March 1

The only possible response to the news that President Obama has signed into law a one-year extension of the Patriot Act -- without alteration -- after the Democratic House passed the extension by a runaway vote of 315-97 and the Senate approved it on a voice vote without any debate, is furious contempt. Since its passage in 2001, the Patriot Act has been the poster child for "shock doctrine" legislation that dramatically expands government power and abridges citizens' rights in a way that is, at best, borderline constitutional. Obama specifically spoke out against the Patriot Act while running for President, but I guess, like so many things, that was just for campaign purposes. He and his people obviously wanted this extension, sending that message down through the Democratic ranks, and didn't bother to expend so much as an ounce of "political capital" on revising even its most extreme, privacy-invading provisions, since they really didn't want any changes. As Glenn Greenwald has amply documented, the Obama administration has not in fact handed back any of the expansions of executive power that the Bush administration accomplished -- quite the contrary, they have fought to keep them. Greenwald is scathing on the Patriot Act extension as well:

The domestic surveillance law that Democrats spent years assailing as dangerously overbroad when out of power is renewed in full now that they are in power.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/02/25/bipartisanship/index.html

It is simply amazing how continuous on almost every level, involving both domestic and foreign affairs, the Obama administration has been with the Bush administration. The Tea Partiers and wingnuts who call Obama "socialist" are clearly not paying attention; he is as much "more of the same" as he possibly could be. He is just another politician from whom we may expect (in the forceful words of British poet Ivor Gurney) "nothing good, Hell uncaring / Hell undismayed." It is hard to acknowledge that a politician I supported with enthusiasm is simply another soft force for evil, but that'll learn me to believe any politician (maybe I'll hold out for Russ Feingold, the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001). All our current politicians leave us of democracy are "Messages of thieves that broke her treasuries in" (Gurney again).

To relieve myself from crankiness, I turn where I always turn -- animals! Wildlife photographer Greg du Toit risked his life and wrecked his health to capture unforgettable images of lions and other African animals at a watering hole (thanks to the great financial blogger Felix Salmon for catching this):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1253935/Photographer-captures-amazing-images-lions-watering-hole-submerging-months.html

An arresting image of folk/country singer Buell Kazee (1900-1976) sent me researching:

http://tsutpen.blogspot.com/2010/02/ancient-voices-27.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buell_Kazee



Roberta Smith gives a mixed but exceptionally interesting review to the current exhibition of South African artist William Kentridge at the Museum of Modern Art:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/arts/design/26kentridge.html

Two days later, also at the New York Times, Matthew Gurewitsch discussed the new Metropolitan Opera production of Shostakovich's The Nose, designed by Kentridge:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/arts/music/28kentridge.html

At the wonderful literature blog The Complete Review -- which I love despite proprietor Michael Orthofer's irrational hatred of non-fiction -- there's an interesting review of a new account of how the invaluable Heinemann African Writers Series came to be:

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/publish/awseries.htm

It is a perhaps peculiar but nonetheless undeniable requirement for noteworthy new buildings that they photograph stunningly, as for example this office for the Paris Transport Company, designed by RH+Architectes (what's with all the plus signs in these firm names?):

http://www.archdaily.com/50289/ratp-offices-laboratories-rharchitectes/

Returning to the far regions (after my recent post on Ushuaia, Argentina): Did you know that Patagonia is home to a large number of descendants of Welsh emigres? I learned that originally from Jan Morris's excellent book The Matter of Wales. There is actually a tourist agency specializing in the Welsh experience in Patagonia:

http://www.welshpatagonia.com/index.html

It's a small world, after all!

Among notables born on this date are novelists William Dean Howells, Ralph Ellison, and Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japan), composer Frederic Chopin, German sociologist Georg Simmel, architect Augustus Pugin, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, painter Oskar Kokoschka, conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, bandleader Glenn Miller, poets Robert Lowell and Richard Wilbur, singer Harry Belafonte, film directors Jacques Rivette and Ron Howard, biographer Lytton Strachey, Who member Roger Daltrey, guitarist/composer Leo Brouwer, astronaut Deke Slayton, and actors Timothy Daly, David Niven, Robert Conrad, and Javier Bardem. Another one of those days with a high number of exemplars whose work matters greatly to me! I must single out William Dean Howells, who besides being a great novelist in his own right, managed to be the best of friends with both Mark Twain and Henry James, than whom there are not two more opposite numbers in American literature.