Prince Harry, it’s been disclosed, has been taking his winter holiday in Afghanistan, fighting the resurgent “Terry Taliban” in the Helmand Province, and calling in air strikes like any ordinary [armed] bloke. The UK and international press were colluding to keep Harry’s deployment a secret, until the story broke on the internet. Now royal family handlers are deciding whether to bring the prince back lest he draw unwanted fire.

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One of the frequent refrains in the US is that the powerful and well-to-do war promoters here always keep their own children out of the fighting, and that many of them are ‘chicken-hawks’, gung-ho avoiders of doing the actual fighting themselves. But in Britain, along comes Prince Super War Hawk, Killer of the Pagan, and he has duly registered and true authentic ‘royal blood’, too! He’s a True Warrior Prince from the Royalty… pure breed!

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America is getting to be something like Czarist Russia, where conspiracy theories swirled about people’s minds big time. Many ordinary Russians back then thought that there were all sorts of conspiracies to control the Czar, who was seen as almost a national icon, saint, and benevolent dad all wrapped up together. Of course he was none of those things. Still, people believed that he was, and that there were conspiracies galore to hijack this good man away from the people.

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It’s been repeated we cannot pull US forces out of Iraq before we have established an Iraq military with which the Iraqis can defend themselves. Not a police force, not a constabulary or carabinieri, but a veritable army to defend Iraq against its neighbors. Unless we’re talking about Turkey.

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An oft-heard conversation in my house goes something like this:
“Mom, why did I only get one Thin Mint and Lara got two?”
“Because I like her better.”
 
Fortunately, my kids are wise enough to know that to accept this un-motherly, and of course untrue, explanation is to be spared an hour-long lecture on The Inherent Unfairness of Life or Life Is Not a Zero-Sum Game or, my favorite, From Each According to Ability To Each According to Need.

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Help the Dems out, just this once. The County Assembly last Saturday was overrun with excited delegates and alternates. Palmer High could hardly support the numbers, or more notably, the DP was unaccustomed to such a turn out. I’d like to insinuate that the DP did not know how to keep the usual lid on everyone’s enthusiasm. But they tried. A line formed around the block while volunteers at the door held newcomers at bay. Some were told they couldn’t enter, many were kept waiting until beyond the posted 10:30am time limit to have submitted their ballots.
I know who was at the door. Do you?

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I’m not sure why, but Tony and I both lost control of our bodily functions last night in the CC parking lot. How embarrassing.

Eric fared a bit better; he just got the sniffles. Maybe he should use this as his blog photo. It’s an excellent likeness, don’t you think?

“Rosa Parks did so act on her own!” I’m faced with this repudiation yet again, as J’s high school class revisits the civil rights movement. Their reading list includes Howard Zinn, but still the lesson plan is determined to press home the Parks as lone rider theory.

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I noticed something about the Rampart Range cleanup controversy but don’t know if I posted it here. A few months ago (before the Range became, as always, a sheet of impenetrable ice) there was a story in the Indy about it. Only, the focus was on Lead. Lead, it was pointed out by the Anti-environmental people, is hard to dissolve in water. Therefore it wasn’t in any way responsible for the sudden spike in toxins in the Manitou spirit-water.

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I had the pleasure of seeing Ray Bracy, Senior VP of Wal-Mart, speak last night at CC. I hardly know where to begin, so convinced am I that Wal-Mart truly is making people’s lives better by saving them money.
 
I’ll focus on Wal-Mart’s contribution to the eco-sustainability movement.

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OPPOSE the construction of a new immigrant detention center in Aurora!
Colorado Progressive Coalition office, 1600 Downing St. Suite 210
Saturday, March 1 11:00 a.m.

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Look at all that pink respect for breast cancer! Breast cancer awareness, I mean to say. As Marie has pointed out, women’s basketball over the weekend was draped in custom pink uniforms for the cause of cancer. “Cause” is an unfortunate pun, actually. No one’s interested in raising awareness of the cause of cancer.

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There is category of meds I call Doctor ordered placebos. You see, the doctors are, within the general population, the most fooled of them all by pill placebos. They often truly believe in drugs that don’t much work, simply because it makes them feel more powerful and strong to prescribe medication not generally thought of as placebo like, rather than just admitting that pharmaceuticals might not be of much effect for a condition. In short, doctors prescribe instead of admitting helplessness in confronting some condition.

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Why is this country going down? It’s because ‘in debt we trust’ to give us jobs, of all things! It actually works the other way ’round. Check out In Debt We Trust

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It’s really quite simple. France owns Chad, and Britain once owned Egypt and Sudan. The US, Britain, and France are all into North Africa together these days. They want the Chinese out. Enter Zionist Steven Spielberg, and a whole host of other ‘concerned people’. Enter European Union troops (under French, British, and US control) into Chad, the country that neighbors Sudan. Now throw in a sprinkling of tears. Yes, the European Union is now fully engaged in a regional war in North Africa. They snuck into the region through the back door last week, and it will all be very ‘humanitarian’ in the press spin.

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I don’t know how many of you are women’s basketball fans, but just in case you missed last weekend’s action, most of the top-ranked college teams played their games bedecked from head to toe in pink uniforms, compliments of Nike. The Think Pink initiative is a global, unified effort of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) to raise breast cancer awareness on the court, across campuses, in communities and beyond. More than 800 universities participated in some capacity in the event which happened to coincide with ESPN’s ‘February Frenzy’ of games. Fans of the game were encouraged to don pink in support of the cause.

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Tonight, instead of hearing a Wal-mart exec explain how Saving People Money Helps Everyone On Earth Live Better TM, stop by another CC venue to see the ACLU Winter Forum. The event in Slocum Commons is scheduled to be a candidate forum where regional representatives of the presidential candidates will respond to ACLU concerns about the abuse of power by the office of the executive. A good idea, on paper.

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The Smokebrush is feting the first anniversary of the Springs Culture Cast enterprise on Thursday night. I love the work Craig and Klayton are doing to illuminate our city’s culture scene. Every weekday the two assemble a four minute segment on local arts. I especially like when their delivery swerves into the theatrical, but I can’t laugh forever at their sledgehammer self-promotion.

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The latest issue of Mother Jones features four photographs from Dulce Pinzon’s SUPERHERO project. These portray Mexican immigrant workers costumed as might befit the superhero responsibility they carry. Favorite unsung heroes? The Thing, Human Torch and Superman below.

NOE REYES from the State of Puebla works as a delivery boy in Brooklyn New York. He sends home 500 dollars a week.

I’m voting against McCain.
 
Saying there isn’t any difference between the candidates is like stating there’s no difference physically or philosophically between you and me, or me and Eric or you and Eric.

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This has got to be the most comical Democratic Party campaign video around. Viva Obama 2008 Empty, stupid, and patronizing it is. Obama is hardly any friend of the Latino community and almost every single Democratic Party politician has had a long history of voting to militarize the US- Mexico Border, including supporting the building of the Border Wall currently being constructed that was voted on in 2006 with total DP support.

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US disinformation forces in Iraq pointed recently to an insurgency so in its last throes, that it was desperate enough, and dastardly, sure enough, to press mentally retarded girls into service as suicide bombers. Soon enough our military was forced to recant that report. The young Iraqi women may have been bipolar, or depressed, but they didn’t have Down Syndrome, as cranial deformities caused by the bomb blasts had led the US forensics to conjecture. But the false accusation had its desired effect and there was worldwide condemnation of the Iraqi resistance. This story has irked me in both incarnations.

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We hear money has been spirited away by the billions in Iraq. Leading some to wonder what that amount of cash would look like in the tangible sense. For example, would a billion dollars be visible from Google Earth?

Last week in Guam, Americans were offered an opportunity to see 71.7 tons of money go up in smoke. By some accounts, “The Spirit of Kansas” was a 2.5 billion dollar plane, others say the B-2 bomber costs 1.2 billion dollars. Hopefully the insurance adjusters will sort it out. The crash represented three to six times more than the Hubble lens, or a solid fraction of our armaments budget.

One reason we have governments, for you inquiring civil libertarians, is for guidance. I can certainly think of two matters which might always evade common man’s grasp: nutrition and economics.

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Even Zippy the Monkey’s friends and family have turned on him. I hear Spurious George was the butt of many jokes at the recent family reunion in Kennebunkport.
 
Could Ralph Nader be the Man in the Yellow Hat, come to take George away?