August 2006 (II): War Declared!

Clever Sister dubs it, "The War On Moisture"...
Dumping varied and supposedly dangerous substances together into bins—now that's what you call "safety"! There are news photos of travelers being ordered to open these suspicious liquids and empty them en masse, into vats of other potentially hazardous substances...

I can't find some of the most outrageous photos now, but xopl captured the one at top, and this one.

John Aravosis brings up some pesky historical context—

Another point about this "liquid explosive." It was liquid explosives that were suspected in the plot back in 1995 that Clinton foiled, the one to blow up numerous US airlines over the Pacific. Why is it that since that time it's been okay to bring liquids on board planes, but now suddenly it's not? Why was it safe on Monday, but not safe on Friday?

As the label of tonight's dinner assures me, "THE QUALITY & H'YGIERCE OF FOODS ARE SAFELY GUARARTEED"

I know these vegetarian spring rolls from Vietnam may be laced with of our old gift of Agent Orange. But even that label is more convincing than this latest "security" measure.

I wouldn't eat a steady diet of Vietnamese imports, but pan-fried in sesame oil, those rolls are tasty. Unlike our regime's daily menu of shit sandwiches.

This comes just a few days after the fifth anniversary of the August 6, 2001 "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Presidential Daily Briefing. In the face of which, Condi Rice later claimed that "No one could have predicted..." To be recycled last year as Bush's, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees"...

Nothing suprising about the new report that Bush's reply to the CIA briefer on 8/6/01 was, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

Glenn Greenwald covers this month's ruling by Judge Anna Diggs Taylor — Federal court finds warrantless eavesdropping unconstitutional, enjoins the program.

Followed by the predictable media attack on Judge Taylor—here and here, for instance.

Greenwald quotes Jonathan Turley on reasons for the attack—

...If this court is upheld or other courts follow suit, it will leave us with a most unpleasant issue that Democrats and Republicans alike have sought to avoid.

Here it is: If this program is unlawful, federal law expressly makes the ordering of surveillance under the program a federal felony. That would mean that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies in office. Moreover, it is not only illegal for a president to order such surveillance, it is illegal for other government officials to carry out such an order.

No wonder the powers-that-be promptly dispatch the ruling into the memory hole.

August 2006 (I): Counting

One year after Katrina, Greg Palast reports from New Orleans for Democracy Now: video segment starting at 13:00, and transcript here.

Among Palast's interviewees is Steven Smith—

Like 127,000 others in this town...he didn't have a car in which to escape...Stranded in the heat on a bridge, he closed the eyes of a man who died of dehydration after giving his grandchildren his last bottle of water.

Palast reveals that FEMA's supposed evacuation plan had been contracted to an outfit called IEM, for "Innovative Emergency Management"—which had no disaster experience, but did have an owner who made big contributions to Republicans. And after awarding IEM the contract, FEMA never received a plan.

After being ejected from IEM's office, Palast interviews local scientist and hurricane expert Dr. Ivor van Heerden. Pre-Katrina, he and colleagues at the Louisiana State University Center for the Study of Hurricanes were shut out of the FEMA planning process, and van Heerden's job was threatened when he persisted in his efforts.

Another interviewee, lawyer and former city councilman Brod Bagert, reacting to the suppression of van Heerden's warnings—

Ongoing protection that should have been occurring was...done negligently. Not only wrong, negligently. And not only negligently, but reckless negligence, the kind of negligence for which an individual would be indicted, prosecuted, tried, convicted, and spend their life in jail. Negligence that killed people, lots of people...Old ladies watched the water come up to their nose, over their eyes, and they drowned in houses just like this in this neighborhood, because of reckless negligence that’s unanswered for.

Anger is an understandable and cogent reaction. But there are many possible responses to trauma.

An 8/9/06 item (no longer online), from Editor & Publisher:

...John McCusker, a photographer for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans - and a local jazz expert - was arrested Tuesday night after a car chase ended with McCusker begging the police to shoot and kill him. He cited what could be called post-traumatic stress syndrome from experiencing, and covering, the impact of Hurricane Katrina.

Thanks, Katrina posts about the story, including this from a recent interview with McCusker—

"Imagine going to bed one night, and waking up and everybody in your entire neighborhood and everybody that they know and everybody that they know is gone and you don’t know where they are. And some nights, you know, I gotta tell you, some nights that just in despair you lay in your bed, and like you’re a three-year-old and you just lay there and say, Oh my god. I want to go home. And you can’t go home."

Followed by a photo McCusker took during last year's traumatic events.

Toxic FEMA trailers have begun to get some national notice—

Are FEMA trailers 'toxic tin cans'?

For nearly a year now, the ubiquitous FEMA trailer has sheltered tens of thousands of Gulf Coast residents left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. But there is growing concern that even as it staved off the elements, it was exposing its inhabitants to a toxic gas that could pose both immediate and long-term health risks.

Just as there's a countdown to Bush's leaving office, NOLA needs a count up—to note the passage of time since August 2005, as victims continue to be denied any measure of justice.

Clever Sister alerts me to one bit of the regime's campaign to smother reality under mountains of organization-speak. Among the official publications CS has found—

Report on Gulf Coast recoveryPresident's Council on Integrity and Efficiency

Lessons learned for protecting and educating children after the Gulf Coast hurricanes Government Accountability Office May 11, 2006

The federal response to Hurricane Katrina: lessons learnedExecutive Office of the President, 2006

The last two are only part of the "lessons learned" motif that CS is seeing over and over. As in—

Lessons learned during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom, and ongoing operations in the United States Central Command Region : hearing before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, One Hundred Eighth Congress, first session, July 9, 2003.

"Lessons learned," as in, "been there,done that/it's history/move on"...

August 2005 (II): History, Lost And Found;Disputed And Denied

It's the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (8/6) and Nagasaki (8/9).

And the 10th anniversary of the Smithsonian's bow to right-wing pressure over its proposed Enola Gay exhibit. The media joined in the attack, as described in FAIR's 1995 piece, "Media to Smithsonian: History Is Bunk"—

...words were often turned on their heads: Because the proposed exhibit contained more than one viewpoint on the bombing, it was called "one-sided"; because it relied on contemporary documents rather than later apologetics, it was called "revisionist"; because it didn't strictly adhere to the official version of history, it was called "politically correct."

...The planned exhibit was often condemned as bad history, although evidence was rarely offered to contradict the Smithsonian's proposals.

Instead, pundits and editorialists decreed that dropping the bomb had been the only way to end the war and save American lives. Which is refuted, FAIR notes, by wartime "indications that... U.S. officials knew that Japan was on the verge of surrendering."

A view confirmed by well-placed observers of the events—

"My belief [was] that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary," Gen. Dwight Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs (Mandate for Change, p. 312).

"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan," declared Adm. William Leahy, who presided over the Joint Chiefs of Staff (I Was There, p. 441). "Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

As FAIR notes, the opinions of Eisenhower and Leahy are now considered "anti-American." And on the media's role in guarding against airing of "anti-American" views—

There are many other historical questions about Hiroshima that pundits have not only failed to answer seriously, but have declared unaskable. A high-water mark in this sort of know-nothingism was achieved on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley (8/28/94), when all four commentators present agreed that even raising such issues was reprehensible.

...Cokie Roberts concurred [with George Will] that questioning history is pointless: "I think that this business of trying to rewrite history in the context of 50 years later makes very little sense."

Two years after all this, a book is published about the incident,Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy.

This book, on what FAIR calls "one of the great intellectual scandals of American history," is out of print now. A good review from 1997 is Jennifer Scarlott's, "The Legend of Hiroshima."

The right's outrage over "revisionism" led the Smithsonian to censor "controversial" references to the Eisenhower and Leahy memoirs. Scarlott notes some key points:

• The current view that dropping the bomb was a matter of military necessity and an uncontroversial decision was not a foregone conclusion, but was cultivated by the Truman Administration in the weeks and months after August 1945.

• Director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves, insisted the bomb was meant to threaten the USSR, not Germany. Leading informed witnesses "to wonder whether the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only the final act of World War II, but the opening act of the Cold War as well."

• The targets—and main victims—of the bomb were civilians.

• 155 Manhattan Project scientists signed a July 17 petition to Truman, imploring that he not use an atomic weapon against Japan.

Over a dozen years after the Smithsonian incident, Adam Harrison Levy's, "Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs" tells the story of how a nearly-buried piece of history came to light.

The day after Japan's August 14, 1945 surrender, President Truman commissioned the United States Strategic Bombing Survey for the Pacific Theater of War. Paul Nitze, Vice Chairman and "de facto author of the Survey" later said the goal was to "measure as precisely as possible the exact effects of the two bombs...so that people back home would have a factual frame of reference within which to draw conclusions about the bomb’s capacities as well as its limitations."

Photo: National Archives

A Physical Damage Division created teams of 150 military engineers, ordinance experts and other technicians, including photographers.

Photography was crucial to assessing and documenting the damage, and a few pictures from the Survey pictures were later published by the government, in a 1946 limited edition report.

But soon after the surrender, the U.S. had imposed strict censorship on Japan, including the dictate that "nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility." Levy notes—

The U.S. government was ostensibly wary of the emotions of grief and anger that could be unleashed in Japan as a result of the circulation of images of the destroyed city; it was probably just as concerned to keep the physical effects of its new and terrible weapon a secret. But this suppression of visual evidence served a third purpose: it helped, both in Japan and back home in America, to inhibit any questioning of the decision to use the bomb in the first place.

Levy tells of the chance events by which the photos fell into the hands of someone haunted by their power. He didn't know what to do with them—just kept them for almost three decades, until accidentally losing them in a house move. They were retrieved by a second man who recognized their importance—and also didn't quite know what to do. Ultimately, the photos were given to the International Center for Photography, and its Hiroshima collection pages begin here.

It's a fascinating story, and a testament to the good instincts of a couple of ordinary citizens who wanted to do the right thing.

And a reminder of how we're now mired in a devastating war that we've caused, and that won't be televised. And how it's only through some rare individual actions that there have been small breaks in the regime's secrecy.

In 2004 Russ Kick of [the late] memoryhole.org filed a Freedom of Information Act request for military photos of coffins being returned to the U.S. The Air Force released photos directly to Kick, angering the Pentagon, but leading to publication around the Web and in some newspapers.

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse photos came to light in 2004 because Spc. Joseph Darby acted on his conscience.

As for benefiting from a knowledge of history: Cheney long ago learned "the lessons of Vietnam"—hide your wars from public view.

Even in Japan, rightists—and apathy—are threats to memory of the bombings and efforts to promote peace, as The Times reports this month.

An ultranationalist's desecration of the Hiroshima peace cenotaph was the most recent of periodic vandalism at the memorial. This particular vandal wanted to obliterate the cenotaph's inscription, which he thought blamed the Japanese for the bombing.

Bomb survivors who travel Japan to tell their stories in schools report incidents of abuse and taunting by bored students. The Times cites a peace activists' term, heiwa boke, translated as, "'peace senility'...or the complacency of the generation that has not known war."

It's a description that fits generations of Americans only too well—our wars are out of sight, out of mind. As for the part of the populace whose only economic opportunity is the military—they're just fresh fodder for the perpetual manipulation of the lower classes into acting against their own interests. There will be no exposure of the general public to pictures of the war, but there will be 24/7 sloganeering—"fight 'em over there"/"support the troops"/"freedom isn't free"...

Naturally, the Disinformer-in-Chief does his own bizarre versions of the sales pitch. Defending his invasion: "This nation acted to a threat from the dictator of Iraq. Now there are some who would like to rewrite history--revisionist historians is what I like to call them."

Said with the usual smirk...Maybe he believes he's coined the term his handlers have fed him. Or else he assumes—no doubt correctly—that the term, "revisionist," is new to his audience, who will believe Bush thought it up all by hisself.

Some historians respond, with needed "revisionist" correction of the lies Bush told to start his war.

August 2005 (I): Dates That Will Live In Infamy

Early this month, Cindy Sheehan speaks at a Veterans for Peace meeting in Dallas. Inspired by the locale, Sheehan suggests to fellow activists that they make a detour—

I heard today that George Bush said our kids died for a noble cause. Why don't we just go down to Crawford and ask him, What Noble Cause?

Which leads to the encampment and vigil outside the "ranch.""It seems to stretch forever..."
Quote and photo: Dru

The media begins paying attention. The NYT publishes a story headlined, Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother's Loss Becomes a Problem for the President.

And when the media pay too much attention...
...the need to distract them becomes so important that Bush's vacation is halted. He's hustled out of Crawford and dropped into photo ops around the country.

Think Progress does a timeline that starts here—

August 26
• Gov. Kathleen Blanco declares State of Emergency in Louisiana
• Gulf Coast states request troop assistance from Pentagon

August 27
• Gov. Haley Barbour declares State of Emergency in Mississippi
• Gov. Blanco asks Bush to declare Federal State of Emergency in Lousiana
• Federal Emergency is declared later that day, with DHS and FEMA given full authority

August 28
• 2 AM CDT, Katrina upgraded to category 4 hurricane...at 7 AM, upgraded to category 5...
• 9:30 AM – Mayor Nagin issues first ever mandatory evacuation of New Orleans
• Approximately 30,000 evacuees gather at superdome with roughly 35 hours worth of food
• Louisiana National Guard requests 700 buses from FEMA for evacuations: FEMA sends only 100 buses

August 29
• 7 AM Katrina makes landfall, as category 4
• 7:30 AM Bush Administration notified of levee breach
• 11:13 AM White House circulates internal memo about breach
• Later that morning – National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warns Bush about levee danger

That last is the same day Bush flies to Arizona for

...McCain's 69th birthday, and on the tarmac, Bush presented his old political rival with a cake. The two posed, holding the cake up for cameras, and within seconds, went their separate ways. The cake, melting in the 110-degree Arizona heat, was left behind, uneaten.

To paraphrase Think Progress, Bush spends the rest of the day in Arizona and California appearances, promoting monstrous giveaways to Big Pharma, via the Medicare drug "benefit" plan.

Back to the timeline, resuming on the 29th—

• 8PM – Gov. Blanco again requests assistance from Bush
• Late* PM – Bush goes to bed without acting on Blanco's requests [*I'm completely unconvinced about this part]

August 30
• 11 AM – Bush speaks on Iraq at Naval Base Coronado
• Midday – Chertoff claims he finally becomes aware that levee has failed
• Pentagon claims there are enough National Guard troops in region
• Mass looting reported, security shortage cited.
• U.S.S. Bataan sits off shore, virtually unused
• 2 PM – President Bush plays guitar with Country Singer Mark Willis
• Bush returns to Crawford for final night of vacation

The timeline lays it all out: no official response from Bush until the 31st, when a task force is organized to coordinate the Feds' response. While supplies have not been reaching the area; tens of thousands are trapped in the Superdome; an estimated 80,00 are stranded in the city. Bush makes a flyover on the 31st...the same day Blanco's request for troops is ignored by the White House.

And by at least the 31st—if not earlier—Bush insider/former FEMA head/Iraq contracts fixer Joe Allbaugh is in Louisiana, "helping coordinate the private-sector response to the storm." The quote is from Dan Balz, in is from Dan Balz, in this Washington Post story. Allbaugh talked by phone to Balz, whose piece was published September 1—so researched and written before then.

Josh Marshall concludes that Allbaugh was "in Louisiana wearing the Allbaugh Company hat, seeing as how a few months back he signed on as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary KBR to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues."

The usual pattern is on display immediately—

The regime's deafness to warnings—both as the storm arrives and earlier, as scientists for years issue warnings about the levees.

The effort put into distracting the media with Bush photo ops.

The results of agencies having been stacked with cronies. In this case, sabotaging the formerly effective FEMA by installing the unqualified, and making the agency subservient to the sham that is DHS.

The amount of National Guard manpower and equipment that are unavailable, having been diverted to the neo-con adventure in Iraq.

The contracts showered on cronies—while people are still trapped on roofs.

The ultimate ethnic cleansing of swaths of New Orleans—purging Democratic voters and opening new real estate opportunities for cronies.

A mountain of sickening detail will emerge in the months and years ahead to confirm all this. But the basic outline is visible from the start.

Official actions causing phenomenal devastation of a major city, with so much death and injury to its citizens—had this happened in any other country, the government would have fallen in no time. But for Bush and crew—sure, there's some bad PR at first, but it's a small price to pay for turning the worst human disasters into profit.

If there were any justice, on earth or elsewhere, what happened to New Orleans would rank high on the staggeringly long list of what these psychopaths would have to account for.

Instead, the costs are borne by people like this—

Draped in his mother's casket flag, Robert Green, Sr. stands on the steps that once led into his mother's Lower 9th Ward home in New Orleans, which was directly in the Industrial Canal breach during hurricane Katrina. Green's mother died while clinging to the roof, and his granddaughter perished in the floodwaters.

"Searching for Solace—Katrina Survivor"
Photo: Ted Jackson/The Times-Picayune

July 2008: Pictures, Words

When the daughter-in-law of Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant threatened to abandon unemployed Sonny, Jr. (and baby) for an army paycheck, J's BAA went into action.


Sonny, Jr. has now worked in our Department for nearly a year.

By hiring Sonny and making Jesus' BAA happy, the IT manager surely made Dr. G. Zuss happy, too.

This couldn't have been nepotism because, according to Jesus' BAA, Sonny, Jr. is a computer jeenyus. Just like his pappy, who is, "a geek in civilian clothes...just a nice guy..." Unlike your usual satanic computer guys, apparently.

Whatever talents Sonny, Jr. may possess, they don't include figuring out how to compose an email and send it to the appropriate persons. The entire Department—over nine hundred strong—receives an All Staff—

Subject: sonny not coming in today

7/16/08 8:59 PM

i have a dentest and doctor appointment today so i will be missing today

Which doesn't even make sense in terms of time stamp/"today" correlation...

Clever Sister remarks:

"Dentest"
It ain't in the dictshunary

"will be missing"
MIA?

Wow! What does this person do?

A rhetorical question, as I've already told her what Sonny does—be related to our Department Chairman's admin assistant...

Later, CS actually finds a "dentest"...


With McCain's campaign so busy setting up their candidate as the butt of jokes, water tiger keeps busy with photo enhancement opportunities.

There was McCain's Baghdad jaunt at the end of March—

One of Mr. McCain’s colleagues on the visit to the Baghdad market was Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, who marveled at the peaceful scene and compared it to a "normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Earning water tiger's response—

John McCain Visits Indiana

In April, visits continued to be paid...

John McCain Visits Orlando...

...San Francisco...

...The Lower East Side...

...Portland, Maine...

This month, water tiger on McCain's trip to Columbia (with soulmates Joe & Lindsay)—

The Sunshine Boys play Cartagena

In contrast to that bunch of losers, are the real players:

Well, somebody accomplished his mission.

From Think Progress:

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans "have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims" by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.

Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase.

water tiger is such a treasure, I was thinking of just using this month's space for links to her recent stuff.

Then as soon as I had that thought, I saw

Bush looks to legacy at last G-8?

From McClatchy:

"People read the American poll numbers and realize there's no juice behind Bush," said John Hulsman, an analyst for the German Council on Foreign Relations, a research center. "They (other G-8 leaders) will be polite, they'll be respectful, they'll listen to him, but they can't wait for him to leave the room."

They're not the only ones. Let's recap, shall we?

Followed by water tiger's compilation of some key images from the last few years: the smirking frat boy juxtaposed with some of the consequences of his having been placed where he is.

Sometimes a picture of Bush is worth a thousand laughs.

But the pictures that remind us of his victims—there's no counting the tears or measuring the pain caused by what those images represent.

July 2007: Hot Fun In The Summertime

Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant returns from camp—on crutches, after spraining an ankle in an overzealous volleyball move. Due to thinking, "the higher the leap, the closer to God"...?One year after Sonny Jr's wedding, the couple and kid still live in the basement, chez Jesus' BAA. Sonny III is six or seven months old, and called "S3" by his parents. Is that supposed to sound like a truck model? Or, maybe it's to emulate the family heroes: the dynasty where father and spawn refer to each other as "41" and "43."

Sonny, Jr. just lost the job he'd gotten recently. He had been sick for a day, then in a vehicle accident and out a second day. Which exceeded his "one absence per first six months of employment"...

Jesus' BAA relates this without comment. And she may very well think it's just dandy—that God has directed the company to make the rules, and the employees to obey.

In any case, Sonny is unemployed. The fights over money have begun... and Elly May threatens that, if Sonny doesn't start earning some pronto, she will join the army.

This is about all these people have in their repertoire.

Dr. G. Zuss may not yet have gained control over employee work station décor, but this month he compensates with an art-shopping spree for the executive suite and surrounding areas. The budget for this includes the services of—an Art Consultant. Who guides Dr. G. Zuss in finding art both to his liking and suitable for "Our Department's Brand."

Because I see the receipts, I know a bundle has been spent on a number of rooms and other spaces. Including the hallway outside the executive suite: a space so narrow it's impossible to look at what's on the walls without walking either into people passing or the art itself.

And "Our Brand" is...what? Most departments hang art that has something to do with their field—or else with the University in general, or the sports teams.

Our CEO mainly wanted to coordinate art to his new wall colors. And he likes mildly abstract pictures—so we now have architectural detail photos of buildings in anonymous locations, shot in extreme close-up and "creative" angles.

Jesus' BAA must have been especially shocked that her boss likes abstraction.

Cruella, on the other hand, barges into the room, oohing and ahhing to Dr. G. Zuss, and announcing, "your taste is just like mine!"

Dr.G. Zuss gets the mildly pained look that comes over him when the underlings speak without having been spoken to. He makes no reply, and Cruella's gambit doesn't seem so effective. But for her, currying favor with authority is a life-long campaign, not to be slowed by a momentary setback.

There's another notable change in the surroundings.

For years, there's been an unmarked room outside the executive suite. It would appear to a storage room, but the unlocked door periodically swings open to reveal a sink and toilet stall.

These are used only by Dr. G. Zuss and Mr. Ghengis. There is an unstated rule that the toilet is off-limits to everyone else—even the most senior male faculty and division chiefs pass it by, to use the men's room farther down the hall.

As the redecoration spree winds down, I walk in one morning to find new wall signs outside the rooms. The room that was previously private, but discreetly so, is now marked, "Executive Washroom." Which is repeated in Braille—presumably, one can't be too careful about blind people entering places above their station.

I report this to Clever Sister, as well as to friends and relations in other departments. In total, the sample represents many decades of experience throughout the University. And the amazement over this piece of chutzpah is unanimous.

The University is a hierarchy, but it's also a public institution, and distinctions are not usually flaunted this much; not so publicly, in a hallway with a lot of traffic. The upper reaches may well have executives-only facilities, but I've never been around a department that's announced it so blatantly. Nor has anyone I know.


Dateline: July 4, 2007—

American citizens will now be compelled to allow British soldiers to live in their homes, thanks to a new signing statement from President Bush.

By negating the Third Amendment, the new order completes the abrogation of the entire United States Bill of Rights. High-level White House sources have indicated that this was Bush's sole purpose in issuing the statement.

Actually, from a "prediction" by Bob Harris, a year ago. Not really so over the top, the joke being based on too much painful truth—

The signing statement — Bush's once-controversial practice of amending and interpreting laws as he signs them, arrogating to himself the traditional roles of both the Congress and Supreme Court — was the 1,745th of Bush's presidency. Previous signing statements have negated the prohibition of torture, eliminated oversight of Bush's use of the Patriot Act, and declared "Englesh" the official language of the United States.

Some constitutional scholars claim that Bush's total number of signing statements is actually 1,744, and that statement number 1,309 was, in fact, an uncompleted seven-letter game of Hangman.

As for our moronic political campaign season, driftglass writes of the Sunday morning pundit show commentary:

Hoss race toutin'.

Feh.

If I want to see overpaid men running in meaningless circles, NASCAR is only a click away...

Among the paragons already in office is David "Gays Threaten Marriage" Vitter. Elected to the House from Louisiana in a 1999 special election—after an adultery scandal led to Bob Livingston's resignation.

During his 2004 campaign for Senate, Mary Jacoby's Salon profile described Vitter's political rise, despite "rumors involving a prostitute and a secret alliance with neo-Nazi David Duke"—

He presents himself as a morally righteous, clean-cut family man, and his wife and three young children have become virtual campaign props. The Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar is also extremely intelligent, observers say, and runs perhaps the most effective political ads in the state. But there are hints of a dark side: allegations of an affair with a prostitute and a lawsuit claiming he lost his temper and physically charged at a woman at a town hall meeting.

And as his political career got underway—

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he'd had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston's wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

But Republicans are nothing if not forgiving.

Even after Vitter is publicly identified as a "D.C. Madam" client, Mrs. Lorena Bobbitt Vitter Stands By Her Man.

And even after becoming known as "Diaper Dave," his Republican colleagues gave him a standing ovation on his return to the Senate. An event commemorated for posterity by water tiger.

July 2006 (II): Hearts And Hammers

During the 1990s, I led the pink collar life in Seattle. And like a lot of city residents, I was unhappy with the Seattle Art Museum's 1992 decision to install a behemoth Jonathan Borofsky "Hammering Man" statue.

Photo: Matthew Langley



According to museum PR, the statue was meant to "honor the working class"...or some such. Even though—after decades of Republican rule—pretty much any manual trades that hadn't yet been killed off were about to be.

A more credible representation of the "worker" theme would have been "Keyboarding Woman" [Earning 70.8¢ to Man's $1]*
*1992 figures from pay-equity.org

As a decade later, "Bangalore Call Center Employee" could be truest to life.

But in '92, "Hammering Man" was on his way to Seattle, and this worker did plenty of mouthing off about it.

Much of the local arts world was displeased at being bypassed—not just for a "name"—but for a name that seems to keep selling knockoffs of the same statue. Among the numerous other versions prior to Seattle's is a nearly 70-footer (21 m) in Frankfurt am Main.

Then, in 1993—on the first Labor Day after installation of Borofsky's "worker"—some locals made a very direct response—

Photos: Barry Wong/The Seattle Times
Eric Scigliano tells how the ball-and-chain was created, then attached to the statue, by a group of

...about 20 co-conspirators, ages 20 to 40-plus, including ironworkers and artists, Job Corps alumni and activists. Over nine months, they secretly built a tarpaulin-covered workshop and fabricated the 6 1/2-foot, 700-pound ball and chain of industrial 14-gauge steel. To guard against rolling, they flattened the bottom of the ball. To protect the sculpture from damage, they lined the shackle with heavy rubber.

They planned their installation with bank-robbery precision. First they staged a full-dress rehearsal, complete with a dummy foot, in broad daylight in an outlying neighborhood. Then on Labor Day, they installed it. They clocked themselves hoisting the ball from their pickup truck, positioning it at the real foot and locking the shackle with a precisely machined steel pin: 31 seconds.

The project was the brainchild of a guerilla artist calling himself "Subculture Joe"—in Scigliano's words, "a 23-year-old metalworker with a penchant for conceiving colossal pranks and a rarer talent for mustering collaborators to realize them, with less utopian notions of work than Mr. Borofsky's."

Scigliano says of "Joe," who learned his trade in the Job Corps, that

chaining "Hammering Man" appealed to him not just as a prank and statement; it offered an answer to his discontent and a way to "rally the troops" for a bigger agenda. That agenda entails using guerrilla art to give other disaffected young people purpose, industrial skills and, finally, employment. Dada meets the Job Corps.

Scigliano's entire NYT story is here. The public's response to the Labor Day action: 70% of those polled found the ball-and-chain an improvement to the original, and they wanted it to stay.

The city removed the attachment, but didn't press charges. After a city arts administrator sniffed that Subculture Joe's group were not artists, but mere "fabricators of the attachment," the group happily appropriated the term as their new name.

Fast forward three years: to July 15, 1996. It was a Monday, and I was at work a couple miles from the city center. Sometime that afternoon, word got around that a bomb threat downtown had central streets closed off and traffic immobilized.

As details emerged, it became clear that this was police overreaction to a non-existent threat. A tipoff: the "bomb" was...
...a 10-foot anatomically correct sheet-metal heart, placed in the bed of a graffiti-covered junker truck. (Photo: Stefanie Boyar/The Seattle Times)

By now, giant metal hearts were well-known locally as the trademark of "Subculture Joe"—who himself was now well-known by his real name, Jason Sprinkle.

Before the "bomb threat," Sprinkle and the Fabricators had installed two previous hearts, in exactly the same spot: a (at the time) pedestrians-only section of downtown Seattle—

... on Valentine’s Day [1994]... the Fabricators erected a heart for "the unloved," inviting spurned lovers to write the names of their beloved on it and then to strike it with a sledgehammer.

Later, in January 1995, the Fabricators built a 13-foot, three-quarter ton steel heart pierced through the center with a 12-foot pole in the shape of a knife. This sculpture was left in Westlake Park to protest the decision to reopen Pine Street [to vehicles]...

The decision had been made in a vote after the Nordstroms, owners of the Seattle-based department store chain, said they would not open a flagship store downtown... unless vehicular traffic were restored to Pine Street. Some felt the decision had damaged the public character of the park and represented a surrender to the rich and powerful. In this spirit, the Fabricators painted slogans on their heart, including "Big Brother" and "Corporate Interests." After negotiations with the Seattle Parks Department, Sprinkle hauled that heart away.

On 7/15/96 Sprinkle acted alone—and on impulse—for the first time. The latest heart had been created as a "Heart of American Youth," that Sprinkle planned to deliver to President Clinton. He traveled from Seattle, stopping at Job Corps sites and having kids sign the heart (and his truck).

He got as far as Utah, where Job Corps officials objected to graffiti, and Sprinkle refused to censor it. He returned to Seattle, frustrated about the project fizzling out. And it seems long-standing emotional problems began to get the better of him.

Sprinkle decided to make what he saw as a gift to the city in farewell to the pedestrian mall: he parked his truck, let the air out of the tires, and walked away. He lingered close enough to observe passersby laughing at the spectacle—and a meter reader ticketing the truck.

At some point police spotted a bit of forgotten graffiti under the grille. It was from an Idaho Job Corps trainee and referred to his program—"Timber Lake Carpentry rules. The bomb!"

The bomb squad was called.Photo: Mike Urban/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A robot was borrowed from the county.Photo: Tom Reese/The Seattle Times

Sprinkle called the mayor's office to say the vehicle was harmless, but an aide hung up on him. After having a reporter friend contact the police, Sprinkle was arrested that evening. Bail for the unemployed artist was set at $100,000.

Running mainly in the Business section, the Seattle Times' subsequent coverage was along the lines of, Westlake Shoppers Just Want To Forget 5-Hour Evacuation.

And a report on the day following the scare: City To Buy Bomb-Fighting Robot—

Monday afternoon, the council turned down a request from the Police Department to buy such a robot. But just a few minutes after the rejection, Councilwoman Jane Noland, chair of the public-safety committee, was among the thousands who got stuck in traffic during a bomb scare in Westlake Park.

That was enough to change her mind and the minds of other council members, who yesterday approved spending $120,000 for a remote-controlled robot.

And on further political ramifications, Post-Intelligencer art critic Regina Hackett—

Some say Jason Sprinkle is Seattle's most prominent performance artist, but my vote goes to King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.

Sprinkle left his metal heart and junker truck at Fourth Avenue and Pine Street on July 15. He intended the piece as a farewell to his brand of art on the run. Instead of an elegy, he created a public panic, with police evacuating the downtown and tying up traffic for hours. Maleng had the presence of mind to conflate that panic into a major crime and showcase himself as anti-terrorist avenger.

Maleng's more effective at street theater, beating the artist at his own game. What gets lost in Maleng's performance is justice.

Maleng has charged Sprinkle under a recent state law that makes it a crime to intimidate with an explosive. It's a felony carrying a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $10,000. Sprinkle has been in jail since the event.

Years later, Eric Scigliano revisited the events of July 1996—

...Rush-hour commuters stewed in a downtown lockdown. Talk-radio fire-breathers and newspaper editorialists called for the responsible party's head. King County prosecutor and gubernatorial candidate Norm Maleng grandstanded grandly, comparing this art attack to bombings in Belfast, Saudi Arabia and Oklahoma City and the downing of TWA Flight 800.

Exit Jason Sprinkle, locked up for five weeks, at first without the meds that kept his mental hatches screwed down. He became the first supposed terrorist charged under a new state law making it a felony to "intimidate or harass" with an "explosive device," real or simulated. This time the device was imaginary and the charge preposterous, but prosecutors clung to it for four months, until the spotlight dimmed and they settled for a trespassing plea and probation.

By 2001 I was living elsewhere and rarely following Seattle news. But in the post-9/11 course of events, I often thought of Seattle's big bomb scare. When I finally began to search the 1996 story, the first results were obituaries—for Jason Sprinkle, 1969-2005.

A sympathetic one by Regina Hackett outlines Sprinkle's story after jail and sentencing: a mental breakdown, followed by involvement in Christian evangelism. A story ending May 2005, when Sprinkle was hit by a freight train. There were no witnesses.

Very sad, but not unusual. A working class youth makes a misjudgment: one strike and you're out. Sprinkle had the misfortune to make his mistake in a public context ripe for exploitation by local political players.

An old story, but also one that could only become entangled with how well modern media exploit fear. And how the powerful rush in front of the cameras, inflaming fear to enhance their power.

Ten years after Jason Sprinkle's misjudgment about being free to make his statement, we live in a Homeland. And its Security is a hugely powerful profit machine.

Eric Scigliano's latter piece, written in 2005, is an obituary for Sprinkle, and a further reflection—

It's a sad irony, but also sadly appropriate, that the obituary lede, what Jason is most remembered for, is not his triumphs and contributions but "the bomb." That fiasco seems in retrospect a turning point, and not just for Jason Sprinkle.

It was the moment the war on terror came to Seattle. That catchall crusade, with all its jingoist hysteria, political exploitation and displaced official aggression, did not begin with 9/11, any more than al-Qaida's war on the United States did. Politicians and law enforcement agencies began ginning up the rhetoric and angling for more funds and powers years before. Fear works; after Westlake, the City Council reversed an earlier decision and bought police the $100,000 bomb-sniffing robot they craved.

Usually, when Islamists fade from the screen, "ecoterrorists" take their place as bogeys. This time an unlucky guerrilla artist did. In a way, the cops and politicos completed Jason Sprinkle's half-baked final art event, but at a terrible cost to him.