best thing on Scott McClellan's Wha' Happened?

"Bush loyalists have responded in three ways:

1) Scott, how could you? This conveniently ignores the issue of what Bush did or didn't know and do about intelligence on Iraq, converting the story line into that of wounded leader and treasonous former aide. (That canard was the sole focus of a CBS news radio report Wednesday night).

2) Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Okay. When do Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, et al *not* say that? Dog bites man.

3) It was an intelligence failure. The CIA gave us bad dope on WMD and, well, they're the experts. More on this in a second.

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

Here's ABC News' Charles Gibson: "I think the questions were asked. It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.” And “I’m not sure we would have asked anything differently."

Really?

Or this from NBC's Brian Williams: “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown (after Katrina). We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq]. I was in Kuwait for the buildup to the war, and, yes, we heard from the Pentagon, on my cell phone, the minute they heard us report something that they didn’t like. The tone of that time was quite extraordinary.” And this: "“It’s tough to go back, to put ourselves in the mind-set. It was post-9/11 America."

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?

Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH!"

round the manse this Caterday it's Cal Tjader...

(playing "Shoshana" here)

roundup of reactions to Stuart (Re-Animator, From Beyond) Gordon's new film Stuck...

interesting group show in Seattle

"Misako Inaoka’s moss piece, Untitled, is the only one that involves movement. A small sprout grows from an artificial moss cluster and swivels back and forth waving at passersby. The way the clusters are sporadically placed on the wall replicates the seemingly spontaneous and rapid growth of moss and algae, presenting the most convincing example of a living, multiplying organism..."

Local trees

Zombie Capitalism

"One is that for the most part the equity — the idea — is the only thing the company is interested in owning. River West acquires brands when the products themselves are dead, not merely ailing. Aside from Brim, the brands it acquired in the last few years include Underalls, Salon Selectives, Nuprin and the game maker Coleco, among others. “In most cases we’re dealing with a brand that only exists as intellectual property,” says Paul Earle, River West’s founder. “There’s no retail presence, no product, no distribution, no trucks, no plants. Nothing. All that exists is memory. We’re taking consumers’ memories and starting entire businesses.”

The other interesting thing is that when Earle talks about consumer memory, he is factoring in something curious: the faultiness of consumer memory. There is opportunity, he says, not just in what we remember but also in what we misremember..."

Charlie & Rubbercat say: if you want something you can really get your teeth into, why not buy The Age of Briggs & Stratton today??

"The London Nobody Knows" part one, with the great James Mason (hi Sara!)...the other parts are inside...

interesting notes on The Library of Charles Willeford

“The only real difference between the rock-and-roll of The Peanut Butter Conspiracy and the rock-rolling of the Burnt Orange Heresy is the serial consistency and orderly arrangement of movable type rearranged by an unmoving writer for an immobilized and highly literate reader...”

thoughtful essay by Eavan Boland discusses the still shockingly undervalued poets Hugh MacDiarmid, Charlotte Mew & Patrick Kavanagh...

excellent James Laxer on the decline of the CBC--

"Managers of publicly owed corporations have always made a killing in the transition to private ownership. Those who do a good job shedding labour, thereby appearing to raise productivity usually at the cost of lower quality, can expect to be hired on with a much fatter pay packet as the first managers of the new private company. Whether it's a railway, an airline, a water utility, a telephone company, or a petroleum company, in Canada and in Britain, the experience has been that the new shareholders do brilliantly, while the old owners, also known as the citizenry, get hosed. The same will be true if CBC Television goes on the block..."

Sydney Pollack 1934-2008, one of the last of the real Hollywood pros, talking about my favorite of his films "The Yakuza"...I also liked his "Castle Keep", "Absence of Malice, "Three Days of the Condor" & "Jeremiah Johnson"...

jimmy mcgriff 1936-2008

"cat and house with cherry tree in background" & "footpath in west london" among the new spring crop of films at Scenes of Provincial Life

Sunday morning wakeup--YouTube - Hector Lavoe "Mi Gente"