Moonhowlings

Today a friend sent me an amazing email with a video link.   I felt it related to many of our topics we have been discussing here on Anti.  I am going to cut and paste Nancy’s (or whoever she copied them from) words and then post the link.  The woman shown in the video  is a sand artist.  The rest tells the story:

Please read the following paragraphs all the way through and then view the video…

This video shows the winner of “Ukraine’s Got Talent,” Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.  Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears, and she won the top prize of about £75,000. 

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple, sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry  sky, but then warplanes appear, and the happy  scene is obliterated. 

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives, and the woman smiles again. Once again, war returns, and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears. 

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. 

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. 

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside, and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying  goodbye. 

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population’s being killed, with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. 

Kseniya  Simonova says:  ”I find  it difficult enough to create art using paper  and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And, there’s surely no bigger compliment.”

View the video

Our country has been blessed.  We have never known our cities to be destroyed and one fourth of our population killed.  Even our own Civil War didn’t destroy the entire country, although many Virginians, Georgians and South Carolinians might beg to differ.   

Sometimes it helps to put things in perspective, when viewing one’s country through the eyes of this very talented young artist.  How does one so young capture the horror of the world in the 40′s?  Those living in the Ukraine must have long national memories to be able to produce such talent.  It would be hard to tell where Stalin stopped and Hitler started.  Judging from the reaction from those in the audience, the feelings are still strong and very much a part of the Ukrainians’s national being.

Chris Wallace interviewed today Rush Limbaugh on his show, News Sunday.  Rush  informed us that President Obama  is an egomaniac.  An egomaniac?  Rush has the audacity to say someone else is an egomaniac?  Speechless.   

This video is the mother lode of insults and national antagonism.  Limbaugh  bashes the President, calling him a man-child and a little boy, brags about earning $400,000 a year, talks about his addiction, whines about the NFL (and blames Obama),  and all the other things we have come to expect from this radio actor.  He says Vice President Biden is a windbag and pompous. 

Rush feels it is his talent, not the news, that has made him what he is.  Rush seems to be all the negative attributes he has attached to President Obama.  How odd.  Who remembers when he talked this way about Bill Clinton?

Is this the most arrogant, egotistical evil man in the world?  I just think he is Un-American.  He makes me like Glenn Beck, who I do not think is evil, just misguided.

Click for full video

Kiran Chetry, formerly of Fox News, currently of CNN is a class act. Jon Stewart had her in his spoof sights recently. Apparently, Chetry was demonstrating a new iphone app that gave traffic reports one day. The next day Kiran had an exposé about how bad using electronics devices while driving is.

Instead of expressing outrage, Kiran Chetry laughed at herself and admitted that Stewart had gotten them and said he was funny. Then she explained that the iphone should be used by a passenger, not the driver, laughing all awhile. How many of our prime time folks are capable of laughing at themselves? Not many. Most take themselves entirely too seriously.

Congratulations to Eric and Anabel for winning the Best Documentary Award at the Charlotte Film Festival last night! The award is the Indy Truth Award for Best Documentary and is a very prestigious award. 

The film will show again at 3:30 on Sunday. Eric and Anabel were featured on two Charlotte NPR radio programs. Check them out at the 9500 Liberty website.

Here are the upcoming plans for these talented film makers:

Next stop, we will be premiering in DC on October 1st at the DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival as the opening night film. You can buy tickets here for the screening and reception.

http://www.apafilm.org/festival-2009/9500-liberty/
This is our big hometown premiere screening with the “stars” from the film and a big after party so it is not to be missed if you are in the DC area.

This is the list of scheduled screenings including Prince William County, Honolulu, St. Louis, San Diego, Charlottesville, etc. We are adding more screenings including in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles in the coming weeks. http://9500liberty.com/screenings.html

Thank you for supporting us throughout these months. Some of you have been with us for nearly two years. In fact, the second-year anniversary of the creation of the 9500 Liberty YouTube Channel will be celebrated on October 9th with the residents of Prince William County with a special community screening of the film at St. Paul’s Church in Woodbridge.

 

Please plan on seeing the film. According the the website:

9500 Liberty reveals the startling vulnerability of a local government, targeted by national anti-immigration networks using the Internet to frighten and intimidate lawmakers and citizens. Alarmed by a climate of fear and racial division, residents form a resistance using YouTube videos and virtual townhalls, setting up a real-life showdown in the seat of county government

.

And you thought that only the Empire Strikes Back?  Not so.  A band called Sons of Maxwell has struck back at United Airlines for tossing an expensive guitar out on the tarmac and breaking it.

The video tells the tale far better than I could ever hope to do.  Hats off to this group, Sons of Maxell, for giving consumers hope.  Too many companies just give half rate services and then blow you off when you complain.  All too often, entry level clerks tell us no without bothering to even investigate.

In the case of Sons of Maxwell, we might speculate on who got fired at United after this video hit Youtube.com and all the cable news shows. No one wants to be the star of this group’s complaint list!

Not all of us are in the position of being able to create our own videos.  What other means do consumers have to right the wrongs of the various companies we have to deal with? Any good get even stories out there?

Doug Hampton in Las Vegas

The Ensign plot becomes the gift that keeps on giving.  However, much of it seems to have missed the news channels.  There has been noticeable “non-coverage” of this story.  Usually cable news latches onto these kinds of stories and beats them to death like an old drum.  Not so in this case and there appears to be a reason why.

According to the Washington Post 6/20/98 Senator Ensign decided to go public with his affair for several reasons. Supposedly, the husband of the woman he was involved with, Douglas Hampton, has sought an undisclosed about of money from Ensign. On first glance, it appears to be blackmail or extortion. Reading further, one gets the idea it is for damages.

Mr. Hampton apparently was so distraught over this affair and the supposed continued interest and attention paid to his wife, he wrote a letter to Megyn Kelly of Fox News. (see letter) Apparently nothing was done with the letter but Ensign didn’t know that the letter would not be acted on and broadcast all over the United States (like was done with indiscretions by Clinton, Craig, Foley, et al).

The Hampton and Ensign friendships go back many years. Both couples were actively involved in a college religious group which continued for many years.  They live in the same upscale neighborhood in Las Vegas.

According to the Las Vegas Sun:

The affair with Cynthia Hampton occurred while she, her husband and their adult son were all on the senator’s payroll. She was Ensign’s onetime campaign treasurer and the former treasurer of the senator’s Battle Born Political Action Committee.

Unnamed sources cited in various media reports initially raised the specter of extortion as the reason for Ensign’s news conference, but Metro Police and the FBI said they were not investigating. Ensign’s office on Thursday declined to say today whether the Hamptons sought any money to keep quiet.

Cynthia Hampton’s salary doubled as she took over as treasurer for Ensign’s leadership campaign account until she left in May 2008. Doug Hampton’s final month’s salary as a top aide at the senator’s office was nearly $20,000 — more than his normal pay at the $160,000-a-year-job, although the extra sum could have been for accrued sick or vacation time, or as a stipend.

The couple’s son, Brandon, was also on the payroll with a $1,000-a-month summer job at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008, which Ensign chaired at the time.

The New York Times reported today that after Ensign reconciled with his wife and dismissed Cynthia Hampton, he paid her a severance out of his own pocket.

Ensign’s office has declined to comment on the Hamptons’ salaries, or any severance.

Doug Hampton took a job with Allegiant Air, a Las Vegas company whose CEO is a major Ensign supporter.

There are some interesting missing key elements here.

Why has Fox News sat on this story?
How did Ensign learn of the letter to Megyn Kelly?
How does this fit in with the fair and balanced motto of Fox News?
How have other philanderers been dealt with by this station?

The Washington Post carries the following explanation for Fox News sitting on this story:

After the Nevada Republican acknowledged the affair Tuesday, a Fox producer failed to tell his bosses that he had the letter from Douglas Hampton, and Fox never reported it. The Las Vegas Sun disclosed the letter’s contents Friday.

“Sometimes a ball gets by,” said Tom Lowell, senior producer of Fox’s “American Newsroom.” “This one got by.” It was, he said, “my mistake.”

Hampton had written to the program’s co-anchor, Megyn Kelly, saying he was not giving the information to any other news outlet. Lowell said his primary concern was protecting Kelly, who “has any number of people who have stalked her.”

Fox says it never received the letter that Douglas Hampton says he mailed to Kelly, but it was later attached to an e-mail that the network received at 12:21 p.m. Monday.

And

After the news conference, Lowell passed Hampton’s contact information to his Washington bureau but did not send the letter or show it to senior Fox executives, who have expressed unhappiness at not being informed. “The letter was an allegation of an affair,” Lowell said. “I don’t know that it would have shined a light on anything new.”

Lowell said Hampton called the Fox booking desk before sending the e-mail Monday. “He seemed evasive,” Lowell said. “His entire focus seemed to be talking to Megyn.” Kelly asked whether she should call Hampton, Lowell recalled, but he said the network should do more research first.

“As the day went on, it fell off my radar,” Lowell said. When he heard the next day that Ensign had scheduled a news conference, “at that point I realized there might be credibility to these claims. . . . Should I have paid a little more attention to this e-mail? Sure.”

There seem to be a lot of reasons why this story was never followed up on.  One that hasn’t been explored is political motive.  Additionally, Senator Ensign is the fair-haired child of the Religious Right.  Was Ensign being protected? 

Reading Mr. Hampton’s letters gives one the feeling that this is a desperate man willing to do anything to normalize his family.  He doesn’t seem like a blackmailer.  Ensign acts like he is being bilked and is the wronged party here.  Hampton just sounds like a frantic, sad man who wants his wife and life back.  He sounds betrayed.  What goes on in Vegas, or DC for that matter, obviously isn’t staying in either place.  I expect when this all shakes down, Ensign won’t be staying in DC either.