Elephants on Parade

Every six months or so, the Asian Art Museum takes a small room between the Korean and Japanese galleries, and turns it into a curated "theme" room with so far not very interesting results.



Previously, the theme was Shadows and Masks: Performance Something-or-Other.



Presently the room is devoted to mostly East Indian representations of elephants.



I don't usually covet objects in museums particularly, but this elephant rug is an exception.



There is a great West Coast science-fiction writer named John Varley whose future tales are set after superior aliens arrive on Earth to communicate with intelligent life. However, that category consists of whales and dolphins. Humans are regarded as ants, who are quickly forced into outer-space exile in underground shelters on the moon.



It was probably just an oversight on Varley's part, but my version of the tale would include elephants along with whales and dolphins as earth's wise, beautiful, intelligent life.



In India, elephants have long been worshiped, decorated, and even turned into warriors.



Though there's absolutely nothing Asian about it...



...I still longed to see a large blow-up of the great "Dovima with Elephants" photo, one of my favorite images in the world.

Ballet Rodeo

One of the best deals in all of San Francisco is weeknights at the Opera House during the San Francisco Ballet season.



A balcony seat will only set you back $8, which is cheaper than a movie, where there's no great live orchestra playing.



Since it's not very crowded, you can use your ticket to stand behind the rails of the orchestra section if you want to get closer. This is where most of the ballet students hang out cheering on their colleagues in between gossiping sessions.



The ballet audience is younger than the opera crowd...



...with lots of gay pairs...



...and old girlfriends.



My friend Thad Trela was manning one of the entrances as a "hospitality" person who is allowed to grab a free seat after his greeting duties are over.



I went to "Mixed Program #3" on Wednesday the 22nd with my neighbor A. who had never been to the ballet before.



She was astonished at what more experienced balletomanes look upon as a convention: the ass-crack tights on the male dancers which allows you to see, well, eeverything. The first ballet was by the old Martha Graham dancer/choreographer, Paul Taylor, to one of my favorite pieces of music by Richard Strauss, a sweet-sounding ballet suite written in 1943 consisting of orchestrations of Couperin harpsichord pieces. The ballet was fine, though I have to confess here that most ballets give me the giggles, and the lack of appreciation is entirely my fault.



My laughter was sincerely derisive during the second ballet, "Magrittomania," choreographed by Yuri Possokhov, one of the principal dancers at the company. The choreography was emotional, tormented and Russian, which was fine, but the music was an ungodly horror. It was an amalgamation of a dozen of Beethoven's Greatest Hits, from "Fur Elise" to themes from the Third and Seventh Symphonies, and one Yuri Krasavin (perfect name!) had reorchestrated them into something more moderne. Instead of being a perfect meeting of two great composers, a la Strauss and Couperin, it was more like the weird bastardizations of classical music used during "Ice Skating" at the Olympics.



The last ballet was the best, Agnes de Mille's 1942 "Rodeo" with the impossibly beautiful Aaron Copland score. I've heard the thing thousands of times on classical radio stations over the decades and never had a clue what scenario it was supposed to be illustrating, which is basically "tomboy wants a man and can't get one until she puts on an ugly dress and dances with the two cutest guys."



My neighbor A., who is a bit of a tomboy herself, was disappointed only in that the piece hadn't been updated Lesbian "Brokeback Mountain" style, where the heroine would get to dance off with the woman, rather than the man, of her dreams. I could see her point.

Eritrea Wants a Border

Last Monday the 13th, there was yet another photo-op protest in the Civic Center Plaza in front of San Francisco's City Hall.



It was organized by a group of Bay Area folks who are originally from the new African country of Eritrea, which is on the northeastern side of Ethiopia, along the Red Sea.



The two countries, regions, what-have-you have been waging a bitter war over sovereignty for the last 30 years, and an agreement over a permanent border was signed by "The Independent Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC)" in Algiers in 2002.



To read more about the history of the place, there's a good historical entry in Wikipedia (click here)...



...and for the official Eritrean word on the Monday the 13th Worldwide "Peace Rally," click here.



The most touching part about the flyer they were handing out was its naivete.



Their handout read, in part:

"Ethiopia continues to violate the Algiers Agreement, UN Security Council resolutions, and international law. It is militarily occupying sovereign Eritrean territory, in violation of UN Charter. Due to its rejection of the EEBC's decision and procedures, all demarcation activities have come to a halt. The EEBC has been forced to close its offices."

It continued:

"The Role of the U.S. Government: The U.S. must fulfill its legal and moral obligations to enforce the EEBC's decision without further precondition. U.S. failure to enforce demarcation will further destabilize the Horn of Africa, a region of strategic importance to U.S. security and the global war against terrorism."

In truth, the United States government could care less about the vast majority of its own citizens, let alone a bunch of obscure Africans.



Still, let's give these people credit for thinking that a public protest will make a difference.

Satanic Love Cult at City Hall

At various times throughout the year, usually for holidays and special events, the remarkable night lighting of San Francisco's City Hall gets the full colored gel treatment.



The Christmas season, for instance, features green lighting which gives the building an Emerald City look.



On February 13th, the night before Valentine's Day, the lights went red and made the place look startlingly like Satan's Palace, and the full moon rising over the dome only emphasized the spookiness.



So here's a Special Scary Valentine to Le Domestic Partner, Tony...



...and "I Love You, You Sinful Creatures" Valentines to Jay in Long Island and Heidi in Santa Barbara. xxx

billofrights

To download a PDF copy of The First Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, otherwise known as "The Bill of Rights," click here.

This flyer is being produced in honor of the Reverend Robert Warren Cromey's 75th birthday on Thursday, January 16, 2006, and is going to be distributed at the weekly Peace Vigil in front of the San Francisco Federal Building at 450 Golden Gate Avenue. The vigil meets every Thursday from noon to 1:00 PM, and will continue to do so until the United States stops invading and bombing other countries. It is organized by a remarkable group of religiously-affiliated people: the American Friends Service Committee, Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Episcopal Peace Fellowship and San Francisco Friends Meeting.

Crash

At 10:45 PM on the night of Wednesday the 9th, a high-speed police chase ended with the fugitive crashing at high speed into another car that was trying to cross the intersection of Franklin and McAllister, directly below my apartment.



The fugitive ran from his car but was tackled by the police at the corner of Van Ness and McAllister a block away.



The accident could easily have been fatal, but providentially that was not the case and the driver whose car was smashed into seemed more stunned than hurt.



The next morning, h. brown sent out a "Watching City Hall" note to friends about the latest shenanigans involving the San Francisco Police Department, Mayor Newsom, and the rich people he works for. Here are a few excerpts:

Newsom surrenders to Cowboy Cop Brass (to offer $100 million today)

In a cynical ploy whose certain failure cannot be measured until he's safely on to the next office purchased for him by Donald Fisher, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is set today to advocate increasing the City's dysfunctional police department by a full third.

The dipshit who convinced the Mayor to call for adding 700 new police officers to a department that refuses to fly helicopters, walk beats, ride buses, man kiosks, civilianize the Office of Citizens Complaints, and keep track of punk-ass rogues needs his own ass kicked by Captain Greg ("You got a problem with my being charged with brutality 80 times?") Corrales."

.

"It positively strains credulity that any mayor would call for a further empowerment of San Francisco's gangster police force. At last evening's meeting of the Police Commission, Chief Heather ("I demand an apology!") Fong downplayed her department's refusal to fully staff as required by law and brushed off questions as to why it has taken her over 2 years to hire 2 of 72 new civilian positions created by the Board of Supervisors to get more cops back on the street.

People, the cops have no intention of reforming. They not only refuse to keep a public record of their most violent members ... they not only refuse to discipline them ... instead (according to the Chron), they promote them into teaching positions.

Yeah, the head crackers become Training Officers. Talk about a fuckin' upside down world. And, they dominate the OCC staff with 'light-duty' officers whom the department's union steward testifies, bully the civilian staff and gum up investigations."

"They mock the Mayor. Police Officer Association head Gary Delugnuts told Mayor Newsom that he should jog to work a different way if he was tired of seeing drug dealers in the Tenderloin. This is the same prick who carries a loaded gun, bulging off his fat ass, while he insults the person and families of Police Commission members. A clearly frightened Commission President, Louise Renne addressed Delugnut's threats thusly: "Oh, that's just Gary being Gary.".

Gavin, the SFPD needs taken apart and put back together differently. It cannot get worse. The first step is to stop hiring, not increase it. If the Chronicle series proved one thing, it is that the department not only has no intention of reforming their violent ways, but is, in fact, perpetuating them by hiring out-of-town recruits with a strong propensity for violence. The last thing in the world you want to do is to add more knuckle-draggers to this army of barabarians. But, that is exactly what the Mayor will propose 2 hours from now."

h. brown turned out to be correct about Newsom's speech in conjunction with the awful Supervisor Fiona Ma at the Police Academy later that morning. For a link to the Mayor's press release, click here.



h. brown continued his polemical outburst:

Gavin's handlers fear Cindy Sheehan

Now, this is only an educated hunch and since we all know that my educated hunches are only right around 90% of the time ... this '700 new cop solution' from Newsom ... I think, anyway ... is a reaction to the announcement by the Nation's leading Anti-War activist, Cindy Sheehan that she may run against Dianne Feinstein for the U.S. Senate.

"You see, Gavin's people know that Feinstein is retiring. Yeah, Dick Blum's gotten all he can out of the old girl and he's putting her out to pasture at their new 15 million buck digs in Pacific Heights. Although Blum wanted the missus to work until she fell dead in her tracks, he approved the transition to Newsom several months ago. Sources in D.C. say that the senator has been unable to walk into the senate chambers under her own power for nearly 2 years."

"Fisher & Shorenstein know that although a late-entry by the empty-headed Newsom can succeed against Green Party challenger, Todd Chretien and any other Democrat presently on the scene, Gavin cannot beat Cindy Sheehan."

"So, they want to pad Gavin's resume in a hurry and throwing money at the gangster police department, while stupid, can be spun as a bold new move. See if I'm not right."

Actually, h. turned out to be only partially correct, because Cindy Sheehan called a press conference in the Civic Center Plaza to announce that she had decided not to run for the Senate.



The event started with the arrival of a Code Pink contingent...



...and a brief introduction from the annoying Medea Benjamin.



For an added bit of surrealism, there was a group of in-line skaters...



...circling the plaza in a promotional stunt for the Winter Olympics on NBC.



Leading the group was one of my favorite people in San Francisco, the Sk8 Godfather, pictured above.



Cindy Sheehan came to the podium and started off uncertainly, remarking how beautiful the day was and how her dead son Casey wasn't around to appreciate it.



She talked about how Senator Feinstein, while declaring she was opposed to the war in Iraq, kept voting for every piece of legislation funding the invasion and occupation.



"That's like telling a friend you're unhappy about them being a drug addict and then giving them a pile of money to buy drugs. It makes no sense at all."



Sheehan related her quandary about whether she would be more effective in getting the troops out of Iraq as an "outsider" or as somebody trying to work within the political system in a senatorial campaign, and announced that she has decided to remain an Outsider.



This came as a huge relief to the professional Democratic politicos. The gentleman who was being interviewed above told me that it was a wise decision because "Sheehan would have made the Democrats look like a laughing stock," which struck me as ridiculous.



They're already a "laughing stock," and it's not because of Ms. Sheehan.

de Young Museum 4: The Great Outdoors

At the west end of the new de Young Museum, there is a large, rather graceless restaurant/cafeteria...



...that extends out to an outdoor snack area which is currently covered in plastic.



The west end of the building is impressive...



...though the monster chrome sculpture flanking it is certainly aggressively ugly.



A lovely, small Henry Moore statue flanks one end of "The Sculpture Garden"...



...which also has a series of upside-down apple sculptures...



...that look designed for seating...



...though there is signage everywhere telling people not to touch the art.



The other end of The Sculpture Garden is anchored by another Claes Oldenberg pop art sculpture, which were amusing when he was doing them in the 1960s, but strike me as increasingly trite with each iteration.



The coolest piece in the backyard, next to the Henry Moore, is an environmental sculpture by James Turell that was commissioned for the opening of the museum.



The museum website has the following information:

"The sculpture will be sited in a grass-covered hill in the Osher Sculpture Garden. Viewers will walk through a short tunnel cut into the hill, and then enter into a cylindrical space carved out of the hill."

"The retaining walls of this cylindrical space will be white concrete..."

"...and the floor will be red stone."

"At the center of this cylindrical space will be a rough-hewn, black basalt stupa form."

"Entering the round stupa through a door, viewers will sit on a stone bench that runs around the circumference of the skyspace and view the sky through an oculus cut in the roof of the chamber."

"Viewers’ perceptions of the sky color will be subtly altered by an L.E.D. lighting system inside the chamber, and by changing light and weather conditions outside the chamber."

Though I didn't see any "subtly altered L.E.D. lighting system" at work, the installation was quite magical.



It felt like a great place to chant, to make out with a lover, to meditate, or do any number of pleasurable things.



To end the tour, we bought a couple of beers at the cafe...



...and took them outside where David could draw the surrounding trees...



...in his glorious journal.

de Young Museum 3: The Collection

If you have ever visited the big art museums in New York City or Chicago, then you are probably aware that the collections at San Francisco art museums are, for lack of a better word, provincial.



Probably the only exception is the Asian Art Museum in the Civic Center with its world-class base collection assembled over the decades by minions of the late Chicago real estate gangster, Avery Brundage.



The de Young Museum and its sister institution, the Legion of Honor, are set up on the New York Metropolitan Museum model, with a little bit of everything from all over the world thrown into the mix.



"There sure is a lot of junk in this collection," I said to my friend David Barnard.



"There's a lot of junk in most museum collections," was his sensible reply.



Having just returned from a long trip to Spain and England, David knew what he was talking about.



"Those huge rooms in the Prado in Madrid with one large Rubens painting after another of fat, pink women are pretty awful."



Having seen those rooms for myself years ago on the way to the great Hieronymous Bosch paintings in the Prado, I could see his point.



Most of our favorite pieces in the new de Young were proudly provincial...



...featuring local artists such as Diebenkorn, Thiebaud, and Jess...



...who had three paintings on display, including the 1954 "Boy Party."



At first the painting looked quite innocuous, but on closer inspection it was a quite graphic depiction...



...of a man-on-man orgy.



In the American ceramics section, there is a characteristically rude, funny Robert Arneson.



A recent donation to the museum was a huge collection of Oceanic art (New Guinea, etc.) and the lighting and display was extraordinary.



It was also quite frightening. "Do you ever get creeped out in here?" I asked a security guard, and he replied, "Only at night."



The Oceanic area shades into the Africa section, rather like going from Fantasyland to Frontierland at Disneyland.



A wonderful piece was this new wall sculpture...



...made out of the aluminum from beer bottle caps.



It was a nice counterpoint to another huge Aboriginal painting down the stairs...



...that was also just a few years old.



My favorite piece in the museum was thousands of years old, an Olmec head from Veracruz, Mexico.



Not only was it well lit, but its placement in front of the park and museum vista was just about perfect.

de Young Museum 2: Architecture and Nature

The publicity about the new de Young museum building was that it was going to interact with the natural world around it...



...through vistas and design elements...



...and they weren't kidding.



The stairway to the basement level...



...where there is a huge space for traveling exhibits...



...descends along a rock and fern garden...



...that is filled with light.



The two-story Museum gift shop also starts off in the basement level...



...and has stairs that take you to the ground level where there is more stuff to purchase.



The building doesn't seem to have any round surfaces but is instead designed out of odd angles that are never quite ninety degrees.



The rooms holding the permanent collection are for the most part large and airy and there is no feeling of claustrophobia or vertigo which is what I usually feel at the Museum of Modern Art downtown.



The main challenge posed by the building...



...is that there is no way the art collection can compete with the glimpses of Golden Gate Park...



...that are cunningly framed by windows here and there.



In one section of the top floor, there is actually a place to sit...



...and look at the sculpture garden and the Golden Gate Park bandshell.



However, it just makes one want to go outside.



Paul Reidinger, the restaurant reviewer for the "San Francisco Bay Guardian" wrote a funny, grumpy piece about the museum some months ago with the following opening paragraph:

"Was it wise to visit the new de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park while experiencing slight hunger pangs? Could such circumstances have led to a de-mellowing of one's judgment, the core of which is that the building is not just inconceivably ugly on the outside but is, within, a soul-chillling cross between an airport lounge and a jail, a hell of angularities and hard surfaces devoid of human reference, except for the names of rich donors etched high on practically every wall?"

That judgment seems a bit harsh to me, but it's not a bad description for the central lobby...



...which is dominated by a steep stairway...



...and a huge Gerhard Richter painting consisting of what looks like blurry film sprockets but which may be a reflection of the copper sheathing on the exterior of the museum.



This awful space is dedicated to the major fundraiser for the building, Diane B. Wilsey (Dede) and her late husband, Alfred Wilsey. They were both subjects of the recent memoir by Al's son and Dede's stepson, Sean Wilsey, called "Oh The Glory of It All" which I cannot recommend highly enough (click here for a review I did on this blog). The irony is that Dede is not only immortalized by this big, sterile room but by her stepson's depiction of her as one of the great, maliciously evil characters of all time. Karma works in interesting ways.

de Young Museum 1: Earthquake Crack Tower

From Civic Center, my friend David Barnard and I took a 5-Fulton bus to Golden Gate Park.



We were there to visit the new de Young museum, which reopened last fall in a brand new structure. The old building was demolished after being deemed seismically unsafe.



Though I had no particular fondness for the previous museum, except for its beautiful little outdoor garden dining area off of the cafeteria...



...I wasn't particularly looking forward to the new structure because all the published photos in the papers made the place look so cold and sterile.



David, however, proclaimed that he adored the place and so it seemed a good idea to take a tour with him and his enthusiasm in tow.



The entrance begins with an environmental sculpture by Andrew Goldsworthy that consists of a single crack in the stone entryway.



Goldsworthy is famous for creating works involving nature that are often quite temporal, though this piece is meant to be around for a while.



The single crack in the floor continued up over a boulder...



...and then turned into a series of maze-like cracks that tied together the other boulders in the oddly shaped plaza.



It was very cool, and even the wall of contributor names on the golden right wall was quite unobtrusive.



That was the one only time that the placement of donor names throughout the new building was even remotely subtle.



The rest of the signage reminded me of the famous early 1960s comedy album by Vaughan Meader where a faux Jacqueline Kennedy is giving a tour around the White House after her redecoration and narrating, "this chair was kindly donated by Mrs. Mildred Dunnett of Columbus, Ohio and the dust was kindly donated by Virginia Rouse of Colorado Springs, Colorado."



Our first destination was to the top of the newly famous tower, which makes the building look like either a Mayan/Incan ruin or an aircraft carrier, take your pick.



Though the entrance hallway is a bit sterile...



...the ticketing queue was great. If you have a membership like David, you can swipe your card through a touch screen and print out your own tickets for the day.



Even better, you don't even have to pay the $10 admission to go up the tower.



While waiting in line for the elevator, there are some Ruth Asawa sculptures to look at.



Unfortunately, the only way to get to the top of the tower is via a single elevator.



Though there are a set of stairs to walk down, they have a large "CLOSED" sign on them to prevent anyone from using them.



Since we had just experienced Goldsworthy's environmental entrance sculpture that was explicitly referencing the fact that we live in earthquake country...



...this inability to use multiple exits struck me as absurd and dangerous.



The view is certainly great, however, including the concourse where the Academy of Sciences is also being rebuilt, with one dumb wall remaining from the original structure.



The roof of the museum also looked interesting, and the spectacle on a clear day must be quite something.



The tower houses offices and storage space in its seven or eight stories, and our downward elevator stopped at a few of those floors, making an already claustrophobic experience really horrific when the employees/docents decided they wanted to crowd on.



I mentioned to one of these ladies that they were making an already bad experience even worse, and asked her when the stairway was going to finally be open. "Oh, it will never be open," she calmly responded with a smile.

People Who Are Going to Hell

On Tuesday the 31st there was another vote at City Hall about the persecution of the Falun Gong in China.



I'm not sure how I feel about the Falun Gong: innocuous meditation/exercise group or evil cult?



There's been a lot of propaganda lately in San Francisco quoting their founder putting out homophobic remarks...



...but by the standards of the current Catholic Church, Orthodox Jewish faith, or the Mormons, for instance, it's pretty mild stuff, comparable to the Dalai Lama's disapproval of same-sexers on dogmatic grounds.



The brilliant San Francisco political polemicist h. brown, who has been somewhat lax in updating his own website, sent out a great diatribe to friends about an hour before the vote for the watered-down resolution decrying persecution by the Board of Supervisors. The resolution was further watered down during the session by Supervisor Fiona Ma who had the word "China" deleted even though they are the only country persecuting the "cult."



Here's Mr. Brown's take on the villains in this tale:

People who are going to Hell
(ignoring genocide unpopular with Deity)

I couldn't let today's vote on the watered-down resolution decrying the persecution of the Falun Gong by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors...couldn't let the vote happen without putting today's biggest assholes in the spotlight. This is a special day. I'm used to shaking my head at these local soap-opera type politicos...used to being disappointed when they traded opening bathrooms in the parks for children for the opportunity to get their picture taken with Tiger Woods (see Sean Elsbernd).

I'm used to that kind of thing. They piss you off, but they seldom cause anyone to lose their lives. Today's Falun Gong resolution is different and all of the people listed below know that their labors against the Falun Gong will surely cause more members of that sect to be harassed, imprisoned, tortured and murdered. For their own reasons, they've chosen to promote the genocide of 110 million people. Remember these names when you see stories of the persecution of the Falun Gong. These people support genocide.

1. Rose Pak...
Like Meyer Lansky, Rose controls millions, yet leads a simple life. In a truly ballsy move a couple of years back, she applied for and was approved as one of the 'low income' recipients of a discounted apartment in a highrise condo in Chris Daly's district. She is a cynical bag lady and chief apologist for the Chinese Communist government which is taking their 7 year persecution of the Falun Gong underground.

2. Phil Bronstein...
Took $10,000 from Pak to run slanderous ad on Falun Gong. Edited their persecution from his paper's copy. Chron's sister TV outlet (KPIX) followed the PRC's full-page ad with an editorial from a Latino commentator who said the Falun Gong should be kept out of the coming parade.

3. Dianne Feinstein...
Has provided the highest American political cover for the PRC persecution of the Falun Gong. Denies she is supporting genocide.

4. Richard Blum...
Dianne's hubby. Could be the greediest man in the world. All that matters to Dick is money, money, money. His URS neocon corp says that how a country treats members of religious sects not popular with their dictator is not his business. Oh, he does massive business in China.

5. Jake McGoldrick...
Has become a truly disgusting human being ruled by his hates. Jake may be relegated to the lowest of Dante's circles. He acts for no reason other than spite. Everyone else on my list is selling their souls for money or power or sex or something else that can be, in some context, considered useful. McGoldrick is opposed to the Falun Gong and will see them driven into gas chambers for no other reason than that he hates Chris Daly and Daly favors them.

6. Bevan Dufty...
Sold his soul out long, long ago. He said that the Falun Gong: "Aren't mostly from around here." in explaining his vote supporting their torture and murder. He continues to justify his support of the PRC's ongoing genocide on scriptural grounds, ignoring his own religion's clear 3,000 year-old call for 'Hori' (an Old Testament call from Yaweh for the genocide of the Philistine - now Palestinian - people)...there ain't no justification for this shit, folks.

7. Fiona Ma...
Has the least moral fiber of any Board member I've ever observed and that includes the likes of Barbara Kaufmann & Leland Yee.

The vote? It will be 10-1 with McGoldrick feeding his demons.

In truth, h. didn't guess the vote correctly. Peskin joined McGoldrick in the vote against the resolution and h. had this to say about the development:

"Peskin voted against the Falun Gong without saying why as did McGoldrick. Peskin later explained his reasons during the supes' Roll Call for Introductions in the form of a slanderous listing of the faults of the Falun Gong. No one could respond. I phoned and cursed his recording machine. Then came Public Comment and he tried to stop the Falun Gong from replying after the item was closed, although he had done exactly that. Not a good day for Peskin name."

Bush Step Down

A group calling themselves "World Can't Wait" helped spearhead a spate of protests across the country yesterday evening, January 31st, during President Bush's State of the Union speech.



The San Francisco franchise was being held in Union Square...



...which is in the center of the downtown retail district.



I wasn't going to go, but I stumbled across an interview with Gore Vidal on the internet yesterday morning that provided a bit of motivation (click here to read the whole thing.)

"Now, we’ve had idiots as presidents before. Bush is not unique. But he's certainly the most active idiot that we have ever had.

And now here we are planning new wars, ongoing wars in the Middle East. And so as he comes with his State of the Union, which he is going to justify eavesdropping without judicial warrants on anybody in the United States that he wants to listen in on. This is what we call dictatorship. Dictatorship. Dictatorship. And it is time that we objected. Don't say wait ‘til the next election and do it through that. We can't trust the elections, thanks to Diebold and S&S and all the electronic devices which are being flogged across the country to make sure that elections can be so rigged that the villains will stay in power."

"I think demonstrations across the country could be very useful on this famous Tuesday. Just say no. We've had enough of you. Go home to Crawford. We'll help you raise the money for a library, and you won't even ever have to read a book. We're not cruel. We just want to get rid of you and let you be an ex-president with his own library, which you can fill up with friends of yours who can neither read nor write, but they'll be well served and well paid, we hope, by corporate America, which will love you forever.

So I think it is really up to us to give some resonance to the State of the Union, which will be largely babble. He's not going really try to do anything about Social Security, we read in the papers. He has no major moves, other than going on and on about the legality of his illegal warrantless eavesdroppings and other breakings of the law."

"You know, it’s at a time when people say, ‘Well, it makes no difference what we do, you know, if we march and we make speeches, and this and that.’ It makes a lot of difference if millions of Americans just say, “We are fed up! We don't like you. We don't like what you're doing to the country and what you have done to the country. We don't like to live in a lawless land, where the rule of law has just been bypassed and hacks are appointed to the federal bench, who will carry on and carry on and carry on all of the illegalities which are so desperately needed by our military-industrial corporate masters.”

I think a day dedicated to that and to just showing up here and there around the country will be a good thing to do. And so, let the powers that be know that back of them, there's something called "We the people of the United States,” and all sovereignty rests in us, not in the board rooms of the Republicans."

The huge police presence in the Union Square neighborhood was grotesque...



...with gangs of cops roaming through the St. Francis Hotel to make sure there were no protestors among the business travelers in the lobby...



...and others spying from the roofs of buildings (check out the guy on the top-left above Tiffany's).



I took the outdoor glass elevator up the Saint Francis Hotel Tower...



...just to see the extent of the crowd protesting, which was actually pretty pathetic.



The protest started well, at 5PM, with a band playing...



...and dozens of young people hanging plastic barrels around their neck to use as makeshift drums.



Unfortunately, the bad speeches preaching to the converted started, which will drive me away every time.



I heard that things got better when the Bush speech was put up on a large screen (silently) while everyone made a hell of a lot of noise, but watching Bush on television is a revolting experience.



It was nice seeing Kimo the WiFi Dude, though, looking like he was ready for the St. Patrick's Day Parade with all his green signage.