Missing here is a connection between capitalist elites worldwide, our various art industries and institutions, arts education and the umbilical chord of gold that controls their messages. Many American artists I know won't speak out on these issues for fear they'll be marginalized. They self censor fearing they'll be run out of the money for their boldness. Yet other countries support controversial artists, and of course other repressive regimes persecute artists into exile or arrest. Every one of the above issues can be topics for publicly supported artists. If America supports its artists with substantive grants for issue oriented work, we will see another area that helps create change without controls from the mainstream media or its elites. I can happen here if we want real change in all aspects of our American life. Cultural health is just as important as mental and physical health.

They self censor fearing they'll be run out of the money for their boldness.

What is wrong with folks not wanting to labor so that the fruits of their labor are turned over to Artists who might spit on them?

The above is not the end of the argument but there is some room here to argue both sides.

Jim

What is wrong with working people not wanting to pay for unnecessary wars and bloated military budgets when they're getting screwed by their government and the corporations that wreak tremendous profits from war mongering? Your comment is typical American backlash against critical public culture. No wonder we could accept eight years of Bush without protest. Remember the Puritans were thrown out of England in part for their art hating. We know for certain where they landed. Who's spitting on who here, Jim?

Jim, I never would have taken you for an art critic. Knowing the difference between hacks and 'real' artists is normally only given to the educated, acclaimed ivory tower elitists. Since I don't know how to differentiate these nuances, I defer to your expertise.

All I know is that critical artists tried for years to inform the American public, through many media and venues, about the Republican culture of greed and war. Obviously many Americans wanted that culture. We became frustrated. I never met an artist who supported our recent wars. Even as they were taking money from the war profiteers and financiers. It's American hypocrisy that appalls me. Feeding from the trough that seeks to muzzle you is no different than an animal being led to slaughter. Perhaps art and artists are really American after all.

I apologize. Sensitivity ain't one of my strong points. However for me art is not so easily defined. It's affects are not so rigid and potent that they speak to, or for, an entire public in one or another defined way. Duck art moves Minnesotans. It moves me deeply emotional smiles and smirks. I don't think art can have errors as much as mixed, confused or ineffective messages. Since I actually do judge art, I know it's not an elitist but an intellectual process. I try to be as open minded as possible. I often want to point out theme or content weaknesses to artists, it's not my job to teach or preach. Mine is to accept or reject art work for different shows. So I know from experience that artists who intentionally desire to insult the public are few and far between. I've never seen a work that is deliberately profane or irreverent. Anti-authoritarian Yes, Yes, Yes! By all the powers of politics Yes! Part of a political artist's goal is to criticize corrupt and inhumane authority. That so many tell me they feel they are frustrated, ineffectual and ignored because of the political climate is my issue here. Hopefully this too shall pass. I don't have any more to say about this issue as the weekend looms with shows I must see and criticize.

Though we really did try to make it...
Hey sorry to fall into a verse of a cheesy old song but it was the first thing that came to mind, honestly. Everybody is talking about accountability for George Bush and prosecution for his war crimes. I consider myself to be one of the first to know just how corrupt the Bush administration was going to be. When questions about 9/11 started getting swept under the rug and suddenly we had the administration talking retribution against anybody and everybody, I knew it was corrupt. One of the things I studied heavily in college was organizational communications, and propoganda in partcicular. And so when I kept hearing the phrase "Iraq..weapons of mass destruction...9/11" I knew right away we were being fed a big lie and that the administration was counting on the stupidity of the average voter.
So after all this time, I have signed every petition available over and over and over again. I have signed so many things urging impeachment proceedings that it makes my head swim. I have written letters to the editor, most more thought out than this note, and even spell checked unlike this note to other members. Two conclusions have come to my mind on the subject of prosecuting Bush for war crimes. For starters it is too late. For seconds if he is allowed to walk away without prosecution we will never know true freedom or true democracy again. When I was younger I grew fascinated with the asassination of John F. Kennedy. The more I studied about it and the more I read on the subject the more convinced I became that the people who killed him were a group of wealthy Republicans who who were in the CIA at the time and who still have ties to the current administration. I believe these people hi-jacked our government somewhere along about 1958 and have been a force behind all of our wars since. So now after having signed literally hundreds of petitions for the introduction of articles of impeachment again a corrupt administration, I have come to the sad conclusion that it really is too late. Democracy is just a word slung around every so often to make us feel like we are actually accomplishing something with our votes. The only thing we are going to do by pushing the Obama administration to prosecute Bush is to get Obama asassinated by the C.I.A. with a dim witted Alabama clan member held up as a patsy. I am not signing any more petitions. Let's just hope we can get a few good laws and some jobs out of the Obama administration and leave it at that. If he pushes too hard to fight corruption in Washington, I firmly believe he will wind up dead at the hands of our own Government.

an even more important related issue than use of recreational pot, and the hundreds of billions of dollars spent by ideologs trying to surpress its use (Note: it's not a 'moral' issue, but a financial one).

The more important issue is the use of industrialized hemp for replacing the use of fossil fuels used in many of the products we use around the world every day. Top on the list is production of fuel for our vehicles in America (it can replace ALL of the foreign imported oil, and even ALL of the domestically produced oil used rather quickly...and the supply will NEVER run out). Hemp turned into biofuel is the best source available, 20 to 50 TIMES more productive than biofuel made from corn or even sugar cane.

Additionally, it is also not going to starve people around the globe, replenishes the soil without fossil fuel based fertilizers, and has a positive impact regarding reducton of greenhouse gas emmissions. Jack Herer, in his book "The Emperor Has No Clothes", even makes the claim, "Hemp can save the world", a bold statement, but undeniable when the facts he presents are considered.

When are we going to evolve from the fear inducing paradigm of J.Edgar Hoover, Henry Anslinger, & JR Hearst into the 21st century? When are we going to throw off the shackles of companies like DuPont, who lobbied Congress to reject hemp because they stood to gain trillions substituting synthetics (like nylon)for 'greener' hemp products? When are we going to wake up to the fact big business has bribed Congress to foist poor solutions on America strictly because of greed for profit?

Hello,
WE MUST write our elected officials for the 35 articles, so that due process can be served. There is no such thing as "off the table". People of the United States of America vs. Richard Millhouse Nixon has been reviewed by the highest court in the land and protocol has been defined. There should have been an appointment of Special Counsel after the Esteemed Representative from Ohio entered these into record. Discovery is the phase where "off the table" is addressed. Fact is the Senate cannot even comment on this after the 35 articles were read into record. The current President and his Group cannot issue directives or act in any other fashion until these articles are addressed. This was the protocol established by the Nixon ruling. Write your elected officials to uphold the law. Simple stuff. Law has already been defined. I know many of you folks will pen various comments to move this dialog along and I encourage them all. After you take the time to blog this comment, send a comment/letter to your elected officials and keep demanding that your elected officials uphold their legal responsibilities of office. A Yogi Berra-ism is good about here.
Thanks all,
citizen

The Final top first Questions from Obama's Change.gov website was about marijuana.You have no right calling this people potheads.Now your are sounding like President George W. Bush and hes Administration showing no respect for the American people I dont think I like the Democrats.com web site any more I have had all the Bush no respect bullcrap I can stand If this is being a Democrat then I dont wont to be one any more I have respect for all the American.

Steven Harmon

A fine list, but why do you prefer a prosecutor who let Rove and Cheney off the hook in the Plame investigation?

While I have no major issues with Fitzgerald (Gerald Fitzpatrick??), why would we pick a Republican to prosecute Republican criminals? Why do we even have an incoming(continuing) Republican unindicted October Suprise criminal as the new Sect'y of Defense? Is this a Harry Reid 60 vote Stockholm syndrome mentality? This guy failed to follow up on the Cheney/Rove connection to the felony political outing of our CIA agent for WMD's, now you want him leading the next investigation into Cheney/Rove? This is serious stuff folks! There is no margin for compromise or failure (again) here!!

Community Spirit

Taking an increased interest in our community, our family attends a neighborhood watch meeting to become better acquainted with our neighbors, our local police officers and representatives.

At some point we notice our daughter (or our mother) has stepped out of the room.

After a few moments, concerned about her absence, we step into the hallway to see where she might have gone – perhaps the restroom down the hall.

At the next door, two steps down the darkened hallway, we hear a scuffle and a muffled cry for help – we try the door but find it locked from the inside.

We rush back to the meeting room and call upon the officers for help.

We all rush to the locked door – the officers force it open – plunge into the room with guns drawn and discover our daughter (or our mother) being raped!

The officers turn to us and instruct us all to return to the meeting room. They holster their guns and shepherd us out of the room – back into the hall explaining, “We have to let him go – he’s almost finished.”

The elected officials nod their heads in agreement.

Need I explain who the rapist might be? That my mother is the country, the Constitution our daughter and those we depend upon for protection are our Congressmen?

Concern for the new President

Even I, an avowed atheist, may be moved to pray for Barak Obama as he shoulders the burdens of leadership of a nation whose citizens and whose elected representatives have so devalued the rule of law and our Constitution that George Bush and Richard Cheney are permitted to continue poisoning the environment, both moral and physical, until their very last days in office when they may pardon themselves and their cohorts for the many impeachable actions that have ben so well documented over the past eight years.

A question for the President Elect

How will you remove the stain on our Constitution left by the failure of this Congress to honor their oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution in the face of so many carefully researched and well documented violations of trust and law attributed to Bush, Cheney et al?
The Constitution does not empower Speaker Pelosi to take impeachment "off the table". The repudiation of Bush's impeachable actions through the constitutionally mandated process of impeachment is the only way to demonstrate to our children, future Presidents and the world that our system of government establishes a nation of laws that works for all the people.
This work left undone is a corrosive so dangerous to the fundamental ideals of our democracy that it undermines the very oath of office taken by every elected officeholder.
Personally, I find no motivation to work for a political party whose leadership and whose elected representatives - and whose MEMBERS found insufficient devotion to the Constitution to use its mandated procedure, impeachment, to remove the President as well as the Vice President whose actions in office have been more reprehensibly impeachable than those of any administration in our history.

Get Bruce Fein or Robert Wexler as Attorney General! There can be no real Change until the Bush/Cheney administration and its policies are officially and publicly repudiated.

I think Obama will probably be “assassinated” anyway if he rocks the boat too much, so why not go down doing the right thing? And the real people who run the government, this country and are responsible for the JFK thing aren’t in the CIA or any agency. So don’t blame any of them. They’re not republican, democrat or independent. More like satanists and that’s all.

Anyway, No one is talking about restoring the dollar which is about to crash. The first thing Obama needs to do is kick the Federal Reserve out of our country. All our income taxes do is pay the interest for the money we borrow from them crooks. We don’t need them, the whole thing was created/passed during the middle of the night on Christmas Eve back in 1913 when no one was around to oppose it except for the few crooks that were paid to pass it. (Look it up)

Once those crooks are kicked out of the country, then Obama can get rid of the income tax. Imagine a 33% pay increase. Talk about stimulating the economy. And it doesn’t involve a buy out, oops I mean bail out, which only devaluates the dollar even more and will cause its eventual collapse. You guys don’t seem to realize how close we are to becoming a 3rd world country. We can’t keep printing more money out of thin air and expect it to be of any value.

The government doesn’t need the federal reserve acting as a middle man for us to print money. Our forefathers fought desperately to keep this out of America and now we’ve allowed it to happen and we’re reaping the rewards for this mistake. But any salvation for this country has to start there. Then we can do all the others things being talked about. Otherwise none of it doesn’t matters.

The world is watching us, without prosecuting Herr Rumsfeldt, GeorgEWbushie, and whataDICcheney etal for all the crimes they have comitted, we the people have simply lost our way. I too hold Nancy Pelosi resopnisble for taking impeachment off the table. She obviously is not willing to do her job. Obama needs to make sure these guys are able to be prosecuted after leaving office, and I for one do not want them retired-laughing all the way to the bank. George Bush drove this country into the ditch. And he and moreso even Cheney need to be held accountable. Herr Rumsfeldt the true sinister evil player himself is golfing today. This makes me sick. Torture and Guantanomo bay and Blackwater also need IMMEDIATE attention by Obama. The world is watching and the time is now.. IMPEACHMENT on their way out... WHY NOT??????

Our country was formed by Liberal thinkers looking for individual rights and freedoms. That includes equality with respect to all things legal. There is no other option for Constitutionalist PE Obama, nor is this a matter even close to suitable for some committee or commission. It is the People's right to legal redress for any crime, including subversion, preemption, torture, murder, and theft via occupation.

There is no grey area to explore.

If Obama wants to frustrate those of us who knew what was up _before_ the 2000 coup, and create havoc, go ahead and toss this grave matter aside. It is the single most important duty Obama has before him. I would suggest he takes care of business quickly and assigns the matter to Fitzgerald and team.

I know they are ready.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/fitzs_dominoes.html

The image code doesn't seem to work:

so, sorry for the extra click.

http://www.light-to-dark.com/benedick_bush.jpg