N.J. Gov. James E. McGreevey
I dunno, the news just broke and we don’t know the whole story, but you gotta wonder, as Barry asked just now, “He resigned? Is being gay more shameful than being corrupt?”
[image from politicsnj.com]
Category: Politics
we already have a unity government: it’s called FEAR
“They should just have a unity government and be honest about it,” said Barry when I mentioned the news report this morning that Senate Democrats are saying that they won’t oppose the Goss nomination. Read the NYTimes story and weep.
Gemini, Gehry, good works
Ed Ruscha Other color lithograph 11 1/4 x 14 3/4
While in Los Angeles last week we stopped at the West Hollywood workshop and galleries of Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited). Ok, to be honest, the draw had been the building itself, whose interest had been touted by an artist friend of ours; we didn’t know about the galleries, and hadn’t really expected to get inside. In fact, we were really welcomed, and graciously invited to walk about the exhibition spaces on our own.
Gemini has collaborated with famous artists nationwide in a great portfolio of first-rate prints, “Artists Coming Together,” to help ACT (America Coming Together) defeat Bush and elect Democrats in federal, state and local elections in November. The prints are available, for those with pockets ample enough, individually or as a series. Here‘s more information.
Back to the building. It’s less than two blocks from the Schindler House, and shows curious references to that structure, which was erected more than half a century earlier. The architecture is that of Frank Gehry, but it’s the really good Gehry, the one whose early modest originality excited an entire world now so eager for duplicates of Bilbao flamboyance. These are a couple of almost abstract images of the Gemini shelter’s 1976 shapes and textures:
[travel tip from Dennis Kane]
Bush and his homeboys
These guys deserve some serious exposure – now! Check out the video link, fucknewyork.
[link thanks to Dennis Kane]
Central Park IS the rally site
peace and goodness in the park before 9/11 – and after 8/29
I’m not going to any rally on the West Side Highway. I am not a car. After marching past Madison Square Garden I’ll be in our great Central Park on August 29th, and I expect a million others will be with me. Bloomberg, Kelly and all the Republican invaders be damned.
See the latest stories in the local paper, from yesterday and today.
This is an excerpt from an email received this afternoon from United for Peace and Justice:
WE ARE MARCHING! On August 29, United for Peace and Justice will hold a massive, impassioned, peaceful, and legal march past Madison Square Garden, the site of the Republican Convention, to protest the Bush Administrations deceit and destruction.
But we will NOT be rallying afterwards on the West Side Highway. As we announced in a press conference today, exiling us to a remote stretch of sun-baked highway makes a mockery of our right to assembly: The deal is off.
Our medics have told us that the West Side Highway isnt a safe place for seniors, children, and people with disabilities to rally. Our sound engineers have told us that its not possible to set up a quality sound system there. Many of our members have told us that they simply will not go to such an awful and marginal location. And our common sense has told us that this deal was a set-up by a Republican mayor openly hostile to free speech.
Central Park is the only sensible place for us to rally. We filed a new permit application today with the NYC Parks Department to rally in Central Park on August 29, using the Great Lawn, North Meadow, and East Meadow. We will keep you informed of the Citys response.
These guys (who are actually all of us) need help to pay for what has been and will continue to be a costly legal fight. If you can help, here’s where to go:
You can donate in several ways:
* Using a credit card online at http://www.unitedforpeace.org/donate
* By calling in a credit card donation to 212-868-5545
* By mailing a check or money order to UFPJ, P.O. Box 607, Times Square Station, NY NY 10108
[image from galanter.net]
Porter Goss would be disastrous
To head the most imprtant part of an intelligence community already disastrously overly-politicized, the President whose party already contols the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, has proposed, yes, a Republican politician.
And Porter Goss is not just any politician but the one who currently chairs the House Committee on Intelligence, the Congressional watchdog which has rolled over for the Administration for more than three years.
A few minutes ago I heard him on NPR, speaking since his nomination. He says the CIA needs more muscle, that the U.S. shouldn’t be loved around the world, but rather respected (read, feared), and that if, within the U.S., it’s to be a question of Big Brother or dead brother, he would see to it that there are no more dead brothers.
Doesn’t sound like intelligence to me.
Digby has more.
Let’s just say that when push comes to shove, old Porter is a partisan Republican first and a guardian of the CIA second. Be warned.
[image from Capitol Shopping Mall]
Kerry says he’d vote for the war again
not thinking
The man so many people hope will lead us back to sanity and save the Republic told us yesterday that he would have voted for the (current) war in Iraq even if he had known what he knows now about the absence of WMDs or a connection to Al Qaeda.
Is this the man we’re told we’ve all chosen as our standard-bearer? Is this the man we must follow blindly, without questions, to the point where we excoriate or gag any who would demur? This is a man who himself blindly followed, without questions, an idiot and his cynical handlers, and now says he would do it again!
I’m thinking for myself, and I do not hope.
[image from Hermes Press]
Green Hummer Project
political art, cruising Savannah streets
Crazy about bikes, but just can’t get those Hummers out of your mind? Check out these guys and their wonderful full-size Green Hummer.
This bicycle is an attempt to make large numbers of people reconsider the ways that they move around their cites. Our SUV is the opposite of modern consumer culture, an anti-commercial. We want people to think independently of the corporations who program their televisions. We want people to see our pedal-powered, life-size Green Hummer cruise around a real city, and think about the contrast between advertising and the real world.
In advertising, cities are lifeless, cars are safe, drivers are happy, gas is clean, and you are not responsible whatsoever for traffic, pollution, your weight, the marring of our landscapes, or war.
Our SUV is for the real world.
Don’t miss the wonderful short video clips!
[thanks to Derick Melander and his brother for the link]
Moon furnished N. Korea missile with subs a threat to U.S.
Yowza! That’s showing some really faith-based initiative!
It would seem that, a few years ago, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon purchased a small fleet of Russian ballistic missile submarines with the missile-launching hardware intact, then handed the subs over to North Korea. Now, according to Jane’s Defense Weekly, the North Koreans have used that hardware to develop missiles that can threaten the United States.
Your tax-free cult’s dollars at work.
Thanks to The American Prospect, linked above, Atrios and Jane’s Defense Weekly.
Ben Franklin is avoiding Boston
In spite of all reported sightings to the contrary, Ben Franklin is not in Boston this week. Can’t say that I blame him.
This image was captured in downtown Portland yesterday. This city was founded by New Yorkers and New Englanders in the mid-nineteenth century, and it remains a very sensible and very liberal society, so maybe there’s some logic to Franklin’s visit (or move?).
While it looks like he’s now in a serious stretch from his sober sartorial habit (his Parisian friends would love it), he still wears the same glasses and he still seems to be interested in journalism.