Category: Politics

Joni Mitchell retired from the music industry a few years ago and returned to her first love, painting. She has exhibited her work here in Los Angeles but usually with very little fanfare.

I found out about her latest show, “Green Flag Song,” in an unexpected place: the Opinion section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times.

Mitchell had nixed doing publicity for this exhibit altogether, but Megan Daum, who writes a weekly column for the Times, happened upon a banner promoting the exhibit on La Brea Avenue. She contacted the gallery owner, Zev Moross, and he set up an interview with Mitchell over dinner at restaurant in West Hollywood:

[Joni Mitchell] said she had had little interest in publicly showing her paintings but that the photographs were infused with political undertones that somehow felt urgent. Though the images, if you look close, range from shots from old movies to talk-show hosts to news coverage, the overall effect has the whiff of brutality.

“The theme of this show is ‘war, revolution and torture,'” she told me. “I was in such despair about the world’s current state of affairs that I didn’t even know where to start. I was taking a lot of landscape photos near my home in Canada. Then I got back to L.A. and suddenly I had this magical TV set.”

Mitchell talked a lot about the photos — “my bedroom lamp is reflected in a lot of them” — and about how she has ideas for more exhibitions. Though she “retired” from music several years ago, she’s writing new songs. She said they were hard in coming, that it’s easy to doubt yourself.

Links:

• Zev Morross Gallery
• Megan Daum

• 2001 – The chairman of the militant Jewish Defense League, Irv Rubin, and an associate, Earl Krugel, were arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up a Los Angeles mosque and the office of an Arab-American congressman. (Rubin died in November 2002, 10 days after what federal officials described as a suicide attempt in jail.) [Boston.com]
• 2001 – Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was charged with conspiring to murder thousands in the suicide hijackings. Moussaoui’s were the first terrorism charges after the September 11, 2001, attacks. In 2005, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to conspiracy [Boston.com]

As the days of George W. Bush’s final term in office grind slowly onward, the president increasingly finds himself on the opposite side of issues from the American public. While a normal president might care about this — strong leaders usually position themselves at the head of the parade — Pres. Bush really doesn’t give a damn what “the people” think.

In an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, Jonathan Chait that Bush’s juvenile behavior reminds him of an episode from the “Twilight Zone” about a young boy who is given super powers that he is too immature to use wisely:

Through the misuse of his powers, the little boy has ruined the lives of everybody in the town — for instance, teleporting them into a cornfield, or summoning a snowstorm that destroys their crops. Because anyone who thinks an unhappy thought will be banished, the adults around him can do nothing but cheerfully praise his decisions while they try to nudge him in a less destructive direction.

Chait says he was reminded of the “Twilight Zone” episode when he read an account in Time Magazine of the behind-the-scenes coddling required to get Bush onboard the formation of the Iraq Study Group last spring. Three people involved in organizing the group approached Sec. of State Condoleeza Rice first:

“As the trio departed, a Rice aide asked one of her suitors not to inform anyone at the Pentagon that chairmen had been chosen and the study group was moving forward. If Rumsfeld was alerted to the study group’s potential impact, the aide said, he would quickly tell Cheney, who could, with a few words, scuttle the whole thing. Rice got through to Bush the next day, arguing that the thing was going to happen anyway, so he might as well get on board. To his credit, the President agreed.”

The article treats this exchange in a matter-of-fact way, but, what it suggests is completely horrifying. Rice apparently believed that Bush would simply follow the advice of whoever he spoke with. Therefore the one factor determining whether Bush would support the commission was whether Cheney or Rice managed to get to him first.

The Founders did not offer a list of job requirements for the office of the presidency but I’m sure they intended it to be filled by men of at least adequate skills. Maybe it sounds over the top, but I really do worry that the United States may not survive the next two years intact.

Mea culpa: Jon, Trish and I consider ourselves, and are actually considered by several others, as being relatively intelligent, if a bit socially inept. So we should have seen this coming. We could have stopped him, but we didn’t. And I can’t tell you why we didn’t see it coming.

Tom DeLay has started his own weblog. If only we had secured the www.tomdelay.com domain, this wouldn’t have happened.

Here’s some of the crap you can find on Tom’s wingnut blog:

We are conservatives. We believe that our government is limited and our freedoms are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. We believe in a society built on three First Principles: Order, Justice and Freedom. These principles are the three legs of the stool upon which our society rests. With anyone of these legs removed the stool, and our society, topples. We recognize the right and the responsibility of every citizen to engage in the political processes of our republic and we commit ourselves to protect the principles we hold dear.

Stool, indeed. A whole pile of it. Here’s how DeLay describes the purpose of his “blog”:

This weblog is one small way for us help create the conditions for positive action. We will foster discussion and debate, by boldly putting forth conservative belief and principle. We all must recognize, however, that while we create an environment for thoughtful conservative dialogue, there is an even deeper need for bold conservative action as we struggle to return our government to its First Principles. It is my hope that TomDelay.com can provide us with some of the fuel we will need to sustain our real world movement. Toward that end we have established a grassroots action and information network (GAIN) that will seek members in every congressional district across the country to which we will take grassroots action to advance our cause.

[…]

Armand Hammer, CEO of Occidental Petroleum,a staunch supporter of presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush — and long-suspected Soviet spy — died on December 10, 1990, in Los Angeles. He was 92 years old.

Hammer grew up in New York and received a medical degree from Columbia University, but never practiced medicine. Instead, in the 1920s, he went into the pharmaceuticals business in the newly formed Soviet Union.

His lifelong association with the Soviet government raised suspicions about his allegiance to the United States. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Hammer’s name was reportedly found in KGB files that described him as an agent vliyana, an “agent of influence” in the United States for the Soviet government. However (and not surprisingly), definitive proof that he was a Soviet spy has never been produced, and so his political legacy in international relations remains a riddle.

His record as an agent for the Republican Party is crystal clear, however. In 1976, Hammer was convicted on federal misdemeanor charges for funnelling hush money to the Watergate burglars during the Nixon years.

These convictions became problematic a decade later when Hammer embarked on a quixotic mission to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his private diplomacy with the Soviets. After being nominated, however, he was thwarted by the fact that no previous recipient had ever had a criminal record.

Hammer requested a pardon from then-Pres. Reagan, sweetening the deal with an offer to donate $1.3 million to Reagan’s presidential library, which was to be built in Simi Valley, Calif. On his application, Hammer listed the reason for the requested pardon as “innocence.” When the Reagan team looked into his convictions, however, they found that he had pleaded guilty to the charges in order to get a better deal, and was therefore ineligible for the pardon on the basis of innocence.

Because Pres. Reagan failed to deliver the pardon, Hammer rescinded the donation to the library. The library sued to get the money but was unsuccessful.

Hammer soon got his pardon from Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, however. At the end of Bush’s successful campaign for president, Hammer gave $110,000 to the Republican National Commmittee to allay campaign costs. He updated his pardon application, changing the reason for the request from “innocence” to “compassion.” On August 14, 1989, eight months after Bush was elected, he issued a full pardon for Hammer.

It was all for naught, however. Hammer lost the 1989 Nobel Peace to the Dalai Lama.

Hammer was born on May 21, 1898.

[Wiki, Counterpunch]