They Live

nancy grace...oh how pathetic she is...

your boy

R.I.P. Jesse Helms...COCKSUCKER

10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency

bond 2.0 #2 - looking tight

slo-mo baby=awesome

Empire or Democracy: Are We Ready for the Fall?

John McCain, as classy as Hillary...

Dammit Jim!

Fire at Universal Studios

"Don't get saucy with me Bernaise"

Harvery Corman, an American Classic

No Country For Gay Men

Happy Memorial Day

Olbermann speaks to Hillary's Assassination Comments...

Hillay Sucks...More...She's truly a class act

Hillary Death Watch...

Grand Pappy the Appeaser

a face only an adulterer could love

McCain/Clinton '08

never have i wanted to punch someone more than...

wow

The Jackals Strike

if you haven't read John Perkins' tell-all book, CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HITMAN, about the lifestyle of a right-wing money-monger, you really must go out and get it.

Voting Machine Company Co-Founder Killed in Small Plane Crash in Caracas

what an ass

i'd have voted for Bush if this were really him...

progress in iraq

Headline of the week: "A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida’s Navy"

A Submarine to Fight al-Qaida’s Navy

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080401_a_submarine_to_fight_al_qaidas_navy/

Posted on Apr 1, 2008

Boo!

Christians should pay attention...

Christians seek to follow Jesus on homeless retreat

Seven men accept challenge to live among disadvantaged in effort to grow spiritually.

Betty White is the 'man'

nice...keep an eye on these guys...or we win nothing in '08

you're momma's so fat, her belt size is "equator"...

two best things of the week...three in fact

goodness gracious

i don't know what got into me, really...

FDR is A-OK!

they were here first...right?

sophie tells it like it is...

worst thing i've heard all day

alex orr told me this was the best...

Find me this film...

The Sanest Republican...in 1994

the maestro

G.O.B. for President '08

do you have the crazy.com

more FALWELL hits keep coming...

to quote the man himself..."Thank God"

World Shocked That Wolfowitz Has Girlfriend

World Shocked That Wolfowitz Has Girlfriend

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/world_shocked_that_wolfowitz_has_girlfriend/

Posted on Apr 20, 2007

Damian is all conference

dancing in the park

our forthcoming war with Iran...

---------------------------------

The botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

Exclusive Report: How a bid to kidnap Iranian security officials sparked a diplomatic crisis

By Patrick Cockburn

Published: 03 April 2007

Homelessness...the lost America

America Gone Wrong: A Slashed Safety Net Turns Libraries into Homeless Shelters

By Chip Ward, Tomdispatch.comPosted on April 2, 2007, Printed on April 2, 2007http://www.alternet.org/story/50023/

By Chip Ward, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on April 2, 2007, Printed on April 2, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50023/

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/50023/

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig
Posted on February 8, 2007, Printed on February 8, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47679/

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/47679/

By Chris Hedges, AlterNet
Posted on January 19, 2007, Printed on January 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/46908/

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/46908/