Sherry Chandler

A reader has drawn my attention to this Terry Jones commentary in The Guardian, with the observation “Didn’t I see that the US Army in the 19th Century had spent $1 M per Indian killed in that article on your blog? The more things change….”:

Early this year the Bush administration is to ask Congress to approve an additional $100bn for the onerous task of making life intolerable for the Iraqis. This will bring the total spent on the White House’s current obsession with war to almost $500bn - enough to have given every US citizen $1,600 each. I wonder which the voters would have gone for if given the choice: shall we (a) give every American $1,600 or (b) spend the money on bombing a country in the Middle East that doesn’t use lavatory paper?

Of course, there’s another thing that George Bush could have done with the money: he could have given every Iraqi $18,700. I imagine that would have reduced the threat of international terrorism somewhat. Call me old-fashioned, but I can’t help thinking that giving someone $18,700 brings them round to your side more quickly than bombing the hell out of them. They could certainly buy a lot of lavatory paper with it.

In 2002 the house budget committee and the congressional budget office both guesstimated the cost of invading Iraq at approximately $50bn; $500bn seems a bit wide of the mark. What’s more, with over half a million dead, it means that the world’s greatest military superpower has spent a million dollars for every Iraqi killed. That can’t be value for money!

I guess, allowing for inflation, you could say we got dead Iraqis considerably cheaper than we got dead Native Americans. For myself, I’d like to have my $1,600 back. I could use it to pay my heating bills.

Continue reading to find out where your particular $1,600 has gone. Here’s a hint:

Vice-President Dick Cheney, formerly CEO of Halliburton, has not had a bad war either. His tax returns for 2005 show that he earned $194,862 from his Halliburton stock options alone.

Here’s the opening two grafs of a nice rumination, Blogart, by Geof Huth at dbqp:

My tendency is to think of everything as art, just some of it bad. Talking, walking, interacting, working—all of these are types of art to my mind. (Maybe lesser arts, but that’s a different issue.)

Given this as evidence, it is easy to understand why I think of blogging as an art—and an art in many different ways. The creation (or revelation) of a persona is part of the art, and probably the most essential part of this art. That construct that is the blogger is important, because every story needs a protagonist. Blogging is also sometimes merely the presentation of pieces of art—the posting of photographs or poems or collages—which is the simplest way a blog can be about art. The manner of presenting information can be part of the art. Some blogs always present data in paragraphs, some break text into lines (poetry), others present a mix of poetry and images and video and sound. Blogs define their meaningscapes and make differing demands upon their readers.

You should read the rest of this post and take some time to explore the art of vispo with Geof.