21/07/2005

FIRE ROVE, mister president



They laughed at Bushie Boy. They called him a dilettante, a wastrel, a trust fund baby, but Bush had dreams and the money to buy them. That's where mercenary Karl Rove, aka Turd Blossom, comes in.



Like any disease, Rove is most effective out of sight, but given an inch, he stole the horizon. Over the years Turd Blossom has metastasized, transforming the Republican Party into a modern day Mafia. People who are a threat are either embarrassed and contained, like Senator John McCain,
or simply squeezed out and left behind. Ethics, fair play, even the truth seem powerless before Rove's assault. He is not hampered by morals.

The lesson for the kiddies? Crime pays. Today Turd Blossom, as Bush calls him, is the co-president of the United States of America. Karl is the brains. He has the power. He is the Commander-of-the-Chief of the United States military and puppet master and moral conscience of the Republican Party and its evangelical foot soldiers. Everyone is on the payroll. Not bad for a leech. Put simply, Karl Rove is a sociopath and we are all fucked.

Or is there a slim, slight, nearly impossible chance that Treasongate, Rove's outing of undercover Valerie Plame, might have...oh dare I say it... consequences? Like Nixon's Watergate, it could bring down their house of jokers.




excerpt from:
Rove: out of White House, into jail?
by Tim Wheeler

WASHINGTON —

Bush’s Brain,” a political biography of Rove by Dallas Morning News reporters James Moore and Wayne Slater, reveals that Rove’s political skullduggery dates back to 1970 and was an important factor in the ultra-right’s rise to power in the U.S.

Rove was a Young Americans for Freedom operative working for the GOP in Illinois that year. Posing as a Democrat, he infiltrated Alan Dixon’s campaign headquarters in Chicago a few days before its official opening. Dixon was a Democratic candidate for state treasurer who later served in the U.S. Senate.

Rove stole campaign letterhead and made up a fake invitation to the Dixon opening with promises of “free beer, free food, girls, and a good time for nothing.” He distributed 1,000 copies at soup kitchens. Hundreds showed up. Richard Nixon’s chief dirty trickster, Donald Segretti, went to jail for similar acts in the Watergate scandal.

In 1972, Rove was executive director of College Republicans. He and an accomplice, Bernie Robinson, organized 15 conferences to train youth how to campaign for Nixon’s re-election. Moore and Slater write that Rove “could not resist instructing his young audiences on dirty tricks — pranks, he called them.”

At an August 1972 seminar in Lexington, Ky., Rove, “with considerable delight talked about campaign espionage, about digging through an opponent’s garbage,” Moore and Slater write. “This was the summer of the Watergate break-in, with the first revelations of a scandal that unraveled the Nixon presidency.” Rove and Robinson “even specifically mentioned the Watergate break-in in their seminars, not as a reason to avoid campaign espionage, but as a caution to keep it secret.”

Decades later, Rove, chief strategist of George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, destroyed Bush’s main Republican challenger, Arizona Sen. John McCain, by leaking a racist falsehood that McCain had fathered an “illegitimate Black child.”

When Bush and Cheney saw their lead disappearing in Florida in the post-election battle, Rove recruited 250 goons to terrorize election officials to halt the vote count.

“Documents released to the IRS 19 months after the election show that the Bush team spent over a million dollars to fly operatives into Florida and another million to pay their hotel bills. The effort also relied on a fleet of corporate jets owned by people like Enron chairman Kenneth Lay … and Halliburton, where Vice President Dick Cheney had served as CEO. … Karl Rove, working with James A. Baker III, put it all together.”

But marching outside the White House last week were demonstrators with signs reading, “Bush, keep your promise: Fire Karl Rove.”

20/07/2005

Tonopah, NV



I pass through Tonopah on a regular basis and have photographed it a lot. Here's a few pictures I took on my most recent visit.



Tonopah is in the center of the drain. I happen to enjoy the place but then I like lost worlds.



Strange and sad as they may be, they have interesting stories to tell.

Submitting poetry

I don't know why I have such a block against submitting poetry. I know it's "good enough". Total crap gets published. The big boogie fear of rejection is not my problem. Plus I promised myself, and a few pushy friends, that I'd start submitting after the writer's conference, as though that were a reason to wait. Now that's over I have no excuse. Plus I'm having neck and elbow surgery pretty soon and then I won't be able to do anything for a while. So got to get busy..........

....okay then....



Before I begin I have a confession to make. I'm a poet but I don't like writing or submitting, not poetry. Not anything. Clearly I prefer images. I can't seem to do a post without including at least one. Take these, for example. They're from another day I intended to write. I went to Comma Coffee for a change of scene but instead of writing, I photographed the place again. June has a flare, you have to admit. The whole place reeks of ambiance even if it is across the street from the Nevada State Senate.

Okay. I'll get busy now. I don't know why I have to write about it???

Oh. one more thing. Never mind. Why do I do this to myself?

Never mind.

18/07/2005

Until next year


Whew! It's over. The Juniper Creek conference was wonderful, but it was a lot of intensity crammed into one tiny little weekend. It's Tuesday and I still feel like I'm slogging back across mud flats after being swept out by a huge wave.



It was great seeing people I met last year. Nice meeting new people. I learned a few things. I got some good feedback, good direction.
Gayle Brandeis was especially helpful. Thanks again, Gayle. Plus we sold enough copies of Ash Canyon Review to pay for the next two issues! Also, I picked up several new poetry books and journals: Hard Night by Christian Wiman, The Dumbbell Nebula by Steve Kowit, a couple of issues of The Sierra Nevada College Review, three issues of Caveat Lector, and a copy of Quercus Review. I've scattered them around the various places I sit for quiet and a cup of coffee. I've got some good summer reading ahead of me.

The best part of the conference for me however, was that my daughter attended it. I don't mind saying that, besides being a completely cool person, she is a wonderful writer. Contrary to popular opinion, moms are not disqualified from objectively knowing things like that! It was so incredible being there together as writers, friends and mom and daughter. It really doesn't get any better than that!

16/07/2005

Juniper Creek Writer's Conference 05



We're mid-way through the writer's conference. Last night Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry Magazine, gave a nice keynote address. He addressed the pitiful irrelevance poetry has fallen to over the last several years. I couldn't agree more. The journal is the oldest in America and, since receiving a 200 million dollar endowment from a dear departed reader a couple of years ago, the richest. Maybe they'll be able to up the stakes a bit. I hope they manage to stay independent doing it. He mentioned he recently wrote an article critical of a government writing program offered soldiers returning from Iraq. He said for about a month after that his life was very uncomfortable, a bit like having Tony Soprano mad at you.

One of my poems was a finalist in the poetry contest and Christian is critiquing it in his workshop today, which is cool. I"m looking forward to hearing what he has to say about it.

13/07/2005

Bush and the good ol boy network


What lies will Karl Rove cobble together now to save his ass? I'm sure it will be very creative. He is, after all, the master strategist that has guided Bush & Co. through so many scandals it's hard to keep track. Too bad he works for the dark side. He's a talent, that one.

Naturally, Bush flipped flopped on his promise to dismiss anyone involved in the Plame scandal. No surprise there. Bush needs Rove like the feet need the brain. Bush couldn't find his way to the bathroom without a instructions from Karl. And who better tends to Bush's chronic disorder, foot in mouth disease?

I'm so glad I don't have a television. I don't have to not watch what's not being covered by the right wing propaganda machine Fox and the other media whores parading as legitimate journalists ....... the truth about Karl Rove and Co. and his revenge on people telling it. Karl says black is white, evil is good, shit is ice cream....the media reports it and Amerrrkans believe it.

In WW2 traitors were executed. How times have changed. Now Republicans crucify Clinton for a blow job while Rove blows off the CIA and national security and gets the president's personal protection.