VOINA!

With the full media attention of the prosecution and sentencing of the Russian political punk performance artists, Pussy Riot, perhaps we should see it in the larger perspective of the ongoing persecution and prosecution of Anti Putin political artists. Most people who try to defend the Putin regimes prosecution of Pussy Riot try to frame it as legitimate outrage against the vandalistic desecration of a religious space. I think the stupidest comment I read on an American comment was "Wouldn't you be outraged if the American punk band, Green Day did this in a synagogue?" You really have to wonder who posts comments like this. I would ask you to read the truly eloquent and concise closing statement by Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich at the Stalinistic show trial. The only time she was allowed to speak her own words in her defense:

"The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia]. Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.
How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.
It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance."

If you are interested in lending your name to the petition by Amnesty International in America, 

follow this link.

The video at the top of this post is the work of band of political artists in Russia called Voina, which means war. The giant penis was a piece of political art vandalism in St. Petersburg which was created one morning about a year ago.  The bridge directly faces the headquarters of the one time KGB in St. Petersburg...If this outrages you, then you deserve to wallow in your misguided shame..If you think it is vandalism, well, then it magnificent vandalism, hooliganism on truly heroic scale.  .Voina, is an art collective which has engaged in politicly provocative anti Putin regime actions for years. They have been arrested and the members are in prisons and suppressed in Russia. To learn more about VOINA, their work and how to support them,

please follow this link.

Why is this important to you? America walks a thin line these days. Art is being suppressed and depending on the direction the country takes in the next year...You might have to be much more careful about what you say, who you say it to and letting people know how you truly feel....

It Can Happen Here!

Oh, I Think You Should.....

My particularly predominate ethnic background is Irish. My wife is Irish and Scot...there are definitely traits that cannot be denied. We are both very proud of our heritage and amazed when we actually meet relatives who are so true to type, who by their natural passion and eloquence reaffirm our passion for our heritage. I ran across this last night, Michael Higgins, the present president of Ireland, has a"discussion" with the American Tea Brain radio dude named Michael Graham. This particular exchange took place in 2010, when Higgins was leader of the Irish Labor Party, he was elected president the next year. Higgins makes me so proud of my heritage! Here's the transcript:
HIGGINS: I've spoken of my time in the Midwest. I'm going to the Greyhound bus station and hearing for the first time "poor white trash." These people, who -- you know, I was there before the Civil Rights charter came in and frankly the idea that a person would not have one job, but would have two jobs, or three jobs and work all the light hours that are there and still not be entitled to the basic protection of fundamental care is so outrageous.
So whether you agree with Obama on what he is doing and aspects of his foreign policy -- I disagree with some things about Latin and South America --
[crosstalk]
But one of the things I do agree, the idea of being a social floor, below which people wouldn't fall, that's the future. I think even the poorest people in the great country that is the United States should be entitled to basic health care --
GRAHAM: Okay --
HIGGINS: -- And I don't think they'll thank the Sarah Palin lookalikes and followers for taking it off them.
You're about as late an arrival in Irish politics as Sarah Palin is in American politics and both of you have the same tactic. The tactic is to get a large crowd, whip them up, try and discover what is the greatest fear, work on that, and feed it right back in a frenzy. And that leads you in time then when you have in fact maybe one of the most gifted Presidents elected. I happen to not agree with all of his foreign policy but you know you regard for example someone who happens to have been a professor at Harvard as somehow now very handicapped.
You don't find anything wrong at all with this Tea Party ignorance that is being brought all around the United States, which is regularly insulting people who have been democratically elected.
(applause)
GRAHAM: Deputy Higgins, I'm not going to insult you by --
HIGGINS: -- oh I think you should.
GRAHAM: --by bringing up your lack of knowledge of the Tea Party movement other than to --
HIGGINS: I lived in the United States and you know one interesting thing, Mike? You know the big difference as I listened, I lived in the Midwest, in Willie Nelson country. I was a student there at the end of the 60s, I was a professor in Illinois when they entered the 70s.
The magnificent, decent, generous people of the United States, with whom I had supper. People who I sat and ate homemade ice cream with them. The difference between them and the tiny elite who are in charge of warmongering foreign policy in the United States is just enormous.
So therefore when you go on your picnic around the country you're really not representing the decent United States people who are very proud, correctly, of the person they've elected President which they're entitled to do.
But you have the neck to say that people like me who are willing to talk to people or at least are trying to build peace are somehow or another in favor of people who want to martyr Jewish people. That is an outrageous statement. I am not antiSemitic, I am not in favor of martyr, and unlike you, I make my profession in politics and I worked in human rights. And I condemned Hamas for sending rockets. Not that that will matter to you.
Because you know what you are, and I wish you well. Keep drinking Guinness and keep ranting away, but don't suggest that those of us who are working for peace in the heat of the day are somehow interested in martyring Jews.
There's a man in the United -- you know him. I think you may have interviewed him. Mark B. Klein. He represents fourteen Jewish organizations in New York. He organized forty-five members of the House of Representatives to sign a letter condemning Barack Obama for giving Mary Robinson the Medal of Honor. Yeah.
I was debating with him on a program rather like this and I said to him "How can you conclude that Mary Robinson is anti-Semitic?" And he said -- and I said "Or Bishop Tutu, for example?" "Bishop Tutu is anti-Semitic as well!" You're going down that road. And really, it is very dangerous stuff.
The fact of the matter is -- look. Young people from the United States are traveling all over the world again. They're welcome in Europe. They're backpackers and hostels. People are talking to them. Because the image of the United States, we've got away from this warmongering is getting better.
At least forty-seven million people that the likes of you condemn to no health care in a country that I was proud to work in -- these people are going to have some health care.
So this is the issue. So therefore be proud to be a decent American rather than just being a wanker whipping up fear.

[applause]

To Mock A Killingbird....

Richard Pryors short lived controversial ABC television show from the 70's.

It was too damn good to be allowed to live. How many great comedic actors 

do you recognize in his cast?

...okay, so it's a very young Robin Williams....that was the easy one....

\

Still in the grip of a record breaking heat wave. Today, the added discomfort
of what I recall as mid western Great Lakes stye  humidity....
Possibility of a thunderstorm this afternoon?
Do you remember when this is what Americans did on a hot night before 
air conditioning? It wasn't that much cooler in your car, but it was somehow...
way cooler!

Macaron Madness

Okay, I love to eat great food and Love making it, but I have to bow down to my mistress...My wife is a genius. I say it all the time. She recently became obsessed with the process of making the perfect macaron. This is science...you really need an oven you can monitor, you have to be able to control the humidity of your kitchen...there are so many variables and it is easy to understand why the perfect macaron could cost a small fortune. She recently became friends with a culinary blogger from the Loire named Crystal. Crystal guided her through the process in which there were moments when she was considering suicide. After a number of spectacular successes, I took the liberty of suggesting macarons made with Dulce con leche as the filling (we made the duce con leche...or confiture de lait by taking a can of sweetened condensed milk and boiling it unopened in a pot of water for 4 hours...when it cools, open it and well...you have opened a gateway to heaven!). Crystal thought it was a fabulous idea and suggested using ground hazelnuts in the macaron batter. Can I say it was a massive success? They were and are the best macarons I have ever had and we are the only people on the planet Earth who have them!
So today, Crystal published Janet's photo of her macarons on her blog Voyage Culinaire, which if you are interested in reading and interested in food, I would highly recommend.

Here is Crystale's piece....

Bonjour, bonjour, aujourd'hui pas de recette mais une nouvelle mise à l'honneur. C'est à nouveau Janet, qui m'a fait parvenir son nouvel essai de macarons. Avant de vous mettre la photo, il faut que je vous explique comment ceux-ci ont vu le jour. En début de semaine, Janet me contacte pour me demander mon avis. Elle venait juste de faire de la confiture de lait et elle me demandait comment elle pourrait " aromatiser " ses coques. Je lui ai répondu, en lui disant qu'elle peut remplacer une partie de la poudre d'amande par du praliné comme ici, ou de la poudre de spéculoos comme là mais qu'à mon avis, avec de la poudre de noisettes ça devrait être comment dire ????? Hyper méga gourmand 8D Et ben figurez-vous qu'elle m'a écouté et voici ses 

Macarons noisettes et Dulche con leche

Ils ne sont pas magnifiques !!! Encore une fois bravo Janet et comme je vous ai dit, dès que je rentre chez moi je les teste car ils m'ont donné trop envie 

I have to add, I eat all the time, but I think I have discovered a basic secret....never stop moving. I am 6 feet tall and weigh all of 140. And you can eat all the ice cream you want, never gain an ounce as long as you make it yourself....except for perhaps my wifes salted caramel gelati....I have never tasted anything like that before in my entire life!!!!!!!

Cleo Checks Out Rome.....

That's righ,t a little epic revisionist history starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton

from 1963. Joseph Mankiewicz directed this epic loser....the highest grossing film of 1963, yet, incredibly, it still lost over 20 million bucks....

Summer In The City

Okay, so I don't live in the city, but it was almost 105 here today, breaking all the records since the beginning of the 20th century. We were the hottest place in France....and this song kept running through my head, but maybe this version is the best cover ever! Butthole Surfers!!!!!!

yeah well, this is the sort of the alternative sound track
 for the next post....FZ 1966

IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE........

Yesterday in Moscow.
Below is the video for the song Pussy Riot released yesterday after being sentenced to 2 years in
a Russian prison for anti Putin "hooliganism".  
                                    
                 
                   
                   
                   

                Here is the link to the post I published on August 10, 2012 with Yekaterina Samutsevich's 

extremely eloquent closing statement in her trial. I also included the links for you connect

t with if you would like to stand up and put your name on the petition by Amnesty International protesting the Russian persecution of these political artists.

But this is not isolated, this is an ongoing purge of artistic political dissent in Russia today. I have written about the Russian Political Art Movement,  Voina and there work and persecution. Most of the members are now facing Putin/Stalinist show trials or now in prisons because they have dared to create politically "incorrect" art which challenges Putin's regime. Why should you be concerned? Aren't you paying attention? Wake up...this is the thin line,  the tight rope you are walking on in America. It can't happen here? IT IS HAPPENING HERE! And it will only get worse if you let it happen in November......

Tom Morello

Wall Street - Rage Against the Machine par Ali_La_Pointe

I've posted a lot of Tom Morello's music and his almost one man revolution as The Nightwatchman.

Tom performed free at Occupy protests all over America this year and as well in Wisconsin.

He is one of the most brilliant guitarists working today, at the forefront of technology and technique.

I'm going to reprint his comments from yesterdays issue of Rolling Stone in which he responds to the incredulous comment by Paul Ryan that Rage Against The Machine was his favorite band.

The Video above is from 2002, when Tom's band, Rage played live on Wall Street. They shut down Wall Street, and yes, no money was harmed....they had applied for a permit with Michael Moore to film the performance, but their permit was turned down. So they did it anyway. Everyone, the band, the tech crew and Michael Moore were arrested by the NYPD.

Last week, Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan, the Republican architect of Congress's radical right-wing budget plan, as his running mate. Ryan has previously cited Rage Against the Machine as one of his favorite bands. Rage guitarist Tom Morello responds in this exclusive August 16, 2012 Rolling Stone op-ed:

Paul Ryan's love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. Charles Manson loved the Beatles but didn't understand them. Governor Chris Christie loves Bruce Springsteen but doesn't understand him. And Paul Ryan is clueless about his favorite band, Rage Against the Machine.

Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.

You see, the super rich must rationalize having more than they could ever spend while millions of children in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night. So, when they look themselves in the mirror, they convince themselves that "Those people are undeserving. They're . . . lesser." Some of these guys on the extreme right are more cynical than Paul Ryan, but he seems to really believe in this stuff. This unbridled rage against those who have the least is a cornerstone of the Romney-Ryan ticket.

But Rage's music affects people in different ways. Some tune out what the band stands for and concentrate on the moshing and throwing elbows in the pit. For others, Rage has changed their minds and their lives. Many activists around the world, including organizers of the global occupy movement, were radicalized by Rage Against the Machine and work tirelessly for a more humane and just planet. Perhaps Paul Ryan was moshing when he should have been listening.

My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected, he'll pardon Leonard Peltier. Maybe he'll throw U.S. military support behind the Zapatistas. Maybe he'll fill Guantanamo Bay with the corporate criminals that are funding his campaign – and then torture them with Rage music 24/7. That's one possibility. But I'm not betting on it.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, by the Quebec-Palestine Coalition

Inside his Memphis mansion, Graceland, the king of rock ‘n’ roll lay silent in a copper coffin. Women hid tiny cameras in their bras to take one last picture as they filed past. Outside, hundreds of floral arrangements, some shaped like guitars and one like a hound dog, lined the long driveway and thousands of fans kept vigil on the tacky boulevard below in the sweltering heat. They had abandoned jobs, driven all night and flown in from abroad for one last glimpse of their idol. “Don’t faint now,” a mother warned her faltering daughter,” or I’ll just have to leave you.” A billboard down the way read “In Memoriam” and the Beef and Liberty Restaurant sign directly across the street carried the message “Rest in Peace.” But hardly anyone in Memphis could really believe that Elvis Presley was dead of a heart attack, at the age of 42.

Bain Capitol Part #2

It's a good thing the nice policeman wasn't a jerk. Instead of arresting this terribly threatening woman (cue sarcasm), he agreed to hand-deliver her letter for her, after Romney campaign workers locked her out and called the police.
Sensata, as you may recall, is the company where Bain Capital is in the process of shutting down plants and sending jobs overseas. Adding insult to injury, Sensata workers are required to train their replacements. I wrote about this story on August 14th and the history and background of Bain Capitol.
While Mitt Romney isn't directly ordering the closure, as a Bain investor he is certainly benefitting from it. As one Sensata employee said, hearing Romney speak makes her physically ill. Who wouldn't feel that way after losing their job and financial security while having to cheerfully train their overseas replacement? The stories are heartbreaking.
I realize there's a lot of people out there who will vote for Mitt Romney just to get Barack Obama out of office purely on manipulative racial prejudice and the nonstop propaganda of the corporate right wing noise machines, but I hope they'll stop and ask themselves whether they really want a guy as President who thinks people exist for only one reason: Profitability. This is what drives Romney in business, and it's what will drive him in office. We're just chattel; the corporations are king.

Infographic: Everything Tou Need To Know About Romney's Dishonesty On Medicare

This from Think Progress today, August 16th...very concise wrap up of waht you need to know when trying to talk to idiots who think that Romney/Ryan could ever have their interests  at heart...if you need  the facts...here they are:

This week, the Romney/Ryan campaign has twisted itself into a pretzel attacking President Obama for “stealing” $716 billion from Medicare, while trying to explain why Paul Ryan included the savings in his FY 2013 budget.

The infographic below offers a rundown of the campaign’s contortions from Sunday’s proclamations that Romney would have signed the Ryan budget and its Medicare cuts into law, to Romney’s announcement on Tuesday that he would restore the Medicare savings that both Ryan and Obama supported:

The changing rhetoric also presents serious policy problems. Romney’s implied policy of steering clear of Medicare reductions would greatly complicate his goal of reducing all federal spending from 24 percent of the GDP to 20 percent by 2016, which would require unsustainable cuts to other government programs. His specific promise torestore the $716 billion will also backfire and shorten the life of the Medicare trust fund “toward the end of what would be his first term in office.” The campaign has not yet specified how it would extend its solvency.

Saint Yriex

So the last time I was in NYC with my wife, we spent an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I was drawn like a fly to honey to the Medieval Art collection. Suddenly, we were both transfixed by this pair of heads. The actual reliqiuary of the skull of St. Yriex...Yriex is actually the patois version of his real Latin name, Aredius. What was this doing in the Met? We live just below the town of St. Yriex-la-Perche...follow the Route 704, just into the Haute-Vienne, South of Limoges. Incidentally, St. Yriex-la-Perche is the place where the first deposits of  fine kaolin clay were discovered which gave birth to the Limoges porcelain tradition.... and where Aredius was the bishop in the 7th century and the mentor of Gregory of Tours when this was the last western vestige of the Roman empire. Long after Rome dissolved, Gallo Roman France kept the flames of civilization burning until the Frankish Merovingians conquered it.
His great stone church still dominates the town from the top of the hill.

 In fact the residents of St. Yriex still call themselves "Aredois".....as I am Badefolois....The actual skull of St. Yriex was encased in the walnut wood sculpted head, then encased in the silver/gilt gem encrusted cover. What happened to the original skull? The relic was acquired by J. Pierpont Morgan, who bequeathed his booty to the Met...but I really think the brain case of St. Yriex should come back here.....

the very last words of the great american philosopher,
nelson muntz

Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair

A 2009 short film starring the one and only Isabella Rossellini and the one and the only Louis Negin by the one and only Guy Maddin. One of the absolutely greatest filmakers working today.

Sick To My Stomach

One of my oldest friends has been working for a fairly successful small company which tests mechanical automotive components for the Ford Corporation in Troy, Michigan. Basically, they take the mechanical components which Ford designs and then devise all sorts of demonic tests to see what it takes to make them self destruct. My friend was basically trained as a welder, but in the course of his employment has acquired a full range of specialized skills....as I said, this company is pretty solid as far as their business goes. But about 4 years ago, he told me that the company was being decentralized...and much of the physical work was going to be done in China! Most of the Michigan work force was layed off. The company is still centered in Troy, but they do most of their actual work in China with low cost Chinese labor. My friend was offered the option of going to China to "train" Chinese workers to do his job. Luckily for him, he is considered valuable enough to the Michigan organization to still be working.
At the time, I thought this was pretty strange, but I hear of things like this happening all of the time. He mentioned the name of the company which had acquired his firm at the time and it was only recently that I made the connection: Bain Capital.
In other words, in 2007, Bain Capital took control of a small successful highly specialized automotive tech firm in Michigan, fired the Union work force so they could move the jobs to China to make money. Clearly, at that time, Mittens Romney was still CEO of Bain Capital. That's what they do to make money. They systematically dismantle successful American businesses and relocate them to parts of the world with out Unions and the cost of paying American workers a decent wage.
Though Mittens has been able to disassociate himself through the use of smoke and mirrors from the present management of this curiously exclusive Mormon enterprise, he still receives a substantial income and is still technically a CEO of the firm.
I saw an article in the Guardian over the weekend and wondered why I hadn't seen it in any American press. It's almost the carbon copy of what had happened to my friends Troy, Michigan company, but it is happening now and it is Bain Capitol that is perpetrating the crime. In Freeport, Illinois, Paul Harris writes about a profitable, competitive auto-parts plant has been bought out by Bain Capital, who have literally shipped the factory to China, and who have extended the "kindness" to the American workers who will lose their jobs of a few extra weeks' worth of work training their Chinese replacements. Mitt Romney owns millions of dollars' worth of equity in the Bain fund that is shipping good jobs overseas, and stands to make a tidy profit from this. 
"I understand business needs to make a profit. But this product has always made a ton of money. It's just that they think it is not enough money. They are greedy," said Tom Gaulraupp, who has put in 33 years at the plant and is facing the prospect of becoming jobless at the age of 54. 

Mark Schreck
the second time his job moved to China

Mark Shreck, a 36-year-old father-of-three, confessed he was one of the few workers not surprised at the layoffs, as this is the second time his job has moved to China. "I feel this is what companies do nowadays," he said. Freeport mayor George Gaulrapp
The Freeport workers have appealed to Bain and Romney to save their plant. The local town council, several Illinois politicians and the state's Democratic governor have all rallied to their cause. "This company is competitive globally. They make a profit here. But Bain Capital decided to squeeze it a little further. That is not what capitalism is meant to be about," said Freeport mayor George Gaulrapp, 52.
The anger towards Bain and Romney is palpable. Romney has become the target for the emotions of a community who built lives based on the idea of a steady manufacturing job: a concept out of place in the sort of fluid buy-and-sell world from which Bain prospers. "I didn't have a clue what Bain was before this happened," said Cheryl Randecker, 52. "Now when I hear Romney speak it makes me sick to my stomach."

Feets Don't Fail Me Now

This might be the most awesomely funkiest recording ever made....you know...sometimes, you just gotta

...if you know what I mean!

This Video Might Be Deleted By The Mormon Thought Police

I have written a lot about Mittens Romney, the Mormon Bishop and patriarch who has been involved since his youth in the missionary work of spreading the influence of the Mormon Religion. I posted this video a few years ago....it is one of the few links still up that will let you see this surreal, mythological view into what they claim to believe. All other links have been mysteriously deleted in the last few months by the Mormon thought police. It's very hard to say exactly what Mormons believe. It is a very secretive closed world. In their own words, their technique of conversion is based on the concept they refer to as "Milk Before Meat"....in other words, the uninitiated do not need to know real Mormon doctrine. It's really too strange for the un brain washed. I wrote about this concept and let them explain it in their own words in my post earlier this year, The Romney Doctrine......In other words, Mormon theological reasoning allows a great deal of leeway between the truth and outright lies. A Mormon is perfectly justified, in his closed set of logic to lie and prevaricate to attain his goal. It is a part of the theology. 
If you asked most people if they had ever heard the story about his polygamist great-grandfather and their exodus to Mexico. Or the head of the LDS Church, or what the First Presidency is, I bet not one would know the correct answer.
In our history the media went crazy over John F. Kennedy being a  Catholic to run for President and he was forced to address it and disavow how much influence the papacy would have over his presidency. Fox News went ballistic over Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his "Black Liberation Theology", forcing Barack Obama to step down from his church. But apparently Mitt Romney is given a complete pass when it comes to his faith. It's astounding.
Here's something you may not know.
Mormons have no full-time paid clergy, and instead are led by an all-volunteer lay male leadership.
Mormons do not have a paid clergy to run their church so males make up the entire infrastructure and as usual, women need not apply. Mitt was ordained at the age of twelve, like other Mormon males. He became a Bishop in 1981 and Boston Stake President in 1986. The dedication each Mormon makes to his faith is as a high as any minister, priest, rabbi, imam or cardinal. The reason a Catholic bishop  has never run for public office is because he cannot separate his religious beliefs from governing a secular United States made up of many different faiths and non-faiths. His religious views would dictate exactly how his votes would be cast and how his policies were shaped. That's not a dig against this hypothetical bishop, that's exactly what everyone would expect him to do.
So why isn't Mitt receiving a serious look into his religious views?
And by the way, every member of the Mormon faith must pay out 10 percent of their wages to remain in good standing with the church, a practice known as tithing. That's why he has given so much money to the LDS church, according to the only tax return we've been able to see.
Romneys "gave away $7 million in charitable contributions over the past two years, including at least $4.1 million" to the LDS Church. Paying 10 percent of their annual income in tithing, what members of the LDS Church refer to as "a full tithe," makes Romney, if nothing else, a typical Mormon.
I love how the Deseret News frames Mitt with his millions of dollars of charitable giveaway as just typicalMormon on 'tithing."
Huffington Post: The Mormon Moment -- Postponed
In the last few months, considerable attention has been devoted to Mitt Romney's tax returns and his former company's "job-creating performance," but there has been insufficient discussion about what arguably has had the greatest role in shaping who he is and how he views the world: his Mormon religion. Despite his reluctance to address the subject directly, public interest in Mormonism remains at historic levels.
His "Mormon Moment" is laden with obligation: never in the history of the United States has an ordained minister been a major party's candidate for the presidency. The Mormon Church has a lay priesthood, and by virtue of his ordination to the offices of Bishop and Stake President, Romney has occupied ecclesiastical positions equivalent to those within the Roman Catholic Church of Priest and Bishop. Were a Catholic Bishop to run for the presidency, there would doubtless be a demand that he address aspects of his religion in far greater detail than would be required of candidates never ordained to the ministry -- and thus Gov. Romney's obligation.
In 2007, Romney was forced to give a speech on religion called "Faith In America" . Not surprisingly, he mentions the word "Mormon" only once! Instead, he chose to give a series of platitudes and generalities. Of course, he made sure to include a heavy statement about 'religious tolerance' to dissuade the demand for any specifics:

"There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus Christ? I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind. My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree."

That's a nice cop out. If you question Mormons on some of their more bizarre beliefs, then you're an intolerant lout. Obama had to discuss his beliefs in great detail. John F. Kennedy had to do the same. But there's one big difference with Romney's faith. Many religions do believe and preach that they are the true faith of God, but Joesph Smith, the founder of Mormonism stated quite clearly that either you follow the God of Joseph Smith or you follow evil. Via Krakauer's Under The Banner Of Heaven
Joseph Smith preached something he called “free agency”; everyone was free to choose whether to be on the side of the Lord or the side of wickedness; it was an entirely personal decision—but woe to those who decided wrong. If you knowingly chose to shun the God of Joseph and the Saints, you were utterly undeserving of sympathy or mercy.
In the Huff Po piece that I cited above, they ask a germane question for Romney to answer:

What your church labels "sacred" is frequently termed by others "secret" or even "sinister," leading many to conclude that Mormons may not always be telling us what they truly believe. How can you assuage these suspicions by articulating your beliefs?
Mitt Romney will never challenge a Mormon principle, ever. Nor will he be open about what the LDS church teaches.

Peter Lorre
M by Fritz Lang, 1931

The Next President Of The United States?

Mitt Romney, idiot savant? Perhaps he is inadvertently telling us something we should actually know?

I mean, once the shit hits the fan after he assumes his position as CEO and he finally has to face the reality of his financial legacy? Perhaps, he really is sort of letting us in on his little secret; that Ryan will be the next president ....

the official 2012 Romney/Ryan hood ornament and logo

We have to stop thinking about Mittens Romney as an individual. He is the figurehead, the hood ornament, so to speak of a monstrous chopped Hummer limo that has been trying to steamroll the vague concept of Democracy that Americans fantasize about. Mittens has proven that the farce of a convention, the traditional waste of billions of dollars that they ceremonially perform is a useless process...He has proclaimed himself the candidate, he has already chosen his Vice President and as far as he is concerned, the convention will be nothing more than a coronation ceremony to affirm the Presidency which he has been buying for the last 8 years. Why are these peons even going through the sham of an election which he has already bought? Mittens quest for the presidency has taken on the aura of a coronation, a biblically predestined prophecy...after all he is a patriarch, a bishop in the Mormon Church. There is no other reality for him, this is destiny and, he is ready to do what ever it takes.......
The best laid plans are historically derailed by human fault. The Republicans are systematically attempting to disenfranchise millions of American voters to steal the election. They are only energizing and raising the awareness of how crucial this election really is in the process. But the biggest fault of Mittens is sheer and utter arrogance.
Arrogance. Arrogance beyond the edge of the ridiculous.
For four years,  John McCain has suffered the torment of damnable ridicule and roasted burlesque: How could you guys have been so dumb as to enlist Sarah Palin as the VP pick? Where was the "process"? Were you really so desperate and knowingly doomed as to heave overboard all semblance of good judgment and prudence? In brief, what were you thinking?
Now, though, the pressure McCain and though he is still adamantly claiming that his choice of Palin was bold, the ridicule is redirected, the snickering burlesque has relocated, and that fundamental question--What were you thinking?--has descended on the reigning nincompoops at the Romney campaign. Alas, Sarah Palin has been replaced as America's worst vice-presidential candidate ever, and McCain can now avert the slings and arrows of snickering interviewers. Four words: Paul Ryan, Eric Fehrnstrom.
For the last two years, President Obama has struggled to fashion the election as a choice. Mitt Romney has countered, logically, with a referendum. For the Republican, a choice election is a lost election; he would instead billboard the economy's chronic troubles and recommend a fix or two and thereby capitalize on electoral malaise. Romney's plan entailed a simple, straightforward strategy which had decades of empirical justification behind it.
Yet three little complications emerged. One, jobs have continued their return, despite congressional Republicans' best efforts to waylay every last American family. Two, Romney somehow forgot to piece together a plausibly specific, alternative economic plan (the Keystone pipeline is no fix for a $15 trillion economy). And third, Mitt Romney has proceeded to demonstrate beyond any doubt or mistaken impression that he is the bumbling, befuddled, squawking and exceedingly irritating Jerry Lewis of this Martin & Lewis presidential contest.
The Democratic mauling of Paul Ryan will approach felonious assault. Joe Biden will leave only barely recognizable pieces of him in the veep debate and President Obama will crucify him on the stump and congressional Democrats can now officially present to their districts and states the Great Satan of pseudoconservative extremism as being in the direct employ of Jerry Lewis.

Once again Mitt Romney has buckled to the selfsame ideologues who have wrecked him from the start; he has signaled his weakness and advertised his fear; he has sentenced himself to three months of defending Medicare and Social Security's demolition; he has resigned his generalship and handed command to a reckless militant; he ... has ... lost.

Meet The Mittsters

The Endlessly Zooming Golden Spiral.A golden spiral grows by a factor of φ, the golden ratio.

PUSSY RIOT

Perhaps the bravest incredible political punk band in history.

FREE PUSSY RIOT NOW!!!!
Vladimir Putin is just another a pathetic jackbooted 
 repressed homo fascist!  thug ready for the trash bin of history!
UPDATE

Yekaterina Samutsevich delivering her closing defense statement at the
Pussy Riot Soviet Style Stalinist show trial .

Argument in the show-trial of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot -- who gave an unlicensed anti-Putin performance in a cathedral and now face harsh, Stalinist justice for daring to point out the spy-emperor's nudity -- has concluded. Pussy Riot member Yekaterina Samutsevich has given a tremendous closing statement, which is a masterful summary of Russian oligarchy:
"The fact that Christ the Savior Cathedral had become a significant symbol in the political strategy of our powers that be was already clear to many thinking people when Vladimir Putin’s former [KGB] colleague Kirill Gundyaev took over as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. After this happened, Christ the Savior Cathedral began to be used openly as a flashy setting for the politics of the security services, which are the main source of power [in Russia].
Why did Putin feel the need to exploit the Orthodox religion and its aesthetics? After all, he could have employed his own, far more secular tools of power—for example, national corporations, or his menacing police system, or his own obedient judiciary system. It may be that the tough, failed policies of Putin’s government, the incident with the submarine Kursk, the bombings of civilians in broad daylight, and other unpleasant moments in his political career forced him to ponder the fact that it was high time to resign; otherwise, the citizens of Russia would help him do this. Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.
How did he succeed in doing this? After all, we still have a secular state, and shouldn’t any intersection of the religious and political spheres be dealt with severely by our vigilant and critically minded society? Here, apparently, the authorities took advantage of a certain deficit of Orthodox aesthetics in Soviet times, when the Orthodox religion had the aura of a lost history, of something crushed and damaged by the Soviet totalitarian regime, and was thus an opposition culture. The authorities decided to appropriate this historical effect of loss and present their new political project to restore Russia’s lost spiritual values, a project which has little to do with a genuine concern for preservation of Russian Orthodoxy’s history and culture.
It was also fairly logical that the Russian Orthodox Church, which has long had a mystical connection with power, emerged as this project’s principal executor in the media. Moreover, it was also agreed that the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet era, when the church opposed, above all, the crudeness of the authorities towards history itself, should also confront all baleful manifestations of contemporary mass culture, with its concept of diversity and tolerance."

If you are interested in  lending your voice to the Amnesty International Action to protest the prosecution and imprisonment of these artist, follow this link!

Shotgun Wedding?

Sorry I haven't had time to post more lately. I have a house full of guests and getting ready to have a big fete in the garden tomorrow for 12 people...I't's super hot, I'm trying to keep the garden watered and be a gracious host all at the same time....then I have to sneak off and do my push ups and the rest of my masochistic self torture routine...and try to find a free moment ot actually be able to look at my computer...my office has become a spare bedroom....things should be back to normal on Sunday...

Normal? Yeah, right....

Self Made Fool

It’s always amusing how “limited government” conservatives and libertarians declare how, unlike those big-gubmint-lovin’ libruls, they never needed any help building their lives and establishing their businesses, as this hapless fellow appears to believe:

Y’know, as full of shit as Mitt Romney may be, his campaign has certainly done their work with that quote-mined President Obama remark.

They say, these days, standing out on the rim of the Grand Canyon, the brightest lights in the night sky are not the stars in the heavens but the glow from casino neon in Las Vegas – one hundred and seventy five miles away.

Andy's Tombstone

Yesterday, August 6th was also the 25th Anniversary of Andy Warhols death. This is a 2 year montage of photos taken of his tombstone from March 2009 to March 2011 by artist Madelyne Roehrig.

I think Andy would have appreciated this.

67th Anniversary of the Atomic Devastation of Hiroshima

Detroit City

Bobby Bare was born in 1935 in Ironton, Ohio. He wrote and released Detroit City in 1963, produced by Chet Atkins. He's still active and wrote the hit for Norways Eurovision entry, Things Change, just this year. But this iconic song about Detroit has always meant so much to me...Living in inner city Detroit in the mid 60's, I saw the edge, the fuzzy line where country and soul met and mixed. If you look at a map of inner city Detroit and look at the space between Cass and Second Avenues below Canfield....one side was soul, the other was redneck, but they all worked in the same factories and drank in the same bars.

Dedicated to America, August 6, 2012
swiftly descending into a vortex of a whirlpool of madness
You poor sick fucks....

Story Time

As part of my Terry Gilliam Appreciation moment,  I would like to present this animated sequence from 1968, Story Time.

 The Comfy Chair!

Terry Gilliam, the only American member of the Pythons 

who was their official graphic artist in residence was 

occasionally unleashed. Here he is as Cardinal Fang. No one expects the Spanish Inquisition....

Gilliam of course went on to become one of the most radically original and 

visionary film makers of our time.  He was a graphic artist from Wisconsin 

who went to Art school in Cleveland, Ohio with Robert Crumb.

Gilliam was a brilliant animator, who created an entire genre of 

Stop motion collage animation. He could create his cartoons in his brain and then sort of act them out. He could become his cartoon characters when he performed. He had access to the entire BBC library 

of images and sound effects, but he always said he could do his own sounds better than any found 

professionally recorded sound by imagining what it should sound like and then making the 

disgusting squishy noises with his own larnyx.

Rider Of The Storm

The storm was approaching out of the southwest at a leisurely rate. Lightning spiked against the black clouds on the endless horizon over the dusty cornfields. A normal late summer afternoon in Kansas and Dale was pedaling his bike against the increasing wind trying to get to his job at the local Commonwealth Corporate Hardware Store before the fiirst rain drops hit.
He swore silently, a secret pleasure rushing through him as he cursed. No one could hear him out in the fields on his bike on the outskirts of Overland Park. He had silently whispered a curse word in his lab class yesterday at Cheney High and was reported to the monitor by that little pest, Angela Blasinsky.
That’s why he was riding his bike. He couldn’t take the bus like the other kids because of the corrective Christian detention he had to sit through as punishment for the next week.” I gotta get out of here” he desparately thought, “ Someday I’m gonna save enough money to go to New York or Los Angeles!”
An unspoken dream that could get him in even more trouble. “You never know who’s a snitch” he sneered.
Last month, his Uncle James had visited from New York City. Uncle James had arrived late complaining that he had been strip searched at the Heartland Visitors Welcome Center at the Kansas City Airport. “They took my newspapers!” He fumed, “No one said that I couldn’t bring a copy of the New York Times into the Commonwealth! You’d think this wasn’t part of the United States anymore!”
Then he had hinted that he had been questioned about his marital status and sexual orientation. They finally let him enter after a DNA sample of his saliva was collected. After he went through the "porno scanner" for the third time, an airport security gaurd had syruply smiled and said, "Welcome to the Christian Hearland Commonwealth, sir. Your visitors pass has been approved for a 2 week period."

It seemed that the border was getting tighter and tighter. Less and less visitors from the outside were coming into the Commonwealth for simple tourism. People seemed more suspicious than ever of outsiders.. There had recently been an incident of violence against a group of travelers that had blundered into a small town and tried to buy more gas than the rationing system allowed. They had been roughed up a bit because there was a panic that they might be arabs, mexicans or something worse. The sherrif’s men had saved them and asssured the towns people that they were Americans with an Italian last name.

The family assured them that they were only trying to get to a relatives house for a visit in the next county and were in the Commonwealth on valid visitors passes and weren’t trying to get jobs.

Dale knew the last thing he wanted to do was work for the rest of his life for a Commonwealth Comapny. He could see gangs of laborers in the farm field even now as the storm approached. “What chance of a future did any of them have?” he thought. You were born into a workers family, no chance of a real education, brainwashed into religious submission and housed by the Corporation in a settlement in the middle of the endless Commonwealth Corporation Farmlands.
You could have a little plot of land if you wanted to have a garden, but other than that, the Commonwealth owned you. They gave you the medical care they thought you deserved, taught you what they thought you needed to know and you really didn’t even have to buy food. You could always eat at your community Christian Heartland Kitchen. The question was, what were they serving you? He had heard that if he seemed interested in becoming a Mormon, doors might magically open up, but then again, there were some pretty bizarre rumors about what went on at the Mormon Educational Boys Camps.

When the Christian Heartland Commonwealth was formed in 2014, it seemed to be a buffer against the failing economy, the godless influences of immorality, the creeping menace of foreign workers and ideas. Christians united in a common vision to take care of each other with out the interference of the Federal Government. The 4 state Union was approved under President Romney. Alaska soon followed suite. Alaska was made a security buffer Commonwealth, with the newly appointed Brigadier General Sarah Palin as the de facto military governor with her "Generalissimo", Todd. After the mysterious death of ex President Barack Obama It all seemed legal enough, but who had the time to stop anything, or even think about it these days?

It was hard for President Romney to do other wise, what with the endless and expanding war with the Arabs and the unexpected results of the pre emptive offensive against Iran that he had initiated.
Dale had seen the latest pictures of the slow devastation of Israel, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon as they slowly succumbed to the spread of radiation. The news casters were invariably grim when reporters braved the dangers to bring the latest pictures, but the reports invariably ended on an upbeat note, with items about advances in the treatment of radiation sickness and the cheery predictions that the fallout would have little effect on the mainland United States.
Europe, on the other hand.......

Lightning flashed somewhere very near in back of him and the resulting thunder almost knocked Dale off of his bike, he pedaled faster as the first raindrops dashed against his face.
Still about a quarter mile to go, he cursed silently again.........

This is a stinkhorn mushroom, or a phallus impudicus. An amazing fungus which will actually grow rapidly before your eyes if you happen upon it as it emerges from the ground. The spores are dispersed from the veiled structure called a gleba.
The name, stinkhorn, is very apparent when you physically encounter it. You will never forget the smell and that is part of the survival strategy of the plant. They attract flies, which disperse the spores.
The immature fruiting body is actually quite edible and tasty, with a radish like tang. They are like white eggs and can be eaten raw or pickled as they are here in France and Eastern Europe. In fact, the "eggs" are used as a flavoring in regional seasonal sausage recipes!

A Sun Ra Story

A Joyful Noise.

A documentary directed by Robert Mugge in 1980. I am continuously inspired and uplifted by the creative energy of a man who was born Herman Poole Blount in Birmingham, Alabama on May 22, 1914, but decided that he did not choose to be a mere earthling and he could be what ever he wanted. Herman, who was self taught pianist and orchestral arranger, self evolved into a being called Sun Ra. He even convinced the United States Government to issue him a passport as Sun Ra, who, as we all know was born on the planet Saturn. He traveled the Earth for decades and still travels the Spaceways as Sun Ra. He wrote and performed music that transcended the past, the present and encompassed a future we will probably never know. Money? Record labels? Heck, he pressed his own records and sold them out of the back of car. He invented his own mythology and made it real by recycling the cast offs of your affluence. He invented his own systems of logic and knowledge. He basically kept the same group of musicians who ranged from musical illiterates to absolute genius together for almost 35 years. He was first jazz pianist to use electric keyboards, one of the first artists to use Moog synthesizers and yet was able to integrate the big band feel of Fletcher Henderson, african tribal chants and beats and egyptian solar mythology into the same performance, creating some of the most original and brilliant music I have ever heard. He made an absolutely brilliant record in the 1960's by acquiring a collection of Asian stringed instruments and giving them to his band, who had no idea as to how they were tuned or how they were supposed to be played and then recorded a guided improvised musical journey...He made movies unlike anything you have ever seen with no budget, he published books of poetry and philosophy. He left the planet physically in 1993.

So, last night, I had dinner with my friend Brian who is a musician and record producer. Brian was a friend in NYC, but has a house outside of Fleurac...in a forested valley above the Grotte de Rouffignac with his wife, Melinda  and son, Harry. Interesting, we lived a few blocks from each other in New York but now see each other more here in the Dordogne. Brian wanted to lend me a book, Space Is The Place...the biography of Sun Ra witten by John F. Zwed. I thanked him, but I have owned the book since the 1990s, when it was published...we started to talk about Sun Ra and Brian told me this story about a musician he had produced that wrote songs that reminded him of the work of Stephen Foster. He was so intrigued by the Steophen Foster references in the mans work that he decided that he wanted to do a project of completely "outside" artists performing the works of Stephen Foster. He spoke to Ornette Coleman, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and a few other artists and they were enthusiastic. Then he approached Sun Ra. Sun Ra was enthusiastic and was going to record his version of The Camp Town Races, but Sun Ra had a reservation...he demanded to see a sample of Stephen Fosters hand writing. He said he had to see his penmanship to determine if Mr. Foster was a racist. This was before the internet as we know it now, so Brian wrote to the Library of Congress to request xeroxed sample of Stephen Fosters hand writing. He gave it to Sun Ra, who looked at it and then smiled and said, "I can clearly see that the man was a product of his time, but not in the least racially disinclined."

Unfortunately due to the malicious meddling of Carly Simon, the project got derailed, but Sun Ra was inspired to record entire suite of Disney music called Second Star To The Right. Here's the Intergalactic Arkestras version of Pink Elephants on Parade from the Disney classic, Dumbo...