weekender...

What do you do when you find a dirty car?

(A) Write 'WASH ME?'
(B) Write naughty words?
(C) Doodle?

or









This is artist Scott Wade.







See what he does with dirty cars by carefully and artfully removing portions of the dirt. According to his website, Dirty Car Art, he lives very close to a dirt road in San Marcos, Texas. Check out his site. It's really neat


so, get out there. get your car washed or wash it yourself this weekend. you don't want Scott sneaking up and...

wait a minute. can you sell this stuff?

what would it do to the Blue Book value of your car?



hmmmmm.......................




UPDATE: i didn't find out if the Blue Book value would go up, BUT i did get the car washed. now it's your turn...

whoa...

the site passed 10,000 visitors and i didn't even notice.

thanks everyone...


mike/

instead of a celebration, i decided to repost my favorite picture of all that i have used -


The Weather Project
16 October 2003 - 21 March 2004
Special exhibit at the Tate Modern
Turbine Hall
London, England

it was one of the most interesting and beautiful art exhibits to which i've ever been. overwhelming is the best way to describe it...

more money for the blind trusts...

last week I made note of the price increase at the station I use by my house on gas prices. [how much are Bush & Cheney's "blind' trusts worth?]

If you remember, I relayed that last Tuesday the price was $2.92 per gallon then on Wednesday it was $3.09. Well, last night when I went by it was $3.26 per gallon. That is an increase of 34¢ in one week.

I think I remember one of the "experts" on CNBC saying last week that we could expect the price to increase by 10-20¢ per gallon by the end of the year. There's a big difference between between a couple of months and seven days!

Just think - this is an 11% increase in one week. At this rate by the end of the year the price of gasoline will be $5.30 a gallon!

those blind trusts have a lot of foresight...

now it's France and the money...

Yesterday, I posted about China and the amount of money the U.S. has borrowed from them with their purchase of bonds, etc. Today the U.S. stock market closed down another 387.18 points. In just over two weeks the market went to an all-time high of 14,021.95 to 13,270.68! That's a difference of 751.27. What caused the drop today?

Stocks Tumble as French Bank Reacts to Home Loan Worries
Stocks dropped sharply as soon as trading opened today after a French bank, BNP Paribas, suspended operations of three of its funds in the wake of turmoil in the American market for home loans and the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve injected cash into the financial system because of tightening credit markets.

hmmmm. How much money do we owe the French and how many bonds do they own?

George W had an answer to the situation in his press conference today.

Asked at a news conference this morning whether he thought the turmoil in the subprime lending market could put a chill on credit in the broader economy, President Bush said, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” adding, “I’m told there is enough liquidity to enable the system to correct.”New York Times

and just how is he going to help this correction?

In an interview with reporters after meeting Wednesday with his economic advisers at the Treasury Department, the president said, "I'm inclined to want to push hard" for revenue-neutral legislation to make the U.S. tax code more competitive globally by reducing corporate taxes. Investor's Business Daily

oh, and this little tidbit also

"Obviously anybody who loses their home is somebody with whom we must show an enormous empathy," Bush said. Asked whether he would champion a government bailout, Bush responded: "If you mean direct grants to homeowners, the answer would be `No, I don't support that.'" Washington Post

In other words, "Let's give Halliburton, Pfizer, Exelon and all the rest of my buddies more, and f*** the regular guys who pay the most taxes and now won't have a place to live."

kinda like Robin Hood, "take from the poor and give to the rich."

oh, wait. i think it's the other way around...

more fodder on Cheney - part 1a...

Seems that the Washington Post is also reporting that Cheney intercepted White House emails putting a process in place that all emails coming from the WH would automatically cc to him and/or his staff.

At the White House, [White House national security lawyer John] Bellinger sent Rice a blunt — and, he thought, private — legal warning. The Cheney-Rumsfeld position would place the president indisputably in breach of international law and would undermine cooperation from allied governments. …

One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and “was concerned” about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were “routed outside the formal process” to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.

Powell asked for a meeting with Bush. The same day, Jan. 25, 2002, Cheney’s office struck a preemptive blow. It appeared to come from Gonzales, a longtime Bush confidant whom the president nicknamed “Fredo.” Hours after Powell made his request, Gonzales signed his name to a memo that anticipated and undermined the State Department’s talking points. The true author has long been a subject of speculation, for reasons including its unorthodox format and a subtly mocking tone that is not a Gonzales hallmark.

So, we have the vice-president and his staff spying on his boss' staff; not following his boss' order on the treatment of classified documents; not allowing records of visitors and appointments to be monitored by his boss' government agencies; having the president sign orders that his senior staff knows nothing about; and what else...?

At this point, any boss would fire an employee for these types of actions.

Where is the pink slip?

Of course there is another boss that both the Czar and Rasputin have - the people. Isn't it time that the people made more of a ruckus so that their representatives started the process to put in motion the writing of a pink slip?

just asking...

well, someone thinks he is above the law...

or so it seems in this case...

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. Cheney's office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an "entity within the executive branch."

"This is a little bit of a nonissue," Perino said at a briefing dominated by the issue. Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, "because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he's decided that he should."Washington Post, June 24, 2007

How convenient!

The Czar is right now in the process of updating the executive order on the issue of oversight of classified information and tips his hand by saying he never meant to include Rasputin, er, sorry, Mr. Cheney.

or, did Mr. Cheney back Mr. Bush into a corner on this one?

or do we have a rogue entity in the executive branch?

just asking...

more signs of inevitable legacy...?

Steven C Clemons over at the The Washington Note is commenting on some major, and very quiet, changes happening over at the Bush White House that may be additional signs that George W, or at least some of his minions, are taking steps to secure a different legacy than can be easily forecast at the moment.

Why is it only in the twilight of this administration that we are seeing highly sensible appointments -- and a new commitment to healthy "deal-making"? It is regrettable that someone of [David] Gordon's [National Intelligence Council Vice Chairman] intellectual capacity and stature now has just a year and half to try and do something constructive in his new role. The reality is that America's place in the world seems to be slipping -- perhaps from a globally hegemonic, ordering role to something like another better-than-average great power -- and most of George W. Bush's political capital has been spent, often on low-return battles like the recent Wolfowitz struggle.

Others on this new team, according to Clemens, are Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary John Negroponte, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, Legal Adviser John Bellinger, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Gordon England, Deputy Secretary of Defense, Mike McConnell and Michael Hayden at the Directorate of National Intelligence.

The danger?

There are a lot of new good people -- working together finally -- in this administration. But Vice President Cheney, and his national security spearcarriers -- David Addington, John Hannah, and David Wurmser -- will be out there to sabotage and oppose him at every turn. These rivals can't be seduced to support David Gordon's logic.

The hope?

They need to be out run, embarrassed, exhausted, pushed out of the room, or crushed.

That's how one wins against Cheney's followers. David Gordon's appointment is a sign that smart realists are ascendant.

As the Hopi Native-American adage goes, When hope is gone, life is over.

We can only hope...

in the face of defeat... UPDATED

Click here for the original post.

UPDATE - 25 May 2007: Rahm Emmanuel even voted for the funding last night. I'm now getting more and more interested in just what may be going on here. The risk is that, if the Czar's surge works in even the slightest way, the Dems' might be playing with more than fire. Of course, the language in the bill gives the Czar the say on what's working or not working. Strange wording. If the loud after-the-vote reaction against the bill by the people who voted in November is an indicator, then part of the gamble may be paying off. Of course, it's still quite a gambit.