artbycassiday

Republican Strategy - A Reminder

2012-01-18T07:02:00.001-08:00

Lest we forget the Republican strategy established many years ago: "Let's hand the next President an economy in free fall, a corrupt and collapsing financial system, a trillion dollar annual budget deficit, and two failing wars. Then we'll fight everything he does to try to fix the total catastrophe we created, weaken every effort made to fix the shattered economy, attack everything about him and his policies, rewrite history, and just make sh** up. Better yet, we'll create a phony grass roots group organized and paid for by the Koch brothers and their corporations and bus them around and have them wear goofy clothes. No matter what the President wants to do we'll call it 'socialist' or 'liberal' or 'big government.' Then when the next campaign comes along, we'll complain that he hasn't done enough. People have such short memories, they might just put us back in office. Okay, that's our plan. We'll promise to do all the things that got us into this mess in the first place - voters won't even notice. Let's go do it."

Questions Andy Rooney Might Have Asked

2012-01-03T13:32:00.000-08:00

Here are a few questions that Andy Rooney might have asked on a day like today:

Why is it that the same people who demand organized prayer in their public schools oppose mosques in their neighborhoods?

Why is it that the same crowd who went Constitutional ape-sh** crazy about having to purchase health insurance voted 525 to 10 to imprison American citizens arrested in America, indefinitely and without charges, in military prisons or even rendition them to foreign countries?

Why is it that Republicans will make you have the baby, but not require you buy health insurance for her?

Why is it that the same people who are making it more difficult for people to vote in state after state are complaining about how hard it is to get on the Republican ballot in Virginia?

Why is it that anti abortionists want to prevent the use any tax dollars from funding abortion anywhere. but they still want me to pay taxes to fund executions?

Why is it that the same bunch of people who claim to worship our Constitution want to radically change it?

Why is it that the same people who want to get government out of our lives want the government to ban birth control, regulate marital sex, and annul gay marriages?

Why is that the same people who used to proclaim LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT to the protestors I was in the middle of are now the ones I think LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT about?

Bud C

;-) The Life and Times of the Semicolon

2011-08-20T11:24:00.000-07:00

In my review of the use of the semicolon the other day, possibly the most misused punctuation mark in our day, I discovered its tumultuous history, its passion producing power, and its unique place in our punctuation paradigm.Semicolons are both chosen and eschewed and desired and disdained. It has technical utility: it may be used to separate items in a series which contain internal commas, for example. It is used between independent clauses when the writer wishes to show a close, but undefined, relationship between the clauses. And , of course, in front of a conjunctive adverb, such as therefore or however. The most familiar usage, I suspect, these days is the use of the semicolon as the sideways winkie smiley face emoticon thingie -- ;-).

My mother instilled in me a strong sense of grammatic rightness and wrongness and the correct use of all of our punctuation marks; and my current reading of The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park, has provided me many enjoyable insights into our language. I have thought of myself, though, as an open-minded liberal descriptivist, but I am becoming more aware of my many latent conservative prescriptivist tendencies. I can't quite get used to "on accident" in place of "by accident" or "acidentally," for example. I am fairly convinced, however, that unless you are a computer programmer or a mathematician, one can have lived a happy, fruitful, and contented life without ever having used a semicolon.

As Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and others have pointed out, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, P.G. Wodehouse, George Orwell, Umberto Eco, Ernest Hemingway, Kurt Vonnegut, and Stephen King have either entirely disdained or used only sparingly the semicolon. As Vonnegut in A Man Without a Country (2005) stated: "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

Kurt Vonnegut's political incorrectness to our transvestite hermaphrodite brothers and/or sisters aside, the semicolon did and does have its modern proponents. George Bernard Shaw in a communication to T E Lawrence criticizing his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. "You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life." Gertrude Stein said: "They are more powerful more imposing more pretentious than a comma but they are a comma all the same. They really have within them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature." And Will Self, British novelist and short story writer said about semicolons, "I like them — they are a three-quarter beat to the half and full beats of commas and full stops. Prose has its own musicality, and the more notation the better. I like dashes, double-dashes, comashes and double comashes just as much. The colon is an umlaut waiting to jump; the colon dash is teasingly precipitous." Apparently Shakespeare used comashes, a comma followed by a dash: ,-. They are certainly not very common. If I ever see student essays with comashes, I'll at least know where they came from. Oscar Wilde regularly used the semicolon: "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people’s. To be poor and not complain is difficult; to be rich and not complain is easy."

T. S. Eliot used semicolons in The Wasteland: 'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; 'They called me the hyacinth girl.' And Robert Frost: "My sorrow, when she's here with me,/Thinks these dark days of autumn rain/Are beautiful as days can be;/She loves the hare, the withered tree;/She walks the sodden pasture lane." But a quick read of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl For Carl Solomon" shows about a thousand commas and exclamation points and just one period. Not a single semicolon among those 2956 elegiac tumbling frantic words. And that single period is not even at the end. A quick scan of a couple dozen Emily Dickinson poems showed a fair number of periods and a generous dose of exclamation points and dashes. But not a single semicolon. Fully expecting a Romantic disdain for semicolons in Walt Whitman, I found plenty of exclamations and dashes and appropriately placed periods; Whitman does give those ubiquitous exclamation points and dashes an exuberant workout. But I did find the occasional semicolon.

And while Mark Twain has plenty, Norman Mailer's "the White Negro Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" has only a few. A glance at George Santayana and John Crowe Ransom reveals a reasonable application of the semicolon while Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" has two. And Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" appears to eschew semicolons entirely and only begrudgingly uses commas and even then primarily for speech tags only. "'Another brandy,' he said, pointing to his glass." I found a few in William Faulkner's The Old Man. But only a few. A glance at Joseph Heller's God Knows found this: "Although I never actually walked with God, I did talk with Him a lot and got along with Him in perfect rapport until I offended Him the first time; then He offended me, and later we offended each other." And of David's admiration for Abishag, "The girl is heaven-sent; I cannot avoid the feeling that perhaps I am entertaining an angel unawares."

Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Saul Bellow are clearly aware that there exists such a punctuation mark, but aren't obsessed with its usage. I expected to find, and indeed did find, a judicious use of the semicolon in Henry James'"The Art of Fiction": "A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life; that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression." And "The successful application of any art is a delightful spectacle, but the theory too is interesting; and though there is a great deal of the latter without the former I suspect there has never been a genuine success that has not had a latent core of conviction."

A national controversy erupted in France in 2008 regarding the declining use of the point-virgule. Jon Henley in The Guardian in 2008 reports that the French blame the English and Americans for its declining usage. "To listen to France's small but growing army of semicolon fans, the full-frontal assault on the semicolon launched by uncultured modern writers and journalists and spearheaded by those idiot Anglo-Saxons is, sadly, just another symptom of the present-day malaise of French language and culture. As the great early 20th-century Gallic novelist, essayist, playwright and Academician Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de Montherlant so succinctly put it in his Carnets: 'One immediately recognises a man of judgment by the use he makes of the semicolon.'" But the usage of the semicolon in France also has a disputatious history. As Paul Collins, Portland State University, points out in his 2009 article in Slate, "Has Modern Life Killed the Semicolon?", two University of Paris professors dueled in 1837 over the disputed use of a semicolon: 'The one who contended that the passage in question ought to be concluded by a semicolon was wounded in the arm,' noted the Times of London.'His adversary maintained that it should be a colon.'"

According to a popular online encyclopedia, in 1494 "the Italian printer Aldus Manutius established the practice of using the semicolon to separate words of opposed meaning and to indicate interdependent statements." The semicolon was first generally used in English print by Ben Jonson. Shakespeare did not use semicolons in his manuscripts, but the printed versions do contain the occasional semicolon thought to have been inserted by his contemporary radical modernist transcribers. Collins notes that Samuel Taylor Coleridge mused that "the semicolon is far more common in the elder English Classics. It was perhaps used in excess by them; but the disuse seems a worse evil." As Coleridge hints, says Collins, "semicolons hit a speed bump with Romanticism's craze for dashes, for words that practically spasmed off the page. Take this sample from the 1814 poem The Orphans: 'Dead—dead—quite dead—and pale—oh!—oh!'" Collins also points us to Edgar A. Poe's 1848 "Marginalia" in which Poe declared himself "mortified" that printers were once again using too many semicolons.

The development of the telegraph, an early form of texting, and the high cost of messages is credibly thought to have discouraged the use of the semicolon in the mid 1800's. Twentieth century action fiction is also a historical suspect in the ebb part of the ebb and flow of semicolon usage according to the Times in 1943: "The semicolon is the enemy of action; it is the agent of reflection and meditation."

Consider the advice of British writer on grammar Lynne Truss: "They are old-fashioned," "They are middle-class," "They are optional" "They are mysteriously connected to pausing," "They are dangerously addictive (vide Virginia Woolf)," and "The difference between them is too negligible to be grasped by the brain of man."

So where does that leave us? I say if you are going to use semicolons, use them sparingly and correctly; remember that one can have lived a happy, fruitful, and contented life never having used a semicolon. Now, about that Oxford comma.....;-)

Read My Lips - No New Texans

2011-08-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

Michele Bachmann won the Iowa Circus Freak Show, er, I mean the Republican Straw Poll at the Iowa State Fair, narrowly edging out Ron Paul. Why this straw poll is even covered is a bit of a mystery. Michele bought 6,000 tickets and distributed them to her supporters to attend and vote for her and ended up with 4800+ votes. She continues to mangle history and stare strangely into space. Joe Scarborough said Bachmann voters were "not fit to run Slurpee machines...." When now ex-candidate Tim Pawlenty asked her to name her accomplishments in Congress, she said, "I introduced the light bulb freedom of choice act." A bit of a short list. Ron Paul continues to be quirky and strange, and ideology always trumps knowledge and facts.

Michele Bachmann's campaign theme song could be based on Sam Cooke's old classic: "Don't Know Much About History" - Don't know much about history, don't know much about biology, don't know much about algebra, don't know much about trigonometry, don't know much about economics, don't know much about other countries, don't know much about sociology, don't know much about psychology, don't know much about science, don't know much about theology, don't know much about the arts, don't know much about epistemology, don't know much about geography, don't know much about geology, don't know much about, criminal justice, don't know much about much............

Meanwhile, Governor Rick Perry, "maybe we'll secede from the union," announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President and is simultaneously running away from his record and continuing to say crazy stuff like Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke is "treasonous." We'll see how this goes, but he may be "Hair today, gone tomorrow." He has some strange connections with a dark version of Christian apocalyptists and dominionists....I hope the lamestream media doesn't give him a pass on his strange vision. His claims of the Texas miracle seem to hinge on three things: Texas sits on oil the price of which has skyrocketed, Texas has huge numbers of Mexican immigrants, and Perry took Obama's stimulus funds to balance his state's budget. Perry has been described as not as "cerebral" as George W. Bush. Now, that's going some.

Read My Lips - No New Texans.

Former half-term Governor and losing vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin even drove her bus to Iowa to hang out. I'm guessing she sold a few books.

Mitt Romney finally made some news with his "Corporations are people, my friend" comment. Even if constitutionally true, it makes for a bad sound bite sure to appear later if he is the party's nomination.

Goethe said, "There's nothing worse than the active pursuit of ignorance." Ideology always trumps knowledge and facts. If that doesn't describe the above cast of characters, I don't know what does.

John Boehner's Real Message Last Night

2011-07-26T08:52:00.000-07:00

Let's keep one thing in mind as we debate these votes on the debt ceiling: Congress is voting on whether to pay for stuff it's already passed during the George W. Bush administration - tax cuts for the rich, two wars, and a Medicare prescription plan. Republicans didn't pay for any of this in the Bush years when we were in control of the government, and we're sure as hell not going to pay for them now with a Democrat in the White House!

It was our good fortune that the economy tanked during the last year of President Bush's administration. The near collapse of the entire economy has played right into our hands. It matters not that Congress has voted on debt ceiling increases a hundred times over the years. What matters, in those stirring words of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, is not what we can do to help govern our country, but what we can do to defeat President Obama.

We handed President Obama a huge sack of economic doggie-doo back in 2009 and have fought tirelessly to undermine every attempt by the President and Democrats to bring our country out of the largest recession since the Great Depression. We have fought every attempt to rebuild our infrastructure, save the auto industry, reform the financial markets, care for our senior citizens, and sick children. We are working in every state across this once great and caring nation to weaken unions, degrade public education, and reduce environmental quality and insure that the protection of endangered species applies to venture capitalists and developers, not snails and frogs. We believe higher levels of particulate pollution is not a bad thing, a little mercury won't hurt, we've got enough swamps already, and a little lead is in the back yard soil won't hurt kids that much.

Exploitation of natural resources is what made our country great.

But back to the debt ceiling. We will not pay our bills unless the President agrees to our plans to take money away from senior citizens' social security and medicare, sick kids' medicaid, and the unemployed's insurance so we can give it to the rich. Medicare operates with administrative costs that are just a fraction of the private sector health industry; private health care plans like we envision would create ten times as many administrative jobs to do the same health care. Now, that's job creation. We have the highest medical costs of any country in the world with nowhere near the best outcomes. Our proposal to end Medicare will require us to spend more and more on ineffective administration of health care creating more and more bureaucratic low paying careers with ever more ineffective medical outcomes. What's not to like?

And this is just one example of our program. Our plans to privatize Social Security will result in untold billions of management fees for Wall Street fat cats unlike the current system which utilizes the safety and stability of the United States of America. Our plan to crash the economy of America and the world for political gain appears to be working. Why would we stop now?

Undermining the full faith and credit of the United States will be good for, well, I don't exactly remember who that will be good for, (I think I read that Eric Cantor's stock portfolio could benefit), but we cannot continue to afford to pay for tax breaks for oil companies, and corporate jets, and hedge fund managers, and the richest 400 families who own 60% of the nation's wealth. So something has to give.

And besides, the Tea Party doesn't listen to me anymore anyway.

So good night and good luck.

- Speaker of the House, John Boehner

A Prayer for Norway

2011-07-25T09:43:00.001-07:00

We are too often confronted with trying to make sense of the senseless. The bombing and mass murders in Norway are now added to the list of atrocities we must reconcile. In the United States, we have our Timothy McVeigh and Unabomber and the KKK and Jared Loughner and all the civil rights murders and other armed militias with their violent ideologies and conspiracy theories. The Muslim World has its Al Qaeda which attacked New York City and later bombed a mosque in Iraq to incite a civil war for geopolitical purposes in the power vacuum following the removal of Saddam Hussein.

Norway now has its Anders Behring Breivik

These hearts of darkness stun us time after time. The faces of evil, as much as we would like them to look Middle Eastern, most often don't. The look like us. They look like an Omaha teenager. Or a kid from Arizona or Colorado. Or from anywhere, USA. This latest incarnation looks like he should be modeling sweaters in Norway. It's disturbing and frightening and perplexing as we do the psychological postmortems and find the threads of pseudo Christian or racial or Islamic fundamentalism and their accompanying chaos of ideological, economic, and political manifestos.

The immediate reaction of irresponsible media was to blame Muslims for the Norwegian attacks. How wrong that has proven. I'm listening to the Beatles' Norwegian Wood as I write this. It was written by John Lennon who was murdered in 1980. Yoko Ono issued a statement the next day, saying "There is no funeral for John," ending it with the words, "John loved and prayed for the human race. Please pray the same for him." So love and pray for the human race.

That's about the only thing here that makes sense.

Amen.

Money Talks

2011-07-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

On the debt ceiling vote - Despite President Obama's inclination to give away the farm, Republicans can't take yes for an answer, and so we are in a continued impasse with Republicans now deciding if they can't get everything we want, then they just might want nothing. Having heard the President offer a 5 to 1 cuts- to- revenues formula, Republicans threw a temper tantrum about taxes on the rich and eliminating subsidies for the 5 largest oil companies in the world and ending tax breaks for corporate jets.

It's an ideological fantasy world..........these are the same people who took a $300 billion surplus at the beginning of George W. Bush's first term and turned it into a TRILLION $$$ annual deficit in just eight years. If the Republican supply side theories were true, we would have a roaring economy now that taxes are at the lowest point in five decades. There may have been points in history where lowering marginal rates could generate marginal employment increases, but we've long since passed that point. The Laffer curve is now the Laugher curve among non-ideological economists.

Tea Party/Republican threats on the debt ceiling vote are to default on the debt and plunge the world into a depression unless President Obama and Democrats agree to kill Medicare, privatize Social Security, lay off a million teachers, police officers, firefighters, public utility workers, highway maintenance workers, public hospital nurses, etc., etc., etc., take hundreds of billions if not trillions of $$$ out of the economy, end unemployment insurance, cut children off medicaid, break all the remaining unions, eliminate collective bargaining rights, lower peoples' wages everywhere, increase taxes on the poor and middle-class, throw people off their health insurance plans, and using that money for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and tax-payer subsidized corporations making record profits while paying no taxes and out-sourcing work to China or India, and let rich people and corporations own and run everything. Republican Governors across the country are working examples. Their negotiating theory is an all or nothing approach where what's yours is ours and what's mine is mine.

But there are fractures appearing:

The US Chamber of Commerce has sent a letter to Congress stating the obvious - the debt ceiling must be raised. Wall Street is getting a bit tired of the Tea Party antics now that its own profit margins are threatened. As long as the Tea Party charade only hurt other people, it was fine, but now...............not so. Defaulting on US debt includes their money.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came up with an ingenious solution: we'll cede all Congressional authority to the President on the debt ceiling issue and create a system whereby a only a super-majority vote could overturn the President's raising of the ceiling. Republicans would, of course, retain the right to complain about it later. Talk about cynical.

And the Republican rank and file still are waiting for a good candidate:

Sarah Palin's movie is playing to empty theaters according to news reports now that her few diehard fans have seen it.

Mitt Romney continues to have problems with his past "success." One really was a success - the Massachussetts health insurance program but is now the bane of Republican mostly because Barack Obama adopted it as a model for his own health insurance reform act. The second is Romney's job destruction and the thousands of layoffs he orchestrated working for an equity firm. Not much job creation there.

Michele Bachmann's anti-gay positions and her past church affiliations with their anti Catholic views is beginning to catch up to her. Michele Bachmann's husband is proving a liability right now with his anti-gay Christian counseling clinic which received Medicaid $$$. Now there's a Medicaid practice which could be eliminated. Spouses probably shouldn't be an issue, but she is a partner in the business and should have to answer questions about it. So far, she's refusing to talk about it. She and her husband left their anti-Catholic church days after she announced her run for the presidency.

Herman Cain's anti-Muslim rants are, I hope and pray, starting to lose their appeal.

Tim Pawlenty's role in leaving Minnesota a financial basket case and his remarks that in the event of a default we should pay the Chinese before we pay military salaries is perhaps not the best soundbite to have out there.

Newt Gingrich's "delusional," in the words of a Republican strategist, campaign is hemorrhaging money mostly for private jet transport.

Jon Huntsman or Rick Santorum haven't appeared in press reports for days.

Other Republican candidates have disappeared into the fog and other potential candidates are still sitting on the fence.Governor Rick Perry, George W. Bush's Lieutenant Governor in Texas, is another possible entry. But his weird political philosophy which has included threats of secession from the United States, the dismantling of any semblance of a social welfare net in Texas, along with some right wing Christian affiliations, and Confederate worshiping rhetoric pose problems.

So there you go; I'm predicting that the Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street arm of the Republican Party will force the passage of the debt ceiling increase. After all, they purchased the Republican Party, and it better do what they say. Adolescent Tea Party tantrums and horn blowing aside, money rules.

A Memorable Fourth of July

2011-07-03T07:10:00.000-07:00

It must have been in 1963 or 1964 in Friend, Nebraska, a town of about 1,000 people on Highway 6 about 40 miles west of Lincoln. I was on the Pee Wee or Little League Baseball team and we had played our game and whether we won or lost, I don't remember. But after the game we were to have fireworks, and boy, did we.

Doc Pollard, the dentist in town, was responsible for the fireworks show after the game. So out in center field he parked his 1954 Desoto or 1953 Plymouth or Hudson loaded with fireworks and was one by one removing them and shooting them off to the delight of the small town crowd. The town dentist was something of a celebrity as I remember.

The children, having frolicked through the mosquito fogger's fog as that sweet blue smoke filled the streets surrounding the ball park, were back in the bleachers or sitting in the infield to watch the patriotic display. Doc Pollard lit the fuses and stood back to watch as the rockets and explosions and sparklers and pyrotechnics regaled the crowd.

Then things got interesting. An errant rocket or spark or ember made its way into the Desoto or Plymouth or Hudson filled with the remaining fireworks and it was a grand explosion! Or rather a series of explosions. The rocket's red glare filled the vehicle with light and smoke. The bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that the car was still there. But barely.

Rockets shot through the exploded windows in all directions scooting across the ground, trails of brightly colored exhaust and explosions marking their trajectories. Kids gathered on the infield ran for their lives! I was hiding behind a telephone pole for cover. I was skinny enough back then that this was quite effective. No one was hurt as I remember.

The explosions continued for several minutes as the car was engulfed in flames.... Eventually the fireworks ended but we watched the car burn...... It was all quite spectacular! I have vague recollections of the local fire department finally extinguishing the flames.

We lived across the alley from Doc Pollard's dental practice and for months we could see the burned out hulk of his Desoto/Plymouth/Hudson parked behind his office. I don't remember if he ever drove it again or not. Or whether he was asked again to manage the fireworks.

2011-06-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

I noticed something before dawn today I hadn't seen before.....a Milk2you.com delivery van. I was making my regular early morning drive to get son Jeremy to 6 am football workouts at Bellevue East. I liked it way better before he wrecked his car and for nearly a month was able to get himself around without parental taxi service. Back in Papillion, I saw a Milk2you.com delivery van leaving my neighborhood. A little investigation revealed that it is just what it says it is.....you can order milk and other dairy products and a few other items on-line and for $3.20, the items will be delivered to your door. That certainly brought back memories of years ago when milk was routinely delivered to one's door - to that small wooden box with the hinged lid where the milk bottles were placed. Glass bottles through which you could see the separated elements that make up milk. The wooden box is now replaced by a required 50-60 qt. cooler, and in freezing weather, the delivery driver will ring your doorbell so the products don't freeze. Perhaps in the future you will receive a text message. So there you have it -- a .com blast to the past.

“Corruptio optimi pessima” - Anthony's Weiner

2011-06-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

“corruptio optimi pessima” - the corruption of the best is the worst

There's something sad about otherwise good men getting caught with their pants down. The pathos, the hypocrixy, the media orgy of it all. Liar Andrew Breitbart stumbles across a true story and claims redemption in a hijacked press conference. Political enemies of The New Deal, The New Frontier, and The Great Society utilize the failings of Anthony Weiner for their cynical political gain. The mass media suffers mass hysteria. And we the viewers lap it up.

Anthony Weiner has now provided many days of bad puns mixed with pathos and cynical politics with the outright glee of his political opponents.

Anthony's wife is very close to the Clinton's, and so we had the occurrence of Anthony Weiner having to apologize to Bill Clinton for his cyber-sexual indiscretions. How pathetic and ironic is that?

Rachel Maddow did a nice job of dissecting the Beltway hypocrisy of it all with her report on Republican reactions to Anthony Weiner in comparison to their response to Republican Senator David Vitter.

I'm guessing that Rep. Weiner will resign soon, go through counseling to try to save his marriage, and maybe co-anchor a CNN hour with Eliot Spitzer.

At any rate, the corruption of the best is the worst.

Reading in the Bathroom

2011-05-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

My current reading list includes: "The World According to Garp" by John Irving, "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon (a descendent of Nathaniel Hawthorne, btw), Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," "Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, and my list for future reading includes James Joyce's "Ulysses," and "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole. "Blue Highways" by William Least Heat Moon is on my ongoing list, too, although I haven't picked it up in quite a while. Timothy Schaffert's "The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters" is also on my bedstand as well as Roger Rosenblatt's "Unless it Moves the Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing."

Rosenblatt says of writing: "We write to make suffering endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible." Great literature attempts these noble purposes. Reading great literature allows one to participate in the humanity of it all. Think of "Don Quixote" or "The Grapes of Wrath" or "Frankenstein" and the humanity of it all. "Huckleberry Finn" or "Catch-22" or "Slaughterhouse-Five" or a James Thurber story and the humor of it all. The many ways these writers confront suffering and evil and explore justice and love is a testament to the possibilities of life.

I dabble in reading these various novels. Some are by my bed, another in the bathroom. Sometimes I carry one with me in my brief case. A favorite simile of mine is there is nothing as full as an adjunct English teacher's brief case. My brief case tends to function as my portable office/filing cabinet. So carrying that extra book around is only a sometimes thing as my brief case gains weight during a quarter or semester. Sometimes a book will be my easy chair in the living room, but the television is a distraction there, as well as my Barca Lounger's comfortable and nap-inducing leather texture. Reading in the bathroom tends to be a short lived exercise. And the bedtime reading often won't last very long if I am very tired. But I persist and have read Joseph Heller's "God Knows" several times during those short bathroom reading stints.

I like the eclectic quality of my current reading list. I like the smell of books. I like that they have heft and weight and are among the "things" of life. I go back and forth between the idea that we own things, and they own us. And I don't mind that my books "own" me.

There are as many combinations of books on a bookshelf, as there are permutation applications in algorythmic turbo coding combinatronic Eularian numbers, and as there freckles on faces.

So this recent painting is a snapshot of books I love and admire. Enjoy. A friend of mine suggested I could offer customized commissioned paintings of your favorite books as well. So there you go.

Regards,
Bud C

Old Lodge Skins, Sisyphus, Sir Isaac Newton, Harold Camping, and Me

2011-05-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

The Sisyphean efforts of Harold Camping and others at predicting The Rapture always (so far at least) have the same result. They push their predictions ever higher and higher against the slope of reason only to have that rock roll back down and they start over the next day pushing that same prediction up that steep hill. Noted television preacher Pat Robertson pushed that rock years ago, as well as a motley crew of other doomsday cheerleaders: a William Miller, an American Baptist, thought 1844 was the year; Jehovah's Witnesses have had a kind of rolling bet going for many years; a Chuck Smith of the Foursquare Gospel Church thought it was in 1981; 1988 was the year according to Edgar Whisenant; would be Sisypheans in Korea were hoping 1992 was the year; Harold Camping predicted 1994 and May 21, 2011; according to an on-line encyclopedia, the great Sir Isaac Newton thought 2060 could be the year.

Robert Frost wrote a poem with a droll and dry wit that frames the issues in personal terms: desire and hate.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice./From what I've tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire./But if it had to perish twice,/I think I know enough of hate/To say that for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice.

And I suspect avoiding this personal perspective is what is at work with these End Times advocates.

Perhaps it is easier to contemplate the end of everything than the end of oneself. Now there's a paradox. I have a poet friend whose image of an individual's death is that of a piece of cloth being torn from the fabric of life. But the fabric is gradually mended so that the rent fabric of life is repaired. I like that image. The continuum of life continues. It is small and personal and real. We have our few years in this life to contribute what we can and then our time is done. The attempts by the end times zealots to include everyone in their extravaganzas is amusing and pathetic and filled with hubris.

There's a scene from one of my favorite movies, Little Big Man, that came to mind while I was contemplating this strange topic. In the midst of the extermination of his people, Old Lodge Skins is ready to die and climbs to the top of a hill and lies down to join his ancestors. A sprinkle of rain brings him out of his sleep. His young companion, Jack Crabb renamed Little Big Man by the Cheyenne, is at his side. With Old Lodge Skins, it's personal.

[Grandfather, who has laid himself down to die, wakes up]

Old Lodge Skins: Am I still in this world?

Jack Crabb: Yes, Grandfather.

Old Lodge Skins: [groans] I was afraid of that. Well, sometimes the magic works. Sometimes, it doesn't.

Little Big Man

Sometimes the magic works. Sometimes, it doesn't. So the next prediction that I know of is on my birthday in 2012, Dec. 21, the Mayan calendar thing. The apocalypse media machine will be churning like crazy soon. The Post Rapture Pet Care companies will shift gears to the Mayan Calendar End Times advertising campaign. I continue to believe the ancient Mayans were about to roll out their next calendar with the Spaniards showed up and personally delivered the apocalypse to the Mayans well ahead of schedule.

Earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, famines, floods, tornadoes, and all the man made disasters we invent are part and parcel of our circumstances. Perhaps Harold Camping and all the rest of us would be better off living in the here and now fighting injustice, ending war, feeding the hungry, lifting up the poor, sharing the loaves and fishes, and playing with our kids.

Later, Bud C

UPDATE: Harold Camping said a couple of days later that May 21 was the "invisible Rapture" and that the world will end on Oct. 21, 2011. It's good to know that he remains undaunted and is still on the job! And although he's never been right, that doesn't appear to bother him one bit.

Newts, Man Dates, Republicans in the Garden of Eden, and Inadvertent Truth

2011-05-18T05:59:00.000-07:00

In the category of inadvertent truth: Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich calls Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare "radical right wing social engineering." He ate crow from the right wing for a day and then ate humble pie. And in anticipation of the many televised ads showing his remarks, he now says, "Any ad that quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood." Reminds me of that old Yogi Berra remark, "I never said all the things I said."

In the category of What the F*** was he Thinking: Another Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum responds to Senator John McCain's impassioned speech against torture and the fact that torture did not lead to Osama Bin Laden's death. Senator McCain, said Rick Santorum, "doesn't understand enhanced interrogation." Presumably, one of Santorum's staff assistants will point out to him that McCain spent many years undergoing torture in a North Vietnamese camp.

Add Arnold Schwarzenegger's name to a long list of Republican men who can't keep their pants on. I know there are Democrats on that list, but the Republican's supposed fundamental Christian spouting off, provides a far greater contrast between the words and the actions on the hypocrisy scale.

On another amazing note, the National Rifle Association is fighting a gun law provision that would give the US Attorney authority to prohibit sales of weapons to suspected terrorists under surveillance pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Authority Act. I might add that US gun dealers are doing a bang up job of arming the Mexican drug cartels.

Next, the "mandates" developed by the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, and supported by George W. Bush, Newt Gingrich, and incorporated into Massachusetts law under then Governor Mitt Romney, is now being challenged as unconstitutional by those same named persons and many states. The US Supreme Court will ultimately hear the case. I am developing a theory, however, that the issue is not a constitutional issue after all. In the context of Republican opposition to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell and its support of the Defense of Marriage Act, and general opposition of gay rights everywhere all the time, the problem is the name "mandate." They just don't like man dates.

Finally, the Republican candidates for President are a shrinking group. Donald Trump flamed out in glorious fashion. Mike Huckabee is going after the FOX News $$$. Newt Gingrich is named after a small amphibian many of which produce toxins in their skin. Sounds about right. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are watching the other candidates self-destruct and biding their time although Sarah Palin is plummeting in the polls while Michele Bachmann is raising oodles of money. Another Republican maybe is Mitch Daniels, who as George W. Bush's Budget Director, oversaw the $256 Billion surplus left by President Clinton become a $400 Billion deficit in GWB's first two years before leaving. Hard to run on that.

So there you go.

A Bad Few Days for Republicans

2011-05-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

You gotta feel sorry for Republicans this last couple of weeks: The Birth Certificate controversy, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin's political careers, the Republican repeal of health care, and Osama bin Laden all dead in the span of a few days! Wow! General Motors, which the Republicans wanted to let die, and President Obama rescued, posted a $3.2 Billion quarterly profit. Even the price of oil dropped. And 268,000 private sector jobs were added to the nation's economy last month. The Featherweight Division of the Republican Party held their first debate last night to what must have been the smallest audience in Presidential debate history. To even call it a Presidential debate is an oxymoron. Anyway.......

Donald Trump's craven and opportunistic big splash in the media on the Birth Certificate issue turns out to be a big fat belly flop and even NASCAR doesn't want him. He had to back out of a stint as the pace car driver at an event because of organized protests. Sarah Palin continues to be stupid and irrelevant.

And then Obama bags Osama! A Navy Seals special operation in the dead of night kills Osama bin Laden in Pakistan nearly ten years after the 9-11 attacks. The President's decision to get us out of Iraq and instead focus on fighting Al Qaeda was the right decision and lead to this good result. Now it's time to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even though George W. Bush famously said about Osama bin Laden, “I just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you," Republicans are making a point of congratulating George W. Bush on his valiant efforts to hunt down Bin Laden and, with a few exceptions, giving only a grudging nod to President Obama.

They live in a bit of a fantasy parallel world I think now that George W. Bush finally got Osama bin Laden. Expecting a bump in the polls any day now, they'll use their new found political capital to end Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, environmental protection, abolish unions, and use all that money to give tax breaks to the rich who will run stuff.

I must say though that the Republican plan to lay off a million teachers, police officers, firefighters, public utility workers, highway maintenance workers, public hospital nurses, etc., etc., etc., take hundreds of billions if not trillions of $$$ out of the economy, end unemployment insurance, end social security, end medicare, cut children off medicaid, break all the remaining unions, eliminate collective bargaining rights, lower peoples' wages everywhere, increase taxes on the poor and middle-class, throw people off their health insurance plans, and giving all the money to millionaires and billionaires and tax-payer subsidized corporations making record profits while paying no taxes and out-sourcing work to China or India, and let rich people run stuff, doesn't seem like a good plan to me.

An analysis of the Republican plan shows $4.3 trillion cuts to programs that help the working poor and the middle class, sick children, the unemployed, end Medicare, etc., etc., etc., while then giving $4.2 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest of the wealthy and big corporations.

The Libertarian branch of the Republicans held their candidate debate Thursday night on Fox News (believe it or not) to what I imagine was the smallest audience ever to watch a debate. The Social Issue Republicans will hold their debate later if any of them ever decide to run. Since Donald Trump and Mitt Romney are political chameleons and adopt the color of their surroundings, libertarian or social conservative, they'll need to have a separate and multi-hued debate.

On reported complaints by George W. Bush that he felt left out of Obama's "victory lap," I'll remind you that George W. Bush prematurely strutted across the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit under a "Mission Accomplished" banner a few years ago while President Obama's "victory lap" was to solemnly place a wreath at ground zero in remembrance of all those killed on 9-11 and after. George W. Bush declined an opportunity to attend the ceremony. Give me a break.

And finally, while I agree with President Obama and not that it's a good idea, but on the Osama bin Laden gruesome photo controversy: I suspect that if the US government sold enlarged color enhanced poster-sized framed photos for $100 each on the internet, we could balance the budget within two weeks and pay down a significant chunk of the national debt. At the very least, the government should get a per cent of the profits from the soon to be released graphic video game: US Navy Seals Kill Osama bin Laden, soon to be available at Walmart and other video game outlets.

Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

President Obama's decision to end US involvement in Iraq and focus on Al Qaeda finally paid off with the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the radicalized Saudi who masterminded the 9-11 attacks which killed so many Americans and others on that day, and who later triggered a civil war in Iraq killing tens of thousands of Muslims when Al Qaeda attacked that Sunni Mosque filled with worshipers, and followed with other attacks in Malaysia, Spain, and London, and many, many other places. The Imam of the infamous proposed Ground Zero mosque, called bin Laden a "mass murderer of Muslims." Osama bin Laden killed many times more Muslims than Americans we sometimes forget.

For that, President Obama deserves our thanks. Getting out of the quagmire in Iraq was a necessary step. Now it is time to take another necessary step and get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan and stop supporting the autocratic regimes we have been so cozy with. Our continuing presence encourages the creation of more bin Ladens. We need to figure out how to better support the freedom movements which are under attack by those same autocratic regimes we tolerate, to whom we send billions of dollars every day for oil, and by whom Bin Laden was created.

I was all ready to unload on Donald Grump, er Trump, for his racism and ridiculous commentaries on US foreign policy, and for the pompous pouty faced angry little racist man he is. But now Donald Grump seems so small and inconsequential. It's not worth any more of my time except to say that in the same week that Donald Grump was so "proud" to have "forced" President Obama to release a birth certificate, President Obama with a serious and solemn and hard grace announced a major success carried out by Navy Seals in the fight against Al Qaeda. While President Obama was concentrating on plans to get Osama Bin Laden, Donald Grump was pestering the President with that birth certificate nonsense and chasing and shamelessly promoting what he knew was a lie.

And another vacuous Republican fallen star, shallow Sarah Palin, says she wants to read Obama's Law Review articles, according to a news report......perhaps she should wait for the Cliff's Notes. And maybe she should release her "works" from her numerous colleges. I'd love to try to parse the grammar -- I like a challenge.

Although George W. Bush famously said about Osama bin Laden, “I just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you," Republicans are making a point of congratulating George W. Bush on his valiant efforts to hunt down Bin Laden and, with a few exceptions, giving only a grudging nod to President Obama. Sarah Palin, for example, didn't even mention President Obama in her public statement. Other Republicans are mostly bumfuzzled about what to say.

Donald Grump is likely pouting about his bad timing, Sarah Palin is working on what dumb thing to say next, and President Obama........

And President Obama........It was on President George W. Bush's watch that we were attacked on that Sept. morning, and it was on President Obama's watch when Osama Bin Laden was killed. It's been a long ten years. People are celebrating at Ground Zero. Some may be celebrating for vengeance; but most are celebrating that justice has been finally done. I'm glad that when I wake up in the morning that Osama bin Laden is dead and that Mr Obama is President.

Jan Brewer - New Voice of Reason in the Republican Party - Egad, I Can't Believe I Just Wrote That

2011-04-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

Haley Barbour's Civil War Reenactment campaign has folded before it began. His Dixiecrat strategy failed. He also may have realized defending Mississippi's highest infant mortality rate in the country might not square with his defense of health care availability for his state's poorest citizens. Let 'em go to the Emergency Ward seems to be his state's health plan.

Donald Trump continues his mud throwing at President Obama with birther claims and now questioning President Obama's Ivy League college admittance without actually using the words "affirmative action." Mr. Trump is now claiming religion in his third marriage, changing his positions on a tax increase for the wealthy, he was for it before he was against it, gay marriage - he was for it before he was against it, etc. And for all his China bashing, I saw a report that his Donald Trump line of clothing is manufactured in, guess where, China!

The Birther stuff has gotten so far out of hand that Jan Brewer, Tea Party favorite way conservative Governor of Arizona, vetoed a birth certificate bill in Arizona, which also called for "circumcision records" as a substitute.....and called on Republicans to stop with the Birther nonsense. When Jan Brewer is the voice of reason in the Republican Party, something is desperately wrong.....

Republican plans to kill Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, The New Deal, The New Frontier, and The Great Society in order to give more tax cuts to the wealthy is meeting resistance in Republican town hall meetings - how fun is that after all of last year's Tea Party yelling at Democratic town hall meetings on health insurance reform? If Democrats can't pounce on this to their political advantage, they are as inept as inept gets.

Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid may even force Republicans to vote on their Republican plan in the US Senate.......talk about dirty politics. Republicans are not happy at the prospect.

House Republican Leader John Boehner calls for an end to $4 Billion in oil company subsidies, but backs away when President Obama voices his approval. That was strange. Mitt Romney comments about large deficits in "peacetime" cause backlash among US Veteran groups; to be expected when the US military has been engaged in wars for a decade now , two of which George W. Bush started, and failed to pay for. In the meantime, Republican state governors continue their assault on worker rights, child labor laws, environmental protections, all the while laying off thousands and thousands of teachers, firefighters, police officers, public infrastructure workers, nurses, social workers, etc., etc.

Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann have been mysteriously silent this last week. Or at least perhaps the lamestream has started giving them the attention they deserve -- none.

As Republicans prepare to brink the world's economy to the brink of disaster once again with its threatened refusal to raise the debt limit cap, Wall Street is getting nervous, and Democrats are devising ways to capitulate. Republicans determined early on in the Obama adminsitration that they would need to do everything possible to sabotage the US economy in order to have a chance to win the 2012 elections and have actively fought, undermined, dampened, cut every effort by Democrats to bring the US out of the deep recession of the Bush Administration.

And maybe I'm wrong, but the Republican plan to lay off a million teachers, police officers, firefighters, public utility workers, highway maintenance workers, public hospital nurses, etc., etc., etc., take hundreds of billions if not trillions of $$$ out of the economy, end unemployment insurance, end social security, end medicare, cut children off medicaid, break all the remaining unions, eliminate collective bargaining rights, lower peoples' wages everywhere, increase taxes on the poor and middle-class, throw people off their health insurance plans, all the while protecting tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and tax-payer subsidized corporations making record profits while paying no taxes and out-sourcing work to China or India, and let rich people and coporations own and run everything, doesn't seem like a good plan to me. I'm just sayin..........

An analysis of the Republican plan shows $4.3 trillion cuts to programs that help the working poor and the middle class, sick chilcren, the unemployed, end Medicare, etc., etc., etc., while then giving $4.2 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest of the wealthy and big corporations. This would be the largest "redistribution" of wealth in our nation's history......upward.

A Gang of Six has their sights on ending Social Security as we know it and giving that money to Wall Street financial wizards who nearly threw the world into a Great Depression a couple of years ago.

Yikes.

Regards, Bud C

ps. Just after I posted this, President Obama released his "long form" birth certificate. The national nightmare is over. The stock market should soar given the national sigh of relief that is occurring. The cloud is lifted. Donald Trump is proud. The nation can get back to its business. All that Republican birther energy can now be focused on jobs, jobs, jobs at last, like they campaigned on.

Sharia Law - to the tune of Frankie Valli's Sherry Baby

2011-04-21T07:35:00.000-07:00

I've noticed Republicans tend to hate everything that begins with the Letter "M" (except for Military/Industrial Complex) -

Mexicans, Moderates, Medicare, Medicaid, Middle Class, Minimum Wage, Mennonites, Methodists, Mainline Protestants, and especially Muslims. Republicans continue their religious holy war against Islam to such an extent that Salon.com is introducing a new regular feature for the next 18 months of the 2012 Presidential Campaign, The Muslim Baiting Tracker. Here a possible theme song: "Sharia Baby" to the tune of Frankie Valli's Sherry Baby.

Sherry, Sherry baby - Sha-ri-a, Sha-ri-a baby
Sherry, Sherry baby - Sha-ri-a, Sha-ri-a baby

Sherry baby (Sherry baby) - Sha-ri-a, Sha-ri-a baby
Sherry can you come out tonight - Sha-ri-a can you come to Detroit?
(Come,come, come out tonight) - Come, come, come to Detroit.
Sherry baby (Sherry baby) - Sha-ri-a, Sha-ri-a baby
Sherry can you come out tonight - Sha-ri-a, can you come to Detroit?

Alluha, Alluha Akbar, Alluha, Alluha Akbar

(Why don't you come out) To my twist party - (Why don't you come out) To my twist party
(Come out) Where the bright moon shines - (Come out) Where the Crescent moon shines
(Come out) We'll dance the night away - (Come out) We'll dance the night away
I'm gonna make you mine - I"m gonna make you mine

Sherry baby (Sherry baby) - Sha-ri-a, Sha-ri-a baby
Sherry can you come out tonight - Sha-ri-a can you come to Benoit?
(Come, come, come out tonight) - (Come, come, come to Benoit)

Alluha, Alluha Akbar, Alluha, Alluha Akbar

You better ask your Mama (Sherry baby) - You better ask your Imama (Sha-ri-a baby)
Tell her everything is alright - Tell him everything is alright

(Why don't you come out) With your red dress on - (Why don't you come out) With your red burqa on
(Come out) Mmm you look so fine - (Come out) - Mmm you look so fine
(Comeout) Move it nice and easy - (Come out) Move it nice and easy
Girl, you make me lose my mind - Girl, you make me lose my mind (or head)

repeat to fade Sherry, sherry baby - repeat to fade Sha-ri-a, Sha-ri-a baby

Alluha, Alluha Akbar, Alluha, Alluha Akbar

Handicapping the Republican Candidates

2011-04-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

Undeclared Republican candidates have been tripping over each other, themselves, and you know, facts and stuff like that, in their rightward sprint to say and be more and more Tea Party friendly these last few weeks. Iowa and now New Hampshire are seeing this group of malleable pols. Here's my handicapping so far:

Newt Gingrich - his explanation that he had so many affairs while married to different women - "I loved my country so much" - may not stand the test of time. Plus he's cravenly opportunistic and will say anything.

Donald Trump - he looks and acts too much like Kim Jong-Il, you know, the North Korean Dictator. Donald expects people to jump when he says stuff. His statement this weekend about lowering gas prices by simply telling the Saudis to do so ignores the realities of Wall Street speculators. I'm guessing the Saudis would tell him to go pound sand up his a**. Plus, if he could lower gas prices just by saying --- why hasn't he?

Sarah Palin - She is so last year. Her Tuscon remarks were probably her permanent undoing. I paraphrase: "Too bad about the Congresswoman and the kid, but what about me?" Plus she's mean, petty, narcissistic, vindictive, and willfully ignorant. At her Wisconsin rally over the week end, there were more protestors than supporters. That about sums her up.

Michele Bachmann - The new Sarah Palin of the far right, she's just plain dumb. Despite all her attacks on public education, she graduated from Anoka public High School in Minnesota. She's the walking proof that something is wrong with public education in America. And her understanding of American history rivals that of a potato.

Rick Santorum - just look up his last name on google. Plus he lost his last Senate campaign.

Former Governor Mitt Romney is doomed because of his successful health insurance reform in Massachussetts - his mandatory insurance idea was adopted by President Obama - of all the dirty tricks.

Tim Pawlenty - who?

Mike Huckabee - Mike Huckabee - he can't help himself and says reasonable things on a regular basis; therefore, he has no chance. My brother Jerry calls it Tourette's Reasonableness Syndrome. Huckabee will rambling along perfectly singing the right wing crazy song, and out of nowhere will come a reasoned thoughtful moment, shocking everyone around him.

Chinese Time Travel

2011-04-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

Honest to God, the Chinese government is banning television shows about time travel.

According to The Huffington Post and The New York Times translating a statement from Chinese, the Chinese government explains that characters traveling back in time "lack positive thoughts and meaning" and that a program's portrayal of time travel can "casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation." It's hard to believe this issue is even on China's Top 1,000 problems list.

I like theories and stories of time travel - from HG Wells The Time Machine, to the dozens of Star Trek episodes featuring rifts in the spacetime continuum, or runaway warp speed, the continuous loops of poker games and anomalous instances of the number three on Riker's shirt, and all their variations from Hollywood. All the Back to the Futures, all the Terminators, to Bruce Willis' 12 Monkeys, to Bill and Ted, to Connecticut Yankees, to Doctor Who, to Millenium (a favorite of mine), The Philadelphia Project, Slaughterhouse Five (another favorite of mine), all those Planets of the Apes, to Timecop, and Time Bandits, and the dozens of other B time travel movies - Idiocracy comes to mind. The Three Stooges traveled through time in The Three Stooges Meet Hercules. From the sublime to the ridiculous, time travel is a time honored genre.

And the science of time travel is interesting. The Twin Paradox says that one twin boards a space craft and heads out into the universe at speeds approaching the speed of light and the other twin remains on earth. In what is only a short time for the space traveler, the twin returns to earth and finds his/her twin to have aged many years while the traveler only hours. And this is backed by Einstein's E=mc2 theories of relativity and space time mathematics. When we look at a night sky, we see a time machine in that we are looking at many different pasts all at once. The light that reaches us as we look up is from thousands of different pasts which converge to our relative point in space time in a rural backyard in Iowa with my 10" reflector looking at distant galaxies and nebulas and even planets with my sweetheart. Light from Saturn takes 76 minutes, for example, to reach the earth. And that's traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Saturn's a long ways a way. And space itself may fold and buckle allowing travel to distant parts of the universe through spacetime worms tunneling through warped timespace.

So in China, some bureaucrat with way too much time on his hands (this has to be a guy), has decided that time travel on Chinese TV needs to be banned. We'll see how well that goes over. If this guy riles up Chinese Trekkies, watch out.

I like to tell my students in my classes that I can prove I can travel into the future. They are usually skeptical. I will then simply say, "Meet me here tomorrow." So there you go.

As China travels into the future, its petty bureaucrats are engaging in work which should be reserved for Jean Claude Van Damme or Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox.

You can't fight time. Time always wins. It's that "arc of history" thing. He may have bitten off more than he can Chu.

Weiners and Losers

2011-04-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

Who were the winners and losers in last week's midnight hour battle against Big Bird and Planned Parenthood? Winners: New York Democrat Anthony Weiner is a winner in my book because of his tell it like it is feistiness (and I can make a bad pun in the title of my blog), President Obama looked Presidential but not very strong, John Boehner came out ahead in his three way battle with the White House, the Congress, and the Tea Party who showed it has the ability to successfully push bad ideas to the very brink. Oil companies who still receive huge subsidies and the Koch Brothers are also big winners.

Losers: hard to tell for sure, but Democrats, abortion rights in Washington, DC, poor working people everywhere, the environment, education, clean air, clean water, basic fairness and decency.

Not raising the Debt Ceiling and The Republican 2011-2012 budget plan are the next focus for the Republican House. New Republican Budget Motto - "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," your senior citizens, your sick children on medicaid, your disabled, your Medicare recipients, your minimum wage earners with no health insurance so that we may cut their programs and raise their taxes in order give a 25% tax break to the wealthy, cut the capital gains rates, and reduce corporate taxes for the Koch Brothers. "We must raise the taxes on the bottom 90% so we can continue the tax breaks and subsidies for corporations and the very wealthy," Paul Ryan, Republican budget whiz kid, won't say.

The ongoing Budget Negotiations stalemate between John Boehner and the Tea Party threatened to shut down the government last week. The feckless Democrats had already agreed to Boehner's original proposal to cut $33 Billion (well, Boehner's proposal was actually $32 Billion, but the Democrats agreed to $33 Billion); they, in fact, settled on $38.5 billion at the 11th hour last Friday night. Democrats complain that every time they move to the middle, the Republicans move further away. Duh, like we haven't seen that before.

Inexplicably, Democrats have at no point even suggested much less proposed rolling back the extensions of the tax cuts on the richest of the rich -- that 1% or 2% of the wealthiest Americans. I did see a report that the President will finally address the tax cut issue this week for that top 1% or 2% of income brackets as a significant way to narrow the budget gap.

So the Big Question of the week was Do Republicans Want to Shut Government Down? I still say, No. They do not want to shut it down; they want to KILL IT; they want to demolish it and stomp on the ruins of the New Deal and the New Frontier and the Great Society;they want to strangle it to death and watch the life drain from its corpse;they want its mangled remains burned to ashes and dumped in landfills..... And they want all the $$$ to be given to rich people and big corporations who run things.

So get ready for Hostage Drama #2 of the budget battles as Republicans hold raising the Debt Ceiling hostage to those who don't want the United States to default on its obligations and thrown the world in to a Great Depression of epic proportions.

And maybe I'm wrong, but the Republican plan to lay off a million teachers, police officers, firefighters, public utility workers, highway maintenance workers, public hospital nurses, etc., etc., etc., take hundreds of billions if not trillions of $$$ out of the economy, end unemployment insurance, end social security, end medicare, cut children off medicaid, break all the remaining unions, eliminate collective bargaining rights, lower peoples' wages everywhere, increase taxes on the poor and middle-class, throw people off their health insurance plans, all the while protecting tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and tax-payer subsidized corporations making record profits while paying no taxes and out-sourcing work to China or India, doesn't seem like a good plan to me. I'm just sayin..........

Regards, Bud C

My Theory of Inverse Evidence/Belief Correlative Republican Dysfunction

2011-04-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

The office of Republican Senate Minority Whip John Kyl from Arizona had to release a clarifying statement yesterday after Senator Kyl's fabrications on Planned Parenthood on the floor of the US Senate: "his remark was not intended to be factual..." At the height of the debate, falsehoods were casually tossed around the halls of the US Senate. Ideology trumps facts in this brave new world we live in. Propaganda rules.

If anything sums up the current level of argument as practiced by Republicans these days, this has got to be it.

Couple this with my theory of the Inverse Evidence/Belief Correlative Dysfunction and we'll be in for a fantastic ride the next two years. And I mean fantastic as in "fantasy," as in disconnected from reality.

My Theory of the Inverse Evidence/Belief Correlative Dysfunction states that the more evidence there is of a proposition or theory, the less likely Republican/Tea Party/Fundamentalist Christians will believe it and the more evidence of something, the more inclined Republicans are to deny it. From Global Warming to Creationism, ideology trumps science and evidence every time. Radiation is good for you says Ann Coulter..... Tax cuts for the wealthy will create jobs and help balance the budget....Health Insurance reform includes Death Panels said Sarah Palin....the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery says Michele Bachmann.... The Texas school board takes Thomas Jefferson out of American history textbooks and inserts John Calvin..... President Obama is a socialist they say.... the world was created 6,000 years ago, and in Colorado, bicycle paths for cyclists were a conspiracy to turn Colorado's sovereignty over to the United Nations.

Facts and evidence no longer matter that much. All that matters is ideology and propaganda.

So just remember the John Kyl explanation, what I said was not intended to be factual, and it'll make more sense.

Budget Negotiations

2011-04-05T06:26:00.001-07:00

The ongoing Budget Negotiations stalemate between John Boehner and the Tea Party threaten to shut down the government on Friday. The feckless Democrats have already agreed to Boehner's original proposal to cut $33 Billion (well, Boehner's proposal was actually $32 Billion, but the Democrats agreed to $33 Billion); Democrats are now sitting quietly by twiddling their thumbs.

Inexplicably, they have at no point even suggested much less proposed rolling back the extensions of the tax cuts on the richest of the rich -- that 1% or 2% of the wealthiest Americans.

So the Big Question of the Week is Do Republicans Want to Shut Government Down? I say, No. They do not want to shut it down; they want to KILL IT; they want to demolish it and stomp on the ruins of the New Deal and the New Frontier and the Great Society;they want to strangle it to death and watch the life drain from its corpse;they want its mangled remains burned to ashes and dumped in landfills..... And they want all the $$$ to be given to rich people and corporations who run things.

I'm just sayin.........

The White Caps on Carter Lake

2011-04-04T09:48:00.000-07:00

View from #2 Fairway, Shoreline Golf Course, Carter Lake, IA

Friday afternoon we saw white caps on Carter Lake...the wind was howling.

I've seen lots of things at Carter Lake -

Dozens of Bald Eagles and greyish Hawks soaring overhead.

A bald eagle in its aerie with little eaglet heads bobbing up and down the #1 and #9 fairways.

Hundreds of three-foot long dead carp washed up along the shore of Shoreline Golf Course smelling like, well, hundreds of dead three-foot long carp.

I've seen fish skeletons and portions thereof, with shiny fish scales glistening in the sunshine, like diamonds strewn about the #2 fairway.

Jet skis and motorboats and water skiers and Creighton sculling teams out there on the water.

I've seen the fairways covered in goose droppings when the geese decide to spend time by the lake. "The fairways will be greener with that added nitrogen," we say as we walk by avoiding the droppings on those late winter and early spring days when the course is open.

I've seen baby foxes in culverts looking out curiously at me as I walked by.

My golfing friend Jerry and I saw a horse grazing on the #17 fairway one day, and the horse allowed us to play through.

I've seen Bob, and Jerry shoot eagles on par four holes -- not the bald eagles soaring over the area on those spring and fall days when they are around, but the golf kind, you know a 2 on a par 4 hole. I've had a couple out there myself.

I've seen concrete chunks protruding from sand traps and fairways -- a reminder of Shoreline Golf Course's origins -- an old construction landfill site--- most if not are gone now. I've heard a story about the guy who knew where the old corner stone of the now destroyed Woodmen building was buried in that landfill and about how he sold his knowledge to the builders of the new Woodmen Building for $10,000 so they could include that cornerstone in that "new" building.

I've seen the Shoreline Springs, not the water kind, but the remains of an old mattress hidden in the woods along hole #8 -- sticking about halfway up in its lengthwise vertical orientation. I told my friend Mel that he could have a free drop there one time. You shouldn't have to play with your swing impeded by old rusty bed springs.

I've seen snow, sleet, ice, rain, wind, fog; I've huddled with friends behind clumps of bushes with umbrellas opened trying to shield against the cold blast front of a thunderstorm; I've been out there in below freezing weather and above 100 f.

So, I've seen it all at Shoreline Golf Course in Carter Lake, Iowa, but white caps are an unusual sight.

Nebraska, The Good Half-Life; the Stupid Award; Radioactivity; and Religious Fundamentalism

2011-04-03T18:35:00.000-07:00

This week's Stupid Award is a tie between that fundamentalist preacher in Florida who burned a Koran for no apparent reason and the enraged Afghanistani fundamentalists who killed those poor UN workers. Like they had anything to do with it. Sometimes I think they should all just be locked in a far away place and have at it......whoa, now that I think about it, that's a bit what's going on.

After ten years of us bombing their country, carpet bombing their mountains, shooting cruise missiles into their dining rooms, installing and keeping in power a corrupted drug infused narco state government, all the while bad-mouthing Islam and harassing Muslim US citizens, you'd think those Fundamentalist Afghanis would be more grateful......

In the Runner-up category of what to do with old newspapers, having already won the Stupid of the Week Award earlier this year for building a nuclear reactor on the world's most active fault lines, 7 tons of highly radioactive water per per hour is leaking into the ocean at that Japanese nuclear power plant. Japanese workers are trying to stuff old newspapers into the concrete cracks of their water containment buildings to stop the leaking. Talk about low tech fixes to high tech problems.

I looked a map of Chernobyl on Wikipedia the other day and 400 sq. KM are still declared "unlivable." No people are allowed in that zone of death. Scientists are studying the wildlife in that radioactively polluted zone. The Japanese will be vacating large portions of the surrounding land for decades......and probably a "no-fishing" sign will be put up along the coast. Radioactive particulates are are being found in the US from coast to coast.

And speaking of old newspapers, The World Herald had coverage of the WWII Japanese Balloon Bomb that exploded above 50th and Underwood in Omaha in 1945. Over 9,000 of these floating wind-driven bombs were released into the atmosphere by the Japanese in their desperation toward the end of WW II, and a woman and her five children were killed in Oregon by one of these devices. In Omaha, the device is reported to have exploded above the ground and there were no Omaha casualties. And there is a plaque somewhere at that famous intersection. Today, untold trillions of these little particulate half-life time-bombs are falling from the skies and landing here from coast to coast. I will also note that the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant just a few miles north of Omaha is on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of three sites that need improved monitoring; and in case you didn't know, a 3.3 magnitude earthquake occurred between Columbus and Lincoln on Nov. 18, 2010, five miles underground.

Experts say the levels of radiation from the Japanese meltdown making it to the US in those same winds are extremely low, and that the half-life properties of these particulate sources of radiation are rapidly diminishing their harmful effects. It's too bad the current varieties of Religious Fundamentalism don't have a half-life like this.

Whatever happened to the religious fundamentals of forgiveness, and love your neighbor, and Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and help the sick, and the poor, and the downtrodden? That's the religious fundamentalism I can support and strive to exemplify.

I'm just sayin.......

2011-03-31T13:22:00.001-07:00

Maybe I'm wrong, but the Republican plan to lay off a million teachers, police officers, firefighters, public utility workers, highway maintenance workers,
public hospital nurses, etc., etc., etc., take hundreds of billions if not trillions of $$$ out of the economy, end unemployment insurance, end social security, end medicare, cut children off medicaid, break all the remaining unions, eliminate collective bargaining rights, lower peoples' wages everywhere, increase taxes on the poor and middle-class, throw people off their health insurance plans, all the while protecting tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and tax-payer subsidized corporations making record profits while paying no taxes and out-sourcing work to China or India, doesn't seem like a good plan to me. I'm just sayin..........

Regards,
Bud C

What I Still tell my Son when Dropping him off at School Even Though He's a High School Sophomore

2011-03-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here's what I tell my son every morning when I drop him off at school. I've recited these and other words of advice hundreds, if not thousands, of times since he was in kindergarten, even pre-school -- with a few modifications along the way. It all started out as a simple reminder - "No biting" at his pre-school/day care. There were about two weeks where he was causing trouble by biting other kids. So everyday I'd tell him I loved him and "no biting." He's a Sophomore in High School this school year.

Have a nice day.
Play nice with the kids.
Help the teacher.
Follow the rules.
Be smart. Act smart. Raise your hand. Ask good questions, including "What could possibly go wrong?" And remember, if an idiot would do it, don't do it.
Learn some high school sh**.

No unauthorized leaping, prancing, dancing, dashing, mashing, pouncing, jouncing, jousting, rousting, skipping, bipping, ripping.

If you see any of the following falling from the sky, run for cover: giant construction cranes, lawnmowers, chain saws, frozen donkeys, dump trucks, refrigerators or other large appliances, derelict Soviet space satellites; pretty much anything.

If you see an alien spacecraft, let me know. If elephants parachute into the parking lot, give me a call.

Do not knock the building down; do not flush your shoes and/or electronic equipment of any size down the toilet (this took on special meaning after he flushed his cell phone down the school toilet--it's a funny story).

Eat all your lunch. Don't eat any giant bugs, worm spaghetti, eyeball soup, weasel spit, beaver barf, fish entrails, platypus lips, hippopotamus hips, buffalo chips, or squid lips. Don't eat anything that Andrew Zimmern, Les Stroud, or Bear Gryll, or Dave and Cody or any of the other knock-off survivalist shows would eat on a regular basis. Anthony Bourdain is not totally insane; Rachael Ray is certainly okay.

Do not put peanut butter in your butt crack, honey in your belly button, or cactus in your underwear. And remember - bananas and coconuts are not armadillos, do not dance the rhumba, and do not change the oil in daddy's car on a regular basis, or any basis for that matter.

If you follow these simple rules, you will have a fine, marvelous, wonderful, inspirational, fun, exciting, memorable, educational, swell .........day at Bellevue East High School, Bellevue, Ne, United States of America, North American Continent, North American and Atlantic tectonic plate which also includes Japan, on the planet Earth, which is 2/3 covered by water you can't drink, in the solar system of our sun, a medium sized yellow star 93 million miles away, one star among hundreds of billions stars in our galaxy, located on the Orion spur of the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, a typical spiral galaxy, a member of the local group of galaxies, one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe most of which are moving away from each other at rates of speed higher than that predicted by the best minds of modern science. Some of which appear to be moving away from each other at speeds greater than the speed of light. Which has very smart people stumped. So work on that.

And, I love you.

As I said, I've recited this message hundreds if not thousands of times now and Jeremy still listens patiently, and corrects me if I make a mistake, and still smiles, and still gives me the occasional good-bye kiss or hug before heading off into the world.

Bud

On Channeling Moses

2011-03-30T07:40:00.001-07:00

I'm always reluctant to claim to be channeling Moses. I mocked Glenn Beck when he said, much like Pat Robertson, that the Japanese earthquakes and tsunami and subsequent catastrophes at the nuclear plants were messages from God. But after considerable reflection and prayer, I have now concluded that Beck was right. The nuclear meltdowns going on are indeed a message from God: DON'T BUILD THESE @#%&*$#@ NUCLEAR REACTORS ON TOP OF MAJOR EARTHQUAKE FAULT LINES WHERE YOU MIGHT HAVE MAGNITUDE 9 EARTHQUAKES AND TSUNAMIS RESULTING IN RADIATION SPEWING INTO THE AIR, SEA, AND LAND FOR DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS, AND PERHAPS YEARS. Over and out, God.

A Symphony of Thoughts on a Tuesday Morning and a Plug for Roy Zimmerman

2011-03-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

A Symphony of Thoughts on a Tuesday Morning and a Plug for Roy Zimmerman-

I am summarizing President Obama's speech last night on Libya: "We figured doing this no-fly thing was better than doing nothing -- but it was a difficult choice. Now we're figuring out what to do do next." President Obama in his speech last night outlined new US policy - "Sometimes we can help. And if we can, maybe we will, if all the stars are aligned right." But the Headlines still read: "Obama intervenes to stop massacres by pathological lunatic North African tyrant - Nobody Happy. Except some guy in Ben Ghazi." And I wake up every morning glad that President Obama is our President.

The Republican response to this action is predictable even though they were very vocal and loud in calling for intervention: too soon, too late, too big, too small, too slow, too fast, not enough, too much, too simple, too complicated, too rigid, too flexible, too salty, not salty enough, overdone, underdone, too rare, too well done, too tall, too short, too nice, not nice enough, too French, not French enough, too nuanced, not nuanced enough....... It doesn't really matter what the issue is either. The criticism remains the same: too soon, too late, too big, too small, too slow, too fast, not enough, too much, too simple, too complicated, too rigid, too flexible, too salty, not salty enough, overdone, underdone, too rare, too well done, too tall, too short, too nice, not nice enough, too French, not French enough, too nuanced, not nuanced enough.......

And Republicans in Congress, by not demanding a vote of Congress on this action, are thereby reserving their right to criticize anything and everything about it: too soon, too late, too big, too small, too slow, too fast, not enough, too much, too simple, too complicated, too rigid, too flexible, too salty, not salty enough, overdone, underdone, too rare, too well done, too tall, too short, too nice, not nice enough, too French, not French enough, too nuanced, not nuanced enough.......

What do Libyans want? As one of the rebels says,“We want democracy. We want good schools, we want a free media, an end to corruption, a private sector that can help build this nation, and a parliament to get rid of whoever, whenever, we want." These are honorable aims. But to expect that they will be achieved easily is to deny the cost of decades of insanity, terror, and the deliberate eradication of civil society which Ghadaffi undertook in his pathological cult of personality.

A recent Congressional Budget Office report says that the much criticized stimulus spending of the previous year created 3.7 million new jobs and the economy is on the rebound. Undeterred by this evidence and all facts in general everywhere, the Republicans aim to stop this economic growth in time for the 2012 elections and are working very hard to stop this economic recovery on a 24/7 basis. When the Republicans campaigned on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, I thought they meant create them not eliminate them...... My bad. They are dead set on eliminating jobs for teachers, police officers, firefighters, state employees everywhere, county and city employees taking care of our roads, sewers, libraries, parks, the very skeletons of our public infrastructure. Anything "public" is bad. Anything "government" is bad. And anything "union" is bad -- having virtually eliminated private sector unions, the Koch brothers are now pulling the strings of their Pinocchio Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and plenty of other Governors to eviscerate their public unions..... When Republicans campaigned on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, I thought they meant create them, not eliminate them. My bad...............

By the way, I've got an idea. Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, children, education, working people, medicare, and social security, let's cut military spending by getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq, end the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and corporations, stop subsidizing oil companies, and raise the social security tax income limit. And you can't tax cut your way to a balanced budget.

Meanwhile back at home: I watched a CNN Special about Murfreesboro, Tennessee's fight to stop a Muslim center from being built on the outskirts of "their" community. While Muslims risk their lives against the oppressive regimes in the Middle East, we are treating our own citizens in this ugly fashion..........It's depressing. Murfreesboro believes they have the right to worship as they please; but other people don't.

And House Republicans did claim victory in their battle against Socialism - Car Talk and Big Bird were defunded. The issue now goes to the Senate for further action.

On public education that is now a target of Republicans: I am a strong supporter of public education, but my problem is that it appears Michele Bachmann graduated from a public high school, Anoka High School, in Anoka, Minnesota. Something's obviously wrong........

Best line of the week about Glenn Beck goes to Ed Schultz on the Ed Show: "Glenn Beck is a liar running an ignorance marathon."

On US Nuclear power: early on, US nuclear energy boosters were characterizing the troubled Japan Nuclear facility as a "confidence booster." I don't think so.

I ran across a folk singer/political satirist, Roy Zimmerman. Youtube his name and listen to a few of his songs. One of my favorites is "God Bless America - It Just Might Work!" Great stuff!

By the way, I've got an idea. Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, children, education, working people, medicare, and social security, let's cut military spending by getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq, end the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and corporations, stop subsidizing oil companies, and raise the social security tax income limit. And you can't tax cut your way to a balanced budget.

Is the enemy of my Yemeni friend my friend or my enemy?

2011-03-20T11:03:00.000-07:00

An Afternoon in Tunisia. 24 x 36 acrylic on canvas.

Tunisia, or not Tunisia? That is the question....... Give me Libya-ty or give me death.......

Well, we've sided now with the Libyan rebels even though we don't quite know who they are. We know that Ghaddafi is an oil rich megalomaniac billionaire thief and tyrant (not completely unlike many of our "friends" in the region) and we are hoping against hope that the rebels who professed to seeking more freedom are doing just that. Time will tell. French and British war planes and US cruise missles are demolishing Libya's air defense infrastructure as a prelude to a "No-fly" zone. The Arab League, having soured on Ghadaffi's ego, has apparently endorsed the actions as long as we do the heavy lifting for them, but will, I am sure, reserve the right to be indignant later. The richer Arab nations are quite accustomed to importing foreign labor.

That we've sided, so far, with the Yemeni and Bahrainian governments against their own citizens' protests clouds the lens through which we view the region. Yemeni and Bahrainian soldiers are killing civilians in significant numbers as well. The view is not so clear now. Is the enemy of our Yemenis our enemy when it is Yemenis who are our Yeminis' enemies? Trying to figure Yemen out is a "Bah-rain" teaser to be sure. I once quipped that when given Yemens, make Yemenade. So, my attempt to clarify US policy regarding these two countries requires that I make bad puns and hope that people smarter than I make good decisions -- and that hasn't happened that often in the Middle East as far back as written records go.

It still irks me that Libyan freedom has to cost me $4.00 a gallon, though, at a time of record domestic supplies of oil and Libyan oil going to China not us. I'm thinking somebody on Wall Street is milking the teats of the petroleum cash cow for every penny, nickel, dime, and quarter they can. To paraphrase P.T. Barnum, "You can fool Allah the people Somalia the time, and Somalia people Allah the time, but you can't fool Allah the people Allah the time."

I still say the only way to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to stop fighting them.

Later,
Bud C

ps. 3-23-11 update - Headline - President Obama stops possible massacre by lunatic dictator -- nobody happy. Except Ben Ghazi, whoever that is.

PSS. 8-23-11 UPDATE - Libyan rebels enter Tripoli and the end game in the revolution is in sight. We are all hoping this works out well. The U.S. doesn't appear as excited as it did during the Egyptian uprising. It's been a long five months.

Tiny Drops in a Large Ocean of Tears

2011-03-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

A Flower for Japan.

From the trivia of politics to the tragedy of Japan.

From the irritating mind of Sarah,"Lock and Load," Palin. She advises Wisconsin teachers to tone down their rhetoric so that no one gets hurt. I nearly blew milk through my nose when I heard that. That group of 100,000 pissed off teachers had to the most polite group of that size in human history.

And in the "What's that again, Bill O'Reilly?" category, he stated that he didn't think a college professor should assign The Koran as mandatory reading when we are involved in a "war on terror" because it would be "akin" to requiring students to read Mein Kampf in the years of WWII. And he would refuse to do so. Which is not even what this mention is about. He later claimed that he wasn't comparing the two books, and that claiming so was taking his remarks out of context.

And Glenn Beck, not be outdone in the nut department, said he thought the Japanese earthquake and tsunami "might" be messages from God. He didn't try to interpret the messages, though, leaving us all to wonder. With all due respect to those more versed in interpreting the Word of God, one possibility, though, might be "Don't build nuclear power plants atop ring of fire earthquake zones, or the San Andreas Fault." Or at the very least, it might be, "Build them better." Another possibility is that God is sending us a message that Oracle Glenn Beck needs help.

Michele Bachmann continues her assault on history with her misplacing the start of the American Revolution in New Hampshire. I'd be more forgiving if this wasn't just one more example of a continuing series of historical gaffes. She's volunteered to show her birth certificate if she runs for President - in her case, a history test might be a better idea.

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin continues to illustrate the "banality" of bad government with his ongoing legislative attacks on teachers, firefighters, police officers, public schools, basic democratic legislative processes, all the while staring with that empty bland blankness of his smiling face.

And regarding the national political scene: Hey, I've got an idea. Instead of balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, children, education, working people, medicare, and social security, let's cut military spending by getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq, end the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and corporations, stop subsidizing oil companies, and raise the social security tax income limit.

The enormity of the multiple human catastrophes in Japan is ever unfolding and the nuclear disaster is an on-going nightmare. I gave a few dollars that I could spare to my church's relief efforts and painted a flower picture for Japan. But I know those are tiny drops in a large ocean of tears.

Later,
Bud

You can fool Allah the people Somalia the time.....

2011-03-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

You can fool Allah the people Somalia the time, and Somalia the people Allah the time; but you can't fool Allah the people Allah the time. Iranian fundamentalist theocrats should probably take note of this as Muslims throughout the Middle East demonstrate for freedom. Brutal oppression of Islamic Iranians and Libyans is taking place on a daily basis by a theocracy in the first instance and a secular cult of personality in the second.

And in our own country, Congressman Peter King, the sponsor of the Let's Investigate Islamic Americans Committee, has convened his McCarthy-esque hearings, just weeks after the above freedom-seeking Muslims across the Middle East began their quests at the risk of their lives demonstrating against oppressive regimes we and other western powers helped install.

The conflation of these two events illustrates Mr. King's moral vacuity. Muslim firefighters died going up the stairwells of the World Trade Centers. Muslim Americans died in that attack.

The perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks were disaffected Saudis with the assistance and safe haven of Taliban fundamentalist theocrats we helped recruit, train, and arm, who overthrew the Soviet backed Afghan government, who overthrew the monarch, etc., etc., etc. Our hands are not clean, as the old saying goes.

Mr. King's hearings likely have a greater chance of increasing discrimination against and suspicion of our own Islamic American neighbors than ferreting out any internal threats to the United States of America. I'd let the FBI and local law enforcement handle this.

Muslims enjoy a degree of freedom in this country far greater than those seeking the overthrow of oppressive governments in the Middle East we do business with: Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Libya, etc., etc., etc. For these anti-American hearings to take place is anathema to our Constitution and to our own citizens and an insult to freedom seeking Muslims all across the world. Mr. King should be ashamed of himself.

The Price of Gas

2011-03-08T06:17:00.001-08:00

A few thoughts on this last week:

The price of gas - "Revolutions begin with enthusiasm and end in tears." The attention span of the American lame-stream media is on display again as Charlie Sheen's public mental breakdown gets more news coverage than the ongoing "freedom" revolutions in the middle east. Libyan dictator Ghadaffi is mass murdering his own citizens in his attempts to crush the rebellion against his cult of himself. And fears of disruption of Libyan oil production is sending the price of gas in the US up and up and up. Wall Street oil speculators are making tons of money on the "futures" market, further driving up the price of gas. The those self-same Middle East authoritarian governments that people are rising up against are making $$$ billions more each month as the price of gasoline climbs. So the price of gas this week is Libya's freedom. Talk about a vicious circle.

Politics and budgets -- several polls now show that sizable majorities of Americans favor cutting military spending, rolling back the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, increasing corporate taxes, and INCREASING social spending for education, job training, child health, etc., etc., etc., and not cutting Social Security, Medicare, and social spending. The Republicans campaigned on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, but I thought they meant create them not eliminate them. Their budget proposals are projected to cost the US economy about a million jobs. And Republicans and the Koch Brothers, instead of creating jobs, are continuing their attacks on Mexicans, Gays, Planned Parenthood, women's reproductive rights, Teachers, Unions, public sector employees, the Middle Class, Muslims, PBS, children's health programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, job training, unemployment insurance, , etc., etc., etc., all the while protecting various tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations, and, of course, their own personal earmarks, now called "letter marks" for their Congressional districts.

Sarah Palin's new campaign slogan? - "I'm not as ignorant as McCain's campaign staff thought --- elect me President." For reasons known only to herself, Sarah Palin has resurrected the charges made by the campaign staff of McCain/Palin for President and VP and reported on FOX News of all places that she didn't know whether Africa was a country or a continent. Raising the question of just how ignorant she really is doesn't seem to help her much. And even if the charges by McCain for President campaign staff weren't true, it doesn't set a very high bar. "I do too know where Africa is -- elect me President" doesn't have much of a ring to it.

And, God forbid, should Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann both be Republican candidates in the Iowa caucuses, any debates between those two should be interesting. One or the other trying to "outsmart" the other is a frightening thought. Linguistic experts will be sorting through the transcripts of their statements for months, if not years, trying to figure out what they said and what they meant.

It's really all quite depressing. Maybe I'll go paint a flower or something.

Later,
Bud

American Idol #2

2011-03-01T06:41:00.001-08:00

Thank God that Wisconsin Governor has pinpointed the main problem in the United States today - reasonably well compensated teachers, firefighters, police officers, and government workers.

Governor Walker's tax cuts for Wisconsin businesses have left his current budget with a $137 million deficit -- and what better way to pay for these tax cuts than socking it to public sector employees and their unions! Talk about killing two birds with one stone! With $$$ from the Koch Brothers and their out of state oil industries (soon to be cherry picking Wisconsin businesses with a sweetheart deal with the Governor), Walker is standing firm like Muamar Ghadaffi in Libya against the thousands and thousands of demonstrators fighting for their rights. Even though the unions have agreed to his wage and benefit concessions, Governor Walker will not rest until collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin are severely limited. He refuses to take yes for an answer.

And he has bravely done so despite the direct challenge to Ronald Reagan's revered place in the Republican Party: "These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland ... They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost." —RONALD REAGAN, Labor Day Address at Liberty State Park, 1980.

How brave Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker truly is. He is willing to risk Wisconsin's ACT/SAT scores for his principles! Destroying collective bargaining has long been the province of the private sector and Scott Walker campaigned to run Wisconsin like a business.....so there you go. No surprise there.

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina -50th; North Carolina -49th; Georgia -48th; Texas -47th; Virginia -44th. If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

Wisconsin clearly has an ACT/SAT cushion that will allow for thousands of teachers to be laid off and for future teachers to be paid less and less to help fund business' tax breaks well into the 21st century. ACT/SAT scores can safely drop into the middle of the pack before he will worry too much. Why be above average when you don't need to be.......

The Republican Governor's association is even purchasing TV ads in Wisconsin defending their brother in the battle against education.....

Meanwhile, Republicans in Wash, DC, are continuing their efforts to cut as many jobs as possible from the nation so they can run on their Jobs, Jobs, Jobs message so successful in the last elections. Three studies now including one from Goldman Sachs have suggested the budget cuts sought by the Republicans will slow the economy by two full percentage points and eliminate 400,000 to a 1,100,000 jobs across the nation. "So be it," says Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner. The Republicans continues to focus on reducing government spending on the poor and middle classes, women, children, education, the environment, the arts, peacemaking, energy independence. "So be it," says Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner.

With Republican Governors proposing Draconian cuts in many state budgets across the country, eliminating collective bargaining wherever possible, undermining health insurance reforms as best they can, continuing their culture wars against gay rights, women's reproductive rights, gun control, Mexicans, Muslims, unions, etc., etc., this next two years will be interesting if nothing else.

A public union employee, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, "Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie."

It's all pretty depressing.

On the brighter side of the news, a small nuclear war could be a good thing: "Scientists from NASA and a number of other institutions have recently been modeling the effects of a war involving a hundred Hiroshima-level bombs, or 0.03 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal, according to National Geographic. The research suggests five million metric tons of black carbon would be swept up into the lowest portion of the atmosphere. The result, according to NASA climate models, could actually be global cooling."

And freedom movements are gaining steam in the Middle East and North Africa -- if only their freedom didn't mean my $4 per gallon gas at the gas pump. I was heartened to see that Libyan oil fields have resumed exporting oil, except that it was to China.

The coordinated Republican strategy of keeping our economy in the doldrums, breaking unions, and fighting the culture wars will be a challenge for President Obama and Democrats. I have a theory that the reason Republicans so revere President Reagan is that he is the only President they have to elevate to iconic status. GWB, no. Nixon, no. Gerald Ford, no. Herbert Hoover, no. Abraham Lincoln, yes, but Lincoln would be a Democrat today. So they overlook his budget busting spending, his negotiations with terrorists, and his many tax increases. The current crop of Republican candidates is long list of has beens and never weres.

So with nobody who can chew gum and walk at the same time including a number who can't string together a coherent set of words into sentences ( I didn't even need to say the name, did I?), their strategy is to misrepresent, lie, lie, attack, undermine, posture, and dissemble.

I saw a report this morning that Fox News can't get a license in Canada to broadcast because Canada has a law that prohibits lying on the air. That's too funny.

I'd better go grade papers.

Later, Bud

Be the Wind

2011-02-22T09:21:00.000-08:00

New Painting: A Day in Tunisia with Miles Davis and Charlie Parker, 24 x 37 in. $350.

And this pisses me off: Sarah Palin's Alaska TV show gets tax subsidy of $1.5 million. How ironic is that? But she publicly said she was willing to sacrifice Wisconsin's public employee bargaining rights -- that's big of her.

Like comedian Andy Borowitz said the other day, freedom movements against dictators in the Middle East continue to spread in countries that we didn't invade. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and others. At least the tear gas canisters in Libya don't say Made in USA; I think Libya buys French weapons. Hundreds of brave protesters have been killed in Libya alone. If we leave Iraq and Afghanistan later today, perhaps freedom movements will erupt there as well.

The Koch brothers are pulling the puppet strings on Governor Walker in his attempt to break unions in Wisconsin. Governor Walker receive a campaign donation of $43,000 from the Koch brothers who own numerous businesses in Wisconsin. The Governor gave Wisconsin corporations $137 million in tax breaks and now is demanding teachers and public workers pay for it. And they AGREED, but that wasn't good enough. He is now demanding a limit in their ability to negotiate contracts. And from my brother in law Kevin in North Dakota: only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows: South Carolina -50th; North Carolina -49th; Georgia -48th; Texas -47th; Virginia -44th. If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country. Let's keep it that way.

Republican/Koch Brother/Tea Party dupes/Supreme Court are now going after Mexicans, Muslims, Planned Parenthood and women, sick children, union members, AmeriCorp, Public Television and Radio, Pell Grants, the unemployed, gays and lesbians, the environment, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, education, 43 million uninsured Americans, and pretty much the entire middle class in order to pay for their tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of the country and their corporate subsidies. Robert Reich points out that if the earnings of the thirteen highest paid hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income instead of receiving an enormous tax break, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Yes, you read that right - 13 hedge fund managers' taxes would pay the salary and benefits of 300,000 teachers.

In this country we have socialism for corporations and the wealthy and capitalism for the rest of us. When the Republicans campaigned on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, I thought they meant create jobs, not eliminate them. My bad.......

Quote of the day: Mary Kay Henry, the new president of the Service Employees International Union. "Politicians put their fingers to the wind," she memorably said. "We need to be the wind."

Egypt, Ronald Reagan, Neanderthals, and Jackson Pollock

2011-02-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

It's Tuesday morning and I've got a chance to sit here and review the week that was. And what a week it was. "Democracy is sweeping every Middle Eastern country Bush didn't invade," said Andy Borowitz, a comedian whose political radar is spot on.

Now that protests are spreading from country to country in the Middle East and after listening to Republican talking heads on the news lately, their position appears to be that the US should be for democracy in Egypt and the Middle East but that no Muslims should be involved. I'm not sure they've quite thought that through. They are, apparently, for freedom and democracy only in certain circumstances.

When the Iranian government pretended to support Egypt's protest movement, Iranian opposition leaders tried to get permits to march in solidarity with Egyptians; they were, of course, denied permission. But marching they are! Update: Iran is brutally cracking down on those supporters of Egypt's dreams for democracy.

In another revolution: Mahatma Gandhi was asked by an English journalist what he thought of Western Civilization. Gandhi replied, "Ahhh, that would be a very good idea."

On the celebration of Ronald Reagan's 100th -- Why is Ronald Reagan's legacy so fondly misremembered by Republicans - he negotiated with terrorists, he raised taxes in 7 of the 8 years of his presidency while simultaneously tripling the national debt, gave amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants, increased the social security tax in order to save the program for future retirees, and reduced our nuclear arsenal. It might be the paucity of Republicans who can be lifted up as heroes leads them to reach back and create a mythological Reagan. GWB, no. Bush, Sr., no. Nixon, no. Eisenhower, maybe, except for the military-industrial complex warning. Hoover, no. etc. They have to go all the way back to Lincoln. And Lincoln would be a Democrat today. Democrats have a few more options - Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, Truman, FDR. And these days from Joe the Plumber to Sarah Palin to a whole new slew of Tea Partiers like Rand Paul..........Republicans are frantically creating their Warholian 15 minutes of fame Republican icons hoping something sticks.

The University of Iowa may sell its Jackson Pollock valued at $140 million. If anybody needs an 8 foot by 20 foot genuine Pollock replica action painting mural like this one, I can do it for less than the $140 million this older one is appraised for.

Republican scatterbrain Sarah Palin called Republican Neanderthal Rick Santorum a Neanderthal. Neanderthals lived half a million years ago which is interesting given the number of Sarah Palin supporters and Tea Partiers who think the earth was created 6,000 years ago. Or perhaps Sarah Palin just didn't know what she was talking about..........nah, it couldn't have been that. And have you ever noticed that Republicans who denounce evolution often embrace "survival of the fittest" as the foundation for their social policies. Hmmmmmmm...........

On the difficulity of balancing the budget: On one side are the Democrats and on the Republican side you've got the Koch Brothers, the Supreme Court, and all that new corporate cash from the military/industrial/banking/financial/plutocrat complex flooding and corrupting our political system, a political ethos that says first try to distort your opponent's record and if that doesn't work, then just lie about it, coupled with a Ruppert Murdoch/Roger Ailes media "Big Lie" propaganda system unchecked by any semblance of even minimal standards of journalism, and an electorate suffering from short term memory loss and a shrinking attention span -- other than that, it should be easy......

Provisions of The Government can Wiretap Anybody Anytime without a Warrant Bill, otherwise known as the Patriot Act, were up for renewal and enough Tea Party Libertarians sided with enough Democrats and voted against it which stalled it for a week. It has since been revoted upon and passed in the House. The Republicans are so good at naming things. The We Love the Constitution Crowd who made such a show of reading portions of their beloved document on the first day of the new Congress just voted to suspend the 1st and 4th amendments. With the complicity of a large number of Democrats and President Obama, I am sad to add.

Like Kurt Vonngegut used to say, "so it goes."

Later,
Bud

Egypt and other Stuff

2011-02-08T07:45:00.001-08:00

A recent painting of mine is Sailing the Nile. There's a saying, "Revolutions begin with enthusiasm and end in tears." So I'll offer this painting as a "picture prayer" that Egyptians can find their way to a better tomorrow. Alliances with military dictatorships, however short term our narrow interests may be served, do not work out very well for us in the long run......After listening to the many Republican talking heads on the news lately, their position appears to be that the US should be for democracy in Egypt and the Middle East but that no Muslims should be involved. I'm not sure they've quite thought that through. The Obama Administration, sadly, appears to be siding with the wrong side of history on this one in backing away from support for the removal of Mubarak and for tolerating the continuation of Mubarak's reign at the expense of the people of Egypt. Be a leader for democracy, President Obama.

An interesting vote took place Feb. 8 on the renewal of portions of the PATRIOT ACT, or The Government can Wiretap any American for any Reason Without a Warrant Act. Tea Party Libertarians broke from the Big Government Republicans and joined with enough Democrats to defeat the extension of portions of the act. Time will tell how this works out. Meanwhile, the Culture Wars Religious Right branch of the Republicans, who want Big Government to be in charge of women's pregnancies, continues to introduce bill after bill to take away women's reproductive rights.

And after all the Republican campaign blather about jobs, jobs, jobs, and deficit, deficit, deficit, the House Republicans so far have voted to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, adding $1 Trillion to the deficit over ten years according to the Congressional Budget Office, cut taxes for the wealthiest of the wealthiest, adding hundreds of billions of $$$ to the national debt. Items on their budget cut "target" list include the EPA, the Dept. of Education, NEA, Public Television and Radio, and virtually every program for women, sick children, the disadvantaged, college students, people with disabilities, people of color, and everything Democrats have done since Franklin D. Roosevelt. And after all his campaign posturing, Republican budget "genius" Paul Ryan's proposed budget cuts have been pared down from $100 billion to about $32 billion. And he won't even include the $56 billion in budget cuts the Pentagon is proposing by eliminating weapons systems the military doesn't want.

In the meanwhile, John McCain and Donald Rumsfeld are publicly calling each other names, former President George W. Bush cancels a trip to Switzerland for fear of being arrested as a War Criminal, and a prisoner at Guantanamo dies after 9 years without being charged with a crime. House Republicans are trying to reinstate Don't Ask Don't Tell back and end Social Security. Republican William Kristol says Glenn Beck goes too far with his nutty conspiracy theories (the two Bush Presidents and a whole list of others are in conspiracy with Iran to create a world caliphate), Lindsey Graham sides With President Obama over Sarah Palin On Egypt, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann relentlessly say goofy stuff illustrating the contemporary truth of Thomas Brackett Reed's 19th century assertion: “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”

So there you go. Everything's back to normal.

Paul Ryan's State of the Union Republican Response

2011-01-26T07:51:00.000-08:00

The last time we Republicans were in control, we started two wars we didn't pay for, a Medicare prescription program we didn't pay for, tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires that we didn't pay for, and turned a budget surplus under Clinton to a trillion dollar deficit by Bush's last year. All of this in only eight years!!! Obviously, when we put our mind to something, we can get it done!

And since being elected as a majority in the House of Representatives in November 2010, and now the start of the 2011 Congress, we've changed the name of "earmarks" to "letter marks," and the House has passed a repeal of health insurance reform which would eliminate all those "socialist" things like no disqualification for pre-existing conditions, and keeping your college kids on your health insurance longer, and not letting insurance companies deny coverage for sick children. And we certainly look forward to shutting down government at the earliest opportunity.

Even though we campaigned on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, we didn't really mean it. That was just a joke. Get it? We're now going after gay marriage in Wash. DC., some of us want to reinstate Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military, and we will try to end Social Security for everyone under 55, cut every benefit aimed at the middle class or below, while fighting to give corporations and millionaires tax breaks, all the while, of course re-fighting every culture war of the past decade. And we have special plans for women and children: Planned Parenthood will be defunded, abortion rights and providers will be targeted, and we'll cut every program we can aimed at children's education, health, and welfare.

And to finally pay for all this we will be proposing a tax increase for the bottom 90% of income earners disguised as "tax reform." The rich deserve tax breaks because, well, they are rich, and so are we, and they give us money.

We promised to nominate really stupid people and we lived up to that pledge and some of them were even elected or re-elected (Michelle Bachman's recent statements on slavery, for example, illustrate just how ignorant some of us really are!!! And of course, Sarah Palin). We ran as the patriot party and the constitution party, and we will attempt to radically modify our beloved constitution to reflect our fantastic view of constitutional history.

During the last two years we successfully fought or weakened every attempt by President Obama to bring our country out of a severe recession and the complete financial meltdown we handed over to him as we got booted out of office.

But we were able to convince enough of you that Obama was a Muslim Kenyan socialist nazi communist alien who hated America and you all voted to put us back in control of the House in the last Congressional election. What a country!!!

Art and Arizona

2011-01-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

Snow day today for Jeremy, but I've got class this afternoon at Metro and Creighton starts tomorrow........

I've been able to do a bit of art this last week looking for some colorful escape from the cold and snow and sad news of the week and am attaching a few new pieces for your enjoyment (I hope!).

I have a few friends in Arizona who are mourning and consoling each other over the loss of friends, and acquaintances, and that poor little girl, and the life threatening injuries to their Congresswoman and other innocent bystanders who
were shot.

I've been perusing the news outlets and considering their limitless commentary and analysis, and I'll offer this: With 82 people killed everyday by gun violence in our country, how can people be "stunned" or "shocked" or find such occurrences "unimaginable"? Whatever the final judgments may be from people either smarter or more influential that I, that tens of thousands of psychotic, mentally disordered people, listen to violent rhetoric, crazy conspiracy theories, apocalyptic proclamations from AM talk radio shock jocks, TV "entertainers," not very "well regulated" millitias with their anti-government agendas and websites ( 2nd Amendment purists tend to not mention the "well-regulated" parts of said amendment) with vast storehouses of high powered weaponry, and snarky politicians talk "Lock and Load" and "Second Amendment Remedies" in a gun worshiping culture with ready access to automatic weapons is a dangerous mix...

I saw this morning that conservative Republican Peter King from New York may be offering some limited gun control legislation, and the large clips used by that psychotic killer in Arizona are the focus of some interest in Arizona, but I wouldn't place much hope there. The NRA gun lobby will fight tooth and nail
against any changes and they appear to have the power and ability to stop any such legislation.

But maybe there's hope that we will have fewer and fewer of these kinds of attacks and events. Reasonable people with immense patience and resilience will have to reassert themselves in our public and rhetorical lives first, though. Here's hoping.............

So consider the commentary and enjoy the art! And check out my Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=101493026592622&id=101542
0763#!/pages/Art-by-Cassiday/303955158963

Regards,
Bud C

www.artbycassiday.com

On Reading the Constitution

2011-01-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

The new Republican leadership of the House of Representatives in a nod to their Tea Party base is beginning the new Congress with a reading of the Constitution. I watched news coverage this morning of this reading - Democrats (determined not to be out-Constitutioned by Republicans) are participating in this spectacle as well. House members each read a few lines, one after the other, for about 15 seconds. It is estimated that this will take about three hours. (It actually took about an hour and a half and even Republicans left the chambers after about an hour of this performance......).

And apparently they are not reading the entire Constitution; they are reading an edited version not including those pesky reminders of slavery or prohibition, for example. Their redacted version of the Constitution parallels their redacted view of American History as well, I suspect. Texas has removed Thomas Jefferson from its history books, for example.

It is amusing to me that the Republicans are simultaneously plotting to amend more of the "peskier" aspects of the Constitution they don't like all the while posturing themselves as the great defenders of that document. They don't like, for example, that the Supreme Court is a separate arm of government empowered to interpret the Constitution. How contradictory is that?

It is all strangely disturbing. Prefacing their soon to occur attacks on the American unionized worker, the uninsured, Muslims, Mexicans, and the middle class, teachers, police officers, firefighters, the environment and education all the while enriching Wall Street, and Corporations, and the wealthiest of the wealthiest, with this spectacle of reading a redacted version of the Constitution is such pervasive cynical and hypocritical PR that I can't believe they'll get away with it.

That 15 seconds about reflects the Republican attention span to the plight of middle class working families, the millions of people who have lost their homes, the tens of millions of unemployed Americans, and the 50 million Americans who have no health insurance.

That 15 seconds also about reflects the length of time it took Republicans to break their campaign “promises” with which they hoodwinked gullible Tea Partiers with their phony populist rhetoric into voting for the Republican Corporate/Wall Street agendas.

Perhaps enough Americans will realize the “bait and switch” that took place in the last Congressional Election. Perhaps 15 seconds will be the duration of Republican credibility.

We’ll see……………

Politics, Frank Zappa, Happy Dogs, and Me

2010-12-20T06:35:00.000-08:00

Thoughts at the end of 2010. Dec. 21 is my 60th birthday and it is no accident that for first time 456 years, if not ever, my 60th birthday and the Winter Solstice coincide with a full eclipse of the moon. I share this birthday with Jane Fonda, Joe Paterno, Joseph Stalin, Phil Donahue, and Frank Zappa, to name a few. This coincidence has to have significance not only to me, but to humanity! And I'm not even going to mention the Dec. 21, 2012 Mayan calendar Nostrodaman apocalyptic end of the world scenarios on the same day I become eligible for early retirement under Social Security.........stay tuned for more on that later.

That I and the above were all born on the shortest day of the year, the first day of winter, the winter Solstice, with all its ancient and Druidic, pagan, and festival notions, always struck me as a nice coincidence. All these associations give it a special flavor -- I'm sure that somewhere in the distant past, various vicious tortures and sacrificial killings of goats, dogs, snakes, servants, and slaves all made this such a special day. Now it all blends in with the various religious traditions and holidays, Christmas, Hannukuh, Kwanzaa, and Walmart Day.

I appreciate the notes and cards from my family and friends reminding me of the cruel and relentless passage of time.

For some reason I like sharing this day with Frank Zappa and Jane Fonda the most. Joe Paterno and Joseph Stalin are more of a curiosity. I'm pretty neutral about Phil Donahue. Frank Zappa's band does a nice version of Ravel's Bolero, by the way.

A few thoughts on the politics of 2010 moving into 2011. After obstructing/stalling/filibustering most of the year, Republicans are now complaining that there isn't enough time to complete the work of Congress and so they want a longer Christmas vacation. The Republicans/Tea Party continue its majority in the Supreme Court and, beginning in 2011, The House of Representative giving them the power to continue to move their corporate agendas. The John Roberts/Walmart Supreme Court will continue is activist coporate agenda while the newly elected Koch Brothers/Wall Street House of Representatives continue its Big Lie strategy of depending on the misinformed ill-informed Faux News viewers fueled by the lunatic Glen Beck/Sean Hannity/Bill O'Reilly propoganda arm of the Republican/Tea Party secessionist fringe to be stirred up to rally to their causes - the complete and continuing corporate takeover of America among them...... I'm reminded of an old Huey Long quotation: "When Fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in an American Flag carrying a cross."

Politifact.org awarded the Republicans the Lie of the Year Award for its branding The Health Insurance Reform Act of 2010 as a "government takeover." I predict the Republican tactics of lies will continue. It worked in 2010, so why not give it a try in 2011? "Death Panels" had to be a close second. "Keep Government out of my Medicare" comes in third for sure. Oxymoron Award of the Year is given to Republicans for appointing Michele Bachmann to the House Intelligence Committee. Are you kidding me?

Sarah Palin's perpetual Alaska vacation hunting trip will continue on The Learning Channel. They need to change the name of the show from "Sarah Palin's Alaska" to "Alaska's Sarah Palin." I've watched it a couple of times just to see what it was and it is mostly Sarah shooting guns and killing stuff. And she'll continue to hoodwink the Lamestream media into covering her ridiculous and inane Twitters and Facebook postings as though they are newsworthy. John McCain, for whom we can thank for bringing attention to Sarah Palin, and making her rich, continues his slide into irrelevancy and grouchy small minded hypocrisy.

Tea Partiers with Republicans will continue their attempts to meddle with the Constitution. The Republicans will continue to succeed in shrinking the middle class and increasing the wealth of the wealthiest micropercent of Americans to record levels. And the investigations! Oh, let the investigations begin: every minute detail of President Obama's last two years in office will be poked and prodded, Matthew 7:3, King James Bible, And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Peter King from New York will have a wonderful time investigating Islam....... Just this last week Republicans voted against their own bill and their own earmarks, all the while criticizing President Obama. And Republicans, after wrapping themselves in the 9-11 Flag for the last nine years, just filibustered a bill to provide health benefits to 9-11 responders who are now dying from the toxic soups to which they were exposed during their rescues. Maybe it'll come up again this week. The hypocrisy levels, already high, will rise to new heights, I suspect, in 2011.

On the plus side, we still have a President Obama working to pass the things he ran for President on. Health Reform and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell were two major things he accomplished that even the magic of President Clinton couldn't get done. And the continuation of the tax cuts for the middle class is a good thing on balance, I think. There may be enough stimulative effect in the various componenets of the Tax legislation to help the economy along in spite of Republican efforts to keep the economy in its current state to gain electoral advantage. We Democrats need to remember Voltaire's comment, "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." The perfect is the enemy of the good. I've been trying to decide whether President Obama capitulates too easily or is crazy smart. I keep going back and forth. I'm still hoping he's crazy smart.

So there you go. Merry Christmas and a Happy Dog New Year.

Bud C

The True Meaning of Christmas 2010 and the Scourge of Subliminal Advertising

2010-12-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

The True Meaning of Christmas 2010 and the Scourge of Subliminal Advertising

Dear Friends, Gentlemen, Gentlewomen, Patrons, Admirers, as well as skeptical bystanders:

With the Diwali (buy Bud's art), Dias las Muertos (buy Bud's art), Christmas (buy Bud's art), Kwanzaa (buy Bud's art),Hanukkah (buy Bud's art), Year of the Red Fire Dog (buy Bud's art), Tet Nguyen Dan gift-giving weeks now upon us and quickly going by, (buy Bud's art), and the time-honored traditions(buy Bud's art), pagan rituals, and religious ceremonies (buy Bud's art)we blithely observe, whose origins are oftentimes obscured by clever (buy Bud's art)marketing ploys including skillfully disguised subliminal messages (buy Bud's art), I'd like to thank all of you (buy Bud's art) who have purchased my art (buy Bud's art) during 2010. But beware of the advertising industry's (buy Bud's art)careful and cynical use of subliminal (buy Bud's art) advertising.

From the seemingly innocuous (buy Bud's art)baking of cookies for open houses in the (buy Bud's art)real estate industry, to the use of (buy Bud's art)brand names in movies, to visual and auditory fragments of a desired message in (buy Bud's art)video, to the insertions of frame messages in motion pictures, to........the list goes on(buy Bud's art). All of these insidious (buy Bud's art)brain washing techniques are infecting our (buy Bud's art)marketplaces of(buy Bud's art) ideas and (buy Bud's art)products. In politics(buy Bud's art), does The Manchurian Candidate (buy Bud's art)ring any Pavlovian bells? These below consciousness levels of (buy Bud's art)persuasion can be the only reason (buy Bud's art) The Hummer (buy Bud's art)became a popular urban (buy Bud's art)commuting vehicle.

However successful (buy Bud's art)these pervasive techniques may be in the (buy Bud's art)market place, tremendous quantities of unpurchased art crowd the walls of my apartment (buy Bud's art), my hallway(buy Bud's art), my garage(buy Bud's art), my sister and mother's house (buy Bud's art), my brother's house (buy Bud's art), my other brother's apartment(buy Bud's art), (buy Bud's art), many of my friends' houses (buy Bud's art), several of my nieces and nephews dorm rooms (buy Bud's art), bedrooms (buy Bud's art), apartment walls (buy Bud's art), hallways (buy Bud's art), my church (buy Bud's art), restaurants, coffee houses, and vineyard shops (buy Bud's art), as well as actual art galleries!! and like I often do I could go on and on and on and on and on and on....

In addition, with the world only slowly emerging from a severe recession/depression, the Presidency of Barack Obama beginning its third year (buy Bud's art)with a Republican House of Representatives, it is incumbent upon each of us to support(buy Bud's art) the nation's economy (buy Bud's art)by an enormous burst of (buy Bud's art)consumer spending in this last weeks of 2010. Do your patriotic duty (buy Bud's art), show your love for others (especially me), and honor our religious, secular, and pagan traditions (buy Bud's art) by spending money (buy Bud's art) furiously (buy Bud's art)until the year's end(buy Bud's art).

And my 2011 Calendars have NEW AND IMPROVED DATES!!!!!!!!!!!! in the hopes that 2011 will be a better year than 2010.

Later,
Bud
www.artbycassiday.com

Ps. In the spirit of accountability, this message was reviewed by me three times now and I still stand by it.

Bibliography

1. ^ a b c d e "The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
2. ^ a b Pratkanis, Anthony R. (Spring 1992). "The Cargo-Cult Science of Subliminal Persuasion", Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, pp. 260-272. Retrieved on 11 August 2006.
3. ^ tachistoscope - Definitions from Dictionary.com
4. ^ a b c d "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Business (Subliminal Advertising)". The Urban Legends Reference Pages. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
5. ^ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Subliminal Advertising
6. ^ a b Lantos, Geoffrey P.. "The Absolute Threshold Level and Subliminal Messages" (PDF). Stonehill College. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
7. ^ Boese, Alex (2002). The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium, E. P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-94678-0. pages. 137-38.
8. ^ Peters, Dan; Steve Peters (1985). Rock's Hidden Persuader: The Truth About Backmasking. Bethany House Publishers, 19. Cited in U.S. Senate, page 125.
9. ^ U.S. Senate, page 118.
10. ^ U.S. Senate, page 125.
11. ^ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2006
12. ^ Karremans, J. (2006). Beyond vicary's fantasies: the impact of subliminal priming and brand choice [Electronic Version]. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 792-798
13. ^ Key, W. B. (1973). Subliminal seduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
14. ^ Byrne, D. (1959). "The effect of a subliminal food stimulus on verbal responses." Journal of Applied Psychology. 43 (no.4), 249-251.
15. ^ Marka conference.com
16. ^ Williams, Leanne M.; Belinda J. Liddell, Andrew H. Kemp, Richard A. Bryant, Russell A. Meares, Anthony S. Peduto, Evian Gordon (2006). "Amygdala-prefrontal dissociation of subliminal and supraliminal fear". Human Brain Mapping 27 (8): 652–661. doi:10.1002/hbm.20208.
17. ^ Brain Activity Reflects Complexity Of Responses To Other-race Faces, Science Daily, 14 December 2004
18. ^ Hassin, Ferguson, Shidlovski, Gross (2007). Subliminal exposure to national flags affects political thought and behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol. 104, no. 50
19. ^ Vokey, John R. (2002). "Subliminal Messages", Psychological Sketches (PDF), 6th edition, Lethbridge, Alberta: Psyence Ink, 223–246. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.
20. ^ Robinson, B.A.. "Backmasking on records: Real, or hoax?". Retrieved on 2006-07-04.
21. ^ Moore, Timothy E. (Spring 1992). "Subliminal Perception: Facts and Fallacies", Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, pp. 273-81. Retrieved on 11 August 2006.
22. ^ Vance, J., et al. v. Judas Priest et al., No. 86-5844, 2nd Dist. Ct. Nev. (August, 24 1990)
23. ^ Eskenazi, J., & Greenwald, A.G., Pratkanis, A.R. (1990). What you expect is what you believe (but not necessarily what you get): On the ineffectiveness of subliminal self-help audiotapes. Unpublished manuscript. University of California. Santa Cruz.
24. ^ The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?. The Straight Dope. Retrieved on 2008-06-11
25. ^ BTK Back
26. ^ Fight Club Easter Eggs - Eeggs.com
27. ^ Screen It! Parental Review: Fight Club
28. ^ Fight Club (1999) - Crazy credits
29. ^ Crowley, Candy. "Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message" CNN.com, 2000-9-12. Retrieved on December 16, 2006
30. ^ Smoking Pistols: George "Rat Ad" Bush and the Subliminal Kid
31. ^ 9/19/00 Speech by Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: The FCC's Investigation of "Subliminal Techniques:"
32. ^ Brasseye Wiki
33. ^ Error - - New York Times
34. ^ Re: [AMIA-L] Reply: "Sherlock Jr."
35. ^ "It was a glitch, not a subliminal ad, for McDonald's on Food Network". Canadian Press (2007-01-25). Retrieved on 2007-03-11.
36. ^ Subliminal advertising. - ninemsn Video
37. ^ YouTube - Led Zeppelin : Greatest Secret
38. ^ www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/queen.php
39. ^ Media:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdd01RI-AZE
40. ^ Agency asks slot-machine maker to halt subliminal messages
41. ^ Killick, Jane (1997). Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows. The Ballantine Publishing Group, 131.
42. ^ Singh, Simon (June 10, 2003), "I'll bet £1,000 that Derren can't read my mind", The Daily Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2003/06/10/ecfmagic.xml, retrieved on 12 March 2008

* Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal Perception: The nature of a controversy, McGraw-Hill, New York.
* Greeenwald, Anthony W. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious Cognition Reclaimed, American Psychologist, 47.
* Holender, D. (1986). Semantic activation without conscious identification in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and appraisal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 1-23.
* Merikle, P. M., and M. Daneman (1998). Psychological Investigations of Unconscious Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies.
* Watanabe, Sasaki, Nanez (2001). Perceptual learning without perception. Nature, 413, 844-848.
* Seitz and Watanabe (2003). Is subliminal learning really passive. Nature, 422, 36.
* United States Senate (1985). Record Labeling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. United States Senate, Ninety-ninth Congress, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records (September 19, 1985). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

[edit] Further reading

* Boese, Alex (2006). Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.'', Harcourt, Inc., ISBN 0-15-603083-7, 193-95

Egad! Thirty percent of voters who thought government hadn't done enough stimulus spending voted Republican

2010-11-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm nursing my election night wounds.....

Much of American political strategy these days is to misrepresent your opponent's position and then argue against the misrepresentation. This worked in a hugely successful way in 2010: from 'death... panels" to "he raised my taxes."

Given 1) the 24/7/365 right wing AM radio/Faux News demonstrated ability to
drive the false political narrative - Obama is a communist, fascist, nazi, socialist, Kenyan, alien, Muslim who Hates America wants to raise your taxes;
and 2) the "Lamestream" media's acquiescence in this false narrative (ABC had plans to have Andrew "The Liar" Breitbart comment on election night --ratings are the most important thing--, but backed off when enough sanity driven people protested); and 3) we had what President Clinton called a "fact free" political climate; 4) and given the enormous new amounts of unidentified Corporate cash pumped into this election disinformation campaign; and 5) given the massive messaging failures of the Obama Presidency and his disappointing "detachment"; American voters have put back into power in the House the Frat Party that created the whole mess to begin with. Disinformation rules!

A very conservative Republican friend of mine was adamant that this was not a Pro Republican vote, this was an anti-Obama vote. I'll agree with that partly but also modify that conclusion to say it was an Anti - ObamaCaricature vote. People voted against the Misrepresentation of Obama, not Obama. George Carlin said once, “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!” A woefully misinformed and disinformed electorate put back in power the party that "Drove the car into the ditch." Epistemic closure prevailed. And the Lame stream media went along with it. People were casting votes against the Muslim in the White House, against the Alien in the White House; and people were voting against the man who raised their taxes.

But I'm going to bet that the firmly rooted Corporate/Establishment Republicans already in Congress and rightest wing corporate Tea Partiers newly elected to ongress will try to govern as though they were given a Huge Mandate like George W Bush did when elected by the narrowest sliver of votes in two elections, the first one by a 5 to 4 vote of the Supreme Court. The second one by a handful of anti-gay votes in Ohio and Florida, which is slowly sinking into the Atlantic (despite the global warming naysayers). So there you go: it'll be interesting to see how this newly elected formula for gridlock works out.

But I'm predicting the Republic will survive and you'll need a 2011 Art by Cassiday calendar after all with NEW AND IMPROVED DATES! I'm including election day 2011 in the new calendar for all my Republican friends to look forward to getting one more branch of government. And also for my Democratic friends, given that there's always hope!

Regards, Bud C

ps. I'm available for small painting and tiling jobs through the winter.......

The Age of Crazy

2010-10-12T07:09:00.000-07:00

The Republican Big Lie strategy appears to have worked and they are on the verge of making some huge gains in the House of Representatives and the Senate, "capturing" one or possibly both Houses of Congress. "Capture" is probably the right word, too. In an all out assault on reason and truth, the party that "drove the car into the ditch," in President Obama's understated phrase, is about to get the car keys again.

The Tea Party, with all its Alice in Wonderland illogic, with backing from the billionaire Koch's and Big Corporate dollars, has been the cover for the right wingers' attempts to take back the government they so dislike and so profit from. For all their rhetoric, their message is the same as the rightest wing of the Republican Party.

The Real Republican Contract for America is "We'll cut your Social Security, Medicare, and your kid's health insurance, say lots of crazy sh**, elect really dumb people, make masturbation illegal, give tax breaks to billionaires, scrap the parts of the Constitution we don't like, shill for the highest bidder, and send your kids to Iran.....Vote for Us!"

And we appear about to fall for it again. Tea Party candidate after Tea Party candidate have been exposed as dumb, dishonest, duplicitous, extreme, and downright loony. Birthers, Creationists, ex-witches, crazy thugs, corporate shills, secessionists, racists and their heavily armed militias, and other representatives from the extreme delusional fringes are leading in their many respective races. Most decided early on not to say what they really believe -- website after website was scrubbed of their extremist nonsense -- and replaced with Republican talking points. But a few will fly into office under the radar and pursue their dismantle government agenda. A few may be even too nutty for their nutty supporters: Christine O'Donnell and that Paladino guy are far behind and that Alaskan Joe something has so many skeletons in his closet that the write-in Republican Senator he defeated in the primary, Murkowski, may have a chance. On the other hand, Sharron Angle is virtually tied with Harry Reid in spite of her far right nuttiness -- she tried early on not to say what she actually thought, but has stumbled time and time again when her actual beliefs come out.

Unlike most of these candidates, I don't believe that government is bad. Bad government is bad, and that's what we had under George W. Bush: from the failed efforts after Hurricane Katrina,to the enormous deficits, to the scandals, to the abridgment of our constitutional rights, to the invasion and occupation of Iraq which abandoned Afghanistan to become a failed drug state, to the collapse of our economy, to dozens and hundreds of other failures.

These many bags of horsesh** were placed on President Obama's White House doorstep on his first day. He's been vilified, alienized, Beckized, Hannitized, O'Reillyized, 24/7 since day one. The more bipartisan he attempted to be the more partisan the Republicans became with their strategy of Just Say NO. And it appears to have worked. President Obama's attempts to make government work better have been thwarted. His attempts to stimulate the economy have been diluted. His attempts to get America working again have been blocked.

And yet, the country is on the verge of making the same huge mistakes in judgment in November.

Maybe you don't like the current incumbents, but at the very least vote for candidates that are not demonstrably loony.

Regards,
Bud C

A Few Thoughts on Koran Burning

2010-09-09T09:12:00.000-07:00

I agree with President Obama calling on the Pastor from Florida to not do his Burn-a-Koran day, but a bit of context seems appropriate......in that in addition to this one nutball lighting up a Koran, we will also be launching Predator drones on Taliban leaders and wannabees having lunch or afternoon tea in several countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and probably Somalia, God knows where else.

I remember the visuals when we blew a huge hole in the ground trying to take out Saddam Hussein during a lunchtime at a local Baghdad cafe. The crater was enormous and surrounding buildings were also vaporized and we missed Saddam. He had paid his bill and moved on. Some uncounted number of poor schmuck waiters, busboys, and assorted cooks, kitchen workers, and neighbors and children watching Iraqi soap operas or cartoons on TV were the casualties. Iran, by the way, is still pissed that we overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953 and installed the Shah of Iran, who after decades of torturing and oppressing his own citizens, was overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini. See how well that worked out.......

Having kept the Saudi family in power for decades so we could buy their oil, 19 of their radicalized citizens led by one Osama bin Laden, a member of the Royal Saudi Family, crashed into the Twin Towers. So we attack Afghanistan's Taliban government, the Taliban being the Muhahideen who we created, armed, see Charlie's Wilson's War with Tom Hanks for a pretty decent explanation, and take them out after having created them to fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Talk about chickens coming home to roost. All the while buying Saudi oil in enormous quantities transferring unfathomable amounts our our nation's wealth to those same Saudi royalty from whom sprang Osama bin Hate America.

We then, for no apparent reason, decide to take out Saddam Hussein, and launch into a war that lasted three weeks, eventually leading to Saddam being hanged in a gruesome decapitation. The seven years after that three week military victory will have to become a manual of how not to do things. The scope of the ineptness, corruption, ideologically driven, Green Zone calamity cannot be understated. The invasion of Iraq begun in 2003 diverted our attention from Osama and those who attacked us and Afghanistan declined to become a nonfunctioning failed narco-state. We are only now extricating ourselves from the calamity of Iraq and are launching into a similar surely to fail surge effort in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, the political climate in our own country has debased intself with a growing anti-Muslim undercurrent pushing the Republican party and even chicken sh** Democrats into opposing a Islamic Cultural Center near the Twin Towers attack. We are undermining the very rational moderate peaceful Islamic Americans we claim to want to come forward....... We can be our own worst enemies....... I swear.....

So as we continue our international meddling with two wars going in that part of the world and a third being lobbied for, and when certain factions of the Islamic world go totally insane with their nuttiness and anti-American flag-burning, foaming-at-the-mouth angry insanity, and this is all broadcast on our 24/7 cable sensationalist news system we have now, keep in mind that there's more going on than just this nutball in Florida.

So how much does this one more match added to the conflagration really matter? Well it matters a lot.....but let's not forget all the other fires still burning.

Okay, I'm done for now.

Regards, Bud C

Patriots Against the Constitution

2010-08-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

The Republican Right Wing / Tea Party alliance, while spouting patriotic slogans and carrying automatic weapons and wrapping themselves in the flag of the Second Amendment, aren't so crazy about the other peskier constitutional clauses that provide for freedom of religion and speech -- except as they apply to themselves, of course. Those pesky Bill of Rights and other Amendments to the US Constitution when applied to Muslims, Mexicans, and other minorities are on the right wing radar screens as "enemy combatants." Oh, yeah, that brings up a whole other group of traditional "American" due process rights that were willingly forfeited during the George W. Bush years -- right to trial by jury, wiretapping only with court orders, habeus corpus, and others.

But the political season is here again and my oh-so sensitive hypocrisy meter -- the 100% Orwellian Big Lie Right Wing Propaganda Machine is Hard At Work -- is loudly ringing. I don't claim any special wisdom regarding these issues, and have plenty of hypocrisy myself, I'm sure, but those alarm bells are ringing loudly during this campaign season once again......... And the Republican wedge issues are being developed - terror babies, race baiting, mosques, Mexicans - the level of political discourse from the right has become so degraded and dishonest and persistent and successful that it has become the norm........Lee Atwater and Karl Rove politics as usual........ They shamelessly and successfully frame the issues year after year, and the feckless Democrats are on the defensive time after time. In the past it has been the Democrats are soft on crime, not anti-gay enough, soft on defense, big government spenders, pro-union, etc., etc. Actual facts have never really mattered.

And by the way, notice how Gay Rights/Gay Marriage and the Repeal of Health Insurance have faded into the background noise as a potential "wedge" issue; Americans have finally discovered that we all have gay children, nephews, nieces, grandmothers, grandfathers, cousins, friends, neighbors, pharmacists, pastors, auto-repairmen, teachers, accountants, police officers, construction workers, firefighters, (the gay union firefighters who risked and gave their lives at Ground Zero, and everyday for that matter,don't get much press) etc., and are now gradually wondering what all the fuss was about; and, in fact, even on the Health Insurance Reform from a year ago, a majority are liking what they are finding out about what really is in there. No Death Panels; no socialism.

The Right Wingers moved on to more fertile territory for fear mongering, scare tactics, and division.........terror babies, Ground Zero Mosque, and race baiting.

"Patriots Against the Constitution" is an oxymoron that seems to fit many of these extremists. From vowing not to follow chain of command orders in the military, to targetting Law Enforcement for assassination as a way to start the "revolution" and replace representative democracy with a theocratic dictatorship is not as "fringe" as you might think...... You've heard of the Six Degrees of Separation ---- well, there aren't nearly that many.

The Rent-a-Bike program in Denver is being attacked by a Republican Tea Party candidate for Governor as an Anti-American plot for world government by the United Nations.......This is from the Republican candidate for Governor of Colorado. From Rand Paul to Sharron Angle, the radical nutty fringe has been promoted to the Republican mainstream.... Remember Sharron Angle proposing her "Second Amendment" remedies?

So I think it's more than just the rhetoric with all its mind-twisting perversion of language that's gotten out of hand, it's the Republican Party's adoption of its fringe right wing black helicopter conspiracy theory crazies who are on the verge of being elected. And it's the apparent success of their "Patriotic Anti-Americanism" with all its inchoate anger, inherent incoherence, and logical dead ends that mystify me.

Cucumbers in the Church Refrigerator, To Kill a Mockingbird, and My Life as an Artist

2010-07-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

I watched To Kill a Mockingbird on a movie channel the other night with my Elizabeth. I've read it before and this year is the 50th anniversary of the book's publication. Harper Lee became famous for that book but not very well known. She also helped research and possibly write with Truman Capote, her boyhood friend, In Cold Blood. What a strange combination.

My parents took me to see To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 12, 1962, the year the movie came out, a year before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We lived in a small Nebraska town, Friend, Ne, and I don't remember where we drove to see the movie, Lincoln, perhaps, 60 miles away. There were no black people living in Friend, Ne, or any where near Friend, Ne, that I knew of. Lincoln had black people, and Omaha had lots of black people, but no black people lived in Friend. As a teenager, I watched the Civil Rights Movement marches on TV, and saw President Johnson move the Democratic Party from the party of racism to the party of the Civil Rights and felt pretty proud that my parents took me to see To Kill a Mockingbird. A black African missionary stayed at our house for a few days in Friend while visiting churches in the area asking for help.

The sad thing is that fifty years after the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, we are still coming up with ways To Kill that Mockingbird. The very popular, public, and mainstream racist elements of the Tea Party and race baiting of Andrew Breitbart and Glenn Beck, the various white pride organizations on the radar, the more underground Christian White Militias, and others too sadly numerous to list, have all manifested themselves these days as the Republican Party of 2010.

I get caught up in things. Art. Golf. Music. Life. Politics. Perhaps too much. I can't let go of stuff. I scan the national news everyday online at my favorite news sources: CNN, Salon, HuffingtonPost, Alternet.org, TheNation, Sojourners, and a few others. I like to post the latest outrages of Faux News, and the ever loony Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter (I still say she's a guy). The newest face on this Mount Rushmore of Crazy is Andrew Breitbart, a new Republican hero. He's personally responsible now for taking down, on false premises, Van Jones, ACORN, and Shirley Sherrod. The Faux News Right Wing Bloviating Machine knowingly propogated his lies hour after hour, night after night. And the White House over-reacted inexplicably. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice and thrice, shame on me. The tactic was very effective in diverting our attention from the racist elements of the Tea Partiers.

The Tea Party conglomeration of angry rich white people is another thing I get caught up in watching. The spectacle of it all is amusing and frightening all at the same time...... The rise of right wing Christian militias and armed citizens fomented by that crazy Mormon guy mentioned above will surely lead to mass murder at some point. It nearly did a week ago in California, but the frightfully armed crazy was stopped for drunk driving before he could get to his target, The Tides Foundation, a non-profit group advocating social justice. Unfortunately, two California State Patrol were wounded during the ensuing gun battle.

Democrats are coming out of the race closet as well..... Inspired by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb’s musings about the "Myth of White Privilege," Adam Serwer over at The American Prospect wrote: "There are a number of things about Senator Jim Webb’s op-ed “The Myth of White Privilege” to dislike, starting with the fact that one of the awesome things about the existence of white privilege is that you can be part of a body like the U.S. Senate, which has a total number of zero elected black members, and write something titled “The Myth of White Privilege” without anyone batting an eyelash." A white Senator from an All White Senate writing about The Myth of White Privilege. That's what's going on these days.......

The disastrous wars, collapsing financial system, and imploding auto industries President Obama inherited from the previous Administration gave the current Republican opposition plenty of grist for the mill. And Republicans who have opposed and filibustered Health Insurance Reform, Financial Reform, economic stimulus, and every other idea put forth by the Obama Administration which have largely enjoyed majority public support, appear to be in position to win a sizable number of seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate, despite the fact that the Republicans public approval ratings are far more negative than the Democrats. Republicans, who are doing everything they can to stop unemployment insurance payments to people out of work while simultaneously wanting to extend tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, got us into a trillion dollars of debt in two wars, tax cuts for the wealthy, a prescription drug plan none of which they figured out a way to pay for, and are now riding the anti-deficit horse at full gallop. Try to make sense of that!

So there you go. I get pretty discouraged. And my car's broken.

And I'm sitting here waiting for a call from the garage that says my car is now drivable again so I can head to work. On Monday, I drove to church to work for a few hours and when I came out to the parking lot to head home, I noticed gasoline dripping into a large pool under the car. There was a hole in the gas tank and I'd just put in $35 worth of gas that morning. There went $35 down the drain. And I've known I needed new brakes and the Check Engine light has been on for a year and a half. And those shop mechanics charge about the same rates as brain and open heart surgeons these days. At one point in my life, no matter what the issue was, car repairs were always $200.....later that became $400.....later $900.......and now double that again....... Brakes, radiator repair, this seal or that seal, this timing belt, this water or fuel pump, or this or that whatever...... The cost rises exponentially.

But now to the Cucumbers in the Church Refrigerator story.

To the person who left the cucumbers in the refrigerator at church..... Thank you! My car was in the shop all day Tuesday and is still there today, and I have no alternate transportation. I got a ride to church on Tuesday, but forgot my to bring my lunch/dinner, leftover Mexican food from the night before. I like certain leftovers because the flavors intensify somehow. I stayed all day at church to remain for an evening meeting and was getting quite hungry but only had a couple of dollars in my wallet. So around late afternoon when my stomach was growling, I checked out the kitchen refrigerator and found a large bag of cucumbers. I found a nice big one, still crisp, and not mushy. That was the best tasting cucumber I ever had........

So I'll be thankful for the values and help along the way my parents gave and give me, my part-time jobs at my church, and Metro, and Creighton, and the house painting I do, and being able to create and sell my art, and play music in my band, and my sweetheart.

And thankful for cucumbers in the church refrigerator!

The Broken Arm

2010-07-01T20:46:00.000-07:00

My honey was out walking one dark summer night.
And fireflies were out in their luminescent delight.

“I must text my friends,” my sweet honey thought.
Not realizing with such danger this act was fraught.

So texting she attempted, and veered in to the ditch.
And while she was tumbling, thought, “Son of a *****.”

But gamely she continued to her sister’s near farm.
All the while quite certain she had broken her arm.

The doctors inserted some pins and a plate.
And my honey has been waiting for the pain to abate.

On her left arm she will bear a four inch scar.
But at least she wasn’t texting while driving a car!

It's the Little Things - Like Toothpicks made in China

2010-06-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

The Broken Toothpick

There's a stoplight by my apartment that is green for 7 seconds. Maybe three cars can get through that light on any given cycle. It must be about 30 seconds going the other way. On a real good day, I round the bend on Gary Street, and will hit that green light, and be on my way -- that should be a 1 in 4 chance given the time ratios, but history says it's more like 1 in 20. I'll usually have to sit there for an entire light cycle before I can be on my way. When I make that light, I have this feeling that it's going to be a good day......

A secret pleasure of mine is be be driving along a stretch of road at the same time as an aggressive driver. The other driver accelerates madly from each stop light and weaves in and out of traffic trying to gain that extra car length, that extra 3 or 4 seconds. I will attempt to maintain a modest rate of speed and accelerate gently and gradually slow for traffic signals so that I am "timing" them correctly. The secret pleasure is, by judicious and careful driving, to pass that same driver who zoomed by me several blocks before who is now stuck in a traffic lane waiting for the driver in front of him to turn. I like that.

I also like playing the game of golf. I was once a near scratch golfer, but now have a handicap of 6 or so. I like hitting a sweet shot -- a crisp iron to a green, a well played lag putt, a chip that flirts with the cup, or that 1 in 5 drive that I hit with that beautiful low draw trajectory that gobbles up those extra ground yards. On my best days, I can still score around par, but my scoring average is definitely creeping upward as I near age 60. I had a streak of about 30 years or so where I had at least one under par round of golf every year...and some years several under part rounds... I've had par rounds the last three years, but haven't been able to get that under par round. My family likes to wish me "subpar" rounds of golf......their humor is to be appreciated. An underestimated aspect of golf courses is that they are usually quite pretty. It does make for a lovely walk!

I like a good snack -- a favorite of mine is a few slices of a sharp dry cheddar cheese, a few green olives, perhaps a bite or two of pickled herring, and a few crackers. Man is that good! I like the Greek Kalamata olives especially, either black or green. That briny vinegary taste balances nicely with the cheddar. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it......

I enjoy a good book, too. I'm currently reading Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct," Joseph Heller's "God Knows," an Agatha Christie mystery, Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," James Joyce's "Ulysses,", William Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways," and Bill Moyers' "Genesis: A Living Conversation." I pick them up at different times and wander through them. "Genesis" is an interesting read - see my previous blog. The Cain and Abel story is still something of a mystery for me. It appears to me that modern scholarship provides the meaning to the story that is not inherent to the story itself - which I can live with.

On the other hand, I had an existential crisis yesterday. I was at a wedding reception for my nephew and his lovely bride and was nibbling my hors d'ouvres using a provided toothpick with the colored cellophane-esque material wrapped around one end. Cellophane, if the material was indeed cellophane, is made from cellulose from wood, cotton, hemp, or other sources which is dissolved in alkali and carbon disulfide to make a solution called viscose, which is then extruded through a slit into a bath of dilute sulfuric acid and sodium sulfate to reconvert the viscose into cellulose. The film is then passed through several more baths, one to remove sulfur, one to bleach the film, and one to add glycerin to prevent the film from becoming brittle. That all seems pretty high tech for that little bit of decoration on the end of a toothpick.

The toothpicks were a long variety - maybe 3 1/2 inches long. According to an online encylopedia American wooden toothpicks are cut from birch wood. "Logs are first spiral cut into thin sheets, which are then cut, chopped and milled into the individual toothpicks. Maine is the leading producer of toothpicks for the United States. Worldwide, Brazil has the highest export rate of toothpicks. However, in the recent years, China has overtaken Brazil's toothpick industry bringing in approximately US$24 billion per year from the export of toothpicks."

So there I was nibbling on a very tasty piece of beef, using the toothpick to pick up another bite, when the toothpick broke. It broke right in half, one piece at right angles to the other hinged in the middle with that one strand of toothpick still unbroken. I hadn't used excessive force I thought. I wasn't being overly agressive in picking up that Nebraska beef morsel with the rich brown gravy. It had worked fine on my cheese and melon cubes. But there I was with that broken toothpick wanting another bite of my hors d'ouvres. I said to my brother, "My toothpick broke." I went on to explain that it was the little things in life, the small aggravations, that we notice most - a hair on the toothbrush that ends up stuck in between teeth when brushing, or that you can feel with your tongue, but can't quite grab with your fingers to remove. Or going to the refrigerator for a glass of milk, only to discover that the last half inch of milk in the bottom of the jug doesn't quite smell right. Or I drop the last M & M down the gap between the seat cushion and the arm of my Brown Leather Barcalounger Recliner Chair and can't find it without upending the chair and shaking it out of there. When these little things in life go awry, they grate on our very existence, and are a sign that our civilization is on the verge of collapse.

Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death - the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Anti-Christ, socialism, and government guaranteed health insurance. Life as we know it - gone forever.

That broken toothpick did it for me...... My brother suggested that I could get another toothpick. Just like a guy to not deal with my feelings on the matter, but to instead jump way ahead to a "solution" to the problem. Hey, I've read "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." Anyway, he said it like getting another toothpick was a solution to the real problem.

I can only assume that the toothpick was made in China.......or Brazil.

Alright, gotta go.

Bud

In the Garden of Eden with a Snake

2010-06-16T15:02:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to figure out the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, and I have to confess it makes no sense to me. There's no Biblical context, or metaphoric way, or analogical way, that this story makes sense. The Garden of Eden story makes sense as a creation myth and "what the heck we are doing here anyway?" story. The Garden of Eden story makes sense as a "conciousness" metaphor -- becoming aware of our mortality and our capacity for doing really crappy stuff to each other. Perhaps the Cain Abel story is simply an example of our capacity to murder each other for the most specious of reasons. Like the Smothers Brothers - "Mom always liked you best." But I think there should be more to it. The Garden of Eden story has more going for it -- Garden story sets the stage for us, though, in a metaphorically conceivable way, the creation of the universe and how we got here.

So now we sit here in our blissful serenity Garden- between catastrophes of our own making or others'- wars, plagues, famines, genocide. Nuclear warheads pointed at each other. Biological weapons stored in "secure" facilities. Sure..... Global warming, the large Hadron collector, engineered viruses, giant solar storms -- any one of which could do us in. We sit here between asteroid collisions which have eliminated virtually all life on the planet numerous times. We sit here between ice ages and stifling deserts and inland seas. We blithely sit here virtually on top of supervolcanoes (Yellowstone National Park, Long Valley in California, Valles Caldera in its own National Preserve) and other not so super volcanoes - Naples, Mount Shasta. We turn these end-all-life-as-we-know-it sites into recreation areas and camp on them and roast marshmallows and sing songs..... Talk about whistling past the graveyard!

We are miraculously/accidentally (it depends on your point of view more than anything as far as I can tell) created on a planet just far enough away, but not too far away, from the sun, so that the planet supports liquid water. There are no threatening gamma ray bursters that we know about in the immediate 200 light year radius of earth. Our sun won't fizzle out for another 5 billion years or so...... Stephen Hawking says we need to beware of mean aliens -- as if we could do anything about a species that could interstellar travel to visit us.

Humanity seems to have become aware of itself only as recently as 1300 BCE (according to Jayne's theory of conciousness). So it's not that we've been sitting around for all that long contemplating our navels. If it weren't for the a slight imbalance of matter and anti-matter during the first trillionth of a second of our universe, none of this would matter because we wouldn't be here in the first place.

Some say conciousness was achieved earlier (in 2001 A Space Odyssey a chimp like creature, named Cain perhaps, smashes another on the head, Abel perhaps)- but at best in the scheme of things, a 4 billion year old planet in a 14 billion old universe, it's like conciousness happened this morning at 10:30.... And even that's not universally accepted: quoting from a Huffington Post article, "As Marvin Minsky, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology cognitive scientist and artificial intelligence expert, put it more crudely, "The brain is just a computer made of meat." Nobel Prize winning Francis Crick, British molecular biologist, physicist, and neuroscientist, went further. In his subsequent book Of Molecules and Men, he wrote, "The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry" -- to analyze, in other words, the meat. And lest there be no doubt about where he stands, philosopher Dennett says, "We're all zombies. Nobody is conscious." So much for Descartes - "I think; therefore, I am."

Even if we posit "conciousness" to ourselves, we get only a sliver of time to provide sense and meaning to each other --40 years maybe. We get a glimpse of our mortality just in the nick of time. We spend the first part of our lives oblivious to our own mortality, and the middle part fighting it, and the last few trying to avoid it and/or welcoming it.....

We must have been created in order to create meaning, I think; or at least, that's what makes sense to me for the slice of time we are here. I may work on a Cain and Abel painting; or like I like to say, "When all else fails, I always say, paint a flower."

Bud

The Things We Make Our Kids Do

2010-05-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

This Memorial Day weekend, I'm looking at the news of the day. The British Petroleum Oil Gusher continues in its 40th day a mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico with no end in sight, and the dollar cost of the Afghan and Iraqi wars now exceeds ONE TRILLION dollars. Civilian deaths in those two wars are estimated to be between 100,000 and 800,000. The very fact that it is so vaguely tabulated says something about the war's very nature. US military casualties exceed 5,000 killed and about 35,000 seriously wounded. President Obama has pledged to get out of Iraq and is being pressured more and more to do the same from Afghanistan. The things we make our kids do.

My Dad and his brothers were in the Navy in WW II. One uncle saw action and was stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. I don't remember about my Uncle Benny. My Dad was stationed at Morro Bay in Northern California and used to tell us kids about marching his night duty along the Pacific Ocean shore watching for Japanese submarines. All three brothers survived the war. Some wars do make more sense than others, unfortunately. The things we make kids do.

I did a bit of research and found that approximately 1,300,000 American soldiers have been killed in all our wars since the Revolutionary War. About half of those were killed in the Civil War, appr. 400,000 US Soldiers were killed in WWII, 50,000 in South Vietnam, with the remaining 200,000 killed in all the other wars combined. Mostly kids, I suspect, forced to do what kids shouldn't have to do. Optional wars seem to me to be a bad idea.

We keep beginning things we can't control, creating problems that are beyond our capacity to solve.... Unequivocal victories are few and far between these days. Unanticipated consequences are the norm. Maybe what is in common between these two items in the news this weekend is our hubris, our arrogance. We think we can start wars and manage them to successful conclusions. We think we can dig oil wells a mile deep in the ocean and we are smart enough to thwart catastrophe. Eleven young oil workers died on that platform.

The unstoppable oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico seems to work as a metaphor for our inability to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hubris tells us we can "manage" these wars -- we can't; they take on a life of their own; hubris tells us we can explore and drill for oil in places we can't even go -- we can't; they take on a life of their own. Just as the oil washes up on our shores do the fallen arrive home to their grieving families.

So on this Memorial Weekend, let us remember all those young kids who gave their lives for all the reasons that politicians come up with. I'm pretty convinced that the best way to end these wars is to stop fighting them. Our kids go bravely where and when they are told. Let us do a better job of deciding where they should go.

Ich bin ein Arizonan

2010-05-18T07:04:00.000-07:00

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." - President Ronald Reagan

"Build the dang fence." - John McCain

"Ich bin ein Berliner." -John Kennedy has become "We're all Arizonans now." Sarah Louise Palin

Times have certainly changed. John McCain has changed from Maverick war-hero independent thinking pragmatic centrist to sycophantic Tea Party chasing weird guy hanger-onner from Arizona. Sarah Louise Palin (anagram - Lush Paranoia Lies) has morphed from unknown Alaska right-wing small-town small-time politician to nationally known opportunist uber-rich celebrity hack, ultra-right-wing, incoherent, inchoate Tea Party anger spokesperson that even Alaska doesn't want as a future President. Someone else writes books for her and she gets rich..... The corporate and Fox News organized, financed, and sponsored Tea Party conglomeration of disaffected angry at everything and everybody is perceived as a populist grass roots movement. The right wing media machine is running at full BIG LIE speed and the "lamestream" media (great phrase coined by SLP) passively reports and, therefore, promulgates the repeated misinformation spread by FOX and Friends. Glenn Beck gets rich with his loony shtick. What a country!

But it is contradictory anger: anger at TARP and bailouts of financial institutions and auto companies is accompanied by filibusters against fixes of the problems. Conservative right wing Republicans are now targeted by Tea Party candidates - to replace with even more conservative righter-wing Republicans. Be careful about how much anger you try to stir up would be a message the Republicans might heed in the future. Constitutional Rights are selectively embraced and/or rejected -- i.e., We should be able to sell terror suspects on Watch Lists and No Fly Lists weapons and explosives, but we shouldn't be required to read them their Miranda Rights after they are arrested for their crimes. And we should be able to imprison American citizens without charges for as long as we want........

Dr. Frankenstein's monster and Oppenhemier's famous prophecy come to mind: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

So, as we head down the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole to the Tea Party, I guess we'll see in the election cycles ahead whether the Ouroboric, snake eating its own tail, "epistemically closed," extreme right-wing devours itself in its undifferentiated "infancy experience" unfettered by the attempt to actually make something work fizzles out or gains strength.....or whether cooler pragmatic heads prevail. President Obama has always struck me as the adult in the room......

Help, I've fallen off the Coffee Party "civility pledge" wagon again. I need a Coffee Party sponsor.

Regards, Bud

Muslim Immigrant is Hero in Times Square Bomb Attempt

2010-05-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

A few observations on the Times Square attempted bombing: President Obama's focused strikes against the Taliban and Al Quaeda appear to be degrading their capabilities to the point that we are seeing the 3rd and 4th string players in the game. As a Nebraskan remembering the glory years of the Bob Devaney and Tom Osborne years when NU would be ahead by 40 points in the middle of the third quarter, players off the bench would get playing time. There'd be a field full of "I wonder who that is" players doing their damndest to impress the coaches with their spirit, spunk, and abilities. Parents of these players would root them on enthusiastically while they sometimes excelled and sometimes stepped the wrong way, blocked the wrong guy, fumbled the ball, got the snap count wrong, etc.,etc., etc.

The latest terrorist attempts, the Times Square event and the kid on the airplane a couple of months ago who set his underwear on fire, seem to fit into this category. US forces have so targeted, pursued, and Predator droned them, that we are seeing their 3rd and 4th string players toward the end of the game. Incompetent amateurs who lack the training and experience of the earlier players have been unable to carry out their planned attacks. Lucky for us? Yes, of course, but credit President Obama's focus on the actual terrorists this last many months. George W. Bush's approach to terrorism -- Hey, let's invade Iraq -- left the door open to Al Quada's devastating attacks in Malaysia, in Mumbai, in Kenya, in London, in Spain, etc., and helped organize Al Quaeda to infiltrating Iraq and fomenting a brutal civil war there.

One difference in my analogy, though, is the Underpants Bomber's parents were not rooting for him. They, in fact, alerted the US Embassy of their concerns that their son was "radicalized." I haven't heard about the parents of the Time Square Bomber, though. I hope they are not among those rooting him on.

Another thing, the citizen who alerted the police to the explosive device in Times Square was a Muslim immigrant trying to make a better life for himself in the US. Let's not forget that...... People risk their lives to come to the United States because the US has more opportunity than most of their home countries.

Other topics:

Homophobia -- Have you noticed that the more rabidly anti-gay and homophobic politicians are, the more likely they are to have unresolved "issues" about their own sexuality? My advice is: be who you are. You'll save everyone a lot of heartache and trouble. George Rekers is the latest in a long line of troubled souls spreading their tormented visions and hypocrisy to others.

Bill of Rights -- The Republicans can be pretty selective about these rights -- Gitmo where it's okay to imprison people for years w/o charges (President Obama, too); warrantless wiretapping of US citizens; efforts to undo Miranda rights for people arrested in US jurisdiction including US citizens. But try to prohibit sales of weapons and explosives to terror suspects on FBI watch and no-fly lists, and the 2nd Amendment zealots go bonkers..... Their position appears to be we will sell terrorists weapons, but we don't have to read them their rights after we arrest them......

And another thing, in the "good old days" many of the people who were spouting "My Country, Right or Wrong" are now plotting the overthrow of the government in Christian or other militias. Whatever happened to that sentiment? When the Republicans are in power, any criticism of the President borders on unpatriotic behavior to be attacked. Now, criticism of President Obama is not premised on any particular program or policy: anything Obama does is subject of coordinated media driven right-wing (Faux News, Limbaugh, Palin, Beck, Karl Rove, etc.) campaigns against it. Oh, for the good old days! Ever notice that Karl Rove and Karl Marx have the same first name?

Next, what's with Florida? - Marco Rubio, Republican candidate for Governor, son of Cuban exiles, now says send all illegals back including American citizen children of illegals. Republican Governor Charlie Crist is run out of party by the rightest of wingers and Tea Partiers, and an anti-bestiality law has been introduced twice now and rejected twice now by Florida's Legislature..... What does all that add up to? Hmmmmmm.

And finally, a comment on the stability of the American financial system. A leading theory on the 1,000 point stock market plummet this last week was that someone typed a "b" instead of an "m" in a purchase or sell order causing computer stock trading systems to run wild. Skynet, anyone? Hardly builds confidence in the system.....

Bud Cassiday

ps. DNA researchers have now determined that we all carry a bit of Neanderthal genetic structure in our heritage. I always thought my Uncle Benny looked a bit Neanderthal. Now, I know why. I guess those Homo Sapiens were always on the look out for a party.......

King David, Vermont, and a Duck that Goes "Quark, Quark"

2010-04-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

Title of the attached painting is "Thirteen Galaxies." I was watching a Discovery Network show about how the Universe was created during and shortly after the Big Bang, and I mean shortly. Real shortly. There is a unit of time called Planck Time and is the length of time that it takes light to travel 1.616-something meters, about 5 feet. It's a pretty short interval of time - about a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. So, pretty short. But given that the earth's orbital speed around the sun is gradually slowing down, it won't be that short for long. And then Ben Franklin thought up Daylight Savings Time.......but that's another story.

One of the fascinating aspects of the Big Bang is how energy/mass/time are all created in that one instant 13.73 billion years ago when everything goes KERFLOOEY and expanded and created everything in that nanonanonanonanonanonano second. Sir Edwin Hubble, who we sent up in orbit to watch stars, noticed that the galaxies were speeding away from each other, and concluded that, "Wow, the galaxies are speeding away from each other." By plotting their speeds and directions, Hubble was able to imagine the galaxies reversing their courses and ending up at the same space/time point. Scientists now can even back track from the present Universe and shrink the Universe mathematically using giant superconducting colliders and crashing elementary particles into each other and taking really cool photos with really cool digital cameras way back down now to about the first trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. They have found all kinds of cool stuff: quarks, and gluon plasma, leptons, baryons, and antiquarks and antibaryons...... And I don't have a hard time with any of that. "God" explains all the stuff we can't otherwise explain in most scientists' minds. As long as they don't create the black hole which sucks the Earth into oblivion on some nice Friday afternoon while I'm out golfing and enjoying time with my friends or out on a date with my sweetheart, I'm okay with all their crazy experiments. Dr. Emilio Lizardo in "Buckaroo Banzai - Electroids Across the Eighth Dimension" comes to mind.

Then there's the Big Fight between Matter and Anti-Matter. The two forces were quite busy annihilating each other willy-nilly in those first few nano-seconds, and Matter won, but just barely. Just a bit more Anti-Matter and we wouldn't be here. I think that's why we have the Matterhorn. And that's why things matter. Just remember, though, never have pasta and antipasti on the same plate; the results could be quite messy.

I can mentally and conceptually shrink the Universe to the size of our solar system given that atoms are mostly empty space and molecules are mostly empty space and matter is mostly empty space, as is the ice cream bar I had last night and the cheeseburger I ate yesterday. In fact, space is mostly, well, space. And I can mentally shrink the Universe down to the size of our Sun or even Jupiter, or Earth, or Mercury. I can mentally shrink the Universe to the size of Nebraska or even Vermont.

I am reminded of a passage in Joseph Heller's "God Knows," a fictional autobiography of King David, where King David is full of braggadocio about his many victories in battles and conquests of tribes and foreign lands and is quite proud of himself that he took a kingdom the size of Rhode Island and turned into a kingdom the size of Vermont. Puts it all into perspective, doesn't it?

So back to the shrinking Universe. I can mentally shrink the Universe to the size of Mount Rushmore, or even a refrigerator, or maybe a case of Budweiser, maybe a basketball, and a softball, or a tennis ball, or a golf ball, or a large marble and even a little cat's eye marble, or a pea, or even a BB. But any smaller than that defies all rational logic and systematic thought and is just plain ridiculous.

So I'm left contemplating the Universe compressed and shrunk to the size of a BB and wondering how God did it anyway........ Did you hear about the first duck created in the Universe? It said, "Quark, Quark."

Made in America

2010-04-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

A few thoughts on a beautiful April afternoon about the state of the union......

I noticed that Sarah Palin is starting to tell her crowds that she is not calling for violence although in response to an Alaska Militia, apparently training to overthrow the US Government, she used the phrase "not at this point." Perhaps the threefold increase in threats against political leaders had something to do with that. She and Michele Bachman got together in Minnesota and didn't have a thought between them...... If nothing else, that one is a former Governor and unsuccessful candidate for Vice-President and one is a Representative in the US Congress proves that in America anything is possible. I still don't get it....... I enjoyed watching Dumb and Dumber with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, but this is ridiculous. And all their militaristic and murder and gun rhetoric - metaphors they say - provide the meta-narrative of their movement.

Nine violent Hutaree Christian Militia members were arrested recently.....tip of the iceberg I suspect. And they are about as "Christian" as Osama Bin Laden is "Islamic." Perverions of faiths are, well, perverted. Joe Conason speculates about a possible US "dirty war" and lists the growing numbers of politically and racist motivated threats against Democratic leaders which have now led to numerous arrests. Perhaps caught up in the "fun" of it all, the mentally disturbed are even threatening Republicans now. And the Tea Partiers continue to be against everything as far as I can tell, but what they are "for" remains a mystery. Even the anti-tax message gets pretty fuzzy when the numbers of Tea Partiers who receive government benefits or subsidies of one kind or another are factored in......... They appear to be mostly against other people getting subsidies or benefits. And a pretty sobering thought: I saw a video of Sean Hannity addressing one of his crowds who cheered when he mentioned Timothy McVeigh "wannabees," you know, that guy who killed 168 innocent people in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. You've got to be kiddingme......

The GOP has it Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans without ever mentioning George W. Bush's catastrophic handling of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath while Chile's new President Sebastian Pinera studies the failed response of the last Republican Administration's handling of Hurricane Katrina in order to do a better job of responding to the human needs following Chile's terrible earthquake just a weeks ago. "We don't want to make the same mistakes," Chilean Foreign Minister Alfredo Moreno said. "The idea is to prevent..... what was done (so) poorly."

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell decides to launch Confederate History Month and forgets to mention slavery......oops. That idea of secession that pops up in Alaska and Texas and Virginia provides such a fun time for the perpetrators of the ever-shrinking pie of Southern Strategy that changed the south from Democratic to Republican a few years ago. Lee Atwater repented, but not many others.

And Barack Obama signed a treaty this week which will reduce nuclear arms in the world by about a third. President Reagan's Secretary of State George P. Schultz praises the treaty and says this is the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Dumb and Dumber mentioned above thoroughly and stupidly trashed the treaty while simultaneously worshiping at the throne of Ronald Reagan. Cognitive dissonance anyone? And something I don't understand is why in the world would President Obama sign off on an assassination order of an American citizen? What happened to the rule of "LAW" which he so eloquently expressed during his campaign? This is for me the biggest disappointment so far with our new President. On the other hand, I guess, if I were a militia plotting the overthrow of the US government, this might make me a bit more nervous.

A dust-up between President Obama and the thoroughly corrupt possibly drug-addicted President of Afghanistan causes Liz Cheney to go ballistic in defense of Afghan President Karzai, who was so completely ignored by her Dad's administration that that country sank into, I fear, an irretrievable drug induced anarchy of corruption and war lords while His Royal Highness Karzai (pun intended) goes about his merry way as Mayor of Kabul. How much Kabullsh** should we take anyway? And I don't get why Ms. Cheney is so upset in general given that our President decided early on not to prosecute her dad for war crimes and has quietly adopted so many of the worst Cheney/Bush policies in regard to enemy combatants, etc., etc...... She should be grateful, not bellicose.

The stock market is hitting new highs every month during the Obama administration, corporate profits are up, but unemployment remains high --jobs remain hard to find, although I personally have four. I do wish I could find one, though.

So there you go.....on this April afternoon.

ps. My son is going to Bellevue East's prom tonight, and boy, does he look good in a tuxedo!

The Inadequacy of Language

2010-03-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

After a year of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Tea Partiers, and others screaming epithets, hurling insults, telling lies, and the whole Faux News Network Propoganda machine trashing President Obama 24/7 as an islamonazi communist socialist fascist dictator illegalalien borninkenya whohatesamerica, their latest line is that President Obama is a divider not a uniter ........... It makes my head spin and my hair hurt. The breathtaking hyposcrisy of this pushes the bounds of the BIG LIE to even more astounding levels of deceit.

This behavior begs for the creation of a new word to describe it. Our language is not keeping up with the advances in propaganda in this new century. George Orwell said, "language can also corrupt thought." And "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." I was looking for synonyms for "lie" and found: aspersion, backbiting, calumniation, calumny, deceit, deception, defamation, detraction, dishonesty, disinformation, distortion, evasion, fable, fabrication, falsehood, falseness, falsification, falsity, fib, fiction, forgery, fraudulence, guile, hyperbole, inaccuracy, invention, libel, mendacity, misrepresentation, misstatement, myth, obloquy, perjury, prevarication, revilement, reviling, slander, subterfuge, tale, tall story, vilification, white lie, and whopper. For Fox (Faux) News, they all sound about right........

Sarah Palin counsels against armed insurrection by an Alaska militia "at this point." Our arms should be, "at this point," she says, our votes. I go back and forth between she's dangerous - or she's an empty vessel way over her head but making some big bucks while she says stupid things without really understanding what she's saying. She's not the most lucid speaker so I would be inclined to cut her some sloppy thinking/inarticulate slack, except that husband Todd was part of that secessionist fringe movement up there in Alaska...... I think for now I'm concluding she's an air-headed huckster who reached the top of her potential as a quitter as Governor and an unsuccessful candidate on the national stage. Now she's just trying to figure out how to exploit people's fears for money. And I can't believe The Learning Channel hired her. She's anathema to learning and knowledge. She's a pure ideologue. I won't be watching the show..........

After winning the Presidency in a modern landslide, a large majority in the House, and 60 and then 59 votes in the Senate, the best President Obama and the Democrats could come up with is a health reform package like Mitt Romney did as the Republican Governor of Massachusetts a few years ago, and the Repubs are still going looney toon bonkers lost-their-marbles to repeal the thing. It's a wacky world......... But I still think Ted Kennedy is smiling.

And speaking of smiling, I've got this idea for a cartoon. An angry mob wearing Tea Party hats and bristling with assault weapons and ammo belts wrapped around themselves, snarling and yelling racial epithets, and spitting at Congressmen, throwing bricks through windows and screaming "islamonazi communist socialist fascist dictatorillegalalien borninkenya whohatesamerica"......you get the picture.......all the while President Barack Obama stands calmly in front of them with his big ears and bigger smile. And a dialogue balloon from one of the outraged snarling protesters armed to the teeth is screaming about the President, "He's dangerous!"

So there you go......the state of the Republican Tea Party.

All for now,
Bud

Ted Kennedy is Smiling

2010-03-19T11:11:00.001-07:00

After winning the Presidency in a modern landslide, a large majority in the House, and 60 and now 59 votes in the Senate, the best President Obama and the Democrats can come up with is a health reform package like Mitt Romney did as the Republican Governor of Massachusetts a few years ago, and the Repubs are still going looney toon bonkers lost-their-marbles against it . It's a wacky world......... But I still think Ted Kennedy will be smiling if/when it passes this weekend.

If I didn't have to buy crappy expensive catastrophic health insurance on the open market and see my premium cost go up 20% this year, all the while watching a Republican strategy of FEAR MONGERING, NAME-CALLING, MISREPRESENTATION, and OUTRIGHT FABRICATION against the various Democratic proposals, I might not have gotten so into it all. But here we are. There was very little rational discussion from the opposition. And after 8 years of doing nothing while holding the power in government, their final argument was: Let's start over........ Egad.

So I guess we can thank Republican Mitt Romney for providing the model for the rest of the country should the current legislation pass. I hope Democrats will continue to improve on whatever passes this weekend. The long national nightmare may soon be over!

And I won't have to pay attention any more!

Regards, Bud C

Living Life at the Speed of Time

2010-03-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

I'm living life at the speed of time,
while listening to some old John Prine;
I'm painting a nice cool ocean breeze,
and doing just what I damn well please.

Herding Cats

2010-02-27T12:46:00.001-08:00

I was at my church recently for a meeting and had a brief conversation with some people I respect and admire, but the topic of President Obama came up and one of my friends said that none of the people he knows who voted for Obama would vote for him again. I asked him why was it the health insurance issue? and he said, "Everything." Well, that's what President Obama is up against these days - an undefined "everything."

I'm guessing that if we had had time to get more specific, I could have countered with something. But "everything" is hard to counter. Personally, I think Obama has been doing the things he said he would do when he campaigned - lower taxes for 95% of taxpayers, end torture, illegal wiretapping, and close Guantanamo. He's getting us out of an disastrous and unnecessary war in Iraq and chasing Al Quaeda to the ends of the earth into Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen. I actually saw a Republican criticism that he was killing too many Al Quaeda members.......He also helped save huge sectors of American business and prevented the meltdown of our financial infrastructure and, I might add, the world's economy.......... Not bad for one year.

He's been relentlessly been criticized by a right wing media machine with everything from he's a Kenyan Muslim who hates America to he's now secretly ushering in Sharia law in the US. And why is it that the most outrageous lies stick to President Obama like mud on a farmer's boot, but the truth bounces off Sarah Palin's and John Boehner's and Mitch McConnell's shiny empty heads like spotlights off a disco ball? What's with that anyway? And the Republicans continue to block every step of the way and spread the Big Lie...... The President is still being bombarded with "Keep government out of my Medicare," for crying out loud. He's been called a socialist, a communist, a fascist, and an illegal alien..........and all the while he's been holding out an olive branch to the Republicans and making concession after concession (much to my dismay). And the Republicans won't take yes for an answer.

I suspect that most of the reasons that might have cited by my friend above would have turned out to not be factual at all........or at least been twisted so as to be unrecognizable from what actually happened.

I thought the President did a good job at the health care summit this last week, and although Republicans are claiming a big victory - I saw Karl Rove say on Fox News that the Republicans scored a victory because the did better than expected (high praise indeed). I thought President Obama had a better handle on actual "facts." One example of the rhetorical minefield out there is that Republicans voted against Medicare in the first place, criticized President Obama's plan to reduce fraud and abuse in the system, and then proposed eliminating Medicare altogether.....try to figure that one out. If that's not political ideological grandstanding , I don't know what is...... I hope people are smart enough to see through that political rhetoric. And even though the Republicans have used the "reconciliation" many times to pass their own agenda with a majority vote in the Senate, they are railing against the Democrats contemplating the same thing. How transparently hypocritical......

President Obama continues to be the adult in the room, the cat herder, and the President I voted for and am proud to continue to support. He's trying to do the things he said he would and was elected in a landslide.

So, there you go. My thoughts for today.

Regards, Bud C

LUSH PARANOIA LIES

2010-02-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

'At any rate I'll never go THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. 'It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!' Alice from her Adventures in Wonderland.

Time will tell whether Alice continues to attend the tea-parties, but the Republican establishment’s attempts to co-opt the tea-partiers, have turned off not a few of the originators of the movement.

The blogosphere is fairly critical of the event with the convention’s mingling of “grass roots” independents with the corporate multinational owners of Fox News and the Republican right wing base, its call for literacy testing for voters while many of their signs are misspelled, the attempted cobbling together of libertarians with those who would wire-tap everyone, the anti-tax crowd with the "keep government out of my Medicare" crowd. The anger of the folks seems real, but their aim is not true.

Fox News rolled out the red carpet for the favorite Daughter of the Revolution, Sarah Palin today. Her truth challenged, fact challenged approach to life has served her well; and so far she hasn’t been hurt a whit by her garlbed syntax, or her mental stumbling, or her willingness to repeat falsehoods over and over and over again until they appear to stick, or her secessionist husband who apparently was pretty involved in Alaska government, or her newly revealed tax problems in Alaska on their properties with unreported structures, or the assorted ethics issues that still chase her, or her hypocrisy in calling for Rahm Emanuel’s resignation for calling liberal Democrats “f****** retards” while at the same time exhibiting fawning acquiescence to Rush Limbaugh’s “retard” rant. There’s more, but I’ve got essays to grade.

And why is it that the most outrageous lies stick to President Obama like mud on a farmer's boot, but the truth bounces off Sarah Palin's shiny empty head like spotlights off a disco ball? What's with that anyway?

So this commingling of the Republican red-meat ultraconservative base with the Tea Party inchoate anger is what we’ve got out there at the moment. And for all you diviners of tea leaves out there, I did a quick “name anagram” search for Sarah Louise Palin and the winner was “LUSH PARANOIA LIES.”

Sip on that cup o’ tea for a while!

The Massachussets Tea Party and Humpty Dumpty's Health Insurance

2010-01-26T14:52:00.000-08:00

Massachussets Tea Partiers, in a fit of angry inchoate anarchist rebellion against politics as usual, elected a .... Republican Real Estate Lawyer.... to the US Senate. It shocked the Democrats that the Massachusetts "Ted Kennedy" seat was taken away, and the Republicans may not like Scott Brown's "social" positions -- he's pro-choice, for example. And let's remember that the Tea Party movement has been created by corporate donors and a conservative media mouthpiece, Fox News, along with a few out of power Republican movers and shakers, i.e., Dick Armey. The Tea Partiers may implode from their own anarchic rhetoric and chaotic impulses, but the Supreme Court has handed those same corporate backers the keys to the palace with its recent ruling regarding corporate campaign finance $$$$.

As a Nebraskan who supported Barack Obama, the role of Ben Nelson's sweetheart deal to federally fund future Nebraska Medicaid increases as a factor in the election of new Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts particulary irks me. Nelson's "hard to get" strategy hurt President Obama and the chances for meaningful health insurance reform. Senator Nelson maneuvered himself into a bad political place and is paying a high price. Polls indicated that this "sausage grinding" aspect of politics turned independent Massachusetts voters against Coakley, the Democratic candidate there. Their shock that "politics" was going on in Washington is particularly amusing in the Land of Tip O'Neill and Ted Kennedy -- two legendary deal makers. Ben Nelson has back-tracked on his "deal" and now wants Medicaid increases for all states paid for by the Federal government. Too much, and too late.

And the icing on the cake is the irony that Massachusetts , which mandates that citizens purchase health insurance and subsidizes to some degree those unable to purchase it, has apparently stopped in its tracks the incremental steps Barack Obama campaigned on and attempted to midwife through the minefields of (sorry about the mixed metaphor but I like the alliteration) disparate Democrats and an obstructionist minority whose only program is to oppose President Obama on everyting.
So after 8 years of bad government by the Republicans and 1 year of the Republican's intransigent refusal to take yes for an answer on President Obama's many concessions to them on health insurance reform, Independent voters and "Tea Partiers" have sent another Republican, a real estate lawyer, to Washington. How much sense does that make? Not much......

Republicans are licking their chops, and Democrats, scared silly it appears, are trying to make sense out of the incoherent nature of it all. Remember the woman last summer who became the poster child of the Tea Party's approach to Health Insurance Reform -- "Keep Government out of my Medicare" and the propogation of the Death Panels Big Lie. They won, it looks like. Too bad for us. The Boston Tea Party has turned in the Alice in Wonderland Tea Party.....where reality no longer matters.

`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

`The question is,' said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

`The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master -- that's all.'

And to mix one more metaphoric allusion -- we'll see whether the Democrats can put Humpty Dumpty's health insurance back together again!

2010-01-12T09:28:00.000-08:00

Art, Literature, and Politics

It’s Tuesday morning again and I’ve got about two hours to kill before doing some prep for tomorrow’s classes, so here I am at the keyboard once more.

I’ve got a painting titled “The Bearable Lightness of Being” at The Hot Shops Nicholas Street Gallery, 13th and Nicholas, for a month as part of their fundraiser for the food bank. Stop by if you get a chance and see some of work of the best artists in the area. Take a can of food. I call the painting "The Bearable Lightness of Being." A Kundera novel with the title of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being" was made into a movie of the same name years ago and were philosophical looks at cycles of life and recurring archetypes and what if there is no life after this life?, German existentialism, the futility of life, etc. So I think that even if we are given one shot at life and that's it, we should make it a good one. Not that I've particularly succeeded, but it's a good thought. So do well and do good seems to be a good strategy no matter what the depths of despair in an uncaring universe. To see more of my art go to: http://www.artbreak.com/artbycassiday

My current reading includes Joseph Heller’s, “God Knows-Go Figure,” a fictional autobiography of King David, William Least Heat Moon’s “Blue Highways,” Kenneth Davis’ “Don’t Know Much About History,” Ted Kooser's, "One Hundred Postcards," James Morgan’s “Chasing Matisse: A Year in France Living My Dream,” a Christmas gift from my sweetheart, (I may write “Six Years in Papillion: Living My Nightmare”), about a 59 year old successful writer and editor who decides to sell everything, move to Paris with his successful wife, and become at artist – what a crazy idea - , and another Christmas gift, “The Mystery of the Missing Antimatter,” by Quinn and Nir, two astrophysicists contemplating the cosmology of why we are here anyway and were not all annihilated in the first one-billionth of a second after the Big Bang. I’m wondering too. I’ve been reading Heller’s “God Knows” continuously for years now and am in my 4th or 5th read. Wonderful book.

And my few thoughts on the last few days politics:

Sarah Palin –According to many of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign managers, Sarah Palin was a walking catastrophe: her mangled “word twistification” and garbled thought processes; her information deficit; her fact avoidance; her truth challenged look at the world; and her willingness to spread untruths even after the few facts she was given indicated otherwise. And now she’s going to Fox News as a commentator and news contributer – sounds like a perfect fit. And the Tea Parties – these folks continue to be fringe looney-toons guided by Dick Armey, Fox News, and some corporate right wingers as far as I can tell. Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak at their upcoming convention in Memphis…….That they appear to be gaining traction says much about the “dumbification” and embrace of demagoguery in America. I hope I’m wrong about that.

Health Insurance Reform is turning into a health insurance industry windfall where citizens are required to purchase health insurance and illegal aliens are prevented from doing same; I’ve heard very little about ending the anti-trust exemption given to the insurance industry decades ago, Ben Nelson’s gambit regarding Federal Medicaid reimbursements for Nebraska made him look greedy and petty. Without competitive forces introduced into the industry, rates will continue to skyrocket – I got a notice the other day that my own crappy over the counter catastrophic health insurance premium will go up by 20% this year. For a few days last month the idea of Medicare buy-ins at 55 was circulating as part of the discussion gave me hope, but that died even quicker than those thousands of Americans who die each year sans health insurance and health care.

Harry Reid’s clumsy and “inartful” remarks on President Obama’s lack of a “Negro dialect” loosed the hounds of hypocrisy: that Trent Lott was forced to resign as Leader of the Senate after his fawning tribute to segregationist Strom Thurmond a few years ago are now being equated with Senator Reid’s gaffe; Reid was pummeled and pilloried over the weekend by right wing talking heads including Michael, “Honest Injun,” Steele, head of the Republican party and all the other shallow draft Republicans were trying to score cheap political points. The transparency and silliness of it all is reaching new heights and depths of tawdriness.

The Big Lie – President Obama’s response to the failed terror attack on an airplane headed to Detroit caused the right wing propoganda machine to say over and over again, “There were no attacks on the US during George W. Bush’s watch” - except many pointed out the biggest attack in US history and the shoe bomber and the anthrax thing and some others. Oh, those……those shouldn’t count, they say. And the repeated untruths that Obama didn’t use the words “terror” or “terrorism” in his many speeches this last year while a look back shows repeated use of the very words. The Big Lie Machine continues to work and the mainstream media tends to sit back and not challenge the malefactors. Even heavyweights like George Stephanopoulos on his ABC interview with Rudy Guiliani had to apologize publicly afterward for letting such inane and inaccurate remarks from Rudy Giuliani go unchallenged.

So there you go, and as Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five” narrator said one hundred and sixteen times, “So it goes.”

Regards, Bud C

When given Yemens, make Yemenade!

2010-01-05T21:48:00.001-08:00

President Obama doesn't bluster, and blather, and bloviate like the right wing wants him to, but he is taking several fights to those who would blow our airplanes out of the sky. He said during his campaign that our focus should have been Al Quaeda terrorists and it has been since he was elected. Getting out of Iraq appears to be possible and is proceeding. More troops are in Afghanistan now trying to figure out what to do in that far away strange failed drug state. And more are on their way. I continue to believe we should buy up all the Afghan opium crop as a way to weaken the Taliban and its Al Quaeda allies. And maybe use the plants to make ethanol.......or I don't know what else.

So now, Al Quaeda, having been defeated in Iraq has moved heavily into Somalia and Yemen. And remember it was Al Quaeda that rushed into Iraq after we took out Saddam Hussein and disbanded the Iraqi army and mismanaged the post war period so egregiously. By bombing a mosque, Al Quaeda triggered the civil war that turned that poor country into a killing zone. And it appears that President Obama is intent on following and engaging them in Yemen and Somalia with our arsenal of drone directed cruise missiles and possibly escalating the military action which may include US troops. Our soldiers won the Iraq war in about three weeks, and then the Bush W administration so badly bungled the aftermath in that poor country that we are still there seven years later. Same thing in Afghanistan only nine years.

The Republican Right appears to want a President who talks loud and tough and spits in the dirt while scratching his nuts and makes bold, if wrong, decisions. Shoot first and ask questions later. Or don't even bother to ask the questions. President Obama appears to gather facts, deliberate with his military experts and diplomatic corps, and then act carefully. The gathering facts part is something new to the Republican Right and I can understand their confusion regarding this step in the President's planning.

So I've got my fingers crossed that this President will do a better job in routing out Al Quaeda and that far right version of Islam that is responsible for so much bloodshed in recent history. When given Yemens, make Yemenade.

I had to write this tonight because I finally got tired of reading and hearing about Dick Cheney and all the right wing radio and Tea Party crazies who criticize President Obama on a 24/7 basis about his response to that stupid kid who set himself on fire trying ignite a bomb in his underwear on that flight to Detroit. The intelligence apparatus failed and I believe President Obama will take steps to fix it.

President Obama was presented with two wars, an economy in shambles, a collapsing banking system, a country divided by eight years of bumbling, bungling, bombast, and in his first year our President has helped avoid a world wide depression, is getting us out of one of those ill-advised wars, is responsible for helping bring the US economy out of its doldrums, and has even accomplished several good things in the health insurance reform bills that may pass soon. When given Yemens, make Yemenade.

Regards,
Bud

I've been learning more about cowboys lately...

2009-12-27T10:30:00.000-08:00

I’ve been learnin’ more about cowboys lately, cowgirls, too, I should add, from cowboy boots to cowboy poetry. There’s a cowboy poetry gathering about to take place: the 26th National Cowboy Poetry Gathering will take place January 23-30, 2010 in Elko, Nevada. Baxter Black is one of the “cowboy poets” who’ll be there. There’ll be plenty of “cowgirl” poets, too. Famous women I’ve never heard of: Yvonne Hollenbeck and Linda Kirkpatrick among others. Dozens of cowpoets will be there celebrating their heritage. According to an on-line encyclopedia, "cowboy" is a term common throughout the west and particularly in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, "Buckaroo" is used primarily in the Great Basin and California, and "cowpuncher" mostly in Texas and surrounding states.

There’s plenty of folklore to go around. Pecos Bill and Cowboy Jack and Annie Oakley, and Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp and Calamity Jane and Sweet Betsy from Pike. When I played in the Nebraska Wind Symphony, we played the John Williams score for the movie “The Cowboys” at one concert. That was a fun piece to play. Fast moving like river rapids and wild running horses and slow melodic phrases like the meandering streams of the west. What a great piece of music. Playing Aaron Copland hoe downs and rodeos are another piece of my cowboy education. And watching westerns on TV as a kid: The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, Maverick, and Have Gun Will Travel, and Gunsmoke, and Bonanza, and many many more. I teach an essay by Tobias Wolff in my English composition classes of the importance of owning a gun for a kid in the west, “On Being a Real Westerner.” And the movies and literature are marvelous: from “How the West Was Won” to “Little Big Man” and from Mark Twain’s “Roughin’ It” to Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove.”

In my later professional career as a union organizer, I even attempted to “organize” cowboys, once. Several years ago, a few Brand Inspectors were interested in organizing – it was like trying to herd cats. These guys were mostly ranchers who did brand inspection at cattle sales. Cows are a “herd” animal: cowboys aren’t. There’s a rugged individualism that runs contrary to “collective” action. Don’t fence me in. Go to YouTube and paste in Roy Rogers and The Sons of the Pioneers singing their version of Don’t Fence Me In at The Hollywood Canteen. Pretty cool. Fences were originally anathema to the west: the fence cutter wars between farmers and ranchers come to mind. Eventually, the “fencers” won that war. There’s even a barbed wire museum in La Crosse, Kansas. There were other “wars” too, not even considering the “wars” against the native populations; i.e., the Johnson County Wars in Wyoming that led to the writing of “Shane,” later made into a movie.

I lived Sheridan, Wyoming in the middle to late 1950’s. And cowboys were everywhere. That was before it was such a big coal town. I sold popcorn at summer rodeos in town one year, might have been 1958 and saw a guy break his collar bone riding a bucking bronco. “All American Days” is what I remember it was called.

People ranched around there and of course wore cowboy boots. And there’s a science to cowboy boot design: narrow toes to find the stirrup holes quickly, high heels to stop the boot from sliding through the stirrup endangering the rider, high leather uppers to protect from everything from brush to rattlesnake bites. They’re made of cow leather or more exotic leathers: alligator, snake, ostrich, lizard, eel, elephant, sting ray, elk, buffalo, and the like. I had a pair when I was about 10 or so, but I wore the heel out in an odd way so my foot turned at an awkward angle and my mother vowed never to buy me another pair. Every cowboy I’ve ever seen walks funny from all that riding so the odd angle seems more natural. If “bow-legged” can be more natural, that is.

So with this sparse and meager cowboy background, I’ve painted some “cowboy” boots for my own “cowgirl” who lived on her family’s ranch, Wearin Brothers Cattle Co., for a while, and now rides her Boogy around her family farms in the summertime in Iowa and gets up early in the winter and trudges through the 3 foot high snowdrifts to feed him. I shoveled through those drifts once or twice over the Christmas blizzard, but within 30 minutes, they’d be drifted over again.

Regards, Bud C

My View from the Window, Vol. 9, No. 14

2009-12-08T08:44:00.000-08:00

It's blizzarding today here. All or most schools are cancelled. Jeremy and his baritone saxophone borrowed from Bellevue East High School are also here and I'll be listening to the sweet sounds of a bari sax sometime today. Right now all I hear in the background are his breaths as he sleeps up in his loft bed while I'm sitting here typing away. And I just heard him chuckle in his sleep -- oh, to be young again! I do enjoy being stranded in front of my keyboard with time on my hands!

I glanced at some of the news today so far: terrible bombing in Iraq kills 118, Afghanistan is about to see more US troops inserted into that huge empty strange country, the US Congress continues to turn health reform into a huge windfall for the insurance industry all the while calling each other Nazis and Communists and Slavers and poised to do what decades of anti-abortion activity has dreamed of -- taking abortion rights away from millions of American poor women. The rich have always been able to have access to abortions -- but not poor women.

President Obama continues to do his best at herding cats. He inherited two losing wars and an economy that nearly crashed into one of those Dante circles of hell. He's like Russel Crowe's Gladiator in the arena while the Glen Beck's, Sean Hannity's, and Sarah Palin's of the lunatic fringes are holding their thumbs down while Nero fiddles and Rome burns........Obama is the responsible one in the Animal House.

And Tiger Woods continues to be the spectacle of the month. The best Tiger Woods joke I've heard is that he's going to change his first name to "Cheetah." He's turning into a combination of John Daly and Michael Jackson before our very eyes. How many more Barbie dolls are there? What strange news will we hear next? Money can buy a lot of sex, but not happiness as he's finding........

So there you go. The Republican National Committee offerred abortion coverage through its health insurance plans until just a few weeks ago. And approximately 2/3 of private health insurance plans offer some abortion coverage according to a National Abortion Rights website. That will likely change in the coming months as this new "reform" takes shape. My own Senator, Ben Nelson, will be responsible for this, the biggest attack on poor women's reproductive rights in decades.

The nut balls of Fox News and the "going rogue" crowd are in the arena cheering the lions. And Tiger "Cheetah" Woods mother-in-law had to be taken to the hospital in the middle of the night. That pretty much sums it up.

I've attached a new painting I did over the weekend after a Saturday morning at Joslyn Museum with Elizabeth. I stood in front of Jackson Pollock's "Galaxy." I can understand why Pollock like flinging paint. Mine is titled "Across the Universe." Jackson Pollock and I have a lot in common: he was born in Cody, Wyo. in 1912 and had four brothers. He lived there for six months. From 1955 til 1961, I lived in Sheridan, Wyo. and have two brothers and two sisters. Pollock and I are, like, tight. I think we both drove Buicks, too.

Later, Bud

ps. Drop by next Sunday, Dec. 13, between 3pm and 6pm. Elizabeth and I are hosting my somewhat annual Open House! Get to 84th Street and head to Papillion. Turn west at the Applebee's Resaurant on Cary Street, curve around to the south and then turn west on Shillaelagh Blvd, go half a block and park in any space. I'm in the 204 bldg, the third breezeway, #13. I'll have some wine and cheese at least.

Afghanistan - A Modest Proposal, Say "Cheese"

2009-11-03T07:49:00.000-08:00

These two articles sum up our current situtation in Afghanistan for me. The first is for real and the second satiric piece is so on the money it's scary.

http://www.slate.com/id/2234333/?from=rss

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/u_s_continues_quagmire_building

We have been sending our kids to Afghanistan for nine years now. President Obama is presented with a snarled mess of jihdist/insurrectionist/narco terrorist Middle East intrigue. We installed our guy in Afghanistan, President Karzai, whose brother (on the CIA payroll) is a big wig in the narcotics industry in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium.

We Americans, and Europeans too, buy their drugs, thereby supporting the Taliban and Al Quaeda to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. President Karzai and his government control an area about the size of Carter Lake, Iowa. And the Taliban now control most of Afghanistan.

For all the sacrifices we've asked our kids to make, we've created a fundamentalist Muslim narco/terrorist country which now threatens Pakistan as well. How crazy is all that? If it weren't so tragic and important, it'd seem like a Keystone Kops movie run amok on a national scale.

The former administration diverted its attention from Afghanistan for a war of choice in Iraq for reasons still undetermined and created an unstable catastrophe for the Iraqi people, unleashing an Al Quaeda invasion into Iraq, a civil war between religious factions, and at least a hundred thousand civilian deaths, which to this day are still continuing.

Let's hope that President Obama can sort through this tangled mess we've created and plot a way out.....At least his Administration is thinking about the problem, which is more that I can say about the previous President......We have a very bad track record installing foreign leaders. The longer we are there, the worse it gets.

Our government should buy all the opium from Afghan farmers at higher prices than they can get from the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We'd win the hearts of Afghanistan farmers, we'd strike a blow against organized crime in our own country, and we'd deplete the treasuries of the terrorists at the same time. Our government buys surplus crops in the US all the time. Cheese anybody? Why not opium in Afghanistan?

Regards,
Bud C
www.artbycassiday.com

ps. I don't know if I mentioned it, but I have 2010 calendars for sale.........

The Bad Things about American Advertising

2009-10-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

I looked out the window this morning and was reminded that it must now be the
Christmas shopping season and so I am sending out this subtle and understated
Seasons Greetings and cautionary message regarding the advertising practices of
American retail businesses!

Dear Friends, Gentlemen, Gentlewomen, Patrons, Admirers, as well as skeptical
bystanders:

With the 2009 Halloween (buy Bud's art), Diwali (buy Bud's art), Dias las Muertos (buy Bud's art), Thanksgiving (buy Bud's art), Christmas (buy Bud's art), Kwanzaa (buy Bud's art),Chanukuh (buy Bud's art), Year of the Red Fire Dog (buy Bud's art), Tet Nguyen Dan gift-giving weeks now upon us and quickly going by, (buy Bud's art), and the time-honored traditions(buy Bud's art), pagan rituals, and religious ceremonies (buy Bud's art)we blithely observe, whose origins are oftentimes obscured by clever (buy Bud's art)marketing ploys including skillfully disguised subliminal messages (buy Bud's art), I'd like to thank all of you (buy Bud's art) who have purchased my art (buy Bud's art) during 2009. But beware of the advertising industry's (buy Bud's art)careful and cynical use of subliminal (buy Bud's art) advertising.

From the seemingly innoucuous (buy Bud's art) baking of cookies for open houses in the (buy Bud's art)real estate industry, to the use of (buy Bud's art)brand names in movies, to visual and auditory fragments of a desired message in (buy Bud's art)video, to the insertions of frame messages in motion pictures, to........the list goes on(buy Bud's art). All of these insidious (buy Bud's art)brain washing techniques are infecting our (buy Bud's art)marketplaces of(buy Bud's art) ideas and (buy Bud's art)products. In politics(buy Bud's art), does The Manchurian Candidate (buy Bud's art)ring any bells? These below conciousness levels of (buy Bud's art)persuasion can be the only reason (buy Bud's art) The Hummer (buy Bud's art)became a popular urban (buy Bud's art)commuting vehicle.

However successful (buy Bud's art)these pervasive techniques may be in the (buy Bud's art)market place, tremendous quantities of unpurchased art crowd the walls of my apartment (buy Bud's art), my hallway, my garage, my sister and mother's house (buy Bud's art), my brother's house (buy Bud's art), my other brother's apartment, (buy Bud's art), many of my friends' houses (buy Bud's art), several of my neices and nephews dorm rooms (buy Bud's art), bedrooms (buy Bud's art), apartment walls (buy Bud's art), hallways (buy Bud's art), my church (buy Bud's art), restaurants, coffee houses, and vineyard shops (buy Bud's art), as well as actual art galleries!! and I could go on and on and on and on and on and on....and on.

In addition, with the current worldwide recession/depression, the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land (buy Bud's art), it is incumbent upon each of us to support(buy Bud's art) the nation's economy (buy Bud's art)by an enormous burst of (buy Bud's art)consumer spending in this last quarter of 2009. Give Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack a chance (buy Bud's art), let George W. Bush retire gracefully with a roaring economy (buy Bud's art), give John McCain a fond farewell, do your patriotic duty (buy Bud's art), show your love for others (especially me), and honor our religious, secular, and pagan traditions (buy Bud's art) by spending money (buy Bud's art) furiously until the year's end.

In addition to my art(buy Bud's art), I now sell representations of my art in the form of (buy Bud's art) hand made cards appr. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2". Let me know which pieces of my art you would like (buy Bud's art) and I can put that together. I sell them in a set of 5 for $10.00. And Calendars are $20. These are really quite nice and make wonderful gifts.

Later,
Bud

www.artbycassiday.com

Ps. In the spirit of accountability, this message was reviewed be me three times
now with a few 2009 modifications and I still stand by it.

Bibliography (directly lifted from Wikipedia)

1. ^ a b c d e "The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?". The
Straight Dope. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
2. ^ a b Pratkanis, Anthony R. (Spring 1992). "The Cargo-Cult Science of
Subliminal Persuasion", Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, pp. 260-272. Retrieved on 11 August
2006.
3. ^ tachistoscope - Definitions from Dictionary.com
4. ^ a b c d "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Business (Subliminal Advertising)".
The Urban Legends Reference Pages. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
5. ^ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Subliminal Advertising
6. ^ a b Lantos, Geoffrey P.. "The Absolute Threshold Level and Subliminal
Messages" (PDF). Stonehill College. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
7. ^ Boese, Alex (2002). The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts,
Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle
Ages to the New Millennium, E. P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-94678-0. pages. 137-38.
8. ^ Peters, Dan; Steve Peters (1985). Rock's Hidden Persuader: The Truth About
Backmasking. Bethany House Publishers, 19. Cited in U.S. Senate, page 125.
9. ^ U.S. Senate, page 118.
10. ^ U.S. Senate, page 125.
11. ^ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2006
12. ^ Karremans, J. (2006). Beyond vicary's fantasies: the impact of subliminal
priming and brand choice [Electronic Version]. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 42, 792-798
13. ^ Key, W. B. (1973). Subliminal seduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
14. ^ Byrne, D. (1959). "The effect of a subliminal food stimulus on verbal
responses." Journal of Applied Psychology. 43 (no.4), 249-251.
15. ^ Marka conference.com
16. ^ Williams, Leanne M.; Belinda J. Liddell, Andrew H. Kemp, Richard A.
Bryant, Russell A. Meares, Anthony S. Peduto, Evian Gordon (2006).
"Amygdala-prefrontal dissociation of subliminal and supraliminal fear". Human
Brain Mapping 27 (8): 652–661. doi:10.1002/hbm.20208.
17. ^ Brain Activity Reflects Complexity Of Responses To Other-race Faces,
Science Daily, 14 December 2004
18. ^ Hassin, Ferguson, Shidlovski, Gross (2007). Subliminal exposure to
national flags affects political thought and behavior. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol. 104, no. 50
19. ^ Vokey, John R. (2002). "Subliminal Messages", Psychological Sketches
(PDF), 6th edition, Lethbridge, Alberta: Psyence Ink, 223–246. Retrieved on
2006-07-05.
20. ^ Robinson, B.A.. "Backmasking on records: Real, or hoax?". Retrieved on
2006-07-04.
21. ^ Moore, Timothy E. (Spring 1992). "Subliminal Perception: Facts and
Fallacies", Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal, pp. 273-81. Retrieved on 11 August 2006.
22. ^ Vance, J., et al. v. Judas Priest et al., No. 86-5844, 2nd Dist. Ct. Nev.
(August, 24 1990)
23. ^ Eskenazi, J., & Greenwald, A.G., Pratkanis, A.R. (1990). What you expect
is what you believe (but not necessarily what you get): On the ineffectiveness
of subliminal self-help audiotapes. Unpublished manuscript. University of
California. Santa Cruz.
24. ^ The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?. The Straight Dope.
Retrieved on 2008-06-11
25. ^ BTK Back
26. ^ Fight Club Easter Eggs - Eeggs.com
27. ^ Screen It! Parental Review: Fight Club
28. ^ Fight Club (1999) - Crazy credits
29. ^ Crowley, Candy. "Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message"
CNN.com, 2000-9-12. Retrieved on December 16, 2006
30. ^ Smoking Pistols: George "Rat Ad" Bush and the Subliminal Kid
31. ^ 9/19/00 Speech by Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: The FCC's
Investigation of "Subliminal Techniques:"
32. ^ Brasseye Wiki
33. ^ Error - - New York Times
34. ^ Re: [AMIA-L] Reply: "Sherlock Jr."
35. ^ "It was a glitch, not a subliminal ad, for McDonald's on Food Network".
Canadian Press (2007-01-25). Retrieved on 2007-03-11.
36. ^ Subliminal advertising. - ninemsn Video
37. ^ YouTube - Led Zeppelin : Greatest Secret
38. ^ www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/queen.php
39. ^ Media:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdd01RI-AZE
40. ^ Agency asks slot-machine maker to halt subliminal messages
41. ^ Killick, Jane (1997). Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows. The Ballantine
Publishing Group, 131.
42. ^ Singh, Simon (June 10, 2003), "I'll bet £1,000 that Derren can't read my
mind", The Daily Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=
/connected/2003/06/10/ecfmagic.xml,
retrieved on 12 March 2008

* Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal Perception: The nature of a controversy,
McGraw-Hill, New York.
* Greeenwald, Anthony W. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious Cognition Reclaimed,
American Psychologist, 47.
* Holender, D. (1986). Semantic activation without conscious identification in
dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and
appraisal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 1-23.
* Merikle, P. M., and M. Daneman (1998). Psychological Investigations of
Unconscious Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies.
* Watanabe, Sasaki, Nanez (2001). Perceptual learning without perception.
Nature, 413, 844-848.
* Seitz and Watanabe (2003). Is subliminal learning really passive. Nature, 422,
36.
* United States Senate (1985). Record Labeling: Hearing before the Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation. United States Senate, Ninety-ninth
Congress, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records
(September 19, 1985). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Fair and Balanced -- I Kid You Not

2009-09-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

That Fox News calls itself "fair and balanced" is amusing and frightening at the same time. They can't really believe it, because they champion "conservative" causes 24/7. There's about a 10 to 1 ratio of opinion to news on the network. From Sean Hannity, to Bill O'Reilly, to.............Glen Beck who organized, promoted, cheerleaded, and "reported" the 9/12 rally (he's the one who said: “I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9/11 victims... And when I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up!' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining.” He's the guy who called President Obama a "racist" and got suspended for a week. Like Jack Paar used to say - I kid you not. Fox News says, "We report. You decide." Fox News exaggerated the turn out for the rally by about 2000% I kid you not.

If they just said we are the right-wingest of the news, at least that'd be accurate reporting. They can't really believe "fair and balanced"; so the only conclusion left is that is that they choose to misrepresent themselves to the public -- lie? A friend of my brother's told him she watched Fox news because they were the only network that wasn't biased. The only network that isn't biased? --- I kid you not. Fox Newsers wear their right-wing "bias" like a medal.

I told a distant cousin of mine that the new Republican strategy of being rude, disrespectful, ignorant, and misinformed would probably work in derailing any meaningful health insurance reform. Modern politics is to misrepresent the opposition point of view and then respond with anger and vitriol to the phony misrepresentation. The Big Lie is working.

Here's are a couple of examples of the efforts to find a compromise health insurance bill that one or two Republicans might support: in one compromise version, illegal immigrants will be barred from being able to purchase health insurance even if they have the money to buy it. Joe Wilson's misinformed, rude, disrespectful, ignorant "You lie" shout at President Obama led to this "compromise." The fact is that if an illegal alien shows up at an emergency ward with an injury with no insurance, he gets treated and we foot the bill now. That won't change. And another compromise is that homeless street people will be "forced" to buy medical insurance or pay big fines. That's the direction the health insurance debate is going.

I usually try to find the humor in all of this, but it's getting harder to do. Maybe it's because it's Thursday and I'm wearing down. But all this "Obama is a Nazi/Communist/illegal alien socialist Marxist, the anti-christ, Bury Obamacare with Kennedy, nastiness" is discouraging. It's gotten so crazy that even Rush Limbaugh and other right wing radio nuts have been knocked off the news for a few days. I kid you not.

I watched Jimmy Carter's remarks about what he perceived as an underlying "racist" factor in the most intense vitriol out there. And I watched the dozens of talking heads on TV supporting or lambasting him for his remarks. My opinion is that he's probably pretty tuned into the issue. And I remember seeing a news report about a campaign worker canvassing a white working class neighborhood in Pennsylvania I think. The canvasser asked who they would be voting for for President. The response, "I'll be voting for the n*****." I kid you not. It doesn't take much of a scratch to expose residual racism under the surface of American life.

Thank God for Fridays and Nebraska football. Go Big Red. I kid you not.

Regards,
Bud C
www.artbycassiday.com

pic attached is "Nebraska - The Good Life"

Too Much Time on my Hands

2009-09-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

I definitely have too much time on my hands this morning. All my students’ papers are graded for the moment – til the next batch is collected, anyway. I just finished a commissioned painting for a customer and don’t have an idea for the next one. I’m not golfing today because I have class tonight and don’t want to wear myself out too much, not to mention that I don't have that extra $20 bill in my wallet.

So I was sitting in my easy chair watching the History Channel show– The Next Nostradomas. Some guy has developed a mathematical formula for predicting world ending catastrophe. You know, the heretofore unknown asteroid or comet crashing into the planet and destroying all life as we know it. Or a gamma ray burst from distant exploding star deep fat frying everything on the surface of our planet. Or Yellowstone National Park’s supervolcano erupting and wiping out the entire Midwest and changing the world’s climate for thousands of years. Or the New Madrid Fault cracking again reversing the flow of rivers and disrupting our lives for decades. Or terrorists with some new fangled biological weapon of mass destruction doing a trial run on Omaha. Or some new super flu virus pandemic (I have to come up with a contingency plan by tomorrow for my Creighton classes in case the campus is closed due to the H1N1 flu virus). Or for some mysterious reason the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy goes bonkers and we all get “spaghettified” while being sucked to the center of the galaxy. Or global warming throws our planet into an overnight ice age with mile high ice sheets blanketing our continent and minus 9,000 degree wind chills. Or when they flip the on-switch on the Large Hadron Collector in Sweden or Switzerland or where ever the heck that is, they create a black hole which sucks our entire planet into a vacuum cleaner the size of a pin-head. Or, the most likely scenario, a time-traveler from the distant future returns to his past/our present and initiates some action that negates our very existence in an alternate universe time-line. Not that I worry about this stuff, of course………

But here’s the thing: the Mayan Calendar ends on Dec. 21, 2012. The Mayans had a 52 year recurring cycle to their calendar according to my reading which I speculate might have related to a healthy Mayan’s life span, so I’m already living on borrowed time at 58 going on 59 later this year (which I will return to in a moment). And the Mayans for some undiscovered reason ended their calendar on Dec. 21, 2012. I’ll speculate that there was a “calendar committee” getting ready to come out with their new one when the Spanish invaded and killed most of the Mayans and replaced the old calendar with the new one with the blessings of Pope Gregory – the Gregorian calendar – which we still use today with the adjustment of a Leap Year and every so often, a Leap Second or two. And so the "Mayan Calendar Committee" was officially disbanded and never got back around to it.

And so now all the Apocalyptists are gleefully jumping on the Dec. 21, 2012 bandwagon and including the Rapture, the Bible Code, and every other goofy-assed "end of the world” as we know it aliens from outer-space are coming to take us away, schizo-maladroit, nutball theory out there and taking over the History Channel. The History Channel used to be about history.

So, anyway, back to Dec. 21, 2012. That’s my birthday. I'll be 62. I am eligible for Social Security on the day the world ends. Just my luck. I’m working five part time jobs right now, and barely eking out my living, and the one date in my life I can look forward to is now when the world may end. Damn. I’m going to have a party on that day anyway. We’ll see what happens……….

Apocalyptically Yours,
Bud

For Love of Amy - Westroads RAVE Theater

2009-09-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

I saw the movie last night at the RAVE movie theater at The Westroads. The Omaha views are quite striking and many local buildings and views are featured. Panoramic shots of Omaha are quite lovely. And it's a poignant story and nicely done with some strong acting. But the movie is only playing for two weeks, so if you are interested, better go see it quick!

I used to play music in the UNO band room which features a memorable scene with John Beasley. And the carriage ride in the Old Market with Michael, the lead role played by Vincent Alston, and his love interest, Jasmine (played by Joyce Sylvester), includes a trot by the stone arch which used to be a part of the old Woodmen building, long since demolished. Amy, the young girl of the title, is played by Grace Bydelak, and she does a nice job throughout. The plot is pretty melodramatic (death by cancer, suicide, racism, an interracial guardianship followed by an unexpected custody battle), and you probably need to like that sort of thing to appreciate the pacing of the movie. Humor is nicely woven through the melodrama, though, as a necessary counterpoint.

I actually saw three of my paintings in the coffee house scene, and work by quite a few other artists as well, but one of mine in particular fills a large portion of the screen and my name is three feet high in a close up when the camera zooms in on Jasmine's face toward the end of the movie...a thrill for me!

The scene was shot at The Meeting Place Coffee House, 12th and Howard, which is no longer in business. It was a terrific venue for artists who could hang their works throughout the business. And poets and musicians often gathered there to read and play their music. It was a cool place for which there is no comparable venue anymore.

Bud

2009-09-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

A few observations since I last observed anything. The crazies came out in droves to the August "town hall" meetings and successfully prevented virtually any rational discussion of health care and health insurance issues at all. That loud and rude fringe of society drove the parameters of the discussion. I don't think I've ever been quite so happy that Congress was back in session. Gun-toting Texas secessionists who think President Obama is a Communist Nazi born in Kenya are now in charge of health insurance reform. Boy, am I relieved.

Republicans have two planks in their platform now solidified: prevent public health insurance for citizens and allow government torture of prisoners in the war against terror(I think we give them free medical care afterwards unless they die, of course). Isn't torture terror? Republicans are adamant that the government stay out of the health insurance business and just as adamant that government should be able to torture our adversaries. Democrats are not quite as adamant that government should not torture our adversaries and quite a bit less adamant that government should be a health insurance provider. To me, we pool our money to build highways, bridges, provide for national defense, and various safety nets for senior citizens, our veterans, poor children, and people who are disabled. Health insurance for Americans seems to be in the same "pool" to me. And we shouldn't torture anybody.

A significant group of senior citizens voiced opposition to Government brokered health insurance, but vehemently insisted that their Medicare not be reduced or changed, and for goodness sake, don't mess with Social Security. And the classic line of the summer by an angry senior citizen was "Keep government out of my Medicare!"

But common ground has been reached on at least a couple of issue: virtually everyone agrees that "death panels" should not be included in the legislation. Not that such a thing was every discussed, contemplated, thought about, considered, written, conceived of, proposed, or written. Nevertheless, common ground has been reached. And even though it was never proposed etc., etc., insurance for illegal immigrants will not happen. Injured or sick illegal immigrants will simply continue to show up at emergency rooms where they will be treated, and we will pick up the tab in other ways. But thank God, at least, they will not be insured.

Ex Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accused President Obama of wanting to force her child to appear before a "death panel," then a week later called for "civility" in the discussions about health insurance. Huh? And the nutballs were throwing around the Nazi comparisons again. I wonder how many of those accusing President Obama of being a Nazi drive Volkswagens? Most other industrialized Western nations provide for national health care for their citizens. They're not Nazis. The Nazi fetish of the protestors is disturbing. And it obscures the brutish evil of the real Nazis.

So there you go. Summer's nearly over, schools have started again, Congress is back in session, gun-toting protestors headed back to their home towns where they can tote their guns, and Texas is still in the union. Not that the latter is necessarily a good thing. But there you go.

Regards,
Bud C

Bait and Switch

2009-08-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

I tease my Elizabeth about this a little bit. The other night she says, "Do you want to see something funny?" "Sure," I say as I get up from my prone position on the couch in front of the television, put my shoes on, and start following her to the garage. As we are walking out the door, she says, "Do you want to do something helpful while we're there?" I don't point out that we are not actually "there" Yet.

And by this time, I realize I've passed the point of no return and am committed to the journey wherever it may lead. "Of course," I say, but mention something about "bait and switch" in a humorous fashion.

In the garage, she points to a pair of muddy little raccoon paw prints (that was the funny part), and then we move to the "helpful" part. "See those 12 boxes over there?" "Uh oh," I'm thinking, "This can't be good."

Well, it wasn't all that bad. We got the 12 boxes out of the garage and up the stairs and into a bedroom closet. And I resumed my prone position on the couch in front of the TV, took my shoes off, and picked up the program where I left off. Life is good.

Last night she made bacon, lettuce, and tomato (from her bountiful garden) sandwiches for dinner, and baked a delicious peach tart for dessert. And then we watched "Babette's Feast," a sweet and charming foreign film with subtitles. Life is really good.

I'm done with major house painting projects for a while because I'm teaching part-time again at Creighton University and Metro Community College, but am available for small painting and or tiling jobs. Or better yet, buy a painting!

Later,
Bud

www.artbycassiday.com

ps. Check out the Blue Pomegranate Art Gallery in Benson, 6570 Maple Street. The gallery is filled with wonderful glass work, hanging doo-dads, sculpture, and painting, including the one attached.

2009-08-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

Thoughts for the week:

Bad idea of the week: Let's go hiking along the Iraqi/Iranian border. What could possibly go wrong? Three American vacationers are now held by Iranian Authorities. Who goes there for a vacation anyway? Did I miss something?

Sarah Palin resigns as Governor of Alaska. Who cares? She pissed off the Republicans when she ran against them for Governor of Alaska and then when she ran as the Vice Presidential candidate (what was John McCain thinking?) she pissed off all the Democrats. Nobody likes her anymore up there.

I am fearful that health insurance reform will once again fail. Why don't we do a Canadian style/European style single payer plan? It's not socialism any more than paying taxes for Interstate highways and the national defense is. Some toothless proposal will probably emerge. We can be our worst enemies sometimes. Doctors lobbied against a provision that would have curtailed Doctor owned hospitals and Democrats caved in and eliminated the provision. Doctors order tests for patients at their own hospitals and pocket the cash coming and going on both ends of the deal. Hyperinflation in costs, an uninsured population the size of California, Washington, and Oregon. That's the system people want to preserve?

A Democratic Congressman, after listening to lengthy tirades against socialized medicine by some Republicans, proposed eliminating Medicare thereby challenging those Republicans to put up or shut up. Not a single Republican voted to end Medicare. For whatever its financial issues, Medicare is a testament to common sense and what we can do when we put our minds to it. Anyway, Republicans have once again chosen bloviation as their program.

The Beer Summit - Barack Obama put his foot in his mouth when he spoke too soon about the arrest of the college professor. But he made up for it nicely with personal contacts to the police officer and the college professor. President Obama has the knack of admitting his mistakes and taking corrective actions in stride which often lead to good results.

Cash for Clunkers - seems like a good idea. Customers love it, auto dealers love it (although they complain about paperwork all the way to the bank). The program ran out of $$ in a week, but the US Senate may add more $$ this coming week.

August Recess: Republicans have been training their people to disrupt August town hall meetings held by Democratic Representatives. Example, "sit far apart and coordinate your heckling --that way it will seem as though there are more of you than there really are." Nothing like democracy in action......

And finally the Birthers - the nutty group of folks who insist -- with ample evidence to the contrary -- that President Obama is not an American citizen. This bunch has been encouraged by a number of Republicans in their silliness. This is the same crowd that believes in UFO's, Area 51 nonsense, conspiracy theories so vast that the total absence of evidence itself is proof of the conspiracy. Some of these, uh, citizens, even believe George W. Bush and Dick Cheney orchestrated the attacks against the Twin Towers on 9-11. As much as I disliked those two, that's going too far......It's really not necessary to invent crimes to discredit those two - they committed plenty the way it is.

People tell me they like reading my commentaries, and so I keep writing them.
Sorry.

And that's the way it is, as Walter Cronkite would say, Aug. 2, 2009.

Regards,
Bud C
www.artbycassiday.com

Sonia Sotomayer and The Blue Pomegranate Art Gallery

2009-07-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

There is something unseemly to me about Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions grilling
Hispanic Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor. This white southern
male Republican Senator's politically trumped up "concern" about Sotomayor's "prejudices" turns history upside down.

Is this happening because we have come so far; or because we have come so little?

I have used the phrase "growing share of a shrinking market" to describe the Republican Party's collapse. Jeff Sessions is emblematic of that, it seems to me. His early oppositon to the NAACP and ACLU and prosecution of civil rights workers frame his early legal career in Alabama. His jokes there about the Ku Klux Klan have fallen pretty flat over time - he said they didn't seem so bad until he found out they smoked marijuana.

He has found himself on the wrong side of history and now sits in a Senate Hearing Room confronting what must be the worst nightmares of his youth - a Hispanic woman candidate for the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Some snapshots tell a story. To me, this is one.

Ironically, Senator Sessions fought against the Senate's 60 vote rule when his party was in the majority. He thought 51 votes was all that should be necessary to end a filibuster of Judgeship nominations. I wonder if he has switched positions on that issue?

Anyway, just an observation from the sidelines.

Regards,
Bud C

ps. I'm pleased that I'll have a few pieces of my art at The Blue Pomegranate Art Gallery at 65th and Maple for a while. Stop on by and check out the wonderful art at the Gallery .

2009-06-26T12:20:00.001-07:00

The hopes for democracy in Iran live on spite of the brutal crackdown on dissent, but the tactics of the dissidents appears to be changing. The image of the young girl killed by assassination will live on and will be an iconic image of the oppression of the population by the right wing fundamentalist theocracy that currently rules in Iran. I have been trying to use a pun I thought of about chadors, those veils that women choose or are sometimes forced to wear by the religious police in Iran and other Muslim countries. "The chador of your smile." How Iranic. Neda was a lovely young girl. According to one of Martin Luther King's speeches, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice...." For a credible discussion of tactics see: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/30/dabashi.us.iran/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I've been studying Raoul Dufy's art; he was a French fauvist painter whose free brush work and muted pastel colors appeal to me. I've done a couple of paintings in the last week in his style.

And I also attended the Nebraska State High School Rodeo championship on Thursday in Hastings, Ne. A nephew of my Elizabeth was in the top of the rankings and should qualify for the Nationals in New Mexico. I watched steer roping, and goat tying, and "cutting" with its subtle nuances, and bronco riding. The only event I think I could do would be the bucking bronco riding. Like many of the young boys in the event, I could be bucked on a horse easily. I might not get up quite so quickly, if at all, but I could surely be thrown off in quick fashion.

And Michael Jackson's death appears to be more important to the media than the events in Iran or Iraq. Live coverage of a helicopter flying to the LA coroner filled quite a chunk of air time. He was a child star, who lived a troubled life, was accused and acquitted of child molestation, but lived with an evident attraction to young boys, lived in incredible luxury while sinking further and further in debt, and died young of an apparent heart attack. That he should get so much news coverage and attention says something about our culture.

So, there you go. Neda, the young symbol of Iran's quest for a democratic election process, assassinated by Iranian secret police it appears, gets bumped off the news by Michael Jackson. We all too often have strange priorities and values. But I suspect, the media's attention will wane regarding Jackson and Iran's autocratic government will do something else provocative and repressive and will capture the news cycle for a while. Or North Korea. Or something in Afghanistan.

At any rate, here's a couple of Dufy-esque floral pictures.

Bud

2009-05-27T11:05:00.001-07:00

The trouble with being a housepainter and a golfer is that when it rains, you can't do either. So here I am today. But I did have some time to do a new painting. It's a study of a couple of other artists' work I admire: Matisse and Tony Curtis. Yes, Tony Curtis - the actor. You know Spartacus, Operation Petticoat, Houdini. He's a wonderful artist as well. I've combined motifs from a number of their works and combined them in this piece.

Regards, Bud C

Memorial Day 2009 Ain't Gonna Study War No More

2009-05-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

We all have loved ones who have served in the military or know someone whose child/nephew/niece are serving somewhere. These kids don't make policy, they love their country, and they follow orders and do the best they can to perform their duties.

So I'm sending out a painting I did 3 years ago. This painting was in memory of our soldiers killed in Iraq. At the time the number of Americans killed was 2322. The number is now around 4500, more or less. The casualties in Afghanistan continue to rise now as well, and we appear to be focusing on the Taliban and Al Quaeda again.

Reasons against the war in Iraq were clearly enunciated by people wiser than me years ago -- perhaps a "truth" commission of some sort will emerge from the wreckage to sort out the fabrications and misjudgments. But at the time, I thought it was premature at the very least to attack Iraq and that we should have focused on Al Quaeda and the Taliban, who were the ones who attacked us on that Sept. 11.

But I also remember that our war against Iraq lasted about three weeks.

What followed was a sectarian civil war incited by Al Quaeda which rushed into Iraq seeing the opportunity of the power vacuum we created with our grossly incompetent and disastrous post war ideological fecklessness, with our soldiers caught in the various crossfires. Al Quaeda wasn't there when we started, but they arrived in large numbers shortly thereafter. The war in Iraq was a golden opportunity for Al Quaeda, and they seized it with all their jihadist nihlistic passion.

They've now been pushed out of Iraq for the most part into Afghanistan and Pakistan -- which is where we appear to be moving our war effort next.

My dad served in the Navy in WWII, and he died just over a year ago now. There are fewer and fewer WWII Veterans as the years go by. He had two brothers, both gone now, who served in the Navy as well. One was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 and survived by the dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time.

So God be with our troops around the world wherever they are and let's pray for wisdom for our leaders.

Regards on this Memorial Day 2009,
Bud
www.artbycassiday.com

Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing "Ain't gonna study War no More."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOmRm0-acJw

Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

According to my exhaustive research, (which included an on-line encyclopedia which shall remain nameless), Cinco de Mayo is a "regional" holiday in Mexico which we make a big deal about here. The holiday commemorates the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. France was unhappy that Mexico was not paying off its debt, so France decided to invade and conquer Mexico, which they eventually did. Emperor Maximillian of Mexico, installed by the French, "served" about five years, but was executed by Mexican President Benito Juarez soon after the French were persuaded to leave. So Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Any inferences about foreign powers installing governments overseas is strictly coincidental.

Here's a painting I did a couple of years ago titled, believe it or not , Cinco de Mayo.

Regards,
Bud
www.artbycassiday.com

ps. I am now available for painting and/or tile work...........

www.artbycassiday.com

When all else fails, I always say, paint a flower!' - Cassiday

'I'm not going down in history, I'm going down now!' - Cassiday

"Although a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, it's still a f****** long walk." - Cassiday

'Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.' Picasso

'Use enough dynamite there, Butch?' - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

'Three out of four people make up 75% of the world's population.' Jeremy

'An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. ' - Albert Camus

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." --Joseph Brodsky

'In Theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they're not.' -
Yogi Berra

'Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at
it.' David Hockney

“Hey, hey, hey — don't be mean. No need to be mean. 'Cause, remember: no matter where you go... there you are.’”-The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension!"

2009-04-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

A Meditation on Easter

I have painted 12 banners for my church sanctuary which are now hanging high above from the rafters. I painted both sides, so there are 24 images - each one is 3' x 8'. These banners are an exploration of my thoughts and feelings about our celebration of Easter.

What it’s all about, this death and resurrection thing? What really happened anyway? What is the significance of this Easter day? Unlike Christmas, December 25 each year, Easter is a moveable celebration. Easter is observed on the Sunday after the first full moon on or after the day of the vernal equinox. This can occur between March 22 and April 25. Complex negotiations over many centuries arrived at this rather odd compromise. So we’ve got this “moveable feast.”

Is the story of the Resurrection true? Is it Truth? I don’t know. I’m an artist, not a theologian. I think that many Biblical stories tell truths without being true. A friend said that former pastor Winston Baldwin once told a girl who asked if a story was true, “Honey, that story’s so true, that even if it’s not true, it’s true.” That works for me. Heresy? In some circles for sure. But whenever I hear that Jesus died for our sins, I think that it is more accurate to say that Jesus died because of the sins of his contemporaries. I don’t believe Jesus committed crucifixion suicide. He was put to death deliberately The politics of the day, and pride, arrogance, bigotry, hatred, and jealousy killed Jesus. I think that’s true.

That Easter is a moveable celebration appeals to me somehow. It moves around like the spirit can move around. And it needs to move around. Somebody kills Jesus everyday somewhere, it seems to me –genocide in Darfur or Kosovo, or innocents in the Holocaust or Guernica or New York City or Dresden, a landmine in Afghanistan or Africa, or an explosion in a town market in Iraq or the Holy Land, or a suicide bomber, or killing sprees with automatic weapons, or where a child is abused or hungry. “Broken-ness” kills Jesus. And Jesus lives and moves wherever goodness and kindness and caring prevail. I think that’s Truth.

So we are fortunate that Easter is a “moveable feast”– we desperately need the redemptive power of this celebration to move around. There are far too many places and times where this “moveable feast” is needed.

One of my favorite songs is Leonard Cohen’s, “Hallelujah.” He says the following about his song:

"This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled but there are moments when we can transcend …and reconcile and embrace the whole mess and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah'. That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say 'Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.' And you can't reconcile it in any other way except in that position of total surrender, total affirmation.”

So my color blasts, dancing figures, doves and flowers, Hallelujahs, Jesus on the Cross, and other abstracted offerings are a way to celebrate this day and this “affirmation,” as are the beautiful music we hear and joyous songs we sing and words of wisdom that come our way as we attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.

I will celebrate the death and life of Easter and hope the miracles will move from place to place, time to time, and person to person. I want these images to be part of the celebration of the contradictions of the rational and the miraculous, of the implications of metaphors and metaphysics, and of the contemplations of the true and the Truth, and I will “embrace the thing” with surrender and affirmation. The Easter story is so true, that even if it’s not true, it’s true. Hallelujah!

Bud Cassiday

Requiem for a Toaster

2009-03-31T19:09:00.000-07:00

My toaster quit working a couple of days ago. Whatever the mechanism that clicks when you push the slide lever down didn't click and stop at the bottom. The heating element wires, therefore, didn't engage. I could have lived with holding it down manually while the heating element did its thing, but even that doesn't work.

It wasn't an old toaster, like toasters should be. It was a relatively new toaster -- maybe two years I've had it. It replaced a toaster I had had for maybe 25 years. Toaster should live long lives and be productive and provide satisfaction beyond measure to their masters.

A toaster should last 25 years -- if not longer. Toasting bread caramelizes the sugars and starches and gives bread that little extra sweetness and crunchiness we like. According to an internet Toaster History site, "Infrared radiation is the key to making toast. Direct heating of bread to at least 310 degrees Fahrenheit triggers what food chemists call the Maillard reaction, in which sugars and amino acids in the bread react to form numerous flavorful compounds responsible for the change in the bread’s taste, color, and aroma. The Maillard reaction also reduces the bread’s water content by about two-thirds, making the toast crunchy." With a bit of peanut butter and some home made pear jelly, man, is that good.

You've got to eat it while it's still warm though, so the race from the toaster to the peanut butter, and then to the home made pear jelly requires steadfastness of purpose, quick reflexes, and a coordinated plan: pour the cold milk ahead of time, have a small plate ready, open the peanut butter and jelly jars, and set the knife astride the open peanut butter jar, and then, and only then, put the bread in the slots of the toaster, and depress the lever.

Do not be distracted. And I might add, even if the phone rings, stay focused on your efforts. Do not answer the door. Focus. And be ready. The toaster in question had an overactive thyroid or something because it tended to fling the toast with some velocity so that if you were attentive and your reflexes were still sharp, you could catch the toast in mid air. If not, then it would sometimes be flung completely out of the toaster and land on my kitchen counter.

Once the toast is ejected, with deft strokes, the thin layer of peanut butter goes down, and the spoon sized globs of pear jelly are applied and then gently crushed and distributed without disturbing the now melting layer of peanut butter.

Whether one slice of bread or two, the race is now on. Grabbing the milk in one and and rushing to my favorite easy chair, my leather Barca Lounger, I anticipate that first bite and that cold splash of milk that follows.

Oh, man, is that good.

But, alas, the toaster no longer functions. We've sent men to the moon, and vehicles to every planet, the sun, and even out of the solar system - Voyager continues on its way how many decades now......

We've built computer storage devices we can now measure in the terraquads.

Nanobots will someday clean our arteries and repair damage in our hearts, and
lungs, and who knows what else.

But my toaster is kaput.

Bud

What I Still tell my Son when Dropping him off at School - updated June 2010

2009-03-04T08:02:00.000-08:00

Here's what I tell my son every morning when I drop him off at school. I've recited these words of advice hundreds, if not thousands, of times since he was in kindergarten -- with a few modifications along the way. He's a Sophomore this school year.

Have a nice day.
Play nice with the kids.
Help the teacher.
Follow the rules.
Be smart. Act smart. Raise your hand. Ask good questions, including "What could possibly go wrong?" And remember, if an idiot would do it, don't do it.
Learn some high school sh**.

No unauthorized leaping, prancing, dancing, dashing, mashing, pouncing, jouncing, jousting, rousting, skipping, bipping, ripping.

If you see any of the following falling from the sky, run for cover: giant construction cranes, lawnmowers, chain saws, frozen donkeys, dump trucks, refrigerators or other large appliances, dump trucks, derelict Soviet space satellites; pretty much anything.

If you see an alien spacecraft, let me know. If elephants parachute into the parking lot, give me a call.

Do not knock the building down; do not flush your shoes and/or electronic equipment of any size down the toilet (this took on special meaning after he flushed his cell phone down the school toilet--it's a funny story).

Eat all your lunch. Don't eat any giant bugs, worm spaghetti, eyeball soup, weasel spit, beaver barf, fish entrails, platypus lips, hippopotamus hips, buffalo chips, or squid lips. Don't eat anything that Andrew Zimmern, Les Stroud, or Bear Gryll would eat on a regular basis. Anthony Bourdain is not totally insane; Rachael Ray is certainly okay.

Do not put peanut butter in your butt crack, honey in your belly button, or cactus in your underwear. And remember - bananas and coconuts are not armadillos, do not dance the rhumba, and do not change the oil in daddy's car on a regular basis, or any basis for that matter.

If you follow these simple rules, you will have a fine, marvelous, wonderful, inspirational, fun, exciting, memorable, educational, swell .........day at Bellevue East High School, Bellevue, Ne, United States of America, North American Continent, North American and Atlantic tectonic plate which also includes Japan, on the planet Earth, which is 2/3 covered by water you can't drink, in the solar system of our sun, a medium sized yellow star, one star among 400 billion stars in our galaxy, located on the Orion spur of the Sagitarius arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, a typical spiral galaxy, a member of the local group of galaxies, one galaxy among hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe most of which are moving away from each other at rates of speed higher than that predicted by the best minds of modern science. Some of which appear to be moving away from each other at speeds greater than the speed of light. Which has very smart people stumped. So work on that.

And, I love you.

As I said, I've recited this message hundreds if not thousands of times now and Jeremy still listens patiently, and corrects me if I make a mistake, and still smiles, and still gives me the occasional good-bye kiss or hug before heading off into the world.

Bud

Guantanamo - Isn't that a song by Trini Lopez?

2009-01-26T10:18:00.001-08:00

In the last week, several people remarked to me that they enjoyed receiving my
e-mails; I warned them that that would only encourage me to continue to write
these pieces.....

So today, I'm sitting here looking out the window and it's 11F and snowing and I'm thinking about summer. I thought about naming the attached picture "The Summer of 2009" but decided instead to do another Happy Days title.

In my class this morning, we discussed contemporary issues including the order signed by President Obama closing the Guantanamo Bay prison where we hold - and this is part of the interesting part of all this - POW's? or Criminals? Unlawful Enemy Combatants?- many of whom are indeed sworn enemies of the United States. But many of whom were swept up in the "shoot first, ask questions later" methodology of the prior administration in the post 9-11 military actions ordered by George W. Bush.

This was a promise by President Obama that I wish he hadn't made during his campaign. Stop torture, yes. Stop spying on American citizens w/o court orders, yes. And yes to most of the Executive orders he has signed in recent days overturning the many GWB constitutional end-runs.

However, Guantanamo does have its advantages -- it's not in our neighborhoods, our cities, our states. Putting militant Islamic jihadists in our prisons seems like a bad idea to me. Our prisons have enough to deal with already with gangs, and racism, and violence, and drugs, and all the rest.

Stop the abuses that occurred at Guantanamo; follow the International Laws regarding treatment of those captives, open it up for the Red Cross and Amnesty International, etc. And by all means, sort out the ones unrighteously held captive and send them home with an apology at the very least and a change of clothes, a weekend at a Hyatt Regency somewhere, and tickets to Disneyland maybe. Figuring out what we owe people wrongly imprisoned for years borders on the impossible it seems to me.

But I, for one, don't mind the rest of those POW's spending their days at Guantanamo, the real POW's, until the war against the United States is declared over by the radical Islamic jihadists who have declared war against us in the first place.

So that's my two cents on one of the many very complicated issues the President has embarked upon unraveling which were left on his doorstep by you know who.

So with that, I'd better grade a few papers and get ready for tonight's class and am attaching a new picture.

"Happy Days are Here Again, Again!"

Bud
www.artbycassiday.com

"When all else fails, I always say, paint a flower!" - Cassiday

"I'm not going down in history, I'm going down now!" - Cassiday

'Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow
spot into the sun.' Picasso

'Use enough dynamite there, Butch?' - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

'Three out of four people make up 75% of the world's population.' Jeremy

'An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. ' - Albert Camus

'In Theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they're not.' -
Yogi Berra

'Always live in the ugliest house on the street - then you don't have to look at
it.' David Hockney

“Hey, hey, hey — don't be mean. No need to be mean. 'Cause, remember: no matter
where you go... there you are.’”-The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the
8th Dimension!

"If given lemons, try to make lemonade!" - anon.

Martin Luther King Day 2009

2009-01-22T17:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a new pic for Martin Luther King Day 2009 and a few thoughts on this Monday .... I've been watching some of the memorial programming on the tv and working on this painting today. The concurrence of Martin Luther King Day with the Inauguration
of Barack Obama is quite a remarkable coming together of memory and hope. Growing up as a preacher's kid in small towns in several western and midwestern states, I've heard my share of racist remarks. And even now, four decades from the Civil Rights Victories of the 60's you don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface of civility we usually encounter to find residual racism and bigotry. So I thought a cross was an appropriate metaphor of Christianity and the misuse of Christian symbols (the Klan) to place in this painting. And some thoughts on what we worship may be helpful....status, wealth, power, beauty, money ... or love, kindness, charity, and hope. Whenever I hear that Jesus died for our sins, I think that it might be more accurate to say that Jesus died because of the sins of his contemporaries. And the sins are the same we have today. Pride, arrogance, bigotry, hatred, jealousy. We killed Jesus just as we killed Martin Luther King. Jesus' death was a result of the power of a government afraid of one man, a state action, to stop a feared revolution perhaps. MLK's death was the result of an individual filled with anger, and resentment, and hate which was aimed at stopping a movement. I'd say both killings failed to achieve the desired ends -- so far anyway. So I'm in a contemplative mood, hoping for the best, awaiting Barack Obama's Inauguration tomorrow and thought I'd share this new painting today.

Buick Specials, Roadmasters, and The Good Old Days

2009-01-16T12:03:00.000-08:00

In the good old days, car repairs seemed to always be $200. It didn't appear to matter what the repair was, it cost $200. New brakes - $200. New shocks all around - $200. Generator broken - $200. Then a few years later that doubled to $400 --- A/C not working - $400. Radiator rusted out - $400. Now it has doubled again and then some - front end bushings, tie-rod arms - $900. Fuel pump - $900. Brakes, drums, rotors, master cylinder - $900. So today it's a head or manifold gasket, new thermostat, and some water hoses - $900. Apparently, they have to disassemble most of the vehicle to do these things.

One winter years ago, my brother Jerry and I were driving home to Nebraska from a Christmas visit with parents and family in Montana. It was about a 16 hour drive and we were doing it in one stretch in my 1956 Buick Roadmaster -- the fancy one with the four portholes on the side, wide white wall tires, power steering, brakes, windows -- the top of the line Buick of its day. The year was 1972 or 73 maybe. About 11 at night while driving on I-29, the headlights suddenly dimmed and the electric indicator lights on the dash showed a power drain. The generator had lost its brushes and therefore was no longer generating any voltage.

I know this because we managed to pull into Elk Point, South Dakota and park under a street light and pull out the spare generator I had in the trunk and crawl under the car in the cold snowy night and remove and replace the generator.

Why, you ask, did I have a spare generator in the trunk? Well, my dad bought me a 1956 Buick Special when I was a High School Senior to get back and forth from school. That was a pretty cool car, too, but not as fancy as the Roadmaster.
While driving to school one day, another driver rear-ended me and totalled my Buick Special, which led to an insurance settlement, which led to the purchase of my Buick Roadmaster. But before having the car towed to the junk yard, I stripped if of any usable matching parts I could think of and carried them around with me in the trunk.

So we pulled off the Interstate into Elk Point, pulled under that street lamp, unbolted the old generator, bolted in the new one, connected the various wires and continued on our journey back home. Ahhhh, those were the days.

So here I sit today, waiting for my $900 car repair on my 13 year old Chevy Blazer S-10, wondering why my students at Metro Community College drive brand new Mustangs.......And working on a new painting, which I'll probably post later. Wait, I may have just answered my own question........

Regards,
Bud C
www.artbycassiday.com

Black Friday, Mumbai, The Hummer, and Christmas

2008-11-28T09:00:00.001-08:00

A few thoughts the day after Thanksgiving.

As you all know, I often sit at my keyboard looking at contemporary events looking for connections among the chaos of events that rush at us. This is not all that easy this morning after seeing the reports from Mumbai, hearing of National Security warnings about the possible attacks on the subways of New York, hearing reports this morning of a Walmart worker trampled to death, and after a nice family dinner for Thanksgiving at which my Dad was no longer there. Life does go on though for each of us, and my family members will gather for turkey sandwiches for lunch and watch the NU v. CO football game today on TV and play some cards and share stories afterwards and watch the news reports of the day.

Back to back reports on cable news this morning included more about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, possible attacks in New York, and the trampling death early Friday morning of a Walmart worker ……The first were coordinated attacks on commercial centers in Mumbai (Bombay), hotels, rail stations, a Jewish Center, a police station by another, heretofore unknown, Islamic, it appears, radical group with anger and hate as its soul….It was interesting to me that a British commentator referred to Mumbai as “Bombay,” still using its colonial renaming of that city as though by naming a place, a colonial power can claim the place. A small group terrorizing an entire city with indiscriminate and deliberate murders. The reasons will become clearer as time goes by and investigators gather their intelligence….but it appears to be some splinter “franchise” Jihadist blow at the Great Satan, etc., etc. Nihilists with visions of …….this is the part where I get stuck……their vision is of nothing. There appears to be no vision – just nihilist anger and hatred of all things “western.” There’s no justice in what they do. An Al Queda “franchise”……I heard that phrase on the news as though it was a McDonald’s, or a Kentucky Fried Chicken, or a Sam’s Club…..commercialized jihadism.

And at the Walmart store, where a worker was apparently killed by a mob of shoppers rushing the entrance to ……to..…. the “to” part is where I get stuck on this one, too. To buy stuff first early in the morning seems to be the answer. So we have one of America’s largest symbol of globalization with its many imported goods from India and China and anywhere in the world where children and low wage labor manufacture cheap shirts and shoes and electronics and toys and small appliances and all that stuff we place way too high on our priority lists……Christmas shoppers trample to death a Walmart employee. Talk about your post modernist ironies.

I remember the days when Sam Walton bragged about selling goods “Made in America” and I thought that was a good thing. Then last week the manufacturers of The Hummer, the world's most ridiculous suburban vehicle, flew to Washington DC in their several private jets and begged for $25 Billion….and I had to think about that one for a while.

Maybe there are no connections in all this but it seems to me the connection is about what we value: what value we place on things v. life, how we let hate and resentment drive us, what value we place on consumerism v. that which endures, and I don’t mean a one year warranty. I think I’m talking about a “lifetime” warranty…..a promise which guarantees “life.” In a small way perhaps that crowd at Walmart was in the same “vision” state of mind as that “franchise of jihadists” that disregarded life and humanity in Mumbai and sold us “Hummers” from Detroit; at opposite ends of the spectrum, to be sure, but perhaps on the same spectrum.

So entering this Christmas season let us think about the real meaning of Christmas – that “lifetime” warranty we have been given. The redemptive possibilities of life…the value of forgiveness and love…and you can’t buy that at Walmart.

Finally, if there’s a way to do it from San Francisco Bay where we deposited my Dad’s ashes this summer, he will be wearing one of his Nebraska sweatshirts today watching the NU v Colorado game rooting for his team. Sometimes he wore his San Francisco 49’ers hat while watching Nebraska games, too. Go Big Red.

Regards,
Bud

The True Meaning of Christmas 2008 and the Scourge of Subliminal Advertising

2008-11-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends, Gentlemen, Gentlewomen, Patrons, Admirers, as well as skeptical bystanders:

With the Halloween (buy Bud's art), Diwali (buy Bud's art), Dias las Muertos (buy Bud's art), Thanksgiving (buy Bud's art), Christmas (buy Bud's art), Kwanzaa (buy Bud's art),Chanukuh (buy Bud's art), Year of the Red Fire Dog (buy Bud's art), Tet Nguyen Dan gift-giving weeks now upon us and quickly going by, (buy Bud's art), and the time-honored traditions(buy Bud's art), pagan rituals, and religious ceremonies (buy Bud's art)we blithely observe, whose origins are oftentimes obscured by clever (buy Bud's art)marketing ploys including skillfully disguised subliminal messages (buy Bud's art), I'd like to thank all of you (buy Bud's art) who have purchased my art (buy Bud's art) during 2008. But beware of the advertising industry's (buy Bud's art)careful and cynical use of subliminal (buy Bud's art) advertising.

From the seemingly innoucuous (buy Bud's art)baking of cookies for open houses in the (buy Bud's art)real estate industry, to the use of (buy Bud's art)brand names in movies, to visual and auditory fragments of a desired message in (buy Bud's art)video, to the insertions of frame messages in motion pictures, to........the list goes on(buy Bud's art). All of these insidious (buy Bud's art)brain washing techniques are infecting our (buy Bud's art)marketplaces of(buy Bud's art) ideas and (buy Bud's art)products. In politics(buy Bud's art), does The Manchurian Candidate (buy Bud's art)ring any bells? These below conciousness levels of (buy Bud's art)persuasion can be the only reason (buy Bud's art) The Hummer (buy Bud's art)became a popular urban (buy Bud's art)commuting vehicle.

However successful (buy Bud's art)these pervasive techniques may be in the (buy Bud's art)market place, tremendous quantities of unpurchased art crowd the walls of my apartment (buy Bud's art), my hallway, my garage, my sister and mother's house (buy Bud's art), my brother's house (buy Bud's art), my other brother's apartment, (buy Bud's art), many of my friends' houses (buy Bud's art), several of my neices and nephews dorm rooms (buy Bud's art), bedrooms (buy Bud's art), apartment walls (buy Bud's art), hallways (buy Bud's art), my church (buy Bud's art), restaurants, coffee houses, and vineyard shops (buy Bud's art), as well as actual art galleries!! and I could go on and on and on and on and on and on....

In addition, with the current worldwide recession/depression, the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land (buy Bud's art), it is incumbent upon each of us to support(buy Bud's art) the nation's economy (buy Bud's art)by an enormous burst of (buy Bud's art)consumer spending in this last quarter of 2008. Give Barack a chance (buy Bud's art), let George W. Bush retire gracefully with a roaring economy (buy Bud's art), give John McCain a fond farewell, do your patriotic duty (buy Bud's art), show your love for others (especially me), and honor our religious, secular, and pagan traditions (buy Bud's art) by spending money (buy Bud's art) furiously until the year's end.

In addition to my art(buy Bud's art), I now sell representations of my art in the form of (buy Bud's art) hand made cards appr. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2". Let me know which pieces of my art you would like (buy Bud's art) and I can put that together. I sell them in a set of 5 for $10.00. They are really quite nice and make wonderful gifts.

Later,
Bud

http://www.myspace.com/artbycassiday (see starving artist Christmas sale 2008 photo album) or
www.artbycassiday.com

Ps. In the spirit of accountability, this message was reviewed be me three times now and I still stand by it.

Bibliography

1. ^ a b c d e "The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?". The Straight Dope. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
2. ^ a b Pratkanis, Anthony R. (Spring 1992). "The Cargo-Cult Science of Subliminal Persuasion", Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, pp. 260-272. Retrieved on 11 August 2006.
3. ^ tachistoscope - Definitions from Dictionary.com
4. ^ a b c d "Urban Legends Reference Pages: Business (Subliminal Advertising)". The Urban Legends Reference Pages. Retrieved on 2006-08-11.
5. ^ Urban Legends Reference Pages: Subliminal Advertising
6. ^ a b Lantos, Geoffrey P.. "The Absolute Threshold Level and Subliminal Messages" (PDF). Stonehill College. Retrieved on 2007-03-01.
7. ^ Boese, Alex (2002). The Museum of Hoaxes: A Collection of Pranks, Stunts, Deceptions, and Other Wonderful Stories Contrived for the Public from the Middle Ages to the New Millennium, E. P. Dutton, ISBN 0-525-94678-0. pages. 137-38.
8. ^ Peters, Dan; Steve Peters (1985). Rock's Hidden Persuader: The Truth About Backmasking. Bethany House Publishers, 19. Cited in U.S. Senate, page 125.
9. ^ U.S. Senate, page 118.
10. ^ U.S. Senate, page 125.
11. ^ Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2006
12. ^ Karremans, J. (2006). Beyond vicary's fantasies: the impact of subliminal priming and brand choice [Electronic Version]. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 792-798
13. ^ Key, W. B. (1973). Subliminal seduction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
14. ^ Byrne, D. (1959). "The effect of a subliminal food stimulus on verbal responses." Journal of Applied Psychology. 43 (no.4), 249-251.
15. ^ Marka conference.com
16. ^ Williams, Leanne M.; Belinda J. Liddell, Andrew H. Kemp, Richard A. Bryant, Russell A. Meares, Anthony S. Peduto, Evian Gordon (2006). "Amygdala-prefrontal dissociation of subliminal and supraliminal fear". Human Brain Mapping 27 (8): 652–661. doi:10.1002/hbm.20208.
17. ^ Brain Activity Reflects Complexity Of Responses To Other-race Faces, Science Daily, 14 December 2004
18. ^ Hassin, Ferguson, Shidlovski, Gross (2007). Subliminal exposure to national flags affects political thought and behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, vol. 104, no. 50
19. ^ Vokey, John R. (2002). "Subliminal Messages", Psychological Sketches (PDF), 6th edition, Lethbridge, Alberta: Psyence Ink, 223–246. Retrieved on 2006-07-05.
20. ^ Robinson, B.A.. "Backmasking on records: Real, or hoax?". Retrieved on 2006-07-04.
21. ^ Moore, Timothy E. (Spring 1992). "Subliminal Perception: Facts and Fallacies", Skeptical Inquirer, Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, pp. 273-81. Retrieved on 11 August 2006.
22. ^ Vance, J., et al. v. Judas Priest et al., No. 86-5844, 2nd Dist. Ct. Nev. (August, 24 1990)
23. ^ Eskenazi, J., & Greenwald, A.G., Pratkanis, A.R. (1990). What you expect is what you believe (but not necessarily what you get): On the ineffectiveness of subliminal self-help audiotapes. Unpublished manuscript. University of California. Santa Cruz.
24. ^ The Straight Dope: Does subliminal advertising work?. The Straight Dope. Retrieved on 2008-06-11
25. ^ BTK Back
26. ^ Fight Club Easter Eggs - Eeggs.com
27. ^ Screen It! Parental Review: Fight Club
28. ^ Fight Club (1999) - Crazy credits
29. ^ Crowley, Candy. "Bush says 'RATS' ad not meant as subliminal message" CNN.com, 2000-9-12. Retrieved on December 16, 2006
30. ^ Smoking Pistols: George "Rat Ad" Bush and the Subliminal Kid
31. ^ 9/19/00 Speech by Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth: The FCC's Investigation of "Subliminal Techniques:"
32. ^ Brasseye Wiki
33. ^ Error - - New York Times
34. ^ Re: [AMIA-L] Reply: "Sherlock Jr."
35. ^ "It was a glitch, not a subliminal ad, for McDonald's on Food Network". Canadian Press (2007-01-25). Retrieved on 2007-03-11.
36. ^ Subliminal advertising. - ninemsn Video
37. ^ YouTube - Led Zeppelin : Greatest Secret
38. ^ www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/queen.php
39. ^ Media:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdd01RI-AZE
40. ^ Agency asks slot-machine maker to halt subliminal messages
41. ^ Killick, Jane (1997). Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows. The Ballantine Publishing Group, 131.
42. ^ Singh, Simon (June 10, 2003), "I'll bet £1,000 that Derren can't read my mind", The Daily Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2003/06/10/ecfmagic.xml, retrieved on 12 March 2008

* Dixon, N. F. (1971). Subliminal Perception: The nature of a controversy, McGraw-Hill, New York.
* Greeenwald, Anthony W. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious Cognition Reclaimed, American Psychologist, 47.
* Holender, D. (1986). Semantic activation without conscious identification in dichotic listening, parafoveal vision, and visual masking: A survey and appraisal. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 9, 1-23.
* Merikle, P. M., and M. Daneman (1998). Psychological Investigations of Unconscious Perception, Journal of Consciousness Studies.
* Watanabe, Sasaki, Nanez (2001). Perceptual learning without perception. Nature, 413, 844-848.
* Seitz and Watanabe (2003). Is subliminal learning really passive. Nature, 422, 36.
* United States Senate (1985). Record Labeling: Hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. United States Senate, Ninety-ninth Congress, First Session on Contents of Music and the Lyrics of Records (September 19, 1985). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

[edit] Further reading

* Boese, Alex (2006). Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S.'', Harcourt, Inc., ISBN 0-15-603083-7, 193-95

Election Commentary -- Gobama!

2008-11-06T09:09:00.000-08:00

You know I have to make a comment or two about the recent election. I'm pretty pleased with the results for the most part. And a kaleidoscope of images keeps running through my head: Jesse Jackson with tears in his eyes, a hundred thousand cheering Chicagoans in the park at midnight, Kenyans celebrating in the streets!, hours long lines at polling stations on election day, Barack and his family (I feel like I can call him by his first name). A photo of a small white home with an American flag, a Confederate flag, and an Obama for President sign in the front yard. Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics participated in this historic election. Not much coverage of Native American turnout…..

John McCain's gracious concession speech drew boos from his audience in Phoenix, and the Republican in-fighting is beginning in earnest. Palinistas and McCainites will be at each other's throats I imagine in a big way in the following days. Even Fox News was reporting that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa was a continent, for example…..That whole side show will get a bit rancorous, I suspect.

Barack Obama's inspirational speech in Chicago on election night was extraordinary for its inclusiveness and compassion and discipline with echoes of Martin Luther King's speeches – "I may not get to the Promised Land…." What a marvelous and inspiring message with a gracious nod to John McCain's service to the country.

In Nebraska, Douglas County gave a majority vote to Barack Obama, but apparently was not enough to give Barack the one electoral vote from District 2 in Nebraska, and the state of course went big for John McCain. An draconian anti-abortion amendment failed in Colorado, but an intolerant anti-gay marriage referendum in California passed. And some post modernist irony in Nebraska: carpetbaggers from California foisted upon Nebraska the 424 anti-affirmative action amendment that passed which will make it more difficult to address the imbalances in college admissions which currently show white males as the most underrepresented demographic. Put that in your anti-affirmative pipe and smoke it, Mr. Californian.

The news photos of the long lines at polling stations reminded me of photos I've seen of voting in third world countries. People lining up for hundreds of yards and waiting hours and hours to vote. That's embarrassing, isn't it? What's that all about? We looked like a third world country that can't figure out how to hold elections. Another observation - it appears that the Republican strategies to deny voting rights to tens of thousands of new and minority voters were unsuccessful. I stood in line for an hour in Papillion listening to the gossipy woman behind me in line going on about Feminazis and the "Liberal" agenda, but bit my lip and tried to ignore her. I figured that I'd probably cancel out her vote.

Re. race in America. For all the rainbow coalition gushing about it's a new day and we've turned a page and all that, I saw a blog in Salon that told the story of a Pennsylvania neighborhood organizer canvassing for Barack Obama. He knocked on the door of a white working class family and the wife answered. The organizer asked who they would be voting for. The reply came from the husband: "We'll be voting for the n*****." It's not a word I want to repeat. So there go. That's progress ---- of a sort. And I'm wondering why with a white Kansan mother and a Kenyan father we call Barack Obama an African American. Maybe Afrikansan American! What % of African genes makes one an African anyway? Echoes of Plessy v. Ferguson reverberating through the decades?

Anyway, our new President will face an enormous list of problems in the "inbox" in his new oval office. So God Bless America! I'm going to listen to Jimi Hendrix' version of The Star Spangled Banner some more…..

Regards,

Gobama!
Bud C

Gobama!

2008-11-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't figured it out, I'm sure this will be a huge surprise, I am supporting Barack Obama for President. He appears to be the real thing to me. Bill Richardson was my first choice early on but he bit the dust rather quickly and I began to watch Barack Obama. His considerable ability to "organize" has been evident in his fund-raising, his ability to turn out huge crowds, his ability to attract smart people to his campaign and/or for endorsements, his ability to find local leadership in neighborhood after neighborhood, community after community, city after city, state after state. Maybe that'll teach the Repubs not to mock and belittle community organizers!

A long list of prominent Republicans have now endorsed Senator Obama including GWB's former press secretary, Scott McClellan, Former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, Ronald Reagan's Chief of Staff, Duberstein, several Republican Governors, William Weld for example, and even the occasional right wing radio talk show host, Michael Smirkonish for one example. It's pretty heady stuff.

The next President will be faced with daunting problems: a melt down in the world's financial sector, a health care system which is critically ill, an economy teetering on the brink of a deep recession, deficits as far as the eye can see, a national debt that is impossible to express in terms that mere humans can understand, and two intractable wars.

One good thing I see is the dissolution of the social conservatives right wing base which progressively hijacked the Republican party over the last 8 years. The infighting has already begun -- McCain campaign officials calling Sarah Palin a "whack job" for example. Neither the hometown Wasila, Alaska or Anchorage newspapers endorsed Sarah Palin and John McCain. John McCain's inexplicable move to the right during the last two years cost him the respect and support of a huge number of moderate Americans if all the polls out there are to be believed.

The Republicans' cynical attempts to paint Barack Obama as a socialist, a Marxist, a "redistributionist," a friend of terrorism, a Muslim, an Arab, a foreigner, in fact, made John McCain a smaller and smaller person in light of his larger than life history. Karl Rove and his subsequent political incarnations took John McCain, a genuine American hero, and turned him into a tawdry and petty politician. The more mud McCain and Palin tried to sling, the dirtier their own hands became.

Barack Obama has attracted the best and brightest of American minds to advise and counsel him, he has remained calm and focused while John McCain careened from strategy to strategy, tactic to tactic. John McCain has attracted and elevated mediocrity to a smarmy kind of iconic status - Joe the Plumber comes to mind. The Republicans' assault on knowledge, on facts, on truth, on honor, on civility will likely cost them dearly. I sincerely hope so at any rate.

Barack Obama grew larger and larger this last several months in my mind; John McCain sank lower and grew smaller. Barack Obama reached out: John McCain reached down. Barack Obama was able to widen his circle of inclusion; John McCain directed his increasingly shrill, mudslinging message to an ever-shrinking market - the right wing base of the ideologically driven social conservatives, managing to offend 2/3 of the electorate.

So there you go. I'm nervous as hell that something catastrophic will happen and McCain will guttersnatch the election somehow and we'll continue the country's downward spiral. So like Rachael Maddow might say, somebody please talk me down!

Bud C.
Gobama!

My next, next, last, last commentary - Jimi Hendrix "The Star Spangled Banner"

2008-10-20T08:45:00.000-07:00

The other morning I was listening to some of my favorite music and came across a couple of patriotic pieces I love: "America the Beautiful" by Ray Charles, and Jimi Hendrix' "The Star Spangled Banner." I also listened to several pretty moving versions of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Jim Nabors, Elvis Presley, Lee Greenwood, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mannheim Steamroller, and even the Leningrad Cowboys! The Leningrad Cowboys sang it with the most gusto of any. Joan Baez and Judy Collins' versions were plaintive and contemplative. Jim Nabors, remember Gomer Pyle on Mayberry RFD?, sang it with clarity and respect.

With all the mud flying Barack's way, I thought a reminder might be in order of what this country is all about - "Liberty and Justice for All." I saw later in the day that McCain/Palin are stepping up their smear campaign with "robo-calls" exploiting Senator Obama's tangential relationship years ago with Bill Ayers. Last Night, Fox News added their pseudo "journalism" regarding the radical politics of the Black Panthers and the Weathermen during the 1960's trying to tie that history to the smear campaign against Obama. Let's not forget that Obama was eight years old at the time. More and more Republican leaders are asking McCain/Palin to stop these calls and stop the mud slinging; many traditionally Republican newspapers are now endorsing Barack Obama. John McCain says he can "reach across the aisle"; but first, he apparently needs to mudsling, smear, character assassinate, and stoop to the tactics of the lowest common denominator. Even Gen. Colin Powell has had enough.

Why McCain/Palin think picking at all the wounds of the Vietnam War era is helpful is hard to figure. It's sad to see McCain sink to the mudslinging level of Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh and the pseudo journalism of Sean Hannity. The enormous price our troops paid then for another misguided war begun with lies and phony pretexts only reminds me of the terrible price our soldiers are paying for our elected leaders' lies, mistakes, and bungling of virtually everything they've done in Iraq.

I still believe America, for all its flaws, can be that City on the Hill, and a beacon of hope, and a better place; but the McCain/Palin politics of personal smearing won't get us there. Their divisive tactics smack of small minded tawdry desperation.

Two weeks after John McCain voted to give $700 Billion dollars to banks to keep them from failing, he's attacking Obama for his "socialist" tax credits to poor people. I think it was Richard Nixon who came up with the idea, in fact. If ever there was a crystallized example of "trickle down" versus "bottom up" economics, this is it. $700 Billion to banks is okay, but tax credits for lower wage income earners is "socialist"? Give me a break.

What's not to admire about John McCain's military service to America? He followed his orders, was captured, imprisoned, tortured and refused to be released until those captured before him were released. But what about his orders? I believe that history has shown there was no victory to be had in Vietnam. We keep hearing that Victory in Iraq is just around the corner. I believe, now, that there is no victory to be had in Iraq, either. We won the war in Iraq in a month; we subsequently unleashed tribal and religious animosities which led to a civil war lasting years and claiming hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Over 4,000 American soldiers have died there trying to insert themselves heroically between the warring factions. But enough is enough. We've done enough. It's up to Iraqis now. America is strong enough to correct her mistakes; America is resilient.

So back to Jimi Hendrix -- as I listen to his Woodstock performance, I can hear the depth of his personal despair and the genuine emotional attachment he has to America's dream. To me it is a profoundly perceptive and patriotic rendition - there's a complexity and depth and resonance and heartfelt sincerity and respect for America. That Woodstock idealism was not a weakness. Idealism is one of the strengths of America. Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and many others, including for me, Barack Obama. were and are able to tap the idealism beneath the commercial facades of America.

Barack Obama keeps trying to elevate the conversation and be inclusive; McCain and Palin continue to sink deeper and deeper into their divisive rhetoric, mudslinging, smear tactics, and character assassination.

So God help us through the next couple of weeks.

Gobama!
Bud

My next "Last" Commentary on the 2008 Elections

2008-10-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

In my last "last" commentary, I was remarking about us entering the major "mudslinging" portion of the election contest - "palling around with terrorists" comes to mind, among other things. And I suspect we are about to relive the Jeremiah Wright nonsense again, over and over and over and over and over, again.

And much of this criticism coming the the VP candidate who has been cozy with the "Alaskan secessionists" and their creepy connections. I'd like to see some credible reporting on the ties between the various secessionist movements in the states and the far too many white racist movements out there.

The hate speech from McCain supporters has been pretty revealing, I think - "kill him," "terrorist," "assassinate him," he's an "Arab," a double-whammy of racism in today's America, not only is Barack Black but he's got an Arab middle name, Barack "Hussein" Obama, etc., etc.; so much so that even John McCain himself has finally stepped up a bit and tried to temper some of the rhetoric. Afterwards, McCain spokesman Paul Lindsey said, “We do not condone this inappropriate rhetoric which distracts from the real questions...." But McCain has to shoulder the responsibility for the inflammatory rhetoric of his VP running mate that has led to this sorry state. And he certainly lost an opportunity to address racism against Arab Americans....

I have an idea for an Obama ad: show John McCain asking the question over and over again - Who is Obama really? and the same line repeated by Palin over and over again --- and then cut to John McCain's answer:

"I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States," McCain said. "He's a decent family man...." "I respect Sen. Obama and his accomplishments." Hmmmm. Could work.

I wonder which McCain will show up this week on the campaign trail?

And finally, I want to pass along a commentary by David Brooks of the NYT - hey, even Sarah Palin quotes it, that hits a nail on the head. The gist of it is that the Republicans have painted themselves into a bit of a corner with its culture wars over the last many years. It's something like a "growing share of a shrinking market":

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10brooks.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1

Later,
Bud