Politics Shorts (37)
Notes from the Trail: The Transpartisan Upwising Continues
by Steve Bhaerman
People are waking up, left and right (well, at least right).
I “treated” myself to a viewing of Inside Job last night, and never have I seen a more compelling exposé on “gold collar crime.” Naturally, we see Reagan and both Bush administrations helping to establish the absolute rule of private wealth over our commonwealth. Unnaturally, we see “Democrats” Clinton and Obama cheerfully moving the program along as well. In one tragically compelling scene, we see Obama reappointing Ben Bernanke as chairman of the (extremely well) Fed. Obama is actually averting his eyes, as Bernanke steps up to accept the appointment. As someone at the showing said, “Without knowing who either of these guys is, it is very obvious by looking at their interaction where the real power lies.” (Hint: We the People had nothing to do with putting this power into power.)
Notes from the Trail: The Dwight Stuff
by Steve Bhaerman
Michael Moore tells us to listen to a Republican.
While many of us have known for a long time that the American President takes orders from the military (actually the military industrial complex) and not the other way around, filmmaker provocateur Michael Moore had that profound realization while reading Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s War...Here’s the part I don’t even want to write—and none of you really want to read: It matters not whom we elect. The Pentagon and the military contractors call the shots. The title “Commander in Chief” is ceremonial, like “Employee of the Month” at your local Burger King. Moore then sends us to perhaps the most prophetic Presidential message of the past half-century, President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address when he left office in 1961.
A Warning to Nude Soakers Revisited
by Katherine Pioli
All charges dropped, but nude soaking in nature, even in darkness and far from a road, remains a crime in Utah County.
Combine nude bathing in remote hot springs with lewdness charges and you have a political bomb, both in Utah and around the country. The December issue of CATALYST published the story "Warning to Nude Bathers," about a group of firefighters caught in just such a predicament at Diamond Fork (Fifth Water) hot springs in Utah County.
Glennbeckistan
by Chip Ward
If the Tea Party ruled.
Imagine a land, let's call it Glennbeckistan, where white, patriarchal, religiously zealous patriots hold a super-majority in both houses of the legislature, sit in the governor's mansion, and have a lock on most local governments. States' rights and secession are always on the agenda; gun-ownership trumps all other rights, climate change is considered an insidious socialist conspiracy, and a miscarriage can be investigated as a potential crime. Welcome to Utah.
Sold down the river
by John deJong
Can we have a sensibly located soccer complex and save the last remaining strets of riparian habitat along the Jordan in SLC? Ask your city council member.
It's not much to look at—just another piece of tired bottomland on the Jordan River. Viewed from the west on a smoggy, inversion-shrouded Christmas morning, with the fumes and vapors from the Chevron refinery rising before the gravel pit-scarred face of the Wasatch Fault, it looks like a backdrop for a 21st century staging of Dante's Inferno. The random flights of flocks of birds add a computer-generated-graphic effect James Cameron would be proud of. It's an unlikely site for a soccer game.
But a 13-field soccer complex is what Salt Lake City is planning for 160 acres located between the Jordan River and I-215, just east of the airport.
Birds or balls?
by Pax Rasmussen
Councilman Søren Simonsen questions proposed Jordan River location for soccer complex.
A bond to fund the city's portion of the Public Sports Complex (read: soccer fields) was approved by Salt Lake City voters in 2003 and has been in the works ever since. As deadline for action nears (the promissory note from Real Salt Lake expires in December 2010, the project is garnering more citizen and media attention—concerns regarding the size, location and ultimate cost.
Reading Between the Lines
by Scott Cooney
What does Obama's inaugural address mean for the Green Economy?
George W. Bush sat just a few feet behind Barack Obama during the new President's Inauguration address, delivered on a frigid yet sunny Washington, D.C. day. The former President appeared warmly dressed but must have felt a distinct chill in the stern repudiation he was publicly receiving, however eloquently Mr. Obama delivered it. CNN's camera showed Bush, wearing his best poker face, flinch ever so slightly when Mr. Obama suggested, "We will restore science to its rightful place."
Unions Great and Tiny
by Michael Place
Of nations and friends.
The first inaugural address of Mr. Lincoln of Illinois was made to a nation in near-imminent peril. Speaking from the steps of the Capitol building on that March day, Lincoln's voice was-as often reported -high, ringing and shrill. One might imagine a few birds circling the crowd and singing in the spring air, the voice of the new President rising over theirs, sharing their pitch.
Thank God for George Bush
Been there, done that; now we're creating a new reality.
by Jim Catano
Tim DeChristopher: Bearing Witness
by Sallie Dean Shatz
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