The Last of Autumn's Flowers

This is another of Melea's landscapes. Maybe better described as a detail in a larger landscape. Early Autumn in the foothills east of Salt Lake City.

The Grand Old Party is a Fraud

After eight years of the Bush administration, the Republican Party -- to put it bluntly -- is a mess and a fraud.

There is an intellectual case to be made for the economic philosophy that the party purports to represent. I disagree with it strongly, but I respect its integrity -- in a way that this administration and the Republican leadership in Congress clearly did not.

The Republican Party said it believed in free and unfettered competition, but it picked winners and losers through a system of crony capitalism. All it takes to make my point is a name: Jack Abramoff.

The Bush tax cuts, which heavily favored the wealthy, showed that the president and his allies in Congress didn't believe in progressive taxation. I think that's outrageous, but the administration goes further and actually seems to prefer a regressive tax scheme. That's the only explanation I can think of for why hedge fund managers making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay taxes at a lower rate than their chauffeurs.

This is a small excerpt from Eugene Robinson's column in the Washington Post today. Here's another:

Can any Republican candidate claim with a straight face to represent the party of small government? For that matter, can any Republican candidate plausibly explain what the party is supposed to stand for these days?

It's pathetic to hear right-wing talk radio blowhards try to associate Barack Obama with "radical" or "socialist" views when a Republican administration is tossing aside "Atlas Shrugged" and speed-reading "Das Kapital.

Thanks Eugene, I needed that.

More of the Delicious Economist Paul Krugman

My favorite economist, the hunky Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman takes on BillO on BillO's own turf.

Paul Krugman Wins Nobel Prize for Economics

The world's hunkiest Economist wins the Nobel Prize. I've become a Krugman fan this year watching him on my favorite prime time news shows: Hardball, Countdown, and now The Rachel Maddow Show. I was turned off by the economists of the past, namely Allen Greenspan and Paul Bernanke, big money morons in my estimation. Thanks a lot you titans of the past for the mess we find ourselves in. Make way for handsome Paul Krugman.

Yesterday It Was Fall, Today It Is Winter

I have been taking photographs of the slow changing of the season. It is, ideally, a slow process, allowing a late season of harvests in the garden, and time to rake the leaves as they fall. But in one day it has gone from the gradual to the immediate. For weeks we had temperatures over night in the low 50's then the high 40's and last night we were supposed to barely touch 32 but not long enough to do much damage. Snow was forecast for the higher elevations, but not so much for the valleys. Yesterday was chill enough that I wore a jacket when I was gathering the plums I could reach on the lowest hanging branches. I planned to visit my neighbor's garden today to pick green tomatoes, the last of the zucchini and peppers. I'm afraid there is nothing left after the freeze last night. It was a hard freeze last night with snow in the valley. More snow is forecast today. A colder night is forecast for tonight. The only season I hate here is winter. And it has arrived. I must do some things today. I must shut off outside water. I must get swamp-coolers covered and their openings into the houses insulated and sealed. None of this is work I want to do. All this is the work that must be done when winter is breathing down your neck. Winters are harsh in the Mountain West. With our winter beginning before leaves in the valley have changed color, trees will lose limbs because of the weight of snow on leaf laden branches. If it continues this cold and snows often enough it will be impossible to rake the leaves when they do fall.

This shocking change of season has me finally in the mood to read. And it is Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine that I am curling up with.

This is my Favorite So Far

My favorite Autumn Landscape
Melea with the great eye for design

Daily Tracking Poll

This is probably the only daily tracking poll on the election worth following. I keep reposting it, but now I'm asking you to post it on your sites. (Cincinnati? Randal?--you should be proud.)

This is posted daily and updated as events unfold. The first time I saw the guy whose site this is interviewed was about a week ago on Olbermann. Since then I've seen him on Rachel Maddow. Sorry I can't remember his name. He's young and very smart and laid back and wonky. There are at least two people posting and you can comment there. I just want you to watch this for your own sanity. It will reassure you. And we could all use a look at something that lets us feel better about our fellow citizens. We just might not be as stupid as they think.

It's called five thirty eight.

Autumn is Here Now

Another of Melea's landscapes.

Naomi Wolf

Listen and then pass it on. This is important. I first saw it yesterday at Liberality. Thanks for posting it Lib.

Give Me Liberty

Leave it to Letterman

Late Night puts together Debate recap:

Speaking of Blindness

New Polling sight:

It's called Iamblind.org For all you sports fans, check the win percentage.

Unknown Photographer Doles Them Out One By One

The first name of the twenty something photographer is Melea. Tantalizing isn't it? Her best work is the self-portrait. It is my favorite type of photography. It's the revelation of the artist that most interests me. Here is one of Melea's self portraits.

A Meme for Randal

For Randal, because he told me to.

Where do I buy my clothes?
At the closest thrift shop, which in my case is one run by the Mormon Church, called Deseret Industries. It's clean, well organized, the clothes at this particular DI are the discards of the affluent in Park City. So, I find nearly new designer clothes for a pittance. I bet it's going to get a whole lot busier and prices are about to go up. Why? Because they can, that's why? Sorry Dcup for stealing your line, but I did it. Why? Because I could, that's why. Why don't you copyright it for christ sake?

Where did my furniture come from?
So many places it would turn into a complicated map of acquisition and inheritance and living long enough to end up with it. I have a few very good pieces. Stickley actually. Bought at a garage sale ages ago, found painted blue, sadly. Then stripped and sanded and oiled and oiled and oiled again. Left with mommy who decided that meant they were hers. Mommy died. They're mine now. The big brass bed was mine when I was a teenager. Mommy kept it. It's mine now. Some pieces I am fond of, I found in thrift stores and impulsively purchased. But I was a runner from life. I have houses full of furniture I ran from along with the husbands I left. Never a backwards glance unless I wanted to set a short story there. Ancient history and fair game, considering. Now, I think my favorite chair is the red leather club chair my mother stole when my grandfather died. It came out of his office in the Judge Building on Exchange Place and Third South. It's from Dinwoody's. A very good local furniture store long gone.

Where do I live?
Salt Lake City. I wasn't born here. I always felt a bit like a refugee here. But here is where the family home is, and I am all that's left of the family. The home of my heart is at the top of West Camino Cielo overlooking Santa Barbara, the ocean, the Channel Islands, and so much more. It was the last place First Love/Last Love and I lived together.

Favorite book? Favorite Movie? That's impossible. If I were the mother of thousands of children and you asked me my favorite would you really expect an answer. Each book, if loved, is mine--it exists for me in a visceral way forever but because it moves me this way, doesn't mean the next much loved book won't do the same in a whole different way. It too is mine now. The same thing with movies. I am too old to cull through my memory of my lifetime of movie going to say "This one." The most recent one is one of the best. That's Blindness, based on a Nobel Prize winning book by Jose Saramago.

Favorite piece of music? Are you fucking kidding me? Do not mess with me. Narrow it down a little will you? Pick a fucking century, decade, genre, some damn thing. Please! But do not fuck with me. I'll hurt you.

I had to come back and insert this. I forgot. I'm old. Favorite TV Series. This is so easy. Deadwood is my all time favorite TV series ever, ever! I watched it so often on ON DEMAND I was able to recite dialogue along with the characters. What character am I? I'm Al Swearengen. And yes, I use that many expletives in my moment by moment commentary on the life around me, or lack of it, the noise or lack of it.

I tag:
Nan from All the Good Names Are Taken
Linda at Vulture Peak Muse
Tengrain, of Mock, Paper, Scissors. Yes YOU. OH YES I DID! Take That! Why? Because inquiring minds want to know.
The Cunning Runt at Little Bang Theory, because I love the name The Cunning Runt. Say it fast three times and it becomes The Running Cunt. And it's such a lovely change of pace once you get there.
And Dusty at It's My Right To Be Left Of Center because she probably needs a little change of pace.
And for good measure I add Beach the man behind the Life and Times of a Carolina Parrothead

Let the linking begin.

A Great Young Photographer

She wishes to remain anonymous. I'll give her that. I've asked to post her recent photographs, but she is shy. This is the one I'm currently using as a screen saver. It was taken in the valleys in the foothills east of the Salt Lake. This is mid-autumn northern Utah, in one leaf. Click photo to enlarge. It's worth it.

Blindness

I took a day off today and Nick and I went to see Blindness. I bought a copy of Blindness when it was first out in Hardback. It's a first addition. Those were the days. It won the Pulitzer for Literature. And a well deserved Pulitzer it was. It's a great book. I go to movies made from great books with trepidation and am usually disappointed by the film versions of great literature. I would not go to Atonement because I so loved Ian McEwan's book and knew that the casting was all wrong for starters, and the ads were horrible. Big Hollywood productions of well written books are almost universally badly done. The film, Blindness, however, is perfection.

I will only go to midweek matinees because I don't like people all that much and they especially annoy me at movie theaters. For probably ten years I wouldn't enter a theater. There were fine films made, but I had to wait to see them until I could rent them. But in Nick I have the perfect movie date. We seem to have the same taste in movies and like the private screening aspect of a 1:00pm movie at an art house theater on a Wednesday We go a little early and sit in the empty theater and talk. When the movie starts we don't talk at all, ever. Ever ever. That would ruin it for me. There is no audience noise to distract from the experience. No noisy popcorn eating, no candy wrappers, no soda sucking through a straw to make me want to kill my fellow man.

I'm not a movie reviewer. I won't pretend to try to give you that here. But it's a film about the catastrophic effects of a mass epidemic of blindness that manifests without warning and results in visual white-out. Sudden and blindingly white, easily spread, creating panic instantly. I know this film was not in black and white, but like the characters in the film, I see it now in my minds eye as shockingly white and terrifyingly dark. I came out of the theater with the sense that I was living in an alternate reality the way the European films of the 1950's and '60's made me feel. It is the feeling of having experienced something profound.

Two Out of Three?

Let's hold the election now.

I'm trying to stay awake long enough to see Jon Stewart and Colbert.

Movie matinee tomorrow. Blindness. We'll talk later.

Koch Industries

The biggest privately held business in the United States is up to some pretty shady stuff. It would be smart to get to know as much about the Koch family as possible. They are the movers behind the scenes, with no oversight, no limits, nothing but greed and dirty fingers in every pie. They are the manipulators of the conservative movement. And they won't relinquish control of the government without some very messy dirty tricks. Know your enemy. It's very good advise. Otherwise your enemy will roll right over you. The Koch family holds most of the cards in the deck that is the Republican family poker party. We need to learn the rules of their game, so we can play it better, with actual rules we all understand.

A friend of mine sent this link to me. please read this piece. Your future may depend on it.

Koch Industries:
I know it's a lot of information, but it's a hell of a story. Stay with it, print it, pass it on, but read it. What you don't understand can kill you.

Thank you Rolling Stone

John Sidney McCain

I hinted about this several days ago, but now Diva Jood has posted the link and I have stolen it just so I could read it at my leisure.

Nancy "McCain Shill" Pfotenhauer

Nancy Pfotenhauer is a McCain shill, who is, in her smart sophisticated way, the flip side of Palin. Nancy Pfotenhauer is a younger version of Cindy with a good education and frightening connections, namely Koch Industries. This is another link I stole from Dr. Zaius. Thanks Dr. Zaius for your linky greatness. You are a friend of the lazy blogger.

The Real McCain

Please link and pass it on. This is what you need to share with the people in your family, or your friends, or the people you work with who disagree with you because of the McMaverick's mythology.