Entry Art
The American Prospect – A Critical Look at the Art of George W. Bush
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Cryptogon.com – DHS May Seize Electronic Devices from Americans Up to 100 Miles Inland from U.S. Borders
Desmogblog.com – NY Fracking Scandal: Seven Groups Demand Conflict of Interest Investigation of Cuomo Administration
Reality Check – Iowa Anti-Choicers Admit They Want to Imprison Women for Abortion
National Interest – The Hypocritical Attack on S&P
Foreign Policy – Neocons vs. Realists Is So 2008
Brookings – A Record Of Progress: How Afghanistan Improved Under Gen. John Allen
National Interest – Syria’s Kurds and the Struggle for Oil
Tahrir Squared – From Tahrir to the Ballot Box: The Key Lies in Upper Egypt
allAfrica.com – Mali: Christian or Muslim – ‘We Are All Victims of Those Terrorists’
New Republic – A Failure of Imagination Why Bookish and other recommendation engines fall short
Daily Galaxy – “Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of the Universe” (Weekend Feature)
Universe Today – Scientist Explains the Weird Shiny Thing on Mars
NYT – Slower Growth of Health Costs Eases U.S. Deficit
Brookings – European Foreign Policy Scorecard 2013
CREDO Action – Tell the Coast Guard: Don’t let the fracking industry ship radioactive fracking waste on the Ohio River
Reuters – Dish Network takes ESPN to trial over licensing deal
New Republic – Courting Disaster A new idea to limit drone strikes could actually legitimize them
Right Wing Watch – David Horowitz’s Winning Formula for the GOP: Be More Like David Horowitz
anonrelations – Anonymous CALL TO IMMEDIATE ACTION! #opSOTU
Ma’an News – Abbas to issue decrees on elections, unity govt
CHRISTY The Doula – It happens every day …
@ adrena;
Got a request from you, but can’t respond via pm or e-mail. Yes is the answer.
Thank you Celsius
@readr satx – Thanks for your email.
Just want to let you and others know that my email account has been hacked/hijacked. Apologies for the spam mail someone sent from my account.
That was spam? Well, I wondered, after I opened it–going to run a scan right now. Thanks for the heads up.
No apology needed; those folks are scum.
I shortened the links and googled them and it appears watches, accessories and software are for sale. lol
Agonist memorabilia
Well, you can add this latest Tom Dispatch to the litany of idiocy;
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175649/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_a_conspiracy_of_stupidity/?utm_source=TomDispatch&utm_campaign=c9f59c8fe0-TD_Engelhardt2_12_2013&utm_medium=email#more
The Wikileaks Party
If he wins, will he have diplomatic immunity to get out of the UK?
The American Prospect has one take on GW Bush’s paintings – that something else is going on in these pictures and it has to do with escaping one’s past. Or, as they put it, Bush can’t really escape his past, as evidence of his image in the mirror, something he might be hoping the viewer doesn’t notice.
I’ve read the commentary from a Freudian psychoanalyst – a little too convoluted for me – but the gist of it was that Bush is seeking to cleanse himself of guilt over his presidency. Now that does make sense, if he spends a lot of time painting scenes of himself in the tub or shower.
Most of the public commentary is about his hackery, and the distortions that show up in his perspective. I don’t buy this. I think he is quite accomplished – the water in the tub is drawn with a good sense of style and shows clear ability. I have to agree that the subject matter of these paintings is unusual. Who paints themselves in the bath or shower? The distorted shoulders people reference in the shower painting I see as something quite different. I think he is showing his shoulders as they look when he is leaning against the glass wall. That’s what the whitish skin suggests to me. But that prompts the same sort of question – what person leans against the wall of the shower, away from the water? Is he fatigued? Resigned to something? Is he disallowing himself the comfort of relaxing in the warm water? It is all rather strange and suggestive, just as the bath scene is weird – does he sit in the tub while it is filling with water (which would be weird in its own right), or is he adding cold or hot water to adjust things? Or am I just over-analyzing, which is a propensity people may have had with Bush?
While it is true these are private paintings, and we have no idea what else Bush has painted (other than a scene of a New England church set in the Texas hills), he was proud enough to send them on to his sister. So at least his family was asked to contemplate what these meant.
Since they are now public, however meanly it was done, we too can contemplate on their meaning. The best I can come up with is that he is a somewhat troubled person fixated, at least in these two pictures, on purification. That does not correlate with his published memoirs, which offered no apologies to the public, so if Bush is troubled over his actions as president, he is keeping such worries to himself and his family only.
Interesting analysis, Numerian.
I was quite struck by the bath tub image. It conveys a sense of ordinariness – he is “one of us”, if you will. The power he once had is in the distant past. Soaking in the bath tub tends to make the mind wander into the essence of one’s being. He is alone with his private thoughts as his only company. He may be contemplating his own mortality.
George Bush the artist … who would have thought?