I don’t know if this scene strikes me because it’s George Seurat’s idyllic park, or because I’m nostalgic for Colorado circa prosperity. Circa 2011, the privatization cronies are after our city’s public gem, Prospect Lake. Colorado Springs local John Moore made a video, which features this and other vintage memories. (See video below)

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Wednesday they were shelling Kabul. That’s… the Capital City, man.
So, really, they’re running, huh? How fast and in which direction? Are they like, running to try to catch up to “us”?
I mean, to hear the Pentagoons and their trained parrots in the State Department tell it, they’re hiding out in caves along the Pakistan border, right? Backs against the wall, fearing the Coward-ass Chair Force with their Drones, right?
In a related note, they “got the No. 2 al-Qa’eda in Afghanistan” earlier in the week… what? How many “#2″ senior officers are there?
A quick nasty note for all those who say that they’re fighting for our freedom… Is the reason for us being under a Fascist dictatorship right now because y’all LOST in VietNam?

You know, when you walk into a room with a lit ciggie and people start choking and gagging? We’re not putting on a show of any kind, it’s because we ARE choking… on your smoke.
So are you but that’s not the point.
When you then get all huffy-puffy and offended and say something like “Well, MOST people don’t complain about it, it must just be a personal thing for YOU.” well, there’s a reason people don’t say anything about it. It’s because we have a conditioned reaction to such histrionics, to people acting like it’s an infringement of their rights if other people don’t enjoy the fresh aroma, taste and most of all TOXIC fumes coming from your ciggie, and if we go that extra step and say something about it we’ll be subjected to a hissie fit.
It’s just one of those things, you know? Torn between watching you self destruct one puff at a time, wanting you to not kill yourself over a stupid and filthy habit…
And also wanting to be “nice” to you because we don’t want to be shitty to you.
Maybe if YOU would realize that, you know, and refrain from lighting up around people who don’t smoke. You know, ASK if anybody minds if you smoke in his or her presence and if he or she does mind, try not to take it as a personal insult that people like to be able to breathe. Just take the thing outside and smoke it, the courtesy wouldn’t kill you. The cigarettes will, but that’s a story you’ve already heard, yes?
Big Tobacco just won a lawsuit brought against them by Missouri hospital districts because the Hospital Districts are going bankrupt treating smoking related diseases and injuries.
“Hey, we’ve known our product is poison since the 1930s (proven) and for a couple hundred years before then (suspected) but it’s not our fault that we sell Death on the installment plan, get people to pay US to kill THEM…”

Banned Books, p.2–
I put a lot of faith in an internet resilient enough to remain an unrestricted archive of crowd-sourced human knowledge, even more I hope public data will eventually permeate the proprietary, but continued access to subversive literature I have little doubt will meet the full brunt of digital book burners. If there’s any text not to download unto your Kindle, as an easily vaporized or expurgate-able file, it’s one of these classic oft-censored, perpetually-offense-giving titles. These are the dystopian novels and science fictions which paint a bleak picture of the society we are engineering.

Not “shoot” as in physically harm people, if you count Royals as actual people, but to speak in a loud voice.
The Cambridge PIGS have held him without bail to prevent the “Rebirth of Ostentatious Wealth” ha-ha, we got Ours, too bad about yours, which we took from you and that’s how we got ‘ours’ in the first place” let-them-eat-cake Publicly Funded Welfare for the richest family on the Planet, from being “disrupted”
Her Majesty’s Police Forces are traitors to their class just like any of the other Lackeys who lick the Royal Boots. So are the Crown Courts.
Just like ours cops right here in the so-called “Land of the Free”… Free to obey, free to grovel to the ostentatious displays of the wealth of thieves and murderers. That’s 20 MILLION pounds, the most expensive wedding on record. All of it on the public dimesixpence while the House of Lords, none of whom earned their titles, strip bread from the mouths of children, medicine from the ill and the very right to raise your voice from anybody who would protest.
The professional Lackeys who were invited to the wedding raised THEIR voices in protest against the rights of the People. Apparently shouting is only allowed if it’s in support of the Very Rich Rulers, like what the retarded-ass TeaBags do here.
Raise your voice AGAINST them and their leaders will have you dragged from their presence by the Publicly Funded Police like Sarah Palin did while proclaiming that nobody should sit down or shut up.
Unless they “heckled” Her Royal Majesty of course.
Or Rand Paul having his Koward Kentucky Komrade tea-bag THUG patrol, three of them, attack a woman, Lauren Valle, for heckling him, while hundreds of other Tea Bag Koward Kentucky Komrades stood around to make sure nobody interefered with their fun.
And still say they only stand for Freedom.

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I LOVE IT! What role should monarchs play in an aspiring-to-egalitarian age? While public demonstrations across North Africa and the Middle East herald an Arab Spring, similar masses in Britain protest bank imposed austerity cuts, each met with repressive force fully sanctioned by their clueless rulers. Democracy is in the air, courtesy of not elections nor representative legislation, but anarchic uprisings. 2011 should commemorate the people’s now clear potential for self-determination, not a celebration of family privilege. It’s time the anti-democratic, unsympathetic, habitually ignoble “royals,” even if mere figureheads, buggered off.

But not Wiki leaks. Nay, what is leaking is a supposedly inspected and approved levee in Missouri. Much like the bridge falling into the Mississippi in Minnesota three short years ago, much like the Cimarron street bridge over Fountain Creek/Monument Creek confluence and the Union Pacific railroad tracks which ferry the looted coal southward to Galveston, to be put on ships to China …every 30 minutes during the day and every 20 at night, Big Ol’ Hairy-scary chunk of bridge falling on the creek. It would have got more press if it had delayed those strategic shipments of coal.

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Documents can be faked, witnesses coached, others disappeared, if it really is all important that a president prove he’s home-born enough to rule the land of immigrants. It’s trivial isn’t it? An old law, fashioned to exclude one particular 18th century foreign-born candidate; a mere technicality, but just the kind of rules-are-rules mechanism sacrosanct to courts, banks, insurers and creditors. What the birthers smell in Barack Obama is a phony president, elected on extraordinarily false, felonious pretenses. And what a pejorative term the corporate media is using to trivialize the may-be-unconstitutional-foreign-birth accusers: birthers. Yes the scent they’ve picked up is irrelevant, and likely false. It’s also incredibly racist. But most fundamentally, it’s true. They are tracking a fugitive of justice, a charlatan and fraud, and for certain, a murdering, torturing, technocrat. Let’s press the White House to conjure a Long Form to disprove that.

Oh dear, is this really the best antiwar argument we’ve got? The share of federal spending which goes to war-making IS astounding, and should give the common citizen pause, but how does it speak to the average weapons industrialist attending the 2011 Space Symposium? They’re trickle-down folks! The more money going to science and skilled labor the better. High tech would be happier if 100% of government spending went through them. Plus the only thing worse than antiwar arguments lamenting OUR OWN casualties, IMO worse too than NIMBY, is making it all about how we can’t AFFORD it.

A staple of army surplus stores since the days Banana Republic was the Starbucks of olive drab, the Israeli Paratrooper Bag was marketed as the Swiss Army Knife of handbags. Beside the ludicrous notion that an airborne assault fighter would shoulder a single-strapped man-purse, the red logo of a winged parachute raises another incongruity. For what pretext does a nation’s defensive force have “paratroopers?” I know the US/UK imperial powers label their entire military as being for defense, but they’ve got client states to dominate. Every nation’s special forces are now synonymous with SWAT, basically unconstitutional deployment of paramilitary forces against their own populations. Even if we grant governments this tool of repression, they don’t use parachutes. Paratroopers are the advance team for an invading army, dropped behind enemy lines to demolish another’s defenses against the main assault. And that’s why Israel is so unsuccessful in defending itself, it’s attacking.

COLO. SPRINGS– Tough crowd at this week’s antiwar bannering: the usual plentiful honks of support, but now intermittent servicemen heckling in crew-cutted indignation. And we haven’t yet inaugurated our WARMONGERS GO TO HELL banner. The best the driver of a white van-load of them could muster was “Semper Fi” so they must have been Marines because they shout it like it means “America! Fuck Yeah!” Are they taught it’s abbreviated Latin for Always Faithful? I believe Fidelis is the root of Fido.

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GARDEN OF THE GODS, COLORADO SPRINGS– Mountain bike X-tremists and thrillcraft eco-vandals Jason Memmelaar and Chris Heath weren’t apprehended by the El Paso County Sheriff or the CSPD, but interrupted by off-duty park ranger Stephanie Stover, who saw them cutting tree limbs to expand an illegal downhill run. When she scattered the limbs across the trail to ameliorate erosion, she later found a note which warned:
“Why would you do that? You will hurt my friends. If I see you do this I will hurt you and no one will hear you scream.”
Reached by the Gazette via Facebook, Heath denied he left the note, or that he’d built the mile-long trail across protected park land, though he did brag about using the trail “a bunch.” So there it is, CSPD, let the citations fly. Trail repairs won’t begin until May, so there’s still time if you want to make their downhill track a surprise obstacle course. Will screams go unheard? We can test that hypothesis.

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97 years ago. A lot can happen in that time, yes? Unions finally getting some decent wage and safety laws going, public education, health care, pensions…
Then people got complacent, and the Anti-Worker Greed Heads take back power, just enough to put us back almost to 1914. They say “Oh, but the Unions are Corrupt, everybody knows that! Look at all the RICO complaints the FBI investigates.”
Yeah, sure. Anybody can file a RICO complaint and the FBI would be compelled to investigate it, even if they notice it’s Bullshit after the first phone call to the complainant. So there are Corporate Lawyers, the ones who will clean the latrines in Hell, who make more money in a week than a worker makes in a year just filing RICO complaints. Talk about your Frivolous Lawsuits. Why don’t the Tort Reform Activists get on THEIR ass? Ouch…
That’s Right, I almost forget, it’s because THEY’RE THE SAME GOD-DAMN PEOPLE!
The “Right To Work Law” advocates who tell us that if we just let Reagan be Reagan, take the “handcuffs” off of the Free Market and the Corporate Big Pigs will make sure that the workers will be well taken care of. Nothing to see her, citizen, all is well, The Smart People are taking care of everything, nothing to see, all is Hell….
And those Maxim belt fed water cooled machine guns pointed at you are strictly for your own protection.
John D Rockefeller ordered the 39 murders, including the thirteen kids. And got rewarded by a shitload of extra Government Contracts and his son Nelson made Vice President of the United States.

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But not for their Political Backers, who bailed out their industry at public expense, a pair of Rich-Bitch Investment Bankers from New York took a joyride in a taxi to Las Vegas and Los Angeles “on a whim”.
Take that, Peasants! We’re cutting off your grandma’s Social Security and your pension and your rights to bargain for a fair wage and decent working conditions, but we get to make a bold statement of the Divine Rights of Wealthy Assholes!
And have the BBC report it as a Serious News Story!!! How Elitist of us! Maybe they’ll pick up George Bush, John McCain, Boehner, Scott Walker, our own Doug Lamborn, and Richard Cheney on the way back and fellate them, in gratitude for them using Corporate Welfare public funds to bail them out when they and their sorry ilk trashed the economy for everybody else in the world.

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COLORADO SPRINGS– It was Doug Bruce himself, the anti-tax man most responsible for the region’s decaying services and infrastructure, polishing his own campaign sign, on land belonging to Griffis/Blessing. The fit was not entirely out of the realm of possibility, but I made a second pass, conspicuously taking photos that he might worry could inform a landlord. To his credit, instead of ignoring me he kept trying to wave me over, as if despite my direct attacks on him in city council sessions, he could win me over out there on the corner. He left with the sign.

The execution in a Jail Cell in Denver, unacceptable… except, of course, to the Police and Judiciary and Social “leaders” in Denver. And the Feds who would have the task of prosecuting Civil Rights violations like, say, tasering and beating a handcuffed victim to death.
If the FBI and the “justice” Department gave any more of a shit about the lives of people they’re paid to protect than the other Pigs do. The murdered man in question was a Homeless Street Preacher, had the same occupation as Jesus. Who was also homeless, by the way
So why wouldn’t the Churches be outraged by this? You know, like the Third Self-Righteous Church of Denver with the Right Reverend P. Ompousass preaching conformity and obedience to the Police State? The question answers itself…
March against police terror! March for Marvin, Oleg, and all the victims!

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Military, Cops, Laborers, Firefighters, anybody, really, who isn’t the Money Class voting Republican in any form. Dig this. The First Responders Health Care bill…has a clause built in that any of the workers poisoned while trying to find survivors or remains, to clean up The Pile that was the Twin Towers, abandoned and left to die by the Republican Establishment, for nearly a decade, as soon as their faces were no longer needed to sell Mr Bush’s War Agenda… (and Chevy Trucks, but that’s another story…)
To get the health care they need to survive, they’ll have to undergo a Homeland Security background check to make sure they’re not TERRORISTS.

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Since she makes so much political hay over having sacrificed “her own” son to the Military Establishment, maybe she should have a short tutorial on the word Sacrifice.
First, stolen goods, stolen money and humans aren’t viewed as Clean for the Temple. Just like Caiphas couldn’t spend the thirty shekels, because it was the price of blood. Sarah Palin could not in any way OWN her son. He’s another separate human being. Not a possession.
He might consider himself a sacrifice (he’d be wrong) but it would be HIS blood offering, not hers.
Also he doesn’t seem to be dying for the atonement of anybody’s sin, if he DOES get his fascist face blown through the back of his skull it’ll be because he’s in a foreign country enslaving the people, taking their land and oil in the name of the corporations for whom Momma Grizzly does her whorin’. and one of them would get in a good shot while defending his country against Young Sgt Palin.
Not anything similar to a sacrifice.

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If Jesus had come to Colorado Springs last Sunday instead of GW riding his sorry ass into town on Sabbath, He would be sitting in a cell at CDC awaiting execution today. Nowadays the police state doesn’t make a huge public spectacle of torturing somebody to death. They just go ahead and do it, in cells far removed from the eyes of any civilian witnesses.The prisoner is then denounced, post mortem where he can’t defend himself, as “being psychotic”, and when the Good, Noble, Brave Righteous PIGS tried to “restrain” him, he died in the struggle. Like the Murdering Scum Pigs in Denver did to Rev. Marvin Booker 9 months ago… and got away with it. Or that they found him hanged in his cell. The Pig Medical Examiner, himself a Deputized Cop, will confirm whatever his Fellow Pigs said and the DA will instruct the Inquest to clear the PIGS of any wrongdoing. They could march the handcuffed prisoner out into the middle of Acacia Park at noon, force him to the ground, and put a bullet in his back, and the “Good” citizens of Colorado Springs would swear on a stack of Bibles that they personally witnessed it as a suicide. The Imperial Storm Troops wear blue now, except when they’re armored up to beat down peaceful demonstrators.”

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The trouble with introductory collections like “Opera for People Who Hate Opera” is of course that it’s still OPERA. I’m inclined to believe the gateway acquired-taste for American pop music ears is –why not– American Musical Theater. But before I get to the particular show I have in mind THE MOST HAPPY FELLA, for a teaser, get thee to Tevye’s dream of Fiddler On The Roof. Find the original Broadway stage recording (These girls found it: The Dream) where Zero Mostel pretends to be visited by two ghosts, blending three melodies –with dances– to a whirlwind intensity. Discordant, shrill, phenomenal, pure opera.

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That the chemical spill which has currently gotten Monument evacuated… is going to be neatly and safely taken care of and that you’re not going to be in any danger from it?
Because the Chemical Industry, especially those divisions most closely tied to the Military, are betting a hundred percent of Your Ass that if they have a Chernobyl or Fukushima or Bhopal or Texas City happen say, in Downtown Colorado Springs, they’ll be able to cover it up as neatly as they have their other little boo-boos.
What’s that? Texas City? Oh, yeah. Not only were they experiencing a chemical spill, and arresting people for taking pictures, draining the equivalent of the weeks worth of water used in Texas City, Galveston Co Texas in sheer liquid volume of volatile petrochemicals. Volatile means they react with other chemicals very quickly, sometimes explosively. The volatility of some, like Raid and Black Flag insectides, is such that they even kill (most of) the roaches in any given area. Oh, that volatile. This was done by BP at the same time their little boo-boo Earth Day present from last year was going full blast. Still is, but reporting on the damage is being covered up like cat droppings in the litter box. On the scene police brutality to keep nosy citizens from seeing first hand what’s killing them, to a neat little YouTube channel where soothing music and deep mellow voices assure us that all is well, no need to worry, the Smart People are working on it, nothing to see here, citizen, all is Hell…

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By which I mean: BANNED by whom? Looking online for a definitive listing of most-often banned or censored books yields a panoply of titles not necessarily candidates for a pantheon. At right I’ve stacked the heavyweights most often resisted for being obscene, here a quality strangely inseparable from being subversive. Many of these titles have been intercepted through the ages by the US Post Office for being indecent under the Comstock Law, but how does that really inform readers of today?

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The extrem(ist)e lack of the first puts any claim of the latter as the very essence of arrogant falsehood. We’re told that America, and ONLY America, actually deserves to run the entire world because we’re better than them.
What’s that sound? Damn, I just heard every Right Wing Jingoist my-country-right-or-wrong, Love-it-or-leave-it, we’re-fighting-for-your-freedom-of-speech-so-you-better-shut-your-cake-hole-or-we’ll-shut-it-for-you “patriotic” TeaTard Racist closing his mind. They just snapped their minds shut simultaneously. with a deafening roar.
Consider the case of one Luis Posada Carriles
For those of our readers unfamiliar with the Castellano (Spanish) naming scheme, Carriles was his mother’s maiden name. His surname is Posada.
A terrorist paid by the U.S. Regime over decades to murder, to overthrow Democracy wherever it reared its lovely head. His CIA “handler” was one Donald Gregg, an American Coward who paid public money, without public oversight and, like fellow Terrorist George Bush Gregg was recently honored in Colorado Springs. Seems the local “conservatives” can’t get enough of Babykilling Freaks. (They’re hosting Sarah Palin later this month)

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This is the only response, so far, from the so-called “Christian” Fascist Party about my pointing out the utter blasphemy of their Whoreship service for George W Beast the other day…
The more than slightly unhinged Nazi “serr8d” starts out with “How the heathen do rage” then offers to sodomize me in a Chevy Volt using a plastic Solidarity Fist.
This shows, very clearly, the unhinged nature of the Far Right Lunatic Fringe, and, serr8d, you should seek professional help. Let me enumerate the ten commandments and how your hero George W and his sycophant Temple prostitutes (such as Sarah Palin [high priestess of Satan] and yourself) break them.
1. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
That doesn’t mean “in line ahead of Him” it’s more like if you’re standing in front of me, you’re also “standing before me” whether we’re face to back or face to face. Republican and Radio/TV “christian” doctrine has it that Capitalism is a religious virtue, and that the Twin Towers, a temple to a graven image (you even call it “The Almighty”) were struck down as an assault against Christianity. Huh? You erect and even call it a Temple to a god other than YHVH and expect that nobody will notice?
2. Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image (your dollar bill is an engraving and the face on it is one many of you call “Our Father” as in, the Father of Our Nation) to worship it.
I would say spending more of each day, including the Sabbath, be it Sunday or Saturday, or Friday for our Muslim friends,thinking talking and acting about the dollar and calling it “The Almighty” qualifies that as Worship.

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Yep, they turned up in their orange tans, diamonds, black gowns and shiny SUVs, to support Christian charter schools and honor “God Bless Him” George Dubya Bush. This was my favorite sign from the protest.