"Welcome to my hanging," Bush said (yes he said that)

[Ichingcarpenter]

Earlier in the day, Bush got a look at how history will remember him _ at least in one artist's view _ as he presided over the unveiling of his portrait at a private club.

"Welcome to my hanging," Bush said, drawing laughs from the well-dressed audience in The Union League's ornate hall.

The portrait shows Bush staring straight ahead, looking comfortable but not quite smiling, against the backdrop of the White House's Treaty Room. The sitting took place in March, when artist Mark Carder took hundreds of photographs to capture details, such as Bush's skin color.

The president put his hands on his hips and eyed the painting when it was unveiled, as if to judge whether Carder got it right. "He did a really fine job with a challenging subject," Bush said.

The portrait was commissioned by the Abraham Lincoln Foundation and paid for with a grant from The Thornton D. and Elizabeth Hooper Foundation, the White House said. Carder has done portraits of such other prominent figures as the president's parents, George H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush.

The president said his 83-year-old mother was recovering well from surgery in Houston for a perforated ulcer. "I hope they don't put this on TV, but she's a tough old bird," he said. Barbara Bush was released from the hospital Tuesday.

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/index.php?nid=78&pid=&sid=665846&page=2

[leftstreet]

1. What a sick fuck

[Vickers]

2. "not quite smiling" Translation: he was smirking.

How unlike him.

:eyes:

[grantcart]

7. lol

[thereismore]

3. "a tough old bird" = the tough old bitch that spawned you and your ilk

[Cleita]

13. Or as Randi Rhodes calls it,

the fetid womb.

[Mari333]

4. His portraiture will hang with dignity in the White House.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

11. Nice effort.

Almost got it right, too, except he's not wanking.

[Mari333]

12. he may not have a frank to yank nor a crank to wank. pity.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

17. Most likely...

A cocktail weenie. Hopefully, skewered on a toothpick.

[rvablue]

14. ...

:spray:...........:rofl:

Oh god....I love DU....some many serious issues discussed, different opinions, etc....sometimes you can get a little down or overwhelmed....and then a post like this!

Thanks for the huge laugh.........where on earth did you find this?

[Mari333]

15. gooooooogle

[Cha]

5. Always the little

fucked up victim, ain't he?

[ColbertWatcher]

6. That about says it all. n/t

[panader0]

8. "paid for with a grant"?

I'd pay with a grunt.

[Octafish]

9. The little turd laughed when he said the same thing about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s portrait.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x159677

[Frustratedlady]

10. I'll wait for the real one.

Just joshin', Agent Mike!

[UTUSN]

16. His history with painters: 1, another one of those porn stars hanging around the WH, and

***********QUOTE*******

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_2003...

.... The president, the painter, and porn: actor-painter Jeff Griggs presented a portrait to President Bush in the White House. Then the tabloids discovered his gay-porn past - People - Interview

The invitation was for Griggs to present the 9/11-themed George W. Bush portrait he had painted, which a friend of a friend had recommended to the White House. So he bought airline tickets for himself and his mom, checked his painting with the baggage, and went to meet the commander in chief.

Months later, the tabloids discovered that Griggs, a former Days of Our Lives cast member, had also done all-male adult films in the late 1980s. GAY PORN STAR PAINTS THE PRESIDENT INTO A CORNER, the headline shouted. The stow faded again until April of this year--when a gay gossip Web site and the New York Post dredged it up again. ....

Always a proud supporter of the president, Griggs says his conviction was strengthened by their meeting. "As we stood there and looked at my painting, as we were reminded of the loss," he says, "I was convinced that he was completely aware of his own humanity and of his failings. But I was also aware that--damn it--he was the president of the United States and he was going to do his damnedest to see that this never happens to our country again." (Griggs can't say where the painting is now, but he's been told its final destination is likely Bush's presidential library.)

Griggs, who's gay and "not single," speaks with admiration of Bush's international AIDS initiative but doesn't feel the need to debate the Administration's policies point by point. "Bottom line is this: I'm sold on the man. Period. He's for us. It's hard not to like the guy."

As for whether Griggs's past "bad choices" really painted the president into a corner, his D.C. contacts tell him that "the White House isn't one bit concerned," he says. "Maybe I needed to have that experience to keep me humble and to remind me that I'm not that far from falling," he says of the gossip eruptions. "It reminds me how fortunate I am to be able to paint and have great friends and family. I am a blessed man."



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and 2, a firebrand who captured Shrub's essence:

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It seems that a sculptor/painter, Richard SERRA, copied from Spaniard Francisco GOYA, substituting Shrub's face. GOYA's painting, "Saturn Devouring One of His Sons" was aimed at the repressive Spanish monarchy. Well, Robert NOVAK had a FIT on CNN Friday and again on Saturday.

http://www.skyscript.co.uk/saturnmyth.html

.... In the Greek version, Kronos (Saturn) also became pregnant, but by swallowing his own children as fast as they were born, having been warned that he would be dethroned by one of them just as he had supplanted his own father. His wife, Rhea, somewhat distressed by the loss of the first five, substituted a stone for the next, the storm god Zeus, who was then raised in secret. After liberating his brothers and sisters, Zeus led their rebellion - as they had been reborn, he was now the eldest - and so became king of the gods. ....

http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix_u.htm
DEMON ART

A SHOCKING image of a blood-spattered President Bush devouring a headless child is causing an uproar. The drawing by sculptor Richard Serra, based on a painting by Goya, is being used to promote pleasevote.com, billed as "a call to vote the Bush administration out of office." It appears on the back cover of The Nation's July 5 issue. Ironically, Serra, a past recipient of NEA grants, was once praised by First Lady Laura Bush in a White House press release about one of his pieces at a Texas museum. His "Tilted Arc" once graced (or defaced) Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan until it was destroyed in 1989. Pundit Andrew Sullivan labeled the Bush image "an obscenity" and "simple demonization."

http://www.netserves.com/moca/lectures/boogoya.htm
.... Goya was a lifelong rebel. ....

Goya's observation of the world led him to believe that the eighteenth century philosophers' dream of Reason only produced monsters. ....

...The horrors of war became his subject, and his paintings and etchings exhibited the atrocities that men visit upon one another in the name of "God and Country." The Third of May, 1808 (below) is Goya's response to the slaughter of 5,000 Spanish civilians who were executed in reprisal for a revolt against the French army without regard to whether they were guilty or innocent. Until Goya, warfare was generally painted as a glorified pageant of heros. ....
GOYA's Third of May 1808:
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