Pig's Nosed American Dream still alive and well in South Carolina!

....It has to be the reason so many conservatives there have no problem
with Millionaire Mitt paying only 15% in income taxes -- the dream/myth
of one day wearing their own hog snout still exists for the poor bastards!

Unique urinals.

WARNING! One or more photos in today's
blog may be offensive to mature adults.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometimes, while surfing the Web, I stumble across an interesting photo. If I like it, I might save a copy for a possible future blog. Such is an example in the photo below.

Urinals in the men's room at the
SOFITEL in Queenstown, New Zealand.

I didn't know exactly how I would use it in a blog. But then some months later I came across another nice urinal photo (below). Entitled, George W. Flush, it provided a pleasant diversion, the thought of actually using it. So I saved it. (Using a similar Barack Obama model -- nonexistent, damn! -- was an equally pleasant thought as well.)

"George W. Flush"—a design by famed
urinal sculptor Clark Sorensen. Sadly,
being more of a one-of-kind art piece,
it's unavailable for actual use.

Then a week or so ago, I encountered the following urinal photo and I felt the blog on the subject finally beginning to materialize. Of those pictured herein, this one is my very favorite.

The Camaleon, a bar in Ajijic, Mexico. Featured in Fred
Reed's blog, Fred on Everything, where he adds: "A
nation's character is embodied in its whizzenzimmers,
loos, and johns. From this example, at the Camaleon,
one sees that Mexicans are stark mad. It is a pleasant
condition, and I hope that it spreads northward."

Yet, I didn't quite feel I had the material to make my urinals blog complete. But I didn't have to wait long. Thanks to our Semper Fi guys, the good ol' U.S. Marines. While the news story didn't immediately hit me, it was while washing my breakfast dishes I realized, after checking online and discovering the following image, it was news of the ultimate urinal -- just the thing to complete this blog!

From Afghanistan, a video clip frame from a New York Times website
showing four U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of three dead Taliban.

I knew I now had the material to finish my urinals blog. (Please note the "Live Leak" tag in upper left corner of this photo most likely refers to the unauthorized release of this video to the public, not the act portrayed therein.)

I suspect these four Marines are going to take some serious heat for this. After all, it's the State Department's job to conduct foreign policy and the public relations that go with it, i.e., rather than pissing on them, it is the State Department's policy to just piss 'em all off. (Although, from the coverage this story is getting, these marines have done a pretty good job of that themselves.)

Of the four urinal photos posted here, this is the one I imagine leaves the most people "pissed."

Or at least it ought to.

Obama's costly wild horse meat mistake.

The following broadcast video on this website does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Dada's Dally. (Except for the dog and ponies part, maybe.)

Season's best to all!

Best wishes to all from Mrs. Dada

Originally published 20 years ago on December 22, 1991 --
(a Sunday), I rediscovered this Doonesbury cartoon between
the pages of my father's professional library mega-sized table
top dictionary. (Which proved a tad unwieldy in his latter
years for solving crossword puzzles.)

But I have resurrected that Doonesbury strip here at it's
creator's invitation to personalize and reprint it. So, for
Mary, a little something from Dada and Garry!

p.s. I don't even know if "Kim" was in Mike Doonesbury's
life 20 years ago.

Tis the season again! (sigh)

Over on Facebook, from a friend of a friend, the following:

"As the dickering over the supposed conflict between 'Merry Christmas' and 'Happy Holidays' is amped by the media and our individual sensitivities, my tolerance for the bickering is on a downslide this year. If you have the time to complain about another person's desire to extend good wishes to you in any form, during what I was raised to believe was the Season of Peace and of Giving then you have time to do some homework on what other holidays are celebrated by groups around the world, get a grip, and adjust your attitude. Think of the children around you, behave like an adult and go and do something nice for your fellow human beings, like you're supposed to." (Bequi Medina)


That said, Dada would like to wish Happy Holidays to all friend followers of Christianity, Judaism, Kwanzaa, Paganism, Atheism, -- whatever your particular belief (or not). Can we lay down our differences for the next couple weeks of this season of celebration(s)? (Then we can resume our bickering and animosity for one another in the "New Year.")

Happy Holidays to all!

"Whom should we blow the shit out of next?"

I think an exciting new competition open to all Americans of voting age could stimulate new interest in U.S. foreign policy among the populace by entering a national contest. Entitled something like "Whom Should We Bomb Next?", it might offer our secretary of state Clinton some fresh insights into the direction to take the country in the post Iraq -- Iran era.

With oversight provided by the Pentagon and posh defense contractor profiteers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, G.E., Dell Computer, etc., sponsoring it, just imagine the fabulous prizes that could be awarded!

Some preliminary personal thoughts on contest guidelines.

For nation state ideas, DO NOT:

- suggest Iran, Russia, China (who may be exempted, being an extremely cheap labor market for American manufacturers), all Middle East nations (to include Turkey), or Venezuela. These are already on the State Department's/Pentagon's "to do" list.

For your reasons to decimate a country's infrastructure and annihilate 10s --100s of thousands of its citizens, DO NOT use any of the following as your justification(s):

- Liberating the poor suppressed bastards / spreading democracy. (That is so Bush/Obama passé.)

- They contain people of color (this has been used since Americans first stepped ashore North America several hundred years ago).

- They live above billions of barrels of oil or are strategically important as a potential pipeline route or drone launching base. (been there, done that too!)

BE CREATIVE!

For those we should attack next after eliminating the Russians, Chinese (maybe), Turks, etc., entrants are encouraged to "think outside the box" for examples of countries or territories to exterminate: such as Finland, Israel, Bermuda, etc.

EXAMPLES:

Who: Sweden.
Reason: for awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the world's most aggressive war monger. (It's been a constant point of contention for Obama's antagonists.)

Who: Tokelau - that tiny Pacific island nation between Hawaii and New Zealand.
Reason: They keep embarrassing the U.S. at every climate change summit by suggesting they'll be first to sink into oblivion if the U.S. keeps obstructing progress toward possible climate change solutions. It just makes us, as Americans, look so insensitive to the concerns of others! (One small minimally controversial and contaminating strategic nuke should be sufficient.)

Whoops!

Dada has a suggestion for the Defense Department:

If you don't want to share your technological stealth advantages of one of this country's most sophisticated intelligence tools such as the "Beast of Kandahar" drone taken down (by overriding its controls?) over Iran this past weekend, why not stop flying it over the airways of other sovereign nations you are belligerent toward?

(Sorry. Too late for your "Beast of Kandahar")

Life isn't fair

Dada suggests he might want

to give it just a little more time!

The end of backyard naked sunbathing?

(click to enlarge)

Happening now:

"New Police Drone Near Houston Could Carry Weapons"

"A Houston area law enforcement agency is prepared to launch an unmanned drone that could someday carry weapons.

"To be in on the ground floor of this is pretty exciting for us here in Montgomery County," Sheriff Tommy Gage said..."He said they are designed to carry weapons for local law enforcement.

"The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems," he said, "including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a "stun baton."

Dada believes Americans need not concern themselves with domestic drones patrolling their skies (nor their vanishing liberties). Besides, such drones will serve as a nice compliment to a hypersonic weapon prototype belonging to the US Army which will strike targets anywhere on Earth within an hour.

Hence, local sheriff's drones will be able to handle/diffuse most situations, insuring greater security for their local communities, but, should things get out of hand, they can call for Army hypersonic weapon back-up that can obliterate the situation from the fringes of outer space within the hour.

Reaping the benefits of the latest technology! (Even if it IS all over our heads!)

It has been commanded...

During her Occupy Wall Street arrest a young girl, named
Joan, of Arco, VA, suddenly receives a vision, with the voice

of God, commanding her to renew the American nation.

The Wall Street gangsters are getting even bolder. They see no harm in stealing from you in broad daylight!

I hate to sound like Debbie Downer (which I am), but when the thieves protected by the government, ignored by the media, and shielded by the forces they pay to control the increasingly cantankerous public rabble now awakening, gain the boldness to openly make their end run on the remaining wealth of those who still have something to "give" them, it's time to stop debating whether to vote for Obama or Gingrich and pull our heads out of our collective ass and get angry. Like Gerald Celente....

Gerald Celente, business consultant, author, successful predictor of global economic trends, and publisher of the Trends Journal is pissed. Very pissed. And why shouldn't he be? His investments in gold futures in excess of $100,000 via MF Global were totally looted by that company's Chapter 11 trustees shortly before declaring bankruptcy.



Gerald Celente contends the correct spelling of Justice in America = "Just Us", i.e., while OWSers get their heads busted, are arrested and thrown in jail, the clowns, the mega thieves they are protesting against, walk away -- untouched -- with our money!

Celente warns all Americans to withdraw their funds from the banks because “they are going to steal all our money”.

Dada doesn't doubt this is where we're headed.

AMENDING THE AMENDMENTS:

The Bill of Rights continues to be a living, evolving document as evidenced by the First Amendment as interpreted by El Paso City Council yesterday.

Example: "abridging the freedom of speech...interfering with the right to peaceably assemble..."is still prohibited except as determined by your mayor, city council or the "Downtown Management District" (a quasi-governmental/private business & development entity).

But take solace Americans. Despite your shrinking rights, as formerly guaranteed under the Constitution, it is still legal for you to yell "theater" in a crowded fire (in El Paso, at least).

Hypocrisy as a point of pride...

The above video further highlights the grand display of hypocrisy that flows unabated from US leaders in the 21st Century. Following the example of its predecessor, the Bush administration, the Obama regime takes it to new heights. Apparently, hypocrisy is no longer something to be concealed. Instead, it is to be flaunted and displayed proudly before the world, as a medal around one's neck. (Instead of a noose.)

*****************

(In the spirit of Hillary Clinton's elegant display of dripping hypocrisy during her "Freedom Speech"
delivered at George Washington University this past February 16th, as captured in the video below.)

*****************

*Dada addendum, not necessarily pertinent: After posting this blog, I entered into conversation with Mrs. Dada about flowers as symbols to hint at an emotion toward, or characteristic of, someone. Wondering if there might not be a flower to represent today's topic, hypocrisy, I decided to check. Sure enough, it's Datura stramonium, or in its most common form here in the US, jimson (or James-Town) weed.

Imagining for a moment how it might be nice to present your favorite Obama administration official with a bouquet of jimson weed as a subtle way of expressing your feelings for them, I suggest you banish any thought of doing so after reading of the plant's toxicity and what could result as described in the following Wikipedia incident as experienced by British soldiers in Jamestown, VA, in 1676:

The James-Town Weed (which resembles the Thorny Apple of Peru, and I take to be the plant so call'd) is supposed to be one of the greatest coolers in the world. This being an early plant, was gather'd very young for a boil'd salad, by some of the soldiers sent thither to quell the rebellion of Bacon (1676); and some of them ate plentifully of it, the effect of which was a very pleasant comedy, for they turned natural fools upon it for several days: one would blow up a feather in the air; another would dart straws at it with much fury; and another, stark naked, was sitting up in a corner like a monkey, grinning and making mows [grimaces] at them; a fourth would fondly kiss and paw his companions, and sneer in their faces with a countenance more antic than any in a Dutch droll.

In this frantic condition they were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves — though it was observed that all their actions were full of innocence and good nature. Indeed, they were not very cleanly; for they would have wallowed in their own excrements, if they had not been prevented. A thousand such simple tricks they played, and after eleven days returned themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.

(Hmm, remind you of anyone's recent behavior? Rick Perry, maybe?)

Olé! Olé! Enough of the BULLshit!

There's an inverse relationship between yesterday's faith in the irrational exuberance of endless market growth in value and its partner -- faith in a prosperous future for all who trust to invest in it vis a vis the unfolding reality of a collapsing economy seeped in a sea of crumbling and increasingly toxic assets of derivatives, credit default swaps and subprime mortgages.

It will make a beautiful chart for adherents of the dismal science, economists, to reference in the future. I would love to graph it out, but at this point it would be speculative at best. Hence, I shall allow time to chart the unfolding collapse more accurately for the economists. That is, of course, if any economists are left alive out of the compassion of their victims.

In the meantime, enjoy the video images of the absurd: Police officers defending Wall Street's fenced off symbol of prosperity, a raging over-sized polymer bull sculpture, against a couple of clowns and a bold matador in defense of his fallen brothers who have for years been gored by the horns of The Bull.

Solving those pesky soaring police department overtime costs

Dada would like to suggest three possible solutions for the tremendous overtime costs being incurred by many police departments across the nation busy containing the Occupy movement:

1.) Increase taxes upon the lower and vanishing middle classes -- those primarily responsible for supporting Occupiers:
2.) End our foreign wars, return and deploy our military soldiers in the city streets across America, or:
3.) Simply eliminate the First Amendment guaranteeing their right of free speech and assembly.

....across the street from the boarded up Wells
Fargo and burned out Bank of America.

Imagine returning home from the Middle East to discover you have to fight to save your country.

"Nonviolence is fine as long as it works." ~Malcolm X

("Remember, Malcolm X was talking about the Earth's most violent species here." ~Dada)

Scene from Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3

Sometime in the middle of last Sunday's Eagle's rout of the Dallas Cowboys (at 21-0, I wasn't paying much attention), the last part of a commercial during a time out caught my attention.

Saying something like, "Imagine returning home from the Middle East to discover you have to fight to save your country."

It was an ad for Modern Warfare 3's "Call of Duty" video game being released later this month.

While *the enemy* was left up to us, in light of recent events, it's not too difficult to imagine circumstances that might give rise to just such a scenario on American soil.

Yes, as Malcolm X said, "Nonviolence is nice as long as it works."

I would love to know Scott Olsen's opinion on that but, as I understand it, he's lost his ability to speak.

In the west Texas town of El Paso....

Photo by Mrs. Dada

For those unfamiliar with El Paso:

In this city's heart, there is a plaza surrounded by megalithic structures of our nation's banking industry. And in their shadows that creep daily across the dwarfed plaza surrounded by these Goliaths, there has arisen a village of tents with residents who in an earlier historic time would have been called "Davids". They come to this plaza, against all odds, in hopes of repeating history.

Dada wishes them well.

Sunday El Paso Times UNEXPURGATED Doonesbury they didn't post

Taking it to the banks!

Well, what an exciting day yesterday turned out to be. Starting off as just another day, I decided to spend part of the morning opening an account at a second local credit union in which to transfer our closed accounts at two of the nation's thirty largest banks.

Nothing particularly *big* about that, other than the good feeling I was enjoying until suddenly dwarfed by what followed: the hugest damn withdrawal made in recent history!

Yes, after 2 years, 9 months, and 2 days, president Obama finally fulfilled the very first thing he said he would do if elected our president: withdraw all US troops from Iraq! (Never mind Obama's promise fulfillment comes in response to Iraq's, not America's, demand we get the hell out.)

Was it coincidental my puny bank withdrawals, were trumped (embarrassingly so) by Obama's withdrawal which he promised, "we could take to the bank"? Probably.

But finally, being the first thing done that he promised, let us celebrate the fact and ponder: What's next? Letting Bush-Era Tax Cuts Expire? Immigration Reform? Closing down Guantanamo Bay? I wouldn't bank on it.

Occupy El Paso pics from Friday

The staff of Dada's Dally strolled through the Occupy El Paso
neighborhood on Friday afternoon, visiting with its residents.

Washington's plan to salvage the economy

Dada corrects the Coen Brothers on a casting error in their movie, "No Country For Old Men"

Occupy El Paso reveals "No Country For Old Men" miscasting.
(Just a minor criticism of an otherwise excellent movie!)

In the movie, Albuquerque was cast in the role of El Paso, and El Paso's sheriff (and former El Paso Chief of Police) was stereotyped as a typical Southern, rotund, out-of-shape older sheriff with a heavy southern drawl. Recent El Paso sheriffs show this casting could not have been more wrong!

As an example, a story in this morning's El Paso Times covering the Occupy El Paso action taking place on San Jacinto Plaza in the heart of downtown quoted an occupier regarding a visit they received from our sheriff yesterday afternoon: "We just got a real generous donation from Sheriff Wiles. He brought us eight boxes of pizza for all the protestors out here."

Kudos to our sheriff!


El Paso's loss = Austin's gain

Below is a video of former El Pasoan Dave Cortez, now of Austin, explaining the best way for depositors to withdraw their (own damn) money from big banks without upsetting those banks , thus avoiding the recent messy, much publicized, attempt of same by La Guardia Place Citibank customers last week.



Nice going, Dave!


Military wives spoke up

Tuesday afternoon - Occupy El Paso Mrs. Dada (right) getting into the spirit

Mrs. Dada and I visited Occupy El Paso for a couple of hours yesterday. It was great meeting and visiting with new people with whom we share much in common.

As we were talking with others, I noticed two women approaching with a young girl of three or four. I got the impression they wanted to join the conversation. They did. We learned they were the wives of Ft. Bliss soldiers. One's husband (the one with the young daughter) is currently in Afghanistan. And neither of these young wives were buying the Army's "lies" fed their husbands; "lies" of the soldiers being "heroes" for serving their country; of protecting our freedoms from Iraqis, and Afghanis.

And aside from their reservations about their husband's employer, I found them to be very, very well informed about other policies in which our government engages. You might say they are Kool-Aid intolerant, i.e., unable to swallow what so many Americans willing swill to wash down the endless fears they are continuously fed in the media via their government.

Yes, great meeting and visiting with new people we share much in common. Indeed!

Maybe we're not dreaming. Maybe it really IS an efe-ing nightmare!

Ever get the feeling you're on the wrong bus, headed in the wrong direction, you can't get off and whoever is in control of all that is putting the squeeze on you?

*****************

Well, today -- Monday, October 17th -- began a huge US "exercise" consisting of 41 massive C-5 transports testing their delivery capability "to provide a rapid strategic airlift response to major crises and contingencies ... the giant US transports will drill for landings in Israel and Saudi Arabia. The aircraft will be packed with command and control elements and fighting units with full equipment." (Gee, why didn't I hear anything about this on the evening network news?)

The timing of the US unveiling of the alleged Iranian plot last week to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador to this country in this country was, I'm sure, coincidental to this week's Middle East massive airlift operation, but I had to admire the striking resemblance of Hillary Clinton's warning to Iran afterward to that of *Colon* Powell's February 5, 2003 revelation before the UN Security Council of WMDs in Iraq (which, of course, turned out to be fiction much as I suspect the Iranian plot is). It left me pondering who does have the bigger "juevos."

Good fiction! Like Obama sending 100 combat equipped US troops into Uganda to advise opponents of the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels who have been accused of grievous human rights abuses there. Sounds humanitarian enough, despite a recent discovery of a rich new Ugandan oil field expected to yield 2.5 - 6 billion barrels of oil which, as I'm sure, has no connection to our "good intentions."

But hey, it's good fiction that ends up costing us tens of thousands of innocent lives and tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, right?

Locally, I was surprised during last Thursday's visit to my dentist. As always, the conversation opener was what I was doing in the stock market. Doc knows what to expect. "Nothing," or "watching my penny stocks go to zero." What surprised me was his answer to the same question: "I'm basically out of the market," he said, leaving me surprised, pleased, and curious to where he's fleeing with his treasures; to what he considered a safe place for his money. "Property, I'm thinking of buying property -- in Dallas," he said.

This was great news to me, a constant contributor to his retirement security, I heartily endorsed his decision. Of course, when economic collapse comes, it's impossible to foresee all possible ramifications, but owning something tangible, like property, sounds like a good idea, so long as hyperinflation doesn't over-run his ability to pay the taxes on it.

And then there's the story on tonight's local news out of New Mexico, about the spaceport there financed to the tune of 209 million taxpayer's dollars, much to the pleasure of billionaire Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space at America's Spaceport. At this afternoon's christening, Branson swilled champagne while danging from its rafters during the dedication for his facility that will provide 450 people (150 of whom were present at today's ceremony) who have purchased$150,000 -- $250,000 tickets (I guess the difference being whether you purchased a first class ticket for $250K or $150K for mere "coach") for a 2 1/2 hour flight, the high point of which will include five minutes of weightlessness with Earth views only seen by astronauts til now.

As New Mexico governor Susanna Martinez assures increasingly economically edgy state taxpayers, once operational, Branson's Spaceport will provide a couple hundred New Mexicans with jobs. After all, there's always a need for janitors, trash collectors, and toilet cleaners.

When you hear of the 99% Occupy Wall Streeters, there are probably no Virgin Galactic passengers among them. If you can't relate to those risking arrest of their asses on Wall Street as well as streets across America for a better America, perhaps you are one of the more fortunate 1%ers with a ticket to outer space or dreamer who thinks they may one day be able to fly high with those who already can.

Current Melt Value of Coins

For those of us without such worries, it may be time to start looking for those old silver coins stored away in the back of closet shelves, filing cabinets, or bank safety deposit boxes, etc. (For heaven's sake, get 'em out of this later storage space if you ever hope to see 'em again!) If things get really bad, a couple of pre-1965 Kennedy half dollars for a 12 oz. bottle of water might buy you another day or so.

Why am I gagging?

So inspired (!), I wrote the following vignette after reading something said by the late George Carlin.*

***************

A Vignette
by Dada

Child: "Mom, what's The American Dream?"

Mother: "It's an ideal, a kind of fantasy where it's every American's right at birth to become a billionaire if they just work hard, or they have a daddy like Sam Walton, Warren Buffet, or Bill Gates."

Child: "So, The American Dream's not real? It doesn't really exist?"

Mother: "Oh no, it exists alright -- in your dreams. You just have to be asleep to believe it!"

* "It's called The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it" by George Carlin; a modern myth still promoted by the likes of Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Herman Cain, etc. amid an American economy in the final stages of putrefaction and still being chewed, swallowed and digested by millions in their "oddiences."

Honking at Hookers

With the world seeming to fall apart all around us, Dada
presents the following 100 seconds of distraction. Enjoy!

Are we being played? Nobody could make this up, right?

Calling the alleged Iranian terrorist plot unveiled yesterday a "violation of US and international law" (note, something the US does globally, continuously, with impunity), secretary of state Clinton went on to tell the Associated Press, "the idea that they would attempt to go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?" (my emphasis, her words)

The beginning is near! (Ya think?)

In the 16th century, melancholia was the elective illness

of the exceptional man, of he who had nothing above him.
During the Romantic period, it stood at the crossroads of
creative genius and madness. Today, it is the situation of
every individual in Western society. ~ Alain Ehrenberg

Occupy El Paso

Clip of Dada (arrow) Friday evening
(from El Diario video below)

Quote of the Day

America bumbles about the world like a blind man, and doesn't know it. Its contempt for everywhere else, its inability to conceive that maybe other peoples and places don't want to be like America, leads to disaster after disaster. Washington was going to invade Iraq, which with gratitude would go all democratic and be like Massachusetts, and the other Arab nations would follow suit, and so we would remake the Arab world according to Fox News.

Americans believe this stuff. There is probably no one in France, and here I include asylums, drains, and morgues, who could be so narcissistically stupid. ~ Fred Reed

Occupy El Paso, Friday evening, 10/7/11

During Occupy El Paso's meeting in San Jacinto Plaza last evening,
El Lagarto unexpectedly lunged skyward. What suddenly then fell to
the ground at our feet? Was it a piece of the Moon? A broken tooth?

In time all walls fail.

In 2006 I wrote a blog about walls. From walls of flowers and love, walls built out of fear, walls with peep holes and the strongest walls of all -- the invisible walls.

Seeing a new wall this past week made from two of the materials mentioned therein -- men and plastic -- in, of all places, New York's Wall Street section, I have reposted that blog below.


It was interesting to see a plastic wall being held by police officers surrounding Wall Street protestors. The nice thing about that kind of wall I suppose is, with their hands busy holding up a plastic wall, police officers are not able to use their clubs or pepper spray. Not to worry, however, their supervisors took care of that part.

***********************

(revised from original August, 2006 edition)

I'd like to devote today's blog to walls. Walls are everywhere, but I seldom think about them. So let's start with one of my favorite walls. This one is one of many great walls in Taos, New Mexico, that are made of adobe. It's simple, yet elegant. I took this picture a couple of years ago when I thought it was in danger of being torn down. But thankfully it wasn't. It was just repaired and remains intact. I like it. (A 2010 visit revealed this wall has been torn down; a new faux adobe wall stands in its place.)
The job of this particular wall is to delineate private property from public property. As you walk along outside, it tells you, "Stay the hell out!" yet allows you to peek inside. That's nice.

Speaking of peeking through walls, there are new dressing room walls springing up at one of the stores of the English boutiques chain by Ann Summers. They sell lingerie among other items. This newly updated store will intentionally have walls with holes in them.
According to an "Evening News" article, "cubicles in the new-look store will have small spy hole windows at eye-level. The idea is that women can throw open the peep hole, allowing their partners a peek at what they have to look forward to, without having to step out in front of other shoppers."

That's a nicely conceived wall. If they succeed in attracting more men into their stores as hoped, you can probably expect walls with holes to begin popping up eventually in American stores like Victoria's Secret.

There are walls designed to keep you out for your own protection. They keep you from getting too close to dangerous animals or falling into deep, sometimes sharp or hard places and killing yourself. As unbelievable as it may seem, there exist some people who still insist on feeding the bears by hand through such walls or leaning in just a little closer over them for a better shot of the canyon.

Walls can be made from many different things. Like the adobe, metal and sheet rock ones above, but here's an example of a wall made of much, much weaker and cheaper material which has proven to be far, far tougher than most walls. It'll remain that way so long as people have faith that yellow plastic ribbon with the word "Police" inscribed somewhere on it is very tough material. Thus far it has been.
Another material often used in walls is people. These can be very strong also and usually prevail in protecting things like democrats and republicans while holding conventions behind walled gathering centers.

On an even larger scale, human walls can be used to save the nation from undocumented immigrants coming through Mexico across our southern border. These have been far less successful. Maybe that's because immigrants are more passionate about their needs and less caring for their safety should they get caught in pursuit of those needs than their more comfortable and passive American counterparts.

Oh sure, there were a few times when the human walls came close to failing here in the U.S. One such harrowing moment that immediately comes to mind is the 1968 democratic national convention in Chicago. There, unruly mobs gave police all they could handle. In 2004, a couple hundred thousand demonstrators outside the republican national convention, while unnerving in number, were basically peaceful, thus allowing those inside the convention to continue their agenda of ignoring popular demands.

Recently our southern border has been strengthened by employing a human wall. In scenes not unlike these, thousands of our national guardsmen are sent marching off towards Mexico. The human border wall's been a wall with lots and lots of holes. Bush is trying to patch them with more people mortar.

While conventional walls of steel and concrete are strong, they are rigid and inflexible. Human walls are more fluid and unlike their non-human counterparts, can shoot guns. And when necessary, they can even "fall back" rather than be over-run.

However, it may help to remember in time all walls fail. It's just a question of when.

The biggest wall failure in recent history was the Berlin Wall which collapsed in 1989.
While it was originally designed and erected to keep people in, it also made a nice canvass for budding artists in need of self expression who were left "outside."

Most walls are built to keep people out. The most spectacular example of that, of course, would be the Great Wall of China. Built in the Third Century, B.C., it stretched across 1,500 miles of China's northern border to discourage invaders from entering. But it failed in that purpose.
Today, however, the wall succeeds when used to draw people in--as a big old tourist attraction. It also continues in another unintended purpose, that of a source for construction workers to raid for building materials for other smaller walls and use in roadway paving.

Here's a couple examples of walls on far smaller scales. These that follow are similar to the Berlin Wall, i.e., designed to keep people in, not keep them out.
Here's a common, everyday prison. Prisons continue to propagate across the American landscape likes hordes of rabbits. As they expand in number, so does the percentage of Americans who have taken up residence behind their walls.

While our current government often hides behind White House, Pentagon and congressional walls and halls to keep people away, more and more of the public is hoping to one day see these same government servants behind prison walls. To keep them away from us!

On an even smaller scale, there are the following little walls:Scattered throughout America in corporate offices that have yet to move worker's jobs offshore are the walls of the fabled cubicles. (Sadly, this photo is from an office that has gone to India.)

I was fortunate to escape my job in corporate America before cubicles invaded our office. So I'm not sure what their exact purpose is. I really have no idea. Unless it's to dehumanize the workers behind them.

In my brief look at walls, these are probably the most touching ones. They are the walls erected to honor those who are no longer with us. Some represent policies of folly that took loved ones from us because of our national hubris.Other, less permanent walls, spring up immediately after a tragedy. Often made of flowers, notes to and photos of lost loved ones. The wall born of grief after 9/11 being the prime example.


But I want to make a brief mention of probably the most prevalent walls of all. They are the strongest but often the most subtle of all walls. And they are very difficult for most to see. Not so much because they can't be seen, but because those living behind them are often very blind. Sorry, I don't have any pictures of them. They are the walls of dogma.

Established dogmas exist as unassailable beliefs. They are walls erected specifically for defense against anyone skeptical enough to question or doubt the belief systems (BS) they protect. I recently heard Naomi Klein refer to such walls as "intellectual police lines."

Perhaps the heartiest (and most significant) of these dogmatic walls are maintained by religions and their churches. I'll not focus on those here because of the heated passions they can provoke. If your passions are aroused by the mere mention of these institutions and my refusal to devote time to them, whether believer or cynic, you illustrate -- and should appreciate -- my point.

Religious dogma is closely followed by governments and their political party subsets, increasingly, multinational businesses and, not least of all, educational institutions and the academic experts who populate their hallways.

Governments give us pretty flags of colorful cloth to swear our allegiance to. Symbolizing our particular BS, if challenged to the extreme, one is obligated to kill or die for it in its defense.

Business provides us logos to wear on clothing or sport on the ass ends of our vehicles to proclaim our allegiances to them. Sometimes, as an arm of their government, they help write the national BS. Taken to the extreme like here in the U.S., business determines our BS by promoting fear and our reaction to it--wars -- but, hey, it's good for business.

Political parties give us symbols, like elephants and asses, and formidably exclude serious challenges from third parties and extremist views of members within their own. Mainstream media protect the BS of all of these.

And finally, educational institutions write our histories for us. Histories constructed under the prevailing paradigms of the day which in time congeal and harden into BS's of unassailable dogma such institutions purport to exist to refute.

While there are all kinds of walls, these are a few that come to my mind. From the most obvious to the most subtle and hardest to see. While serving many different purposes, in time they all will perish. Perhaps we should give thanks.

"Thoughts on Fathers, on Integrity and on a Failed Presidency"

(Dada note: After reading the following blog, I was so impressed I asked its author if I might reprint it here on Dada's. My thanks to Thomas Wark, aka A Bordello Pianist.)

*****

As the days grow shorter and cooler and the angle of the sun bathes desert and mountain with the year's most special kind of light, Brandi and I spend more and more time out there, listening to the silence. I can't tell what my uncharacteristically pensive boxer-shepherd is thinking, but I'm thinking about fathers and about integrity.

I think of my father and his father and their passion for the works of Shakespeare. I remember an autumn Saturday in the woods with my Dad. We were "hunting" with our .22s but the squirrels in that Ohio woodland were quite safe; the walk, the companionship, the mutual appreciation of the silence, the sunlight, the falling leaves and the acorns and the scents of deepening fall -- these were more important than shooting at squirrels.

Something I had said the night before troubled Homer Arthur Frederick Wark, the autocrat of Herbert Avenue. Quoting an English teacher, I said that Polonius in Hamlet was an unmitigated hypocrite and so his famous advice to his son Laertes, one of my father's favorite passages, was but so much eloquent bullshit.

When we paused to rest on the trunk of a fallen tree, he turned to me and said softly, "It's about integrity." Shakespeare, he said, used the playwright's tools, from irony ('. . .clothes make the man. . .') to moral imperative ('This above all, to thine own self be true. . .') to place eternal verities in the mouth of a minor and not entirely admirable character. He handed down to me his own moral imperative: "If only men of perfect character can be held to speak truth, scant truth would ever reach human ears. After all, the world could give us only one Lincoln; it can never give us another."

It was Chris Hedges, one of today's most important American writers, who set me to ruminating about fathers and integrity, when I read his recent article based on a long conversatisn with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Hedges:

"Wright, who perhaps knows Obama better than nearly any other person in the country, sees a man who sold his principles for the chimera and illusion of power. But once Obama achieved power he became its tool, its vassal, its public face, its brand."

To Hedges, Obama is Wright's personal Judas: "Obama's politically expedient decision to betray and abandon his pastor (Wright) exposed his cowardice and moral bankruptcy. In that moment, he surrendered the last shreds of his integrity." Now merely a "black Mascot for Wall Street," Obama, Hedges writes, must "grapple with the fact that he was a traitor not only to his pastor, the man who married him and Michelle, who baptized his children and who kept him spiritually and morally grounded, but to himself. Wright retains what is most precious in life and what Obama has squandered -- his soul.

"I grew up as a Christian," Hedges writes. "My father was a pastor. I graduated from a seminary. I can distinguish a Christian pastor from the slick imposters and charlatans. Wright preaches the radical and unsettling message of the Christian Gospel. He calls us to live the moral life. He knows that the measure of our lives as individuals and as a nation is reflected in how we treat our most vulnerable. And he knows on whose side he stands. Obama, who like Judas took his 30 pieces of silver and betrayed someone who loved him, withers into moral insignificance in Wright's presence."
Wright, also the son of a pastor, thunders his own and his father's moral imperative, again and again, in his conversation with Hedges. The uncompromising eternal verities drive themselves home in his voice, like Polonius.

"President Obama was selected before he was elected," Wright said, "and he is accountable to those who selected him. Why do you think Wall Street got the break? Why do you think the big three [financial institutions] were bailed out? Those were the ones who selected him. We didn't select him. We don't have enough money to select anybody. You're accountable to those who select you. All politicians are. (Obama) is accountable to the ones that put him where he is. Preachers, pastors, ministers, we are not accountable to these people."

Selected before he was elected. Think back, America. Think back to the Democratic National Convention of 2004. Somewhere, probably in Boston, very powerful and no doubt very rich people reached down into the murk of Illinois state politics and selected an obscure black politician to speak to Democrats and to the world in prime time amid expertly orchestreated media hype, both before and after. With his acceptance of their pieces of silver, Barrack Obama had the presidency conferred upon him, and lost his soul. His betrayal of Wright was inevitable from that moment on.

Hedges (quoting Wright):

"In February 2007 on [a broadcast of 'Religion and Ethics' I said there will come a time when Obama will have to distance himself from me," Wright said. "Now that's February 2007. So the fact that he had to distance himself from me does not come as a surprise."

Nor is what follows a surprise, coming as it does from this stern demander of Christian principles, this apostle of truth, this custodian of the eternal verities:

"I was walking through the airport a few weeks ago," Wright said. "I saw on the cover, I think, of Time Magazine, Osama bin Laden's picture. The caption on the cover said 'Justice.' I said, 'How about murder? It was an assassin's hit.' What really bothered me as I read more about it was that Barack and Hillary [Clinton] and the war folk were sitting in the war room watching the hit. There were cameras in the field. It was a hit, two right above the eyebrow. Why, why, why did you murder that man? We have international courts. We have trials like the Nuremberg trials. Why did you murder him? Why not put him on trial?

"And I sat up in the middle of the night, about 10 days later, with the answer. I said, because you didn't want him to talk. If he starts talking on the stand everything comes unraveled. We will have to look at the Cheney war machine. A trial would rip to shreds the lies we have been telling ourselves and our American public. We can't afford that, so we murder him. We murder him and call it justice. That one really hurt. I said to myself, this is the Barack you once knew who cared enough about humankind to work in Altgeld Gardens with the poor, to not run against an African-American female, who now calls for a professional Navy SEAL assassination, a hit, and watches it. It's like that story you heard your dad preach and you know from seminary in Acts, where the demons said to the seven sons of Sceva, Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you? Who have you become?"

* * *

"One of you shall betray me." (Matthew, 26:21)

"Is it I, Lord?"

"He it is, for whom I shall dip the sop, and give it him." (John 23:26).

Art as metaphor?

Maybe it's time I broke out the old oils and brushes. Seems artist Alex Schaefer has found his paintings with the following theme sell better than his others. This colorful and pleasant one of a Bank of America brought him $3,601 on eBay.

Bank of America, 6" X 8" by Alex Schaefer

But it was this one below, likely purchased by a fan of Chase Bank, that enriched Schaefer by $25,000! It was this one that also drew the attention of a couple of police officers as he was painting it, followed up by another visit or two by police wanting to know if maybe he wasn't a terrorist?

Schaefer describes his impressionistic bank paintings as "visual metaphor for the havoc that banking practices have caused to the economy." Dada calls 'em, "Nice!"

Chase Burning, 22" X 28" oil on canvas, by Alex Schaefer.