Loose Lips (Leaks) Sink Ships (Presidents)

Writing for MSNBC Michael Moran wonders if George W. Bush is looking at the leak that will eventually sink his presidency.

“They begin, invariably, without much fanfare. The Paula Jones saga began with a story in a London newspaper about Bill Clinton’s 'sexual peccadilloes' written off by the American media for weeks as typical Fleet Street scandal mongering. Iran-Contra, the tangled affair that bedeviled the last two years of Ronald Reagan’s tenure, started with the otherwise unremarkable crash of a small plane over Nicaragua that turned out to be an illegal CIA gunrunning operation. For President Richard Nixon, of course, it all began with a ‘a two-bit burglary’ at a hotel called The Watergate.”

Now, due to a loose end that is suddenly being tugged at hard, by all sorts of people who know how to play the game, Bush -- in total denial -- may well be seeing the first stage of the unraveling of his administration. That is seems to involve such weasels as Karl Rove and Robert Novak is almost too sweet to be believed.

Read the story on MSNBC.

A New Storm Brewing in DeeCee

The story that the White House, itself, leaked the story that outed a C.I.A. undercover operative is gaining momentum. Some seem sure it was none other than Karl Rove who dished out the payback.

“…some of the 10 Democrats seeking to challenge President Bush in 2004 said the disclosure of an ambassador's wife as a C.I.A. officer demonstrated that the Bush administration was intertwining politics and national security and could not be trusted to investigate itself.

‘This administration has played politics with national security for a long time, but this is going too far," one of those Democratic hopefuls, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, told Reuters, suggesting an independent commission look into the accusations. 'I don't think, in this administration, the Department of Justice will have the credibility it needs to reassure American allies abroad, and people around the world, about this matter.’”

Read the New York Times story.

International Protests Oppose Iraq Occupation

Coordinated protests of the occupation of Iraq occurred in cities across Western Europe, as well as in Turkey and South Korea. Read the story on Reuters.

Iraq Spells Trouble for Bush

Writing for BBC News, Matt Frei wonders if Dubya is on his way to being the second Bush to be a one-term president.

"...The last time [George W. Bush] sat on the high backed chair of the general assembly - more of a throne in fact - on which speakers are placed before and after their speech, he looked like a patriarch who was holding a wayward family to account. This time he came across as a fidgety schoolboy, anxious to leave.

To read the piece click here.

Dems go toe-to-toe in NYC debate

Here's a crisp account of the Democrats' cat-fight debate on Thursday night:

"...Despite preaching the virtues of training their guns on President Bush, the other candidates' rhetoric evolved at times into biting personal attacks and sharp policy disputes with their competitors on stage yesterday."

Sounds like fun! To read the rest of it click here.

Unplugged

On the Friday morning (Sept. 19) after Hurricane Isabel blew through town the sky was blue and the air smelled clean. The residents of the Fan District, at the heart of Richmond, Virginia, woke from an uneasy sleep. Day One of the unplugged life was underway.

Before the worst of the storm passed, about midnight, Isabel tossed huge trees around like a handful of Pickup Sticks. Power lines snapped. Cars were crushed. Roofs caved in and basements flooded. As the shocking and unprecedented devastation dealt out by the previous night’s onslaught of wind and rain was revealed to the stunned urbanites, so, too, did the reality of widespread electricity deprivation.

On my block the lights came back on Wednesday afternoon. Other areas of the Fan are still doing without.

Hurricane Isabel

We made it through the storm. Thursday night Isabel rocked Richmond, a city not accustomed to such extremes. The Fan District was hit hard. Power is still out in a good part of the Fan, including my little nook. I'll be posting an account of what happened. No time now.

Remembering Hazel

Ed Note: The smell of the storm and the sound of the wind-driven water were exciting. As a six-year-old, looking out of the bay windows of the dining room, Hurricane Hazel made a big impression on me.

The tall pine trees behind the outbuildings were whipping around in the wind, when suddenly I saw what was both thrilling and sad. The Umbrella Tree (our family name for it, I don’t know what kind it was) was pulled up out of the ground. It was in the air for a moment with its roots torn and exposed – this was a big tree – before it came crashing back down, almost completely upside down, to fall on its side.

In a fickle flash of its gray wrath Hazel killed what was my favorite tree to climb. Never again would it provide shade for the white lawn furniture that rested in the part of the yard we called, The Dell.

In reading about the path that's being predicted for Hurricane Isabel, I see that this new storm is being compared to Hurricane Hazel (1954). Old Hazel left a mark on the East Coast as few storms have. The path brought it through Richmond, up from North Carolina, on its way to Toronto.

Here’s AccuWeather.com on Hazel:

The strongest storm of 1954 was the legendary Hurricane Hazel, a powerful Category 4 storm that brought estimated winds of 150 mph when it made landfall in the Carolinas on Oct. 15. The storm retained strength fairly far inland, causing 100 mph winds as far north as Pennsylvania and New York. The damage in 2000 dollars was estimated at approximately $4 billion, and when totaling U.S. deaths with those in the Caribbean and Canada, the death toll was more than 600.

Here are some links to read more about Hazel:
Intellicast.com
CBC
AccuWeather.com

Clark To Run for President

Apparently (retired four-star) General Wesley Clark has heard the call and felt the draft. Reports out of Little Rock say Clark will throw his hat into the ring tomorrow, to become the 10th Democrat in the race for the party’s nomination to face George W. Bush in 2004.

“…Clark's resume is formidable,” reports the New York Times, “Rhodes scholar, first in his 1966 class at West Point, White House fellow, head of the U.S. Southern Command and NATO commander during the 1999 campaign in Kosovo.”

Clark’s entry into the race comes at a time when only one of the other nine candidates’ campaigns seems to have gained any traction, that being Howard Dean. It says here that Clark will immediately pass by most of the other Dems and become a serious challenge to Dean. This, as other better-known candidates such as Sen. Joe Lieberman and Sen. John Kerry seem to being fading from the picture.

To read the Times story click here.

HOTH 27

High on the Hog (No. 27) will unfold on Richmond's Libby Hill on October 11. The acts that will appear live on stage are: Johnny Houston, Debra and Pat with Gayle McGhee & the Nocturnes, Li’l Ronnie & the Grand Dukes and Big City. As always, admission is free. Food (get there early to be sure of getting a barbeque plate) and beer are available and moderately priced.

In order to truly appreciate what High on the Hog has become, one must first understand that when it began the odds were stacked against it. In the late '70s, Richmond was anything but an outdoors rock 'n' roll party town -- if you tried to mix amplified music with fresh air, you were likely to attract more cops than guests.

So when HOTH began to reoccur each year on Libby Hill -- with top-notch saloon bands such as Memphis Rockabilly and Good Humor performing on an improvised stage in the alley behind Chuck Wrenn’s house -- it was not backed or sanctioned by anybody beyond the stalwarts who threw it together. Eventually the party outgrew the alley, moved across the street into the park and became a legit tradition in spite of what had been Richmond’s rigid rules.

Money has been raised for good causes and the party, now a classic, has grown to the point that thousands show up every year on the second Saturday of Hogtober.

California Recall Halted by Court

Court-ordered sanity, of a sort, returned to California on Monday:

'"The Secretary of State is enjoined from conducting an election on any issue on October 7, 2003,' a three-member panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in its 66-page opinion that sent immediate shockwaves through the state.

"The court stayed its order for seven days to allow the parties to either appeal its ruling to a full 11-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit or directly to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Read the story on Reuters.

Disaster in the Making

"If Iraq is another Vietnam, when will we know it?" asks Eleanor Clift, writing for Newsweek.

Then she asserts: "As the architects of the minimalist strategy that has left U.S. forces stretched thin in Iraq, the Darth Vaders of defense will bear the blame if the pace of reconstruction doesn't improve. Firing Rumsfeld would be tantamount to admitting the Iraq war was a mistake, which is why it probably won’t happen."

Click here to read Clift's take on where we are on the roadmap to disaster.

The Only Way Out Is Forward

Col. Mike Turner, writes: “…The operation was a unilateral, conventional, U.S. military operation against a Third World power which, in the final analysis, posed only an indirect and peripheral threat to U.S. vital interests. The operation lacked formal United Nations backing and broad international support, two factors that eventually sapped U.S. will and drained our resources. Mission success was ill-defined, and administration officials, assuming a quick victory, adopted and stubbornly adhered to a tragically simplistic and naive view of the both the military forces required to achieve military victory and the level of societal change necessary to win and sustain the peace.”

Is Turner referring to Iraq, or Vietnam, or both?

In his piece Turner makes an eloquent case for winning in Iraq. Read the Newsweek story.

Art: What It Is

By F. T. Rea

In a Virginia courtroom about 20 years ago I witnessed an entertaining scene in which an age-old question -- what is art? -- was hashed out in front of a patient judge, who seemed to thoroughly enjoy the parade of exhibits and witnesses the attorneys put before him. The gallery was packed with paint-speckled-blue-jeans-wearing art students, gypsy musicians, film buffs, and various other stripes of weekend anarchists.

At the crucial moment a popular college art professor was testifying, as an expert witness. He was being grilled over where to draw the line between what should be, and what should not be, considered as art. The Commonwealth’s Attorney asked the witness directly if the beat-up piece of paper in his hand was actually art.

“Probably,” shrugged the prof. “Why not?”

The flyer, promoting a midnight show at an area cinema, had been posted on a utility pole near a college campus. Rather than pay the small fine for breaking the city’s law forbidding such posters on poles in the public way, the defense attorneys attacked the statute itself. They asserted that their client had a right to post the handbill and the public had a right to see it.

The stubborn prosecutor grumbled, reasserting that the flyer was no more than “litter.”

Eventually, having grown weary of the high-brow vernacular being slung around by the witnesses supporting the theater manager, the prosecutor tried one more time to trip the clever witness up. As soup cans (Warhol’s) had just been mentioned by the art expert, the lawyer asked, “if you were in an alley and you happened upon a pile of debris spilled out from a tipped-over trashcan, could that be art, too?”

“Well,” said the witness, pausing Jack Benny-like for effect, “that would depend on who tipped the can over.”

The line went over like Gangbusters!

The courtroom erupted into laughter. The obviously amused judge bit his lip, while he allowed the laughing to continue long enough to convince the crestfallen lawyer to drop that line of questioning. The city lost the case.

Although I got a kick out of the crack, too, I’ve always thought the prosecutor missed an opportunity to hit the ball back across the net.

“Sir, let me get this right,” he might have said, “are you saying the difference between art and randomly-strewn garbage is simply a matter of whose hand touched it; that the actual appearance of the objects, taken as a whole, is not the true test? Furthermore, are you telling us that without credentials, such as yours, one is ill-equipped to determine the difference between the contents of a trashcan and fine art?”

Yes, the prosecutor gave up too soon because, whether the wise-guy professor admitted it, or not, that is where he was coming from. A smart lawyer could have exploited that angle.

Still, the prosecutor’s premise/strategy that an expert witness could be compelled to rise up to brand a green piece of paper, with black ink on it, as “un-art” was absurd. So, maybe the wily artist would have one-upped the buttoned-down lawyer, no matter what.

Perhaps the fundamental question really shouldn’t be – what is art? After all, any town is full of bad art, and good art, and all shades of in-between art. Name your poison. Rather, it’s probably better to ask – what is worthwhile or useful art?

Then you become the expert witness.

Johnny Cash Dies in Nashville Hospital

Recording artist Johnny Cash, known to his fans as the Man in Black, died today (Friday) from diabetes-related complications. He was 71. Only four months ago his wife, June Carter Cash, died of complications from heart surgery at age 73.

Other than Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash is the only person to have been inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To read the New York Times obituary, click here.

Here's the link to an NPR page that has its obituary for Cash and other audio files.

By the way, Cash’s 1971 song, “Man in Black,” underlined his anti-war (Vietnam) stance. Whatever worries he had then, as a country music artist from the South, didn’t keep him from speaking his piece. Today, we must suppose, Clear Channel would banish him from its 1,200 radio stations’ play lists for being unpatriotic.

Here’s a slice of Cash’s explanation for why he chose to wear black onstage:

“…Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.”

Downtown Richmond's Direction

According to its web site, Save Richmond is a group of "artists, musicians, painters, sculptors, writers, dancers, poets, DJs, promoters, composers, dramatists, web designers and arts-related small business owners living and working in Richmond, Virginia."

The group is working in opposition to some of the measures that have been, and are being, put in place to revitalize Downtown Richmond. Here's a short list of what the group is calling for:

"Respect for the city's street-level arts and music scenes; less emphasis on costly and artificial downtown projects, more emphasis on historic preservation and organic culture; an open environment of city government where new ideas and opportunities can plug in; tolerance toward gays and other alternative lifestyles."

The group also opposes the new increases in the City's meals tax and admissions tax. To read its open letter to the City of Richmond click here.

For the Next SLANT

Ed. Note: The email posted below was sent out to our list of likely suspects. It is being posted in this space in hope that it will inspire a SLANT Blog reader to participate.

Avant-Garde, a late-60s magazine that I admired in those days, used to run features that offered the reader a collection of short answers to a question, culled from a group of well-known people. Usually the group of know-it-alls ran heavy on artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and so forth. The editors once asked 25 “noted Americans” to say who they thought was the most hated man in America.

The answers, taken as a group, were quite interesting.

Another time the magazine's editors asked a panel of 35 to name the machine they hate the most, and why. Then another panel was asked to predict what ordinary thing, in their time, would be transformed into a classic, 20 years into the future.

That last one was fun. I remember someone said something like -- Converse's (Chuck Taylor) canvas basketball shoes will be rediscovered and seen as cool by a whole new generation.

That one has turned out to be a screaming bulls-eye; take a look around.

For the next issue of SLANT, I want to run a collection of answers to that same basic question -- predictions on what thing, in the midst of our everyday life, will become classic, or perhaps much-collected ultra-kitsch, 20 years in the future.

Like Avant-Garde, I’m leaning the panel toward artsy folks (as far as who I've sent this email to). Because of space limitations, please keep your prediction, with whatever accompanying explanation, under 100 words. I’ll print as many responses as space permits. The deadline for copy to be emailed (ftrea9@yahoo.com.) to me is September 22 (but sooner is better).

Activists Moving On

At MoveOn.org they don't pull any punches and they have become quite active in matters political during the last year: "Impeachment. The 2000 Election. The California Recall. The pattern is becoming clear: there's a group of men in power who will do anything to consolidate that power, including undermining our democratic institutions. We've got to fight back."

To visit to this organization's web site click here.