Observation

Am I the only one to note that the Defense Department is now headed by a former top CIA guy, and the CIA is about to be headed by a former top military guy? And both were key figures in the regime of George Senior.

Actually, to go on record, I think the nomination of ADM McConnell to head the CIA is a good choice. I was at NSA during McConnell's tenure as Director and he was very good. He had a clear vision of where NSA needed to go, he communicated well with people at every level of the organization, and he wasn't afraid to knock heads when necessary. He's not a political animal, although he certainly understands how to use politics when necessary. He's stepping into one of the hardest jobs in government right now, but I think he'll do well. We ALL need him to do well.

Bush's Iraq Strategy

I've been speaking as loudly as I can for the past three years about the stupidity of George Bush and his neocon friends. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was one of the dumbest things that any President has ever done. Bush lied about his reasons for going to war and the Republican party has goose-stepped in unison behind him. But it has finally become clear to all, even Bush, that the strategy of "stay the course" is a complete failure. So this past week, he unveiled his new strategy for Iraq. And it comes as a huge suprise to all that know me - hell, even to ME - that I actually support the plan.

The reason is that, finally, Bush has articulated a clear and possibly achievable goal: calming down Baghdad long enough for the Iraqi leaders to get their acts together and start acting like a real government. And he's committed an increased number of troops to the mission. It's not the numbers that the experts have called for, but they're at least concentrated on one area and mission, not just thrown into the same old quagmire.

I don't think this plan has even a 50-50 chance of succeeding. It depends on too many things that can go seriously wrong:
- The Iraqi government starting to do its job.
- A reduction in the corruption that's siphoned off billions of OUR dollars.
- The Iraqi military and (especially) the police becoming at least marginally effective.
- The Sunni and Shi'ite militias stepping back from their levels of violence.
- Iran and Syria not stirring the pot too much.
- No more American scandals like Abu Ghraib or Haditha.
- George Bush staying focused on the problem.

All that being said, I think this plan does have a small chance of moving the country forward, which is something that neither Bush's previous strategy nor the Iraq Study Group's plan featured.

Bush talks about this being a long-term commitment. I don't think so. We'll know in six months whether progress is really being made. If Baghdad's quieter by late June, and if the Iraqi government is making progress towards a real solution, then we might see light at the end of the tunnel. If not, then it's time to call a failed nation a failed nation and to do what's necessary to protect our own soldiers, people, and interests.

As it is, my patience is about gone. I've had it with the whole thing. I say give Bush and Maliki one last chance to pull something together. If they screw it up again, then get our troops the hell out of the way.

Thoughts on Iraq

Sometime in the next few days, George Bush is going to lay out his “new direction” for Iraq. He got the recommendations from the Iraq Study Group a month ago and has been considering his options since then. I want to get my thoughts out on record before George does.

First, some background. Back in ’02, when talk of attacking Iraq first surfaced, I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt. I retired from the Navy as a cryptologist in ’99, and at that time I knew that Saddam was pretty much contained. He was a pain in the ass, but he wasn’t hurting anybody outside Iraq, and he certainly wasn’t a threat to us. Bush kept talking about the “threat” Hussein posed, and with such experienced advisors as Cheney and Rumsfeld, I figured that something new in Iraq must have come up since my retirement. As time went on, however, it became clear that there wasn’t anything new: it was the same old stuff, just repackaged with a few exclamation points thrown in to make it sound urgent. So I came down hard against the war in Iraq.

One other thing: I believed Hussein had chemical and biological weapons. Bush cited that as the “grave danger” that Hussein posed; I viewed it as a “so what”. As long as we stayed out of Iraq, our soldiers wouldn’t have to deal with them. There are lots of bad guys around the world that have bad weapons and it’s not our responsibility to go around invading them because of it. So I was angry that Bush was going to throw our troops into a chem/bio war for no reason.

Fortunately, there weren’t chem/bio/nuke weapons of any sort. Instead, there was something that was worse: strong Iraqi sectarian animosities that were contained under Hussein’s brutal rule, and absolutely no American plan for what would happen after Hussein’s overthrow. This combination has led to steadily increasing levels of violence and to the current state of low-level civil war. For three years, Bush has pretended that the situation in Iraq has been going well … maybe okay … so it’s really going well except for the damn media … umm, it’s making progress … except that progress is slower than expected … until nobody believes him anymore.

Now the situation is this:
- Iraq has a government that is essentially useless, powerless, corrupt, and incompetent.
- Various sectarian forces have stepped into the power vacuum and are escalating the “ethnic cleansing”.
- Our military is playing a game of “whack-a-mole” and is not making any real progress.
- Our military is the only real US player in the country. There’s almost no State Department representation, little/no economic or political or any other kind of help. It’s just boots on the ground.
- Our military is way overstretched, with some troops currently on their third tour in as many years. Our senior generals are saying that they’re nearly at the breaking point.
- The blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group has noted that the situation in Iraq can only be solved by Iraqis, not forced by the US.
- The Iraq Study Group recommended gradual disengagement of US military forces and increased negotiation with Syria and Iran, who are stirring the pot in Iraq.

It appears that George didn’t like the ISG’s report. So he started talking to others. And from press reports, it appears that the only people he’s listening to are the neoconservatives, who are arguing for a buildup of forces. To me, the neoconservatives have less than zero credibility: they’re a bunch of liars who got us into this mess in the first place. But neocons like to talk about “victory”, and George likes “victory”, even if he doesn’t know what it is nor how to achieve it.

Now for my viewpoint. I have been looking for a rational plan from SOMEbody in power for over three years now. I believe that we have an obligation to the world to bring stability to Iraq. It’s the old Pottery Barn rule: we broke it, we should fix it. But nobody has offered a plausible way to do that. George has one last chance this week to present one.

Everybody has been focused on troop strength. That should actually be a fallout of a rational plan. In other words, a good plan should come first, then you decide on how many people you need to implement it. I’ve seen one or two good plans, but they require far more people (50-100K) than the numbers coming out of the White House (20K).

I’m afraid that George is going to screw it up again. I think he’s looking for something he can call a “plan” that will need 20K more troops. He wants a troop increase for political reasons, so it looks like he’s doing something. He won’t draw down the troops because that’s an admission he failed. And he won’t commit the numbers that are really needed.

In my view, if he chooses not to commit sufficient resources, he chooses to let Iraq sink. If he chooses to let Iraq sink and keep the troop strength the same or bigger, then he not only fails Iraq, he fails the country by wrecking our already-overstretched Army and Marines. If he chooses to let Iraq sink and pull our troops out, at least we can start rebuilding our forces.

So the choice is to between implementing a realistic plan with sufficient resources, or pulling our troops out. Both are tough but we can live with them. Anything less than either of these choices is complete and utter failure, both now and for the long term.

Happy Hanukah?

A lady I know was telling me today that her young daughter was invited to a Hanukah party by one of her classmates. The girl had invited pretty much her whole elementary school class. The lady took her daughter over there a bit early and was the first to arrive. When she went back to pick her up later, it appeared that she was also the last to go.

As it turned out, nobody else had come.

The girls are young and don't seem to really understand what happened. They just had a great time playing together. The mother was appalled. As am I. Why would all those parents keep their young children from experiencing a Hanukah party?

Well, DUHH: it's because racism and anti-Semitism is alive and well in the South. But they won't tell you that. And they may not even think they're racist or anti-Semites. They all think they're proper Christians, raising their children the right way. (I know this because they've said it to this lady on different occasions). The problem, of course, is that Jesus was a Jew and would have celebrated Hanukah himself. So by keeping themselves and their children away from Jewish practices, they're missing an opportunity to understand a side of Jesus that's not taught in Christian churches. What are they afraid of: that their children are going to be forcibly converted to Judaism? Give me a break!

Every time I think this country's making progress, something like this happens to throw a wet blanket on my illusions.

And to my Jewish friends: Happy Hanukah, and I'll come to your party.

Merry Christmas to ALL in the military

Today is Christmas and I'm fortunate to be home with my own family. But there was a time when I was in the Navy and deployed to somewhere far from home during the holidays. Those days are over, but somebody else has taken my place on the deck watch, or the operations floor, or the thousand and one other places where military people must spend their time to keep our forces ready for anything.

So today I'm sending these Christmas greetings to all those who wear an American military uniform, wherever you may be. Thank you for taking up the challenge to serve this great country.

And have yourself a great Christmas!

Nonsense Spam

We all get spam, but I've noticed that over the past several months, I'm not getting as many offers to enhance my male virility or save money on prescription drugs. (If I'd followed up on even half of them, I'd be better endowed than King Kong and it wouldn't have cost me a nickel!) Instead, nowadays I'm getting nonsense. Real nonsense. This new breed of spam seems to be made up of random sentence generators, with titles like "themselves on the his heart because of pure heart to heal thyself ". Makes it easy to identify and delete, but I'm wondering, who would go to all the trouble of spam that doesn't do anything except clutter mailboxes?

Career Change

A few days ago, I received an email from a post that I subscribe to. The writer spoke of a friend of his named "Bill". "Bill" is a stockbroker, but isn't happy with his life. He see's Robert (the writer) making a lot of money selling his paintings and wants some of that action. "Bill" is thinking of quitting his job, leaving his wife, and going to live on an island for six months and just paint. In other words, he's Paul Gauguin. Robert said his recommendation was to take a leave of absence for six months and see if that's what the guy really wanted to do. The question to us was, what would we say? And, of course, I had something to pitch in. Here's what I said:

"Robert, your advice to "Bill" to take a leave of absence was good. "Bill" is obviously unhappy with his current situation and searching for something better. However, he doesn't have a clue to what it's like in the real art world.

Like many of your readers, I'm on my second career. I was a Navy officer for 22 years. My move into art was carefully planned: I studied with private artists and at Maryland Institute College of Art's continuing ed classes while on active duty. After retiring, I earned a BFA from a university with a very strong fine arts program. I've been an "emerging" artist since graduating three years ago, working my tail off to make paintings, get them in shows, and market like crazy. My studio is still in the red, however, and probably will be for another couple of years. It's a good thing that I have my military retirement and my wife has a good job. Without this support system, I couldn't have made it. Or I wouldn't be painting what I want to paint, which to me is the same thing.

To be monetarily successful in the art world, it seems like you have to be very talented and/or skilled (they're not the same thing), you have to create something that a lot of people want to buy, you have to have a great promotional system, you have to work your tail off, and you need a good bit of luck.

To be personally successful, you need to find a way of working that satisfies your inner demons. To do that, you have to be willing to ask yourself some really hard questions about who you are and what is important to you. And you have to answer them honestly, whatever the real answers are. Even then, you haven't even started the issue of making a living at it.

And regardless of whether you're striving for personal or monetary success, six months ain't gonna do it. That period might give him an idea of what it's like to really focus on something, and he might be able to build up a body of work. But he'll be just barely getting started: being a successful artist requires way, way, WAY more than that.

Before throwing everything away, "Bill" needs to understand what he's really getting into. Otherwise, he may as well try to make a million as the lead singer in a rock and roll band."

Botero and Abu Ghraib

There's an artist named Fernando Botero who's well-known for his paintings of cute chubby people. He's made a very lucrative career of them. His paintings normally have all the emotional depth of a Hallmark card, but sell like crazy.

Botero has now done a series of paintings on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. You can see them on the Marlborough Gallery web site. Frankly, I'm impressed. He takes his signature chubby people, but this time they're not cute: they're tormented, anguished, and in pain. The works address a deep and painful subject. There is a tremendous amount of feeling in these pictures. In stepping out from his normal shtick, Botero has hit a home run.

But Botero hasn't gone far enough. Frankly, none of us have. There have been quite a few artists who have criticized President Bush, the Iraq war, and American excesses at Abu Ghraib. I've been one of them. But in seeing these works, I'm struck by the fact that it's always the United States that's the subject of criticism. Where is the criticism of the Sunni and Shi'ite death squads? Time magazine just had an article on Abu Deraa, a Shi'ite warlord who's responsible for thousands of Iraqi deaths. One of his favorite techniques is to run a power drill into a live victim's head. Where, I ask you, is the art world's criticism of Abu Deraa? Where is the criticism of Putin, who's rolling back all the democratic gains that Russia has made since the collapse of the USSR? Where is the criticism of Hezballah for the war they started with Israel? I'm no fan of Israel, but the widespread condemnation of Israel for the destruction in southern Lebanon ignored the fact that Hezballah did half of it. You can pick almost any conflict around the globe, and artists probably aren't doing anything about it, except to criticize the U.S.

And as much as I can't stand Bush, he's right when he complains about the criticism of America over Abu Ghraib and other atrocities. If we're going to condemn atrocities, we need to condemn them ALL: American, Shi'ite, Sunni, Serb, Sudanese, all of them.

So Botero's work is great, as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough.

A Red-Hot Art Market?

At least four magazines have published articles recently on the "red-hot art market". Time is the latest; others include Vanity Fair and W Magazine; I forget where I saw the other one. These articles have all talked about the millions of dollars being thrown into art auctions at Christies and Sotheby's. One article had a serious discussion with some art-world bigwigs about how an individual should spend a million or more to build an art collection. There was also a lot of talk about how scouts are trolling art schools to find the latest hot sensation. As a working artist, I have one question:

What "hot" art market?

For most living artists, the art market began a downswing in about 2000, and then collapsed almost entirely over the next couple of years. Good galleries went belly-up left and right. Sales on the art festival circuit plummeted. It appears that the slide has stabilized over the past year or so, but I don't think it has recovered any lost ground yet.

The reason: America's middle class has been under seige for the past six years. Job security is almost nonexistent. Even with the current job growth, people still have fresh memories of business closures, job losses, and pay cuts. Real take-home pay has declined. Consumer confidence is way down. Art is the first thing people cut when times are tight, and the last thing to be restored. And there's no restoration happening yet.

The "market" they're talking about is the tiny tip at the top, where multibillionaires throw money around like it's nothing. It's the same one that the Barrett-Jackson auto auction cater to, where somebody will spend a million bucks on a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda. We saw similar feeding frenzies in the dot com boom of the late 90's and the housing price boom in this decade. So, in other words, the market is being driven by greed, speculation, and the desire to one-up the neighbors. It's not about art at all.

I think the only way to fix this is the same way we fix the rest of America: restore the middle class's security and income. It's the middle class that supports working artists. When people are secure, upwardly mobile, and confident that things will continue that way, they buy art.

Working artists are the canaries in the cultural coal mine. If you really want to know how confident America is, ask a working artist. You can forget about those in the "red hot art market".

Rain Clouds Keep Dumping On My Head

So Friday, I get the mail, and here's a dunning notice from the city of Asheville saying I haven't paid my parking ticket from August yet. This is news to me, as I never saw a parking ticket in August, or any month this year. I try to call, and of course their system's down. On to the next item in the mail, which is a reject notice from an exhibition in New York that I was hoping to get into. Then on the news at 11, there's a comment that two out-of-the-way railroad crossings are going to be closed for several days starting on Sunday. These two crossings happen to be the ones that are critical to traffic in Asheville's River Arts District, and of course THIS is the weekend of the River Arts District Studio Stroll! Oh, yes, this weekend is off to a flying start!

Saturday starts off okay: the weather is nice and we hear that the closing notice is erroneous. Whew, dodged that bullet! On to the studio, and here come the thousands of visitors eager to buy our art. Well, hundreds of them, anyway ... and not at all eager, as it turns out. After all day in the studio, I sold a grand total of one (count 'em, 1) poster for $20. I'd even made a special effort to put away the political stuff and get out the happy pictures. To no avail.

Sunday was a disaster. It was cold and windy. I got down there early to set up the information tent and there were the railroad guys ripping up the crossties out of the intersection, which was now closed for the next several days. So the information that the report was erroneous was itself erroneous. We put up my tent for the information booth and it blew over inside of ten minutes, bending a couple of support braces and rendering it inoperative for the duration. I got the tent workers resettled in another location (next to a coffeeshop, so they were happy), then went out to relocate some of our directional signs to show visitors the convoluted detour route around the damn railroad guys. Ever tried to pound one of those cheap signs into packed roadside gravel? Try eight of 'em.

I finally got back to the studio about two hours after the Stroll officially began. As it turned out, I probably could've gone home instead. Very few visitors and nothing else sold. Not even a poster.

I spent all today framing a bunch of etchings for a show here in town. Went to the building to hang it and found out that the company sponsoring the show is no longer in business. Ergo, no show. Bummo.

Do you remember the "Lil Abner" comic strip? I think that was the strip that had one character who walked around with a raincloud over his head all the time. That's been me since Friday. The wonderful lady who arranged the show asked me this evening if my raincloud was contagious.

Sigh.

What can ya do? Rant in your blog, bitch and moan, then get up in the morning and keep on plugging. What else is there?

Election Results

Oh, happy day! We got rid of our corrupt Congressman and the Democrats have taken control of the House, with the Senate is still up in the air. President Bush is talking this morning about "bipartisanship" ... a concept he hates even worse than terrorism, since it hasn't been on the radar in over six years.

I think what this all means is that finally we'll have some checks and balances to Bush's imperial agenda. Without enough votes to override a presidential veto, the two sides will either have to compromise or get nothing done. At least Congress won't be a rubber stamp anymore.

The big question will be the '08 elections. The Democrats were successful this time because they weren't Republicans. That won't be enough in two years. Now the Democratic leadership has to do something they've failed to do for years: articulate a forward-looking vision. They don't have a lot of time to do it, either: if it's not clear by next January, it's too late.

But at least the Republican excesses are ended.

Portrait Workshop

Last weekend I went to Raleigh for a portrait painting workshop. Now, if you've looked at my web site, you know that portraits are not something I focus on. But I saw this as an opportunity to learn something from people who do portraits for a living. And it worked out very well.

On Friday night there was a portrait demo by Dawn Whitelaw. She talked her head off while painting and I scribbled 6 pages of notes as fast as my little hand could scribble. (Side note: Talking while painting is hard. Both activities use very different areas of the mind and I, for one, can't switch back and forth very well. She did, though.) I learned quite a few things about color mixing and paint application.

For example, Dawn uses a rather radical palette. Most painters start with two reds, two yellows, two blues, probably a couple of earth colors, a white, and more than likely a few other favorites. Not Dawn. She had one red (napthol), one yellow (cad yellow light), one blue (ultramarine), and titanium white. That was it. And she still managed to come up with an impressive variety of colors on the canvas.

On Saturday, there was a workshop run by Dawn and Ed Jonas. I tried out a number of the things Dawn talked about and got some feedback from both of the instructors. At the end of the day, I walked away with some new skills and a better understanding of my own capabilities and limitations. Not a bad weekend's work!

Now back to the real world. I came down with a bug of some sort on the trip and am still fighting it. Today is election day. This weekend will be our fall Studio Stroll, where all the artists in our area (over 70) open our studios to the public. And next week I have a show of my etchings going up. So I'm trying to get the studio in shape for visitors, get some work ready for presentation in both the Stroll and the show, get rid of the bug, and fight a bad case of the "I don't care's" (probably brought on by the bug). And all the while, there's a really neat painting leaning against the wall in my studio that desperately needs to be finished.

Painting

Y’know, even though this blog is titled “Ramblings from a Painter”, I haven’t written much about painting. Over the past few days, I’ve had some interesting conversations about painting with different people. Might be time to share the substance of them here.

A couple of years ago, I was asked, "What do you really want to do?" At the time, I had gotten very concerned with selling my paintings, and was painting pictures with only sales in mind. I wasn't at all happy with myself or the work, and they didn't sell worth a hoot anyway. Then, out of nowhere, came that question. It brought me up short and I thought about it for a long time. I finally realized that I had to tackle the issues most important in my life. All this occurred right after the 2004 elections. I decided to plumb my own feelings about the state of the country, and it led me to much stronger paintings. This year I've added a series on another subject that has affected me personally: war. And lately I'm beginning to see these two series start to merge.

These works (particularly the satirical ones) are often overt and didactic. I felt they had to be. Nothing like a sledgehammer between the eyeballs to get somebody's attention! They've proven to be attention-grabbers wherever they've been shown. But there are a lot of subtle details in them. I want people to get my idea immediately, but also be able to discover new things in them no matter how many times they look.

While sales would be nice, my goal for now is just to get them seen. That's proving to be difficult, since even most non-profits have an eye towards either sales or continued support from their major donors. I approached the local Democratic Party office to see if they'd be interested in using them in campaigns or fundraisers, but when I had to explain that the paintings were satire, I kinda lost all hope! But I'm keeping on with this theme. Don't know where it'll lead, but this is the kind of art I need to make.

Rolling Stone on Congress

For a ripping, no-holds-barred review of Congress for the last six years, take a look at this article in the current issue of Rolling Stone, "Inside the Worst Congress Ever". And check to see if your congressman is on their list of the 10 Worst. Mine isn't, but he is on the list of the "20 Most Corrupt" prepared by the non-partisan Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

But hopefully that'll change with the election in two weeks!

Iraq

It's been a while since I posted anything here. So much has been happening that I don't have much time to spend at the computer. Then when I do, there's too much to write about. It's the same way today. So I'll just bite off a small chunk and chew on it a while, and save the rest for later.

Much news about Iraq over the past few days. 60 Minutes had a report on corruption in the new Iraqi government. The Bush administration gave 'em $1.2 billion to buy equipment for the military. They spent $400 million on junk and siphoned $800 million to private bank accounts in Europe and elsewhere. CBS's intrepid reporter found one of the Iraqi officials living high on the hog in Paris. Yeah, that's just the sort of visionary leadership the world needs, huh? And that's YOUR tax dollars at work. We can't fund Katrina repairs, we can't fund schools, we can't fund health care for National Guard members mobilized for duty in Iraq, but Bush has no problem wasting $1.2 BILLION on his Iraq pipedream!

Meanwhile, George has been closeted with senior military officials. They're not using the term "stay the course" anymore ... seems they finally realized that the "dead-enders" who are "on their last legs" (remember those Cheneyisms?) have dragged Iraq into a full-blown civil war. (Okay, so Busy isn't acknowledging what the rest of the world knows, that it's already a full-blown civil war ... that would be bad for politics, what with the mid-term elections only two weeks away). Anyway, now Bush is starting to talk about "benchmarks" and turnover to the Iraqi government.

About time, I say. I've long felt that the two alternatives of the right and left were dead wrong. Bush wanted a blank check (literally) to maintain a policy that was obviously failing. The Democrats wanted a definitive pull-out date. Neither answered the real question, which is how to get Iraq to a stage where it can limp along on its own. Now they're finally getting to the right questions that they should've been debating a year ago, but it's probably too late. The questions have changed now. Iraq has a corrupt and incompetent government, a civil war raging between Shi'ites and Sunnis (and now beween Shi'ite and Shi'ite), no economy to speak of, and a growing influence from Iranian-style fundamentalism.

So George Bush has removed a thug from power and turned a repressed-but-functioning country into a cesspool. Way to go, George!

Wackos

In my note on Camp Democracy a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about talking with a guy who claimed that the government was controlling his thoughts through the chips implanted in the fillings in his teeth. Later, I shared this story in an email to a friend who works in one of the federal security agencies. He sent me his own story:

"I know you're not making it up. I've run into a few of those folks along the way as you can well imagine. One time I took a call from one of these guys, a regular who called our office several times a week. I asked him for his name and address. He didn't want to give it to me until I said, "How do I know whose chips to turn off if you won't tell me your name and address?" He thought about it, then told me. I told him we didn't need his devices any more, and I would turn them off as soon as we hung up. We never heard from him again!"

Russian Artist Visitors

We had a group of Russian artists visit our studios today. They were here from Asheville's sister city of Vladikavkaz, on a state-sponsored trip, looking into various ways Asheville's artist community is functioning. I had my political satire paintings up on the walls. Some of it was beyond them, since it addressed internal US politics (contrary to Dick Cheney, most people outside the US don't give a damn about it ... frankly, most people inside the US don't give a damn, either!)

One of my paintings caught their eye, though. Our Commander in Chief (which can be seen on my web site) is a portrait of Bush that makes him look remarkably like Alfred E. Neumann. My artist visitors zeroed in on it. One asked me "Is permissable to make joke of President?" Yes, young lady, it certainly is.

In fact, being able to make fun of our leaders is one of our country's major strengths. And her innocent question drove home, yet again, what a unique position we're in. We may have an idiot for a President, but we are free to speak our minds about him. And even in this day and age, that is not a very common thing.

Boycott Citgo

Over the past couple of days, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez has been in New York for events at the United Nations. Chavez became a walking event in himself when he began attacking Bush as "the Devil".

While I am no fan of George Bush, I find Chavez to be a first-class jerk. His comments, now and in the past, are not acceptable from any national leader. He can disagree with our nation and our President all he wants, but should keep the discourse at a professional level. His remarks belong in a cheap Venezeuelan bar, not the U.N.

So I say, boycott Citgo. Why? Citgo is owned and operated by the Venezuelan government. It's a source of billions of dollars a year to Chavez. If you want to get his attention, take his money.

Terrorist Treatment Debate

President Bush is at it again. The Senate is debating what kind of legal structure is needed to guide terrorist interrogation. Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham are leading the effort, and Colin Powell and Senator Arlen Spector weighed in on it, too. Frankly, these Republicans are finally showing some backbone. They're insisting that interrogations be done in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. About time, too. First time in years that I've actually supported a Republican effort in the Senate!

But ol' Bush is seriously pissed off. He's threatening to shut down the interrogation efforts completely if he doesn't get what he wants, and says it'll be on the Senate's heads. Umm, excuse me, George? You're threatening to shut down an ILLEGAL system? Something we should never have been doing in the first place? Something you could get convicted of, if it ever went to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague? Am I missing something here?

Now let's look at some street cred issues:
Senator McCain: Decorated Navy war vet, former POW, spent years being subjected to torture and illegal interrogation techniques. I'd say he's an expert on it.
Senator John Warner: WW2 Navy vet, Marine officer in the Korean War, former Secretary of the Navy.
Senator Lindsey Graham: A JAG officer in the Air Force Reserves since 1982, including active duty stints during the Gulf War and earlier this year (yes, active duty while still a Senator).
Senator Arlen Specter: Two years in the Air Force in the early 1950's.
Colin Powell: Now, really. Retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as high as you can go in the military, and one of the two guys who made the Gulf War a success.

On the other hand:
President Bush: One step above a draft dodger. Got Daddy to get him a cushy reserve billet that kept him out of Viet Nam, then didn't even show up for work.
Vice-President Cheney: Confirmed draft dodger. Had "other priorities" during Vietnam.
Donald Rumsfeld: Served as a Navy pilot back in the 50's, and as Sec Def once before, so he should know better.

So who ya gonna believe?

You know where my vote is.

Camp Democracy, 9-10 September

Last weekend I was in Washington, DC, as part of Camp Democracy. This was an outgrowth of Cindy Sheehan's Camp Casey, outside Bush's ranch in Texas. This time they were set up on the Mall between the National Gallery of Art and the Air and Space Museum. I thought it would be a good opportunity to show my paintings to thousands of The Faithful, right there within spitting distance of some of the people lampooned in the works.

Well, not quite. Yes, I showed to The Faithful, and yes, my paintings got a great reaction from nearly everybody who saw them. Problem was, there weren't very many people there. Instead of thousands, I'd put the turnout in the low hundreds over two full days. And half of them were just tourists wandering by on their way to this or that museum.

Still, I talked to a bunch of very interesting people and had a good time. Maybe something will come out of this. Maybe not. We'll see.

I took up a bunch of my posters, too, hoping to sell enough to cover my transportation costs. Turns out that selling posters is illegal on the Mall. Why? Good question. The Park Police decided back in the mid-90's to cut down on the number of vendors clogging the Mall. So they outlawed the sale of everything except literature, bumper stickers, and buttons. So I had to take down my sign. HOWEVER (there's always a "however" in DC), the sale of posters was quite legal on the street, which was outside Park Police jurisdiction, and was only about 20 yards away. So selling a poster here was illegal, but right over there was okay! Makes sense, no? No.

I'd contacted a bunch of old friends who live in the area and told them I'd be there, and to come on down and visit. Some of 'em did. Problem was, they all came at the same time! So there I was, trying to visit with all of 'em at once, and still talk to people looking at the art ... didn't work worth a hoot. So they all left, again at the same time, and left me standing there talking to some guy who claimed that the government was controlling his thoughts through the microchips imbedded in his fillings. I'm not making this up. He had colorized X-rays and reams of stuff downloaded from the internet to prove his case. Why do these people always find ME?

So, all in all, it wasn't the most productive trip I've ever taken. Would I do it again? Well, knowing what I now know, no. But I've had another "learning experience" and will have a better idea what to look for. I still think that political events such as this are good venues to show my paintings. I just want bigger ones!