No Deal

Yet...

Mariota to Tennessee at #2.


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National Summer of Running

The long, hot U.S. summer is in front of us.

To usher it in we need to run.  We need a national movement steeped in the tradition of political street theater.

We need to run in symbolic unity.  Once a week, preferably every Friday throughout the summer, during your lunch hour if you have one, walk out of your workplace. Walk up to the first policeman you see. (You'll have to find one, but they're everywhere.  Plan ahead a little if you have to, work in small groups.)

Make eye contact, don't speak.  Then run away.  Have your friend shoot the video of you "escaping." If the cop yells at you to stop--stop.  If he chases you down, don't resist. Talk to the officer about why you are running away.  Tell him/her there must be accountability and sanity.

If the officer ignores you, try another.  If he pulls his weapon, get down and stay down. Don't resist.

There are certain risks (street theater can be dangerous, you might get shot for nothing like so many others), but if you haven't done anything you're within your rights to run away.

If you're harmed, you own them.

Send your videos here.  I'll publish them, or create another blog for the occasion.

Word will get around quickly.  Law abiding citizens running away from the police become powerful symbols of unity and an expression of your disgust with police brutality and sanctioned murder.

What else are you gonna do this summer before starting your weekends with a brew?


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Rolling Stone

No shit.  What is the point of the money if the ideas suck?







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Emptiness

What if they played a game and nobody came to watch?

It happened today.


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Pierre Thomas, 37

Faced with intractable poverty, high rates of deadly violence and a "poison" relationship between citizens and the police, it's perhaps not surprising if many Baltimore residents feel like Pierre Thomas, 37, a protester who told NPR this week that calls for "peace" only come when the powerful feel threatened.

"Where was the peace when we were getting shot? Where's the peace when we were getting laid out? Where is the peace when we are in the back of ambulances? Where is the peace then?" Thomas said. "They don't want to call for peace then. But you know when people really want peace? When the white people have to get out of bed, when cops have to wear riot gear, when the cops start talking about, oh we got broken arms. Then they want peace."

"Peace?" Thomas went on. "It's too late for peace."

From the HuffPost.


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Yeah

I'm burning my library copy of "Sketches of Spain" right now.

Man, what took me so long?!  My favorite Miles.  Pure genius.

I'm burning some Jimmy Reed as well.

Then--this is gonna kill ya'll, I burned me some Van Morrison--as in "Moondance," which is one bitchin' album.  And it stoned me...45 years ago and tonight.

I'm arollin'.


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Agreed

I agree.

Buy it.


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Good News

I'm ready here in Portland.  Ready to roll up my sleeves.  Give me a call, Bernie.

Not optimal, but likely as close to Eugene McCarthy as we'll get in my lifetime.

VIETNAM MESSAGE

We will take our corrugated steel
out of the land of thatched huts.
We will take our tanks
out of the land of the water buffalo.
We will take our napalm and flame throwers
out of the land that scarcely knows the use of matches.
We will take our helicopters
out of the land of colored birds and butterflies.
We will give back your villages and fields
your small and willing women.
We will leave you your small joys
and smaller troubles.
We will trust you to your gods,
some blind, some many-handed.

Eugene McCarthy


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POV

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Pulse

David Simon's blog.

Simon's art accomplished nothing.


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TV

I've dialed into a couple of television items thanks to my Netflix free trial.

The German production "Generation War," which CD has praised at his blog, is dang good, though it has been criticized in some circles for misrepresenting the extent of anti-semitism among Polish resistance fighters during WWII.  I'm not sure how much faith to place in either side of that debate, as it's just another example of the many holes in my understanding of the deeper nuances of the war.

Might be an area I need to investigate, as I have somewhat in terms of the French resistance and collaboration. (BTW, one of my favorite movies on that theme was Louis Malle's brilliant "Lacombe, Lucien.")

The other program on my mind is "Bloodline," a direct-to-Netflix series underwritten by Sony.  Set in the contemporary Florida Keys, it's a family saga with, among many fine costars, Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard as mom and dad to a brood of a feuding/loving siblings.

Pretty standard fare thematically (few have done it as well as Shepard with True West), but this is very good television.

Shepard, whose acting usually underwhelms me, stretches out here--his best work yet.

Check out all of the above if you haven't already.


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Product of the Year

Everybody should have one of these!

Thanks to Chris Pilon of Houston for a great Christmas idea.




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After the Fall

If our wars in the Greater Middle East ever end, it’s a pretty safe bet that they will end badly -- and it won't be the first time. The “fall of Saigon” in 1975 was the quintessential bitter end to a war. Oddly enough, however, we've since found ways to reimagine that denouement which miraculously transformed a failed and brutal war of American aggression into a tragic humanitarian rescue mission. Our most popular Vietnam end-stories bury the long, ghastly history that preceded the “fall,” while managing to absolve us of our primary responsibility for creating the disaster. Think of them as silver-lining tributes to good intentions and last-ditch heroism that may come in handy in the years ahead.

UMass historian Christian Appy on identity and war.

Nick Turse quotes Morrison.

Chris Hedges sees a connected new battlefield.


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Quake

Pics of the damage in Kathmandu.

My mind goes back Krakauer's description of the Khumbu icefall just above base camp. The route was changed this year along the icefall, a Nepalese mandate after last season's avalanche killed 15 in the area of the red line marking the previous route.

Perhaps that decision alone saved some people this time?

A Google exec died.  The names of 2K more down the mountain haven't been released.

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Essay of the Week

In the years before he ran for President in 1968, Richard Nixon’s publicists promoted a New Nixon.  It was the same old Tricky Dicky with the rough edges smoothed away.

The old Nixon lost the 1960 presidential election to John Kennedy in 1960; then Pat Brown defeated him in 1962, when he ran for the Governorship of California. The hope after that was, as Nixon himself put it, that the press would no longer “have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Nixon had always had trouble with the press.

But this was not to be. You just can’t keep a good scoundrel down.

A highly charged yet nuanced take down of the scheming Hillary camp, the dithering Republicans, old versus new electoral strategies, praise for Jim Webb, and much more--by the always luminous Andrew Levine.


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