“Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” –Orwell

The U.S. government has reached the bottom of the barrel. Having packed every square inch of the National Mall with monuments to every war they wanted to admit to, including the wars on Vietnam and Korea, and including the two world wars, our dear leaders have decided that another World War I monument is needed, and that it will be built in Pershing Park (named in 1981 for a World War I general by then already sufficiently forgotten).

Local Voters Will Deliver 1.5 Million
Petition Signatures to Offices of Sen. Rob Portman Telling Him: Do Your Job.

PCCC Launches Online Ads Statewide

Petitions gathered by Organizing For Action (OFA), Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), MoveOn.org Civic Action, UltraViolet Action, Color of Change, Daily Kos, Demand Progress, People For the American Way, Common Cause, NextGen Climate, Sierra Club, CREDO Action, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Donna Edwards, and Every Voice Action

Tomorrow -- March 3, 2016 -- local PCCC members will join supporters of ally organizations to deliver 1.5 million petition signatures to the Cleveland office of Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Hamilton County Courthouse in Cincinnati.

The petitions demand Portman and Senate Republicans follow the Constitution and do their job by allowing a fair process on the president’s upcoming Supreme Court nomination. The PCCC will also launch online ads in Ohio to hold Senate Republicans accountable for obstruction.

For some reason I can't for the life of me recall, I was thinking about the time I saw Leslie West of Mountain play at the Agora way back in the '70s. Why was I thinking about it? Oh, I know why: I was transporting to my crammed house the two wooden stools from my ghost of a record store along with a bunch of other junk I didn't want to leave to the advancing Mexican asbestos-removal army. And the memory just sort of seeped into my consciousness.

Because: Leslie West--whose band name was sort of his nickname and not for a powerful build which he did not have--walked out on stage with his awesome little vintage Gibson Melody Maker guitar and had to sit on a stool.

Because: he was so damned fat his legs couldn't support his humongous-ness. I remember estimating his weight pretty near 400 pounds.

And the stool? Well, the significance of that was how the stool, you know, sort ofdisappeared into him as he sat down on it. I mean, it looked like his body just sucked that piece of convenience furniture like Scotty beaming up Spock.Gone!