High on hubris

"We're an empire now" - senior adviser to President Bush

The New York Times Magazine recently posted an article by Ron Suskind titled "Without a Doubt". In it he presents a rare and candid look at George W. Bush, religious fanatic and right wing extremist. I highly recommend reading it, especially if you think Bush's confidence and decisions are based on facts or even an informed intuition. I've included a couple of paragraphs from the article below but you can read it in its entirety here, here or here. As Kerry said during the debates, "You can be certain and still be wrong". Bush is so wrong it's nothing short of chilling. In fact, even Pat Robertson has trouble with Bush's megalomania.

Excerpt from "Without a Doubt".

"REALITY-BASED COMMUNITY"
"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'"

This madness is rooted the neoconcervative program of Perception Management. George Orwell with his Newspeak has nothing on these guys.

--Ron Suskind was the senior national-affairs reporter for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000. He is the author most recently of "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill."

Magic Johnson

Magic Johnson called yesterday. He wanted to remind me to vote. General Westley Clark called today. He also reminded me to vote. Busy guys. I suppose you've also heard from them too and probably many others. I was already planning to vote. In fact, I voted today. There was a pretty good line, but it went quickly. I have to say it. I hope you vote too, and early if possible. Nov. 2nd is sure to be a very busy day. Have a question about where to go? Go here, enter you zip code and you'll be directed to local information. If you're voting early, be sure and double check on the location. It may be different than it is on Nov. 2nd. So vote, damn it!

Bill Cowee, impresario with a heart

An American director who had, along with his troupe (his two wives), nearly starved to death in Mexico told me once that you can claim to have an audience when there is one more person in the house than in the cast. I don't know if that's true. Good thing poets aren't bound by rules otherwise, even counting bartenders and baristas, we'd generally come up wanting. My fall back when doing a reading has always been to include an open mic. However, the Ash Canyon Poets don't do open mics. Cowee wants people to have attended at least one Ash Canyon meeting before reading with us in public.

Bill Cowee, poet
Ash Canyon Poet's beloved Impresario

That said, after the conclusion of our reading last night at Border's Books, Bill invited audience members to read if they wanted to. They were practically falling out of their chairs in eagerness. Cowee has an eternal soft spot for anyone with the slightest interest in writing poetry. Under his enormous wing, I have seen people improve who I would rather have dropped off a cliff. And after that, he invited them to join us at Casino Fandango. It is a garish, friendly place which, as soon as it opened, Bill immediately declared our new Friday night meeting after the meeting institution.

Susan Priest, Ash Canyon poet

Roy Chavez, Ash Canyon poet

The casino's quirky Vegas style jungle theme and pampering staff instantly earned the highest regard a group of poets, or dogs, can confer... Loyalty. Every Friday, we sit under the canopy of its neon jungle talking deep into the night over wine and coffee, lakes of chowder and mountains of fries. It provides perfect hideaway for strange birds and even includes a squawking mechanical parrot that scoots along a ceiling track randomly dropping money on people below. When I was a kid the adults warned me that if I grew up to be a poet I would die drunk and poor in the gutter. I don't know whether or not they'll turn out to be right, but that damn bird never drops a penny on any of us.

Borders Reading

After Hours

We're reading at Borders tonight (Ash Canyon Poets) and I'm at it again, doing a fourth version of my poetry zine, After Hours. Will it ever end? I changed a word, redid my SkyRiverPress logo, tweaked the cover and am printing out a few new copies. For all this, I'll probably just give the damn things away. Madness. Yes. This is madness. If, by some remote chance, you want to actually buy a copy, email me. They're 3 bucks, postage paid. ashaATashabot.com


Old logo


My revised logo. Much better.

Pat Robertson, Bush on the eve of the invasion of Iraq

Strange times. Who would have ever guessed that a playboy cowboy backed by such an unlikely combination as former Communists, Jewish extremists, fat cat CEOs, highly discrete billionaires, Ivy League Professors, otherwise known as Neoconservatives, and swarms of automaton evangelicals guided by Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition would ever be able to railroad the United States of America into this bullshit, first-strike war, needlessly sacrifice so many lives and line their pockets all in one swoop?

But recently Pat Robertson and the White House butted heads after Robertson reported to CNN that on the eve of invading Iraq, Bush told him "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties". Today on CNN the White House denied that Bush ever said such a stu-pid thing. What's up with that? Is the Brotherhood getting confused by its own spin? Robinson described Bush that night as "the most self-assured man I've ever met in my life. You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looked like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world'."

There's a creepy, quasi-sexual image...Bush at night, intoxicated by power, totally out of touch with reality, aroused and eager for war. Is it that he just doesn't get it or that he just doesn't care?

Monday Blue Plate Poetry Special #2

Rilke by Balladine Aquarelle

The other day, Mr. Lee reminded me that it's almost Nanowrimo time again. I immediately purged myself of the idea and wouldn't have thought of it until next year (when he will tell me again). But then someone else had to mention it. ARG! But don't get me wrong. I think Nanowrimo is a great idea. Get over yourself! Have fun! Kick out the stops! Be bold! Blast your ass out of the mud! Just write, damn it! Leap before you look! Of course, I'm not going to enter Nanowrimo. I'd have to write 1666.6666666666666666666666666667 words a day for thirty days. I'm sticking to poetry. There I can get by with writing 2 words a day. Less. I don't remember who it was but I completely relate to the poet who said of their day's work, "This morning I changed a comma to a semi-colon and in the afternoon, I changed it back again."

Which brings me to my point, Rilke's "For The Sake Of A Single Poem" which I include here for no particular reason other than it's the Monday Blue Plate Poetry Special.

from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
...Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines. For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough) – they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else – ); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet, restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along high overhead and went flying with all the stars, - and it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves – only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke