32 Years Ago Today, Richard Nixon Walked Away

Thirty-two years ago, Dick Nixon went on TV and announced that he would tomorrow become the first president in American history (but surely not the last) to resign.

Impeachment proceedings were grinding away in Congress for his involvement in the
Watergate affair (the cover-up mainly). . .and Nixon was bowing to pressure from the public and Congress to leave the White House.

"By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America." Just before noon the next day, Nixon threw in the towel. He jumped on a helicopter, and raised his arms in the victory salute, and disappeared from the public stage. Gerald Ford became the 38th President and said "our long national nightmare is over."

The last nail in the coffin: On August 5, transcripts of more White House recordings were released, that contained a conversation in which The President told Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation. Three days later, Nixon quit.
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Reuters yanks the photoshoppng photographer, Adnan Hajj

Reuters withdrew nine hundred photographs by Adnan Hajj, a freelance Lebanese photographer from its database on Monday after a review of his work showed he had altered two images from the conflict between Israel and the armed group Hizbollah. Global Picture Editor Tom Szlukovenyi said the fact that two of the images by photographer Adnan Hajj had been Photoshopped [tm] undermined trust in all his work. "There is no graver breach of Reuters standards for our photographers than the deliberate manipulation of an image," Szlukovenyi said in a statement. This is old news now, and The blogs have long been all over this one.

I don't know why, but I just can't take it seriously. I find the plagiarism and photoshop stories uproariously funny. . .it's seeing the press take a beating. And then jump into auto-flagellate mode for a few weeks! While the press wear their hair shirt, the protracted hand-wringing begins on the left and the right. Was Hajj, like Jayson Blair, "sticking it to the man, " trying to jazz up some lackluster pictures, or letting his imagination run free and wild? Was he a mad prankster, having fun? Alas, probably not. He was a free-lancer and spec. photographer in an extremely competitive environment. He was in the right place and time to pick up some serious coin.

If I wrote news, or shot news pictures, I'd have to approach the news more as a raconteur than a retailer of facts. The truth never matters as much as The Story. In any case, it can all be true, whether it happened or not. If it's remotely plausible, it will happen sooner or later. By reporting on it early, you're not practicing the liar's craft; you're prescient.



You do have to wonder how many thousands of photoshop jobs we've seen in the news section over the years? Readers of All This Is That know we are not averse to a little photomanipulation ourselves.



This Hajj thing has me a little shaken 'though. I start wondering if some of my favorites have been manipulated.


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Ron Mueck, an amazing photo-realist

click photo to enlarge

Ron Mueck is a London-based photo-realist artist who worked on children’s television shows for 15 years before working in special effects for such films as “Labyrinth,” a 1986 fantasy epic starring David Bowie.

Mueck started his own company in London, making models to be photographed for advertisements. In the early 1990s, still in his advertising days, Mueck was commissioned to make something highly realistic, and was wondering what material would do the trick. Latex was the usual, but he wanted something harder, more precise. He stumbled on a some architectural decor in a boutique and figured out it was fiberglass resin. He has used it ever since. His art is fascinating. It reminds me of Duane Hansen's sculptures writ large. . .but with more painstaking detail. There are a lot of galleries of his work online:

James Cohan Gallery
Boy at the Venice Biennale
Australian Govt site showing Pregnant Woman.
Extensive gallery
Washington Post gallery
Russian website with good gallery
Ron Mueck images on Flickr





Click detail of "Boy"'s foot to enlarge


click the baby to enlarge


click "Boy" to enlarge
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Cindy Sheehan rides again

I don't know what it is about Cindy Sheehan . . .there is something about her/their tactics that seems wrong, including buying acreage in town as a protest base. This is probably not a popular opinion among the earnest lefties, but I wish she'd put a cork in it.

A year after her first protest in Crawford, Cindy Sheehan resumed her whatever-it-is on Sunday with 50 fellow hand-wringers. Once again, they marched toward POTUS's ranch. At the Secret Service checkpoint, Sheehan held up her driver's license and said she wanted to meet with The President.

"I do live here now," said Sheehan, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and recently bought land in Crawford for war protests. "My name is Cindy and Bush killed my son." Her band of followers then began to shout: "This is what democracy looks like! This is what democracy sounds like!" After singing a glum folk song or two, they left the roadblock and returned to the protest site.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said that neither Bush nor his staff plan to meet with Sheehan. "I would advise her to bring water, Gatorade or both," Snow said when asked about Sheehan during a press briefing Friday.
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Poem: The White Flag

Click the flag to enlarge

It's hard to keep a straight face
When you don't believe your sclera,
When nothing really fits in place
And not a sheckel dime or lira

Can ballast the mounting reams of news,
Or the clamor for surrender,
That we obstinantly refuse
As the plots grow to put us under.

The debate ends in a shutout
And we will not end the bout.
We talk sing laugh and shout
And instead of a bang, we just fade out.
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Painting: whirled in time

click image to enlarge
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Am I hot or not? The story behind the Statue of Liberty

click to enlarge - a life size copy of the statue of liberty's
face in the Statue of Liberty Museum

It was 121 years ago today that the cornerstone for The Statue of Liberty was laid. The Statue--a gift From France--was already waiting.

Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the designer, chose an authentic American model, "the good-looking, recently widowed Isabella Eugenie Boyer, the wife of Isaac Singer, the sewing-machine industrialist. " (From about.com)

"She was, from the beginning of her career in Paris, a well-known figure. As the good-looking French widow of an American industrialist she was called upon to be Bartholdi's model for the Statue of Liberty." (Ruth Brandon, Singer and the Sewing Machine: A Capitalist Romance, p. 211)

The wikipedia says "Isabella was still a striking lady when she met the sculptor Bartholdi. "

The photograph to the right, above, seems to be the only actual record of Isabella Eugenie Boyer. Am I missing something?

As for the statue itself, I always found it stunning and thrilling. In the time I lived in Brooklyn and Manhattan, we would often take rides on the Staten Island ferry (the fare was either a dime or a two bits) just to see her. . .
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Alien Lore No. 85 - Separated at birth?

click image to enlarge

The silent, banjo-playing boy the men encounter along the Chattooga River in Deliverance, and one of the Roswell Crash/Alien Autopsy victims. . .
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Poem: Changes 14/Possession

The fire in heaven above
Shines down upon us
And everyone standing

In the light has a mission
To carry
Their brothers and sisters

Our fates are determined
By a cosmic dice roll and the clock
In which we wrap our lives

It's up to us
To administer
The benevolent will of heaven

The sun in heaven above
Shines brightly without prejudice
Upon everything on earth

On the evil and the good
We're all just customers
Of the sun

Men and women
With a mission to do no harm
And to leave a little good in our wake

Great possessions are counted
By their mobility and utility
For their use in good works

And if you live right you wake up
With the sun shining
Sweetly just for you

You wake up like Scrooge
Or Bill and Melinda Gates
With your hearts already singing

For what could happen
Before earth rolls around
And night falls again
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Montage: Another Presidential Stumble

Click to enlarge

Between Presidential stumbles, gropings, and bicycle and Segway crashes, you start to wonder why Gerald Ford had the rep. as the clumsy President. . .


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Alien Lore No. 84 - ancient astronauts in the art

Various UFOlogists, art historians, and crackpots have written about the alien/UFO content in some of these paintings. The art ranges from about Shakespeare's time to 29,000 years old.

Did the artists have great imaginations? Were they abducteees and/or throwbacks? Were they implantees? Drug-addled mystics? Or are these objects in paintings hints, as some conspiracists have theorized--images of spaceships and aliens elicited from our great collective unconscious to help soften us up for the actual invasion (if it wasn't already stealthily underway right under our noses)? Or do we carry the germ in all of us--the cultural memories and images---a psychic imprint--because the Greys are our cousins and came here long ago? Were these works of art realistic? Drawn directly from UFO sightings? I don't think we're going to know the answer this week. . .



This painting comes from a cave in Tanzania. It may be up to 29,000 years old. One section seems to show Aliens about to implant the demon seed? There is also an alien-looking figure looking down into a box, or a well? Or what?




The Madonna with Saint Giovannino was painted in the 15th century, and is attributed to the school of Frau Lippo Lippi. Above Mary's right shoulder is a saucer (see inset). On the right a man and dog are seen gazing at the saucer.




A detail from a Yugoslavian fresco circa 1350 A.D. This painting of a crucifixion contains saucer-like objects flying overhead. Some schools of alien lore claim that the Greys witnessed the crucufixion of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.



The Baptism of Christ was painted in Flanders by Aert De Gelderin about 1710. A hovering saucer shines some kind of ray down on John the Baptist and Jesus.




This image of a crusader and saucer comes from a 12th century manuscript. Books about historical and religion events refer to a UFO sighting in the year 776, during the siege on Sigiburg castle, France. The Saxons and the French were fighting when suddenly a group of discs appeared hovering over the top of the church. The Saxons thought the French were protected by these objects and the Saxons fled.



This painting shows Moses receiving the stone tablets with several UFOs in the sky nearby. Know one knows who painted this, or when. . .


Click image to enlarge

An ancient Egyptian depiction of what seems to be a classic Grey. This mural was found inside the Tomb of Ptah-Hotep, at Saqqara, Egypt. In the painting, servants offer food to the Egyptian Philosopher Ptah-Hotep (at a table to the left of this part of the picture). Ptah-hotep served during the reign of Izezi as a sage. Izezi ruled Egypt from 2388 to 2356 BC.



Detail of the "Grey" depicted in the mural above.

Ancient Egyptian wall sculpture, Abydos, Egypt - click to enlarge

This relief seems to show a helicopter, a submarine, a UFO and what seems to be an airplane.
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Ned Lamont overtakes vertically challenged incumbent in CT race

Democratic challenger Ned Lamont has jumped into a commanding lead over Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) in Tuesday's Senate primary, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Lamont leads Lieberman 54 to 41 percent and has gained serious momentum over the lilliputian incumbent and losing Democratic vice presidential nominee. For more information, go to the Washington Post's online article.

What does all this mean for the sawed-off turncoat from Connecticut? Next January, we'll see Crazy Joe a) mount a modestly lucrative lecture tour; b) join the faculty of a prestigious college; or c) lick his wounds and write a book.

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“It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”
12/7/05

Who better to refute this statement that Joe Lieberman himself? "A president does not rule, he governs. He remains always answerable to us, the people. And right now, the president’s conduct of our foreign policy is giving the country too many reasons to question his leadership. It’s not just about 16 words in a speech, it is about distorting intelligence and diminishing credibility.” 7/28/03



In November, 2003, Crazy Joe accused Bush of lying to Americans about everything from national security to helping the poor. “There has been one value repeatedly missing from this presidency, and that value is integrity,” Lieberman said. “By deception and disarray, this White House has betrayed the just cause of fighting terrorism and tyranny around the world.” Leaking the CIA employee’s name “was the politics of personal destruction at its worst,” he said.
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