BREAKING NEWS:

Stupid Judge Hurley, lookin' out for people's rights'n'stuff.

Smell The Metaphor

The demolition of this ugly hulk of a building is more than progress. It's metaphor. The building, itself, loomed precariously on the southern edge of the Cuyahoga river valley for generations, just west of the southern departure of the current I-71/I-90 Innerbelt bridge. It has now been removed to make room for a new bridge across the valley.

I drove past it each morning as it eclipsed the city. It was, by all accounts, a vacant, useless building designed as a refrigerated warehouse in the earliest days of that technology, but it made money for someone as a billboard. Massive, stupid, ugly advertisements covered it's sides. It may have been some coveted commercial space, but it was a cynical, shameful one, abusive to passing traffic. If anyone ever hated a building, I hated this one.

After civic planners decided to destroy it, the inevitable court case ensued. Somehow the case revolved around who actually owned the facade of the building - the advertising space. Of course, every party involved got a piece of the pie.

In as much as it was an eyesore, it was also a blind spot. The monolithic cube with bank and drugstore adds precluded passers-by from seeing the true Clevelandia, physically and psychologically, in its past, present and future tenses.

Here's how: at the very spot where these moments were filmed, another bridge that crossed the Cuyahoga river valley existed a century ago. At the very spot where the new bridge will be build, seventeen citizens perished on November 16, 1895, when the lift over the river malfunctioned. They plunged and died. Forgotten. A mass transit tragedy that no one remembers.

Blind spot, indeed, Clevelandia.

Tweet, Chomsky, Tweet! or Noam, Tweet, Noam!

parts 2 through n.

I'm kicking the hostas in atypical fashion (in my underwear) at 5:00 a.m. after a feed under the glow of Jupiter and it's moons and I spy movement out of the corner of my eye. A raccoon at the end of my driveway has spotted me. I spook it, but it growls and backs up.

Cute lil' bandit mask and all. Cute but treacherous. Close Encounter hand signals will not work.

Clevelandia Loves You, Lady Kaga

The last lines of her dissent:

 ARIZONA FREE ENTERPRISE CLUB’S FREEDOM 

 CLUB PAC v. BENNETT

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Less corruption, more speech.  Robust campaigns leading
to the election of representatives not beholden to the few,
but accountable to the many.  The people of Arizona might
have expected a decent respect for those objectives. Today,
they do not get  it.  The Court invalidates Arizonans’ efforts
to ensure that in their State, “ ‘[t]he people. . . possess the
absolute sovereignty.’ ”  Id., at 274 (quoting James Madison
in 4 Elliot’s Debates on the Federal Constitution 569–570 (1876)).
No precedent  compels the Court to take this step; to the contrary,
today’s decision is in tension  with broad swaths of our First Amendment
doctrine.  No fundamental principle of  our Constitution
backs the  Court’s ruling; to the contrary, it is the law
struck down today that fostered both the vigorous competition
of ideas and its ultimate object—a government
responsive  to the will of the people.   Arizonans deserve
better.  Like citizens across this country,  Arizonans deserve
a government that represents and serves them all.
And no less, Arizonans deserve the chance to reform their
electoral system so as to attain  that most  American of
goals.
Truly, democracy is not a game.  See  ante, at 25.
I respectfully dissent.