Kate McKinnon

They finally got me with this one.

The crisis in Detroit is a godsend for George W. Bush. Just think- in one fell swoop, the Republican Senators who voted against the loan package to save our auto industry gave Bush a way to go out with style, and also to clip a bit of the cash from the pockets of the investment bankers, who are all busy paying each other large “retention bonuses” from our tax dollars. 

The White House is considering using some of the Wall St. bailout cash to step in and save Detroit. Brilliant!

They couldn’t have scripted this one better- I hope that Bush plays his role just as neatly, and that he steps in, like the Grinch after the scales fall from his eyes, and uses TARP money to save Detroit.

He could be a real hero, instead of just playing one on the deck of a carrier.

Maybe using the wonders of Photoshop, I can hang them as Gaudi’s catenary arches, set them up like rope chains in front of skyscrapers, and cables holding bridges. I’d love to work in as many engineering projects as possible to the new books, even if only in the photos.

And in another stunning display of incompetence, the McCain campaign sells off a bunch of used Blackberries for $20 each, some of which contained internal campaign emails and private phone numbers. Genius!

It’s called Bag News Notes, and it focuses on photojournalism. Check it out.

This is a shot from the Detroit area, of the abandoned Michigan Central Station. What a waste. Can you believe that we are now relying on the Bush White House to save the jobs of the auto workers? They are considering re-routing some of the Wall St. bailout cash to Detroit, and hey, I hope that they do.

Here’s another great Laurent Baig photograph of Arizona big sky and wild land. I can’t get enough of this guy’s work. Beautiful.

My Rep, Raul Grijalva, is still in the running for Secretary of the Interior, and I’m rooting for him all of the way. He’s done so much for our land and our creatures- I’d love it if he were the one protecting our last old growth forests and our National Parks.

When things are hard, in any way, I find that the most difficult thing for me to do is to keep my heart open. The blonde trophy wife with the white poodle bouncing illegally in her lap as she drives up to school in her gas guzzling shiny black Lexus SUV is about a thousand times more irritating than she usually is. I get more disgusted with the wealthy, with the warmongers, with the people who throw garbage out of their window as they drive down the road.

It’s not a good thing, to be angry, and the danger with that kind of social exhaustion is that it can spill over to the people who are really on your team, and it can prevent you from taking positive action to help. With so many people having their spirits and their homes broken by the fallout from the Bush recession, I worry for our basic relationships. It’s harder to be kind and to reach out and help others when you are hurting.

The auto bailout has me particularly angry- I would be the first to say that the executives who run the American auto companies have done a poor job. They haven’t kept up with foreign automakers in any category, and they’ve resisted higher fuel economy standards to all of our detriment. But this refusal on the part of the Senate Republicans to bail them out is union busting, pure and simple. They obviously don’t mind bailing out incompetent crooks, as we can see by the 700 BILLION DOLLARS passed out with almost no oversight to Wall Street. But this is their chance to break the back of the unions, and they are seizing it. We can’t let this happen, and yet, it’s happening.

I’m furious, and I’m trying to find peace somewhere in my soul, to re-center myself, forget about expensive blonde women with poodles, financiers with 50 billion dollar Ponzi schemes, NPR reporters claiming that our economic crash is really the fault of the poor and minority homebuyers who defaulted (a complete  lie) Republican gasbags, and the rapidly melting polar ice. Most of us are totally screwed; this is just the truth. What matters after that is using our time wisely, and acting with intent and kindness. I’m searching all of my corners, trying to pull together that peace.