terra smile

you see, she doesn't really know what to do with herself when the camera is pointed at her, (and who could blame her?) so what she did on this occasion was, she forced a smile, of sorts, kind of leaned into it a bit like something i might see one day several years hence in a yearbook photo she will be chagrined by, and contorted her hands in an attempt to mask her uneasiness. cute, isn't it?
i love it.

where's antonio?

may day monday will see two major marches in los angeles protesting the various referendums to reform immigration policy. no city in the united states will be more impacted by whatever policy comes out of the coming elections and no city has a keener interest. but the mayor of los angeles, antonio villaraigosa, (he claims to be a latino but i'm not so sure,) will be out of town. apparently he needs to arrive a day early for tuesday meetings concerning the nfl's return to the city of angels.

the truth, of course, is that the mayor prefers absentia when caught between his identity as a latino mayor and the outcome he expects on immigration. he is playing cat and mouse in order to play politics and it's a bad policy to leave town on such a big day.

too often these days politicians do not speak their minds because they find it easier to let people fill in the blanks themselves. they understand the issues can be thorny territory while just shoving money into a campaign, smiling for cameras, kissing babies and spin doctoring when necessary is the path to election. that is a shame and we the people of los angeles, we the brown, white, black, red, or yellow people, should take every opportunity to let our leaders know we will not stand for this behavior.

i hope villaraigosa's absence tomorrow is noted and produces a serious backlash.

nothing is worth anything if it is not worth something

it seems the only way the moon is going to receive anymore visitors, is if she can produce something corporations can make money off of.

this is capitalism run amok. there was an obituary article on the front page of the times today for john kenneth galbraith. this harvard university professor argued that the free market economy was a myth and that the 1,000 largest american corporations dominated both our economy and our social life.

Giant corporations essentially operated free of competition, he said, often turning out frivolous goods for an increasingly consumer-minded society, while the capitalistic economy ignored more pressing social needs. "Americans still have an extraordinary capacity to ignore poverty," Galbraith told an interviewer in 1983. "I am struck by our superb capacity to manufacture consumer gadgetry. including electronic games, versus our capacity to produce schools."

glabraith's most noted work was "the affluent society," which was published in 1958.

now we see the only way we can run a space program and increase traffic to the moon is if we can find a way to make it profitable for corporations? That is pathetic, don't you think?