The raging fires and toxic smoke clouds pouring through Northern California can only be described as apocalyptic.

Were they sparked by Pacific Gas & Electric’s centralized grid?

And where are our federal government and national media?

More than 40 people are dead; many more are missing. Given how fast the fires raced through the region, it’s possible that other humans—as well as farm animals, pets and wildlife—have been incinerated.

In many cases, the margin for escape was five minutes or less. Some people who did not leave their homes at the first sign of danger died. Some stood in home swimming pools for hours while everything burned around them. Flames  leaped over Highway 101 and other major roads, creating firestorms with temperatures of 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit and more.

Saturday, October 21, 6-10pm
Vanderelli Room, 218 McDowell Street, Columbus, OH 43215
ACME Art Company’s infamous Art Auction is resurrected once again! New and emerging artists will present their artwork for silent or live auction. Proceeds benefit the artists and The Vanderelli Room.ACME ART COMPANY COMES ALIVE AGAIN IN OCTOBER 2017!
Since its inception in 1987, ACME Art Company was the first central Ohio gallery with a mission to provide a space devoted to local, avant-garde artists through art installations, music, and theater. ACME presented Columbus’ early underground events such as Cafe Ashtray – a venue for experimental performance art.

Originally located in Columbus’ Short North, ACME Art Company played an integral role the development of the area’s art scene. Many of ACME’s artists and supporters went on to continue their work as artists and musicians, open their own art spaces and theaters, and support arts organizations around the Short North and beyond.

I felt very, very badly about that. I always feel badly. The toughest calls I have to make are the calls where this happens. Soldiers are killed. It’s a very difficult thing. Now, it gets to a point where, you know, you make four or five of them in one day. It’s a very, very tough day. For me, that’s by far the toughest. – President Donald Trump talking about himself, October 16, 2017

The jury is not out and the verdict is in: Laguna Playhouse’s production of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men is “guilty” as charged of being an excellent, tautly written, directed and acted drama. Suggested by Rose’s own stint serving on a jury, Twelve goes behind the scenes to watch the jury deliberations of a dozen men over what appears to be an open and shut homicide case in New Yawk City. They are in a rush to leave the sweltering jury room - as in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, also about racial injustice, it is literally the hottest day of the year - and the weary men want to leave the courthouse, go home, to a Dodger game (in Brooklyn, not Chavez Ravine - this is a 1950s period piece), etc.

America’s endless war quietly moves across the broken nations of the world. Every so often, U.S. soldiers die, as four Green Berets did several weeks ago in . . . Niger.

And the news was more about the adequacy of presidential condolences to the families of the slain soldiers than the point of our military presence there, i.e., why they died. An official sentiment was uttered by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Oct. 5:

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the fallen service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of the freedoms we hold so dear.”

They died for a cliché. This is the best the country could offer, but it’s hardly surprising, much as it rips the grief and the outrage wide open. They died in defense of no one’s freedom except those who wage and profit from endless war, and the fake media fuss over the nature of their condolences simply further shields this fact from public view.