Gore Vidal’s Article of Impeachment...High Crimes & Misdemeanors...

On June 9, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberties and the Constitution itself.

I wish to draw the attention of the blog world to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment presented to the House in order that two faithless public servants be removed from office for crimes against the American people. As I listened to Rep. Kucinich invoke the great engine of impeachment — he listed some 35 crimes by these two faithless officials — we heard, like great bells tolling, the voice of the Constitution itself speak out ringingly against those who had tried to destroy it.

Although this is the most important motion made in Congress in the 21st century, it was also the most significant plea for a restoration of the republic, which had been swept to one side by the mad antics of a president bent on great crime. And as I listened with awe to Kucinich, I realized that no newspaper in the U.S., no broadcast or cable network, would pay much notice to the fact that a highly respected member of Congress was asking for the president and vice president to be tried for crimes which were carefully listed by Kucinich in his articles requesting impeachment.

But then I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic, and so I turned, as I often do, to the foreign press for a clear report of what has been going on in Congress. We all know how the self-described “war hero,” Mr. John McCain, likes to snigger at France, while the notion that he is a hero of any kind is what we should be sniggering at. It is Le Monde, a French newspaper, that told a story the next day hardly touched by The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal or, in fact, any other major American media outlet.

As for TV? Well, there wasn’t much — you see, we dare not be divisive because it upsets our masters who know that this is a perfect country, and the fact that so many in it don’t like it means that they have been terribly spoiled by the greatest health service on Earth, the greatest justice system, the greatest number of occupied prisons — two and a half million Americans are prisoners — what a great tribute to our penal passions!

Naturally, I do not want to sound hard, but let me point out that even a banana Republican would be distressed to discover how much of our nation’s treasury has been siphoned off by our vice president in the interest of his Cosa Nostra company, Halliburton, the lawless gang of mercenaries set loose by his administration in the Middle East.

But there it was on the first page of Le Monde. The House of Representatives, which was intended to be the democratic chamber, at last was alert to its function, and the bravest of its members set in motion the articles of impeachment of the most dangerous president in our history. Rep Kucinich listed some 30-odd articles describing impeachable offenses committed by the president and vice president, neither of whom had ever been the clear choice of our sleeping polity for any office.

Some months ago, Kucinich had made the case against Dick Cheney. Now he had the principal malefactor in his view under the title “Articles of Impeachment for President George W. Bush”! “Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate.” The purpose of the resolve is that he be duly tried by the Senate, and if found guilty, be removed from office. At this point, Rep. Kucinich presented his 35 articles detailing various high crimes and misdemeanors for which removal from office was demanded by the framers of the Constitution.

Update: On Wednesday, the House voted by 251 to 166 to send Rep. Kucinich’s articles of impeachment to a committee which probably won’t get to the matter before Bush leaves office, a strategy that is “often used to kill legislation,” as the Associated Press noted later that day.

-Gore Vidal (TruthDig, 6.12.08)

William S. Burroughs: Parasitic Beings...

"To reach the Western Lands is to achieve freedom from fear. Do you free yourself from fear by cowering in your physical body for eternity? Your body is a boat to lay aside when you reach the far shore, or sell it if you can find a fool...it's full of holes...it's full of holes.

I want to reach the Western Lands-right in front of you, across the bubbling brook. It's a frozen sewer-it's known as the Duad remember? All the filth and horror, fear hate, disease and death of human history flows between you and the Western Lands. Let it flow!

My cat Fletch stretches behind me on the bed. A tree like black lace against a gray sky. A flash of joy. How long does it take a man to learn that he does not, cannot want what he "wants?" You have to be in Hell to see Heaven. Glimpses from the Land of the Dead, flashes of serene timeless joy, a Joy as old as suffering and despair.

The old writer couldn't write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. And then? "British we are, British we stay." How long can one hang on in Gibraltar, with the tapestries where mustached riders with scimitars hunt tigers, the ivory balls one inside the other, bare seams showing, the long tearoom with mirrors on both sides and the tired fuchsia and rubber plants, the shops selling English marmalade and Fortnum & Mason's tea...clinging to their Rock like the rock apes, clinging always to less and less.

In Tangier the Parade Bar is closed. Shadows are falling on the mountain. "Hurry up please. It's time."

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

"Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage."

-William S. Burroughs (1914-1997 Image: Burroughs, 1960s)

Dialogue Exercise: Do You Love Me?

x: "That was great."
o: "You're an animal."
x: "Sure."
o: "In about a half hour."
x: "Have you told him yet?"
o: "No."
x: "Are you going to?"
o: "I have something else in mind. Something that could
benefit us both."
x: "What?"
o: "Do you love me?
x: "You know I do."
o: "How much?"
x: "Come on. What are you driving at?"
o: "Answer the question. How much?
x: "Okay, okay. More than anyone, ever.
o: "He's worth a great deal of money, you know."
x: "Yeah, so."
o "You could pay off Tony--all of it.
x: "Come on baby, I owe him eighty grand.
o: "Done. Then we could go away together."
x: "Where?"
o: "You always wanted to go to Tahiti."
x: "You're an evil little girl."
o: "Sometimes."
x: "I see. And you want me to help you."
o: "Yes."
x: "How?"
o: "However you see fit? You're a smart guy."
x: "It's too risky, baby."
o: "He's afraid of the water."
x: "You've got it all planned out."
o: "I'm a good actress.
x: "Let me think about it.
o: "I need to know now. I can find someone else."
x: "Alright, alright. Tell me the plan.
o: "So, you'll do it?"
x: "Yeah."
o: "Kiss me."

-VioletPlanet

Pierre Tristam: When America Can't Handle The Truth

"The word, attributed to the late writer Saul Bellow, is “angelization” — willfully putting someone beyond blame. Angelizing America is the common tongue of all national politicians, the oath candidates implicitly take when running for president. It’s what the most sentimental people on Earth expect. It’s what enables a country that committed its share of atrocities in the past and is committing more than its share of moral degradations today to look itself in the mirror and see something exceptional looking back, rather than just another empire trampling down its march of folly, as the great historian Barbara Tuchman called it. Angelizing America is the unspoken, self-evident pledge of allegiance. Someone didn’t tell the Obamas.

First, there was Michelle Obama: “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

Then there was Barack Obama’s spiritual adviser, the fascinating Jeremiah Wright — not the outright lies about Wright’s black separatism, which is bunk (although to most classically illiberal whites any black who adopts the fervor of Emersonian self-sufficiency is suddenly a separatist), but this, from a 2003 sermon: “The government gives (blacks) the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”

Then there was Obama himself, insolently ripping the halo off the romanticized iconography of race in America and returning the matter to the reality of a job undone. That he did so in a 37-minute speech more powerfully essential than anything the incumbent nullity has managed in seven years was bound to inflame those commentators — Shelby Steele, William Kristol, Kathleen Parker, any lips that move at the Fox network — who’ve been outdoing themselves to dig up hollowness at Obama’s core. What they’re digging up instead is his disarming arsenal, an ability to face up to national blights without, like Wright, stopping at the diagnosis.

Obama offers a path to conciliation. The path begins with a willfulness exactly opposite angelization. It begins more along the lines of where a truth commission might begin. That’s Obama’s problem. It’s doubtful whether this country can, in its lethargy for social justice at home and its trances for wars abroad, HANDLE THE TRUTH."

-Pierre Tristam (Published March 25, 2008- Daytona Beach News-Journal ) EXCERPT

Dinner With Andy Warhol

Date: Fall of 1985
Place: New York City
Restaurant: NOBU- 57th and 6th Ave
Cuisine: Japanese
Courses: 8

The Introduction:

The back of his fried blonde head sat three rows in front of me. I felt…important.

She and I were dressed to the nines that night. We had just seen a bad fashion show at the institute and had walked outside. I was in the midst of hailing a cab when I felt three gentle taps on my shoulder. I turned around and he softly said, “Would you girls like to have dinner with us tonight?” I stared at his waxen pocked-marked complexion and two-toned owl-eyed sunglasses, which obliterated his eyes for about 5 seconds before coolly replying, “Yes.” He took my arm and said, “You and she will ride with me and the others will follow.” The others were Jean-Michel Basquiat, his latest smacked out protégé, Eric Goode, the owner of AREA and Elizabeth Saks of 5th Ave.

The Cab Ride:

We sat in the back seat. He insisted on the middle position and soon began an onslaught of questions:

“What’s your name?”

“Where are you from?”

“Ohio!” I’m from the Midwest too. Pittsburgh. Terrible place. Have you ever been there?”

“What do you do? Do you go to school? “What School? What do you study?”

Before we could barely answer, he would interject little compliments:

“Oh, that’s super!” “You’re Super!”…”Super”
“Oh, you’re beautiful!” “You’re beautiful” …Beautiful.”

“Michelle, who’s your favorite Movie Star?”

“Marilyn! I met Marilyn. Tragic. You have a great voice, you know. It sounds a lot like hers did.”

I said nothing. My heart was pounding.

“It’s true. Her voice was much deeper in real life. That little girl voice was only for her films.”

His voice was surprisingly soft with a slight snake-edged undertone.

I suddenly felt like I was being conned.

The Restaurant:

The owner—an excitable middle-aged Japanese man greeted us at the door. Immediately, he asked Andy for his autograph. Andy signed the book and said, “You both should sign it too.” but never handed us the book.

We waited in the lobby while the private dining room was being prepared. The other party soon arrived and blandly introduced themselves. Basquiat mumbled a hello and said nothing else the entire evening. The other two giggled and necked in the corner. Andy mentioned he was going to make a new movie.

No one responded.

We were ushered into a beautiful dining room—no chairs. Cushions. No shoes permitted. Two Geisha Girls waited at either side of a huge cherry wood table. I sat at the end opposite Andy and beside Basquiat who immediately produced a Tupperware container full of pot and put it beside him.

The owner ecstatically announced we were going to experience a traditional Japanese meal served in traditional Japanese style. He grandly stated that he would introduce each course as it was served.

An awkward silence.

Andy simply nodded and asked me what I wanted to drink.

“Ah a martini! I love a girl who can guzzle gasoline.”

He smiled at me. Ordered a Coke and began to gossip:

“Do you know Nikki Haskell?”

“Yes” (I lied)

“What do you think of her?”

“She’s great.”

“Oh, really? I think she’s terrible. Oh, you girls are super! Jean Michel, we should put her in our next film!”

Basquiat said nothing. The other two snickered. My friend looked like someone stuck a poll up her ass and I…ordered another martini.

To change the subject, I asked him about the past. I mentioned that I had read the book, EDIE and wondered how factual it really was.

He simply said, “Edie who?”

Succubus.

Dinner was served.

I don’t remember any more conversations probably because there were none. I do remember having difficulty eating my blowfish. Andy barely ate anything. Basquiat never smoked any of his pot nor offered it to anyone else. Elizabeth Saks and Eric Goode played footsy under the table with Basquiat. My friend continued to look uncomfortable and I ordered yet…another martini.

Andy paid the check, knelt at my feet and asked if he could help me put my black riding boots on. My hand on his shoulder, I let him do most of the work. He was tender and took his time. I wondered…

The owner offered to drive us downtown to AREA. We piled into his Mercedes limo. Andy sat in the front. We drove in silence. Said Thank yous and curt Goodbyes before entering the club.

That was the last we saw of them.

-VioletPlanet ( Image: -Unknown, Andy Warhol & Edie Sedgwick at a cocktail party, 1960s).

H.L. Mencken: Clear And Honest Thinking

The Creed:

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.

I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty...
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech...
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.

But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.

Mencken On Liberty and Government

"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself. Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable."

"The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

"Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently, one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings."

"Law and its instrument, government, are necessary to the peace and safety of all of us, but all of us, unless we live the lives of mud turtles, frequently find them arrayed against us."

"A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker."

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

"The true bureaucrat is a man of really remarkable talents. He writes a kind of English that is unknown elsewhere in the world, and an almost infinite capacity for forming complicated and unworkable rules."

"Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, criminal, grasping, and unintelligent."

"The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse-that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it."

- Henry Louis Mencken ( Journalist 1880-1956)