The Clinton Smear Machine Turns The Dial To 11

In another desperate move, someone in the Hillary campaign has circulated a two year old photo of Barack Obama in native Somalian costume. The photo was taken in rural Kenya. Obama was on a five country tour of Africa.

According to the Drudge Report, an email by one staffer asked "Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?"

Obama's people, of course, accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering." Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams shot back: "If Barack Obama's campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed."

The Clinton campaign team really has devolved into a cheap-jack mudslinging machine. At this point, if the Senator were running against Idiocracy's Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, I'd probably vote for Camacho.

---o0o---

Ralph Nader enters the Presidential race to save us from ourselves

Ralph Nader announced this morning on "Meet The Press" that he is launching a third-party campaign for president on the Sunday talk "Meet the Press" in Washington, Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008.

Nader ran as a third-party candidate in 2000 and 2004, and probably cost Al Gore the election by siphoning away nearly three percent of the vote. So why wouldn't we want to elect the guy responsible for putting George Bush in the White House.

Barack Obama, responded Saturday to Nader's earlier criticisms that he lacked "substance," and praised (and damned) Nader: "In many ways he is a heroic figure and I don't mean to diminish him. But I do think there is a sense now that if somebody is not hewing to the Ralph Nader agenda, then you must be lacking in some way."

Senator Clinton called Nader's announcement a "passing fancy" and said "obviously, it's not helpful to whomever our Democratic nominee is. But it's a free country," she told reporters in Rhode Island.

Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, speaking before Nader's announcement, said Nader's past runs have shown that he usually pulls votes from the Democrat. "So naturally, Republicans would welcome his entry into the race."

"If the Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form," Nader said.

---o0o---

The best of times, the worst of times for Senator McCain

This has to be both one of the best and one of the worst weeks in John McCain's life. He emerges as the last man standing, only needing to dispose of the minor Huckabee insurgency to claim the nomination. And then the New York Times drags up the old conflict of interest and possible adultery charges from 1999, and all of sudden McCain has a noose around his neck. The bright spot for the Senator is that the far right and the neocons, and people like Limbaugh and Hannity are now circling the wagons against the onslaught...they may have been very unhappy with McCain as the presumptive nominee, but there is no way they're going to let that pinko newspaper damage McCain.

One thing you can bet on, and it happens in every one of these cases. There had to be a near-arctic-blast of air blowing between John and Cindy at the breakfast table this week.

Check out our exclusive interview with the Senator. Pablo Fanques spoke to Sen. McCain yesterday. You can find the interview here: John McCain tells All This Is That's national affairs editor "OK. I drilled Vicki Iseman. So what?"
---o0o---

John McCain tells All This Is That's national affairs editor "OK. I drilled Vicki Iseman. So what?"

In an interview today with All This Is That's national affairs editor, Pablo Fanques, Senator John McCain at first mocked the New York Times recent revelations about a possible relationship he had had with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

Fanques: So is there any whiff of truth to the story?

Sen. McCain: Sure, I guess there's a whiff of truth. She is a woman, and a good looking woman. It's more convenient to pin her on me than it would be a male lobbyist. That's for sure. Every person on the hill deals with lobbyists.

Fanques: But the New York Times also alludes to something deeper than a drink with a lobbyist.

Sen. McCain: Sure they do. Have you read the 'paper lately? They allude to a lot of things. And the Times has a stake in getting their boy Obama elected. They shredded Hillary Clinton, and now they're coming after me.

Fanques: But that still doesn't really answer my question.

Sen. McCain: But isn't this interview supposed to be about how I would support the arts after I'm elected?

Fanques: It is, indeed. But this seems a little more important.

Sen. McCain: Than what?! This is a f***ing sideshow you're running here. Let's talk about The Issues.

Fanques: We are. This has become the issue.

Sen. McCain: Look. I've become a threat to the Democrats and to the New York Times. So you drag up a ten year old story and start flogging it. It's not relevant to the campaign.

Fanques: So just what WAS your relationship with Ms. Iseman?

Sen. McCain: I think I explained that. Several times this week.

Fanques: But the New York Times and some of your staffers seem to think otherwise.

Sen. McCain: You're talking about Pravda here. A paper that is ashamed of the United States. And some traitor staff members who will be rapidly disposed of. Pardon me for ending that sentence with a preposition.

Fanques: But Senator, you've explained that you did some business with a lobbyist. Now, it seems, you need to explain the accusations that have been lodged against you about having a romantic relationship with Ms.Iseman.

Sen. McCain: Really. OK. I drilled Vicki Iseman. So what? Do I get the same pass you gave Slick Willy? Do I get the same pass you've been giving Obama and Hillary?

Fanques: Pass? I don't recall hearing these sorts of allegations against them?

Sen. McCain: Then you have your head in the sand. Because it's all out there. This interview is over. [click].
---o0o---

President Bush's Happy Feet & speculations on the debate and endgame between Hillary and Barack

Our President Bush gets happy feet on his visit to Liberia in Africa. Hey, what's he got to lose? I wish our Democratic candidates could also get happy feet going. Tonight's debate was interesting. Hillary, at one point, totally blew it, and at a later point hit at least a three-bagger that would have been a home run if she hadn't blown it so badly with her Xerox comment earlier...(this ought to smoke Kev out of the woodwork!). And she ended the debate on an incredibly moving grace note. But a zinger here and a tear there don't turn around the kind of explosive juggernaut we are seeing with Barack Obama. I'm getting excited about Obama. But I've talked myself into being excited before, as you've read, for even hopeless causes like Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. I guess what I really want is for Obama or Clinton to have a Bulworth Moment, or a Peter Gibbons moment, or an American Beauty moment...where they throw caution to the wind, and let the freak flag of truth fly and damn the consequences.

I could just about personally guarantee to deliver Obama or Hillary five million votes if they would just get up on stage in a beer-stained Grateful Dead t-shirt, fire up a bong and then deliver a torched version of a state of the union address, at the end of which the audience would be rolling in the aisles, convulsed with insane laughing fits! Wouldn't it be nice?

A bittersweet note on Hillary Clinton's likely departure is that there will be no Clinton-McCain tilt, which by all reports (due to their friendship and great mutual respect) would have probably been the cleanest Presidential and most civilized campaign in the history of the United States. . .

It's just about the end of the line for Hillary, but you never know what happens next. Two days ago, John McCain stepped into it with the New York Times' revelations about the lobbyist--they imply he was "making the beast with two backs with her. Political wonks remember this story from nine years ago. It seems like old old news. But the press drumbeat seems to just be beginning. And the New York Times seems to be standing fast on their story.
---o0o---

A chicken in the backyard in Bucerias (Nayarit, Mexico)

click to enlarge

A Mexican backyard in Bucerias, Nayarit, Mexico. Now, this kitchen has some elbow room! This backyard is great! There is a laundry, a cooking area and dishwashing area, lines for hanging clothes, a huge box of the glass jars from devotional candles (you know, the tall candles in glasses wth pictures of Madonna or one of the Saints), a sack of beans (the greyish frijoles usually found in Nayarit and Jalisco...I don't know their actual name, but they're similar in texture to a pinto, with a slightly more earthy taste like, say, a field pea, or a black-eyed pea), and a lot of other things that don't fit in the house.

And one chicken. The lone chicken standing by the water bucket, reminds me of the wonderful imagistic poem by one of my favorite American poets:


The Red Wheelbarrow
by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
---o0o---

The JFK conspiracy buffs, and cover-up fanatics are about to have a field day...

A sketch, detailing how the single bullet

theory works. Click to enlarge.

A batch of old documents linked to the slaying of President John F. Kennedy has reportedly been unearthed in Texas. The documents include a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer Jack Ruby that numerous people have thought is actually a work of fiction--a bogus conversation that was destined to be included in a novel about the JFK assassination conspiracy. This is according to a Dallas Morning News published on Sunday.

The newspaper said the Dallas County district attorney's office, which found the documents, would display them at a news conference on Monday morning.

The Morning News said the items from an old safe in a Dallas courthouse included personal letters from former District Attorney Henry Wade, the prosecutor in the Ruby trial. Jack Ruby shot Oswald two days after the president's death. There were also papers and records from Ruby's trial, a gun holster and clothing that likely belonged to Ruby and Oswald, D.A. Craig Watkins told the newspaper.

One item is sure to inflame the Kennedys, the surviving Warren Commission members, and the ranks of the dwindling but still vocal and cantankerous of the JFK conspiracy theorists. This is a conversation in which Oswald and Ruby allegedly discuss killing Kennedy to halt the mafia-busting agenda of his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy (ed's note: Jack Ruby, although Jewish, was allegedly an associate of La Cosa Nostra).

The Morning News said one theory about the transcript was that it was part of a movie script Wade was working on with producers, for a film that was never made.

As you know, the official U.S. government version of the murder is that Oswald acted alone when he shot Kennedy on November 22, 1963, as the president's motorcade passed the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas.

A few days later, Ruby shot Oswald dead at point-blank range as police were escorting their prime suspect. Live on national TV, which I remember, they played and replayed that whole long, weird weekend. Jack Ruby died some years later in prison.

---o0o---

Drawing: detail from Canvas 136

click to enlarge

This is a detail from one of the canvases in my Faces series. I have been drawing these for nine years, and have completed around 14o canvases, each with 16 faces, and about a dozen with 96 faces (or six faces in each square that usually holds one).
---o0o---

The Trailer From "Strange Wilderness"

The trailer from Strange Wilderness, out now, from Happy Madison productions, with many of the same gang that brought us the comedy masterpiece Grandma's Boy:



---o0o---

"That's right, play my head, Monkey"

click to enlarge



"That's right, play my head Monkey, " says Dante to his chimpanzee roommate.

---o0o---

No Politics Thursday: A drawing and a painting

A drawing: Sixteen Voters 36" x 36" (Ink [a/k/a Sharpie] on Mississippi School for the Blind canvas).

A painting/assemblage: Owner Will Maintain 24" x 48"(Acrylic paint on pine panel, with doll eyes, a lightning bolt car emblem, two stickers, an "owner will maintain" sign I found in a ditch in 1995, and an old saw blade I bought for a dime at a junk store).



click to enlarge


click to enlarge
---o0o---

Alien Lore No. 124 - Three airline crews report seeing UFOs as big as a battleship in 1976

click to enlarge

In 1976, three pilot crews from three different airlines saw UFOs "as big as a battle ship."

On May 14, 1977, the “Natal Daily News” from South Africa, published an article about this UFO incident titled “UFOs as big as battleships, pilots claim":

"For fear of being ridiculed, pilots of three airliners kept secret the sighting of three UFOs over Portugal, later described by one of them “as big and solid as battleships”.

"British Airways Trident jet pilot, captain Dennis Wood, who has been flying with the airline for 20 years, said he and his crew first spotted the UFOs while flying from London to Faro.

"The sighting, described by experts as the most important in the past decade, was also made by the crew of a British Tristar below the Trident and the pilot of a Portuguese airliner. All the stories tallied.

"Captain Wood, 42, said he and the Tri-star crew made sighting reports when they arrived at London’s Heathrow airport but kept it all a secret for fear of being ridiculed. Captain Wood has come forward in the hope that Britain’s ufo experts will turn a serious eye to this particular sighting."

“Suggestions that the three objects were balloons, stars or satellites, strange clouds or reflections are quite unacceptable to us”, he said. “As I looked to the west we saw this very bright headlamp in the sky. All the cabin staff saw it too and I told the passengers. Then it was joined by two cigar-shaped objects as big and solid as battleships”.



"On the return trip, captain Wood tilted his radar scanner. “There, in exactly the same spot, were these two cigar-shaped things. We got to within seven miles of them when they disappeared from our screen”.
---o0o---