That’s rich. Mitt Romney wants GOP to shun frauds and phonies.
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Tag Archives: Romney
Letter to Michael Moore, indelible hero, retrograde Occupy Obama supporter
Dear Michael,
I write you as a longtime, enthusiastic fan, and please pardon me if the deference and affection I’d like to convey have been overcome by my shock at your recent emails. My question may sound rhetorical, but I would really like to know: what the hell compels you to shill once again for Barack Obama? Beside the campaign pablum.
When you visited Occupys across the country, including ours in Denver, I defended you to friends who dismissed you as the usual shepherd’s crook for the Democratic Party. No no no I assured them, he gets it. But did you? We weren’t protesting eight years of Bush followed by an ineffectual Obama, we were protesting Obama and the economic system under his watch. We weren’t protesting the Democratic Party being insufficiently adversarial to the Republicans, we were protesting the corporate party system, the Democrat face being the more two-faced.
Most significantly, while our anger was vented at Wall Street, the repression we were dealt, and which dissenters continue to suffer, came directly from the agencies of President Obama.
Yet now you presume to accuse the same audience of cynicism about the election, and urge us to support Democrat Obama, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, out of fear of the Big Bad Wolf, as usual Republican.
Maybe as the election draws to a climax you’ve become privy to an unseen power struggle you need to tell us about. Because it’s at odds with your earlier giddiness with Occupy. Then your enthusiasm was unclouded by your pragmatism today.
Please do tell, because Mitt Romney seems more a sheep in wolf’s clothing to me. He’s a cartoonish straw man villain spouting wedge-issue threats to scare us crows from lighting upon the real corporate agenda. The banking kleptocracy doesn’t care about gay/women’s rights except to restrict all rights, the easier to pursue its grand thefts. If the GOP had wanted to pick a winner, I’m certain the average doctor or teacher you come across everyday would have made a more suited contender.
Could the GOP have chosen a greedier more callous thug, who didn’t pay his taxes, tainted by so much scandal that a new one emerged every day to titillate and offend? Obama had to sluff the first presidential debate because they’d chosen such an unbelievable, lame duck opponent that the ratings threatened to tank.
When the Neocon Washington Post endorsed President Obama, I knew the stooge from the ringer. The empire would be screwed without Obama to placate its victims. As Glen Ford argues, Obama may appear the lesser evil, but he’s the more effective evil. He’ll sell what arrogantly-white Romney never could: more war, austerity, privatization, fossil fuel. Without Obama, the global populace would push back.
I don’t favor a Romney win, but for another reason than you. A Romney presidency would mean another cycle of voter outrage, with MoveOn once again rallying Democrats, as if they were any different, and you probably among them.
But the election is not even going to be close. The six billion spent on this election was six billion earned by the media by pretending the polling was tied, to extort more spending by both sides. Meanwhile horseless statistician Nate Silver is vilified by television pundits because he’s calculated that surprise, Obama has a comfortable lead over his bogeyman idiot challenger.
Yes I know multitudes who support Mitt Romney. Four years ago they got nowhere with John McCain, because the juggernaut of empire was already up to full steam with Obama. I confess I didn’t know it then, and fretted a GOP win like everybody else, but it didn’t keep me from voting for Cynthia McKinney against war and climate change.
You began your letter by saying “I get it” but then assume we non-voters are motivated by apathy or weariness. You’re the one who sounds worn down. Bummer.
Yours,
Eric
For Presidential Debate No 2, your reflection on television is dumber than you appear
If Mitt Romney’s candidacy serves one purpose, it’s to highlight what fools Americans have become. Without question, Romney shows his supporters to possess a thinking deficit virtually unfathomable. But more dispiriting, Romney’s opponents run from him like Team Scooby Doo from a masked ghoul, Saturday after Saturday never wiser. Tonight’s second presidential debate was no exception, with Romney contriving ever more spookier hogwash, to an audience and media taking it seriously. As a result tonight, people who otherwise pretend to know better were cheering for a “clean coal” fossil fuel president who’s “all about pipelines” because they’re afraid of a GOP foil who can’t prove he’d be better than Bush. If tonight’s town hall questions were vetted, can we not guess they were also ordered? Two subjects, the so-called Libya debacle and Anyone-but-Bush, seemed pedestrian enough to boost the illusion of reality television, but suited campaign camps rather equitably. Are we to believe Romney was left to improvise deficient answers? Any middle schooler could disprove Romney’s math, but that’s probably more schooling than we can attribute to the corporate media’s pretend audience. The public, polled to believe they’re as dumb as the level to which pundits condescend, think they have to chose a lesser of two color-coded evils. Most people, uncomfortably above the charade, are given to conclude that America’s foolish public could never govern itself, demand a responsive leader, or even crawl unaided from a paper bag. And that’s to confuse reality for television.
Next, illustrious talking heads pronounce the winner. NPR had this handicap prepared to suggest a Romney win: it was a tie, but a tie is a victory for the last person in the lead. Then come the fact-checkers, as if a debate is adjudicated based on facts. Are we really to expect that either candidate does not know the facts? A lie on national television used to mean immemorial disgrace.
Obama nails presidential debate. With Romney made viable, the election is on
President Obama nailed it! He had to lose last night’s presidential debate and how else was that going to look credible unless he out-Romney’d the reigning court fool? Arrogance would have been easier, and sloughing it off would have been unconvincing. Neither would have resuscitated Mitt Romney’s credibility. And while Obama’s brilliant turn may appear ego-less, it reflects the ease with which he has been betraying all his supporters with higher hopes. After turning his coat on every issue A-Z, it took a debate to infuriate his Democrat supporters? Where was the anger on Guantanamo, Immigration, Civil Liberties? They only care that he didn’t show up Mitt Romney. On the positive, they’ve all spent the next morning going over in their heads what Obama should have said, probably the arguments they’ll make in now revived voter-drives. Denver’s debate was psy-ops at its crudest.
El Paso County Clerk Wayne Williams wants voter registration fraud evidence pulled from net
COLORADO SPRINGS– A young voter registration activist, by admission soliciting only Mitt Romney supporters, was caught on video saying she worked for the El Paso County Clerk, mistakenly as it turns out. Local Dems have run with the story while Clerk & Recorder Wayne Williams and the Colorado Springs Gazette, both notorious GOP bullies, insist the viral video be taken down because it misrepresents the truth, missing the point about WHO was misrepresenting the truth. Whether the young woman spoke in error, she and perhaps others are representing themselves as county representatives, and the clerk’s damage control is revealing. After clarifying that his office does not employ partisan foot soldiers (although examples abound of Democrats being purged from his staff), Williams scolds only the video taker for “spreading disinformation”. He does not warn citizens to question volunteers who pretend official status, nor does he offer evidence of reprimands or special retraining. Of course all sides are protecting the identity of the 20-year-old Victoria Bautista. Why? At 20 she’s not getting any smarter, or educated obviously. I hardly think it serves our society to coddle anyone screwing with civic participation. Many of our current officials are evidence of what happens when you nurture mediocrity in politics. Are we so hard up we want idiots in authority? I think that’s a characteristic best pruned aggressively like you would rot.
Paul Ryan! Mitt Romney picks running mate more low brow than Sarah Palin
He did it! Mitt Romney picked someone more low brow than Sarah Palin, and not just figuratively. Kleptocrat Representative Paul Ryan personifies the very definition of the idiom, Low Brow, coincidentally a eugenic measure of a diminutive frontal lobe, not unrelated to pea-brained under-evolvedness. Such a Frankenstinian VP pick for the GOP ticket, means our election stage managers are pulling out all stops to scare Democrats into the voting booths. That they keep having to make the Republican bogeyman ever bogeyer, could mean they anticipate enthusiasm for President Obama to reach new lows. What unspeakably unpopular move is coming from Goldman Sachs’ man in DC, dare we ask, that we’ll need Paul Ryan playing Goober Pyle Lugosi to frighten Americans back into Obama’s arms?
Mitt Romney trips upon brilliant foreign policy idea, gives Israel’s plan to attack Iran an idiot’s stamp of approval.
On the heels of making A TWIT of himself in London, self-caricaturized Romneyshambles, GOP presidential foil-candidate Mitt Romney traipsed over to Israel and depth-charged their bellicose policy of menacing Iran with continuous threats of preemptive attack by proclaiming his “respect” for it! Then he mistook the capitol of Israel for Jerusalem in the Palestinian occupied territories!
American billionaires aren’t underwriting Mitt Romney’s campaign because they think he can be president. They don’t need him. Pro- corporate Barack Obama is already their internationally-populist figurehead. The money the oligarchs are pouring into Election 2012 is to convince a post-hope public that voting still matters. To ease voter buy-in the electoral decision is being made easy: choose smart versus stupid. Barnum dictates you can’t underestimate the American public, but Romney’s lack of political sense may out-dumb common wisdom.
UPDATE: What did Romney do next? He praised the Israelis for being more economically successful than the Palestinian neighbors they’d dispossessed, crediting the stereotypical Jewish culture! He closed his standup tour by deliberately soliciting foreign campaign contributions.
Occupy was fooled by undocumented Obama Dream Activists, so were you
DENVER- Who wouldn’t want to stand in solidarity with undocumented immigrants willing to stage sit-ins in Obama campaign headquarters across the country, risking arrest and certain deportation –we thought– to demand that President Obama hear their plea? Yeah, the Dream Act is an economic draft to ensnare illegal aliens, but these “Dream Activists” spoke mainly of schooling opportunities and the prospect of legal jobs thereafter. So they locked themselves in, began hunger strikes, and left support crews outside to hold press conferences, until yesterday, when Obama announced he would cease deportations! A win-win for Obama and his Hispanic constituents. On cue, Bogeyman Romney vowed he’d reverse that order. Did you see that coming? You might have, if you’d noticed that these campaign HQ occupiers had decorated their handmade signs with Obama logos. That, and the DPD never ever rattled its sabers. You try to hold a sit-in and you’ll be cited for trespass before you sit down. Denver Police were never called, and we figured it was because the Obama campaign didn’t dare upset the Latino community, like they do environmentalists, labor, feminists, social justice…
Near success of delegates for Ron Paul exposes electoral college as rigged
I want to give Ron Paul supporters their due. By their determination to advance their Republican candidate by hook or by crook, Team Ron Paul’s self-deputized delegates have exposed the US electoral college nomination process to be fixed. Isn’t it interesting how far Republican state party chairmen have been willing to go to stop even the slightest encroachment on candidate Mitt Romney’s presumptive convention backing? May the best man win is the ethos they preach, but it seems the furthest from what they will allow. Of course this learning moment will be lost on Ron Paul’s army of halfwits, just clever enough to outmaneuver the average rival Republicans, but dumb enough in the first place to fall for their “Dr. Paul”. Don’t you just love it, their reverence for a PhD, from mostly stunted males claiming post-grad (of associate degrees) studies in “The Austrian School” of economics? They’re gun nuts and bombastic proponents of folk-wisdom libertarian nationalism, no surprises there, and so we can’t even congratulate them on debunking the apple-pie objectivity of America’s electoral level playing field, because it will go to their head and their craniums are pit bull small.
Doug Lamborn won’t touch President Obama because he says he’s a Tar Baby
That line probably gets lots of laughs at Tea Parties, but over Denver airwaves, Congressman Doug Lamborn’s likening President Obama to a “Tar Baby” got, I’ll say it, sticky. Yeah, the expression meant “intractable quagmire” when Mitt Romney used it to describe an cost-prohibitive subway project, but Tar Baby’s primary allusion to a negative African-American stereotype got Romney in trouble. Now like a banana peel gag irresistible to Republicans, “Tar Baby” is how Doug Lamborn chose to describe, not a hole in the ground into which you pour money, not a trap set by a clever fox to lure the Uncle Remus progenitor of Bugs Bunny, but to describe his Teabag constituents’ poster child usurper, risen from America’s untouchable class, our first black president.
You dopey Tea Party Klan jester, you won’t shake Barack Obama’s hand because it’s black. You’re a racist sneak, unfortunately egged on by the bigots endemic to your backwater district. I hope you find that the rest of Colorado will make your “Tar Baby” remark a real tar baby for you.
Lamborn says he meant “quagmire” and a supportive media is referencing the dictionary to assert his usage was correct. But the instances for which Romney and John McCain apologized were quagmires, not personifications, least of all OF Obama. A physicist can say he’s got a problem that’s real bitch, but not if he’s talking about his wife.
I think it’s fairly disingenuous to say the primary definition of Tar Baby is a quagmire. That’s like concluding Fag is a cigarette. Yes, but that’s when neither are used to describe a person.
Curiously the local media helpfully mention that “Tar Baby” was a plot device in Uncle Remus, popularized by Disney in Song of the South. No mention that it’s the only animation that has not been reissued, because it’s widely regarded as offensive on racist grounds.
Lamborn has apologized to President Obama and assures interviewers that he’s confident his apology will be accepted. Isn’t it ironic that he won’t touch Obama with a ten foot pole, yet can count on the man’s magnanimity? Of course he’s right, the president opposes nothing, why take issue with racism?
But I believe Lamborn will have lost his value to even his Tea Party Klan associates. Having his apology accepted, it’s going to be impossible for Lamborn to belittle Obama with even a pea-brain pretense of credibility.
Republican-Democrat? It’s a Christian thing.
I have to delineate this in three different perspectives, that of Christians who don’t preach that God tells us to kill people, people who say they’re Christians and that God DOES say to kill and torture people, and people who don’t claim the name of Christ and say that God doesn’t tell us to kill and torture people.
Since the issue was raised, why Republican makes such a huge difference:
They not only are making Torture and Killing the major part of their platform for the mid-term elections but for the 2012.
I brought up Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal because they’re both being considered as candidates
They also, like the entire leadership of their party and the only vocal members of their party, who are fortunately very loud in their screams for the blood of everybody who Is Not Them….
…claim to be the representatives of God on earth.
Literally.
I don’t listen to KVOR by choice, but the idiots who do like to play it REAL damn loud because that’s the only way they can convince anybody to listen to it.
and a loving God in His infinite mercy and wisdom failed to provide me with ear-lids.
Sarah Palin, for instance, is a lay-minister in the Assembly of God church.
Somehow the AOG has slipped a little in the past 40 years because they used to not allow their women to wear slacks… far less dressing like a crack whore.
Bobby Jindal, Gingrich, Vitter, the list goes on, Huckabee and Romney… aside from all of them being Chickenshit ChickenHawks who are all for killing people just as long as they don’t have to put themselves at risk to do it…
Claim to be Christians. So do the loudmouth rednecks on KVOR. Huckabee is a preacher. Romney took draft deferments because he was doing his Mormon missionary service. Gingrich converted to Catholicism so he could get an annulment from wife #2, thus wife #3 wouldn’t be judged as a whore. Kind of like Henry the Eighth.
He’s also considering a run for President in 2012.
All this in the name of God.
If the R’s hadn’t made these things their entire platform I would be entirely wrong to criticize them (almost) exclusively.
The Democratic Party doesn’t claim an exclusive right to speak for Christians…
Now, see, I AM a Christian, remember? It’s where I get the Brother part of my name.
That means I do have a horse in this race.
If I allowed the Christian version of the Taliban speak unchallenged on this or any other issue I would be betraying God.
And, like the boy scout oath, My Country as well.
A lot of Christians have about zero tolerance for outsiders telling them what’s wrong with with their version of what Christ said and did.
Let’s make that fair, eh? Those readers who are pagans, Buddhists, Jews, Muslim, Atheist, do YOU ever take it kindly when people tell you, speaking from THEIR faith, or the dogma thereof, what YOU as a pagan or Buddhist or Jew or Muslim or Atheist has to believe or how you’re supposed to act as representatives of your faith or lack thereof?
I didn’t think so.
Since I AM a Christian and not ashamed of Christ (although some of my fellow Christians make me queasy and uneasy) I am obliged to point these things out, not just “preaching to the choir” of people who agree with me but ESPECIALLY to Christians who don’t. I took His name, I have to stand against the Murderous blasphemy and to do it in His name.
Or be a collaborator and accomplice to their crimes, the ones they justify with their blasphemous use of God’s name.
The Republican Party are with a united voice claiming that any criticism of their policies is an attack against America and an attack against God.
I say that it is instead an affirmation in my faith and my patriotism to oppose placing my nation squarely in the wrong, and to oppose doing it in the Name of God.
That counts for the first perspective. Mine. And shared by millions upon millions of other American Christians who opposed the Republican agenda precisely on that ground.
The Republicans have a huge amount of available air time and their tame corporate press to spout their bullshit and they do it regularly.
That’s the second perspective and they express it … a LOT and very loudly. For them to deny it would be pointless and laughable.
The third is from non-Christians who have pointed out that God didn’t tell us to kill each other.
Here’s where the rubber meets the road (I’ve got a million unused cliches to tap into)
There’s a Fourth Perspective.
Just like a lot of Christians, and a lot of Atheists, and a lot of Other non-Muslims will say that Islam is a religion of purest hatred, and cite passages in the Koran which are based on very similar passages in the law of Moses…
A lot of non-Christians will say that God did teach murder and torture and other perversions.
And they’ll cite the same scriptures the Hate Freaks like Palin and Gingrich and Bush cited, and they’ll cite every “christian” who is Stupid Enough to follow them.
Follow them explicitly by tossing up the stiff-arm Salute and echoing their bullshit, or follow them implicitly by not opposing their murderous ways.
Bush, McCain and the Romney Boys owe us one…
The former Commander in Thief and his anointed replacement, who would have been President until Palin figured a way to Get Rid of him….
Both made “The Troops” a pledge, Bush told them that “if only my Wife and My Dawg support me, WE will remain in Iraq”
And an hour of carefully scripted photo-ops later he took his wife, his Dawg and the “he” part of “we” and got smuggled out of Iraq the same way he’d been smuggled in. He made a similar promise to the guys in Afghanistan, admiring their “Romantic” mission and wishing that he could join them, but, alas and alack, (wiping crocodile tears from his beady little chimpanzee eyes) he had a Prior Commitment in Washing Tundy Sea.
McCain echoed the sentiments, and went for a “casual’ photo-op stroll to a bazaar very near the Green Zone, to prove that it was just the same as walking to the mall in Indianapolis or wherever the hell…
Just as safe as one could be, so long as he had a platoon of soldiers, snipers standing by, a helicopter or two, and wearing body armor.
And of course, the Romney Demon-spawn saying that the reason their Big, Healthy, ChickenHawk collective arse wasn’t getting shot off in Iraq or Afghanistan was because they were on a More Important Mission, to help Daddy become the ChickenHawk Führer-in-Chief.
Funny thing, now that they got their collective arse handed to them in the election cycle, they still haven’t made good on their promise to put their money, and their arses, where their mouths are and actually LEAVE.
More outrageous fight-pickin’ speech about Chambliss…
It’s a strong case of poke-poke-poke at him with a stick in the hopes that he’ll go ballistic.
Or any of his supporters, especially locally.
Like when I point out that the “medical problems” that kept him from joining Martin and Cleland in Viet-Nam was this strange yellowish rash on his abdomen and running from his neck to his buttocks along his spine.
I don’t mind people not going to war, in fact I encourage people not to go to war. Where it starts to bug me is when they develop mystery illnesses like Spinal Jaundice (Chambliss) rectal pimple Limbaugh, Mormon Missionary Duty Romney, Too Stupid to find his way to the recruiters office Giuliani…
And then insist that Other People have a duty to go to Viet-Nam or Iraq, in place of their coward arses.
Is it a personal attack against the “man”? Hell yes.
Resoundingly and Proudly YES!!
Just like that other protegé of McBush Jr and Karl Rove, Not-Joe the Not-a-REAL-Plumber, who also is conveniently not serving in the War he Claims to support…
Both of the chickenshit grovelling toadie bastards also use Claims to be Heirs to the Confederacy as well, trying to put themselves up front as Real Macho He-Man Warrior Class individuals…
When they’re essentially loud-mouthed cowards.
I hear tell that Chambliss’ REAL great great grandpappy was a Carpetbagger from New Jersey.
See, it used to be that Southern Gentlemen would be so offended by being characterized like that they would challenge you to a Duel, swords or pistols at sunrise, My Second will be Calling on you, Suh…
Or take another slug of ‘shine and jump up and attempt to beat the living dogshit out of you.
I don’t think either of these Faux-Confederate “Heroes” would do anything that would put themselves in physical danger though.
Nor would any of the wannabees who have bumper stickers saying “I’m voting for Joe the Plumber”.
John ‘Wayne’ McCain
John is our tough guy candidate. But he’s not all that tough, and we should think of him as a Dick Cheney-Light sort of guy. As such, he’s more likely to shoot birds with a nuclar weapon instead of a shotgun, since it’s much safer. That’s the type of guy John ‘Wayne’ McCain is. Safe and sound when it comes to foreign policy. Yet tough. Very tough.
With John, you get a guy who’s respectful of religion. McCain is well known for promoting serial monogamy in his own life, and can be depended on to give religious leaders like Pastor John Hagee more access to the White House than they have gotten from Dubya. John McCain might actually be God’s chosen candidate to lead us to ultimate victory over The Heathen? But then again, he might actually be Satan in disguise? Many thought that was Mitt Romney, but Satan has a way of fooling people.
With John ‘Wayne’ McCain, look for private property like guns to receive the respect that they have not been getting. If you don’t like it, then you can go to jail. It’s as simple as that, and ‘Wayne’ don’t play around with the bad guys. Look for socialized public schools to be sold to outfits like the Montessori and Catholic chains. Look for evolution to be taught only as a theory, and the Bible not.
Did you like Dubya but felt that he was not quite heroic enough? Then get tough and vote McCain. That should send the pinko liberals a message they will have trouble ever forgetting. America doesn’t want their faggots to run the country, not when John ‘Wayne’ McCain can come riding in in White. Don’t let the men dressed in dark take over the White House. Vote tough! Vote for John ‘Wayne’….. McCain!
The ‘Clash of Civilizations’ isn’t real except to DP Joe
Today, I got a chance to listen in on as a local proponent of ‘the clash of civilizations‘ theory spouted his religious like beliefs. He wasn’t talking about how Christian America has to stop ‘Islamic fascism’. No, Joe was talking about the Democratic Party, and how its supposedly epic clash with Republican idiocy was the end all and be all issue in America.
Like all these true believers in the ‘clash of civilizations’, Joe is totally convinced that he is defending the true values of civilization from total barbarians. Substitute Republicans for Muslims, and one can get a true idea of how important this self view is to Democratic Joe as he apes the Republicans he despises so. He is a real player in the world of politics, and those who do not understand this ‘clash of civilizations’ are considered by him to be mere anarchists.
You see, anarchists reject the need to have the true organization needed by the defenders of civilization to defend themselves from the Republican barbarians, which is a ‘revitalized Democratic Party’. Anarchists are ignorant enablers to the conservatized defenders of ‘liberalism’ like Joe, just like liberals are ignorant enablers of ‘Islamic fascism’ to crazy Right Winged Christians like Pat Robertson, or Mitt Romney.
Listening to Joe is a little like listening to Glenn Beck talking about Muslims when Joe gets going about the nefarious Republicans and how we need to get the Democratic Party into fighting form to cut them bastards down to size! Joe sees himself as the only and most knowledgeable knight in the fight to defend civilization. The clash of civilizations is as real to Joe as it is to Samuel P. Huntington. In fact, it defines his total view of the universe.
Liberal Joe is a conservative, you see. He will always be fighting to make a corporate party the people’s party…. in order to fight against the corporate party… The Republicans. Now isn’t that weird?
Liberal Joe is a defender of civilization from the barbarian influence. He is all that stands between liberty and the backwardness of Republican retards and degenerates running our country. Liberal Joe is IT. He is all THAT. Liberal Joe is a Democrat Party hag till the day he dies, even if the DP is actually more like the Republican Party than anything else. That doesn’t register with Democratic Party Joe though.
Joe is a religious fanatic even as he spouts his secularist credentials. Democratic Party Joe is a true believer. Democratic Party Joe is faithful to the end because his religious belief defines his self view.
‘Health Care Reform’ that is not a real reform will just not work
How did Massachusetts get to be saddled with such a repulsive governor like Mitt Romney? There is a new governor now, as Romney is off running for the US presidency, and this new governor is endorsing Barrack Obama!
But the new governor, Deval Patrick, is also still running and celebrating the health care ‘reform’ that Romney put into place in that state, which has been a total fiasco. In short, a Democrat is running the Republican platform of Mitt Romney in the state of Massachusetts.
So what might the doctors practicing in Massachusetts think about this pseudo reform bill set into place by a Republican governor, and now run by a Democrat?
Go directly to the web site of the PNHP to learn more about why single payer national health insurance is totally necessary. Plans that only try to work like the already unworkable mandatory driver’s insurance laws will not make things better. Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts legislation has been a disaster on top of an even larger disaster, which is the lack of universal health coverage for America’s population.
Ivy Leaguer accosts car stabs driver 2am
My attention was grabbed by a recent headline, IVY LEAGUER STABS BOSTON TEEN.
But let me tell you another story. In Colorado Springs, April 26, 2002, a friend of mine was driving back from a Thursday night concert in Boulder. Her girlfriend was half asleep, half intoxicated in the passenger seat. It was around 2am as they were driving through the Colorado College campus within a block of their home. Slowly rounding a quiet street corner, the girlfriend remembers something struck out at the car, perhaps a rock.
Lest I betray how this tale ends, I must point out that the subsequent events are entirely the recollection of the tired, inebriated passenger. The driver, Jocelyn Sandberg, 41, community activist, KRCC radio station manager and beloved on-air personality, did not survive the encounter.
Suddenly the car window was down and Jocelyn was having a shouted exchange with a youngish man on the street. Before the girlfriend could refrain her, the door was open and Jocelyn was getting out to confront the man. Jocelyn was very confident physically. Stocky, not butch, Jocelyn was back-on-her-heels jocular, the kind of girl it wouldn’t occur to you to offer to see safely to her car after dark. In fact Jocelyn usually worked a second job as a baker, walking there and back in the middle of the night.
The girlfriend remembers yelling for Jocelyn to return to the car. She watched as Jocelyn confronted the man at the curb. The man was in his mid-twenties or thirties. He struck Jocelyn, she fell to the ground face forward and he ran off. The girlfriend got out and ran to Jocelyn, but before she could get to her, Jocelyn had risen and taken after the man, north into the campus. Yelling after Jocelyn, she saw her disappear behind an administration building. Disgusted at Jocelyn’s typical stubbornness, the girlfriend returned to the car, climbed into the driver’s seat, and drove the last block home. While waiting for Jocelyn inside the house, she fell asleep.
When the girlfriend awoke an hour later, Jocelyn had not returned, so she called the police. By the time the officers arrived, Colorado College maintenance and security personnel had already discovered Jocelyn’s body. Jocelyn had bled to death on the SW side of Armstrong Hall, two hundred yards from where her car had been stopped. She suffered stab wounds in the face, neck and chest. The first cut may have been struck at the initial altercation at the curb.
Except for the girlfriend’s foggy description of the man, there were no witnesses. This was neither a robbery nor a premeditated assault. As for leads, Colorado College is a fairly insulated campus, buffeted by upscale neighborhoods, with very tight security. It’s not on the migratory route to anywhere, and the campus grounds present an inhospitable and unlikely hangout for transient males.
The girlfriend was of course considered the main suspect because it seemed improbable that a man could accost a moving car at 2AM in the morning. However other Colorado Springs residents can recall having snowballs thrown at their cars, in that same general area, by Colorado College students who would then dash off, leaving drivers unable to reciprocate their frustration.
When the police failed to produce any leads, the most persistent rumor was that the knife-wielding man had been a Colorado College student who was then perhaps whisked off campus by well-heeled, politically-connected parents. This could also explain the lack of concern shown by the college administrators. There was plenty of DNA evidence at the scene to test against the student population but such tests were not done.
A year later a stabbing in Boston revived that rumor. On April 12, 2003, a Saturday night around closing time, a Colorado College grad, Alexander Pring-Wilson, now studying at Harvard, was stumbling home drunk. On the way home he accosted a stationary car and stabbed the driver. Immediately after the event, still drunk, Pring-Wilson left this message on a friend’s answering machine:
“Hey, Jen. How’s it going? I just, um, I got attacked. I just got attacked by a group. I fended them off. I stabbed him a couple times and, don’t repeat this to police, um, but yeah, I’ve got a fucking killer headache. I just walked a couple of miles home. I think I’ve got a concussion. Anyway, I had a swell time tonight. I hope you guys made it home. Okay, bye-bye.”
Colorado Springs police were alerted to the stabbing death of Michael Colono and noted the similarities of the MO. Colorado Springs Detective David Edmondson inquired about obtaining DNS evidence from Pring-Wilson to test against the Jocelyn Sandberg stabbing case, Pring-Wilson’s lawyers refused.
Much was now made of the fact that Jocelyn’s witness described their assailant as weighing perhaps 150 pounds, not 200. And being 5′ 8″ instead of 6′ tall. But there was enough doubt. In a woman’s world, couldn’t 150 pounds denote a heavier person? And Jocelyn’s passenger was not making her observations from a sober perspective. Otherwise the age, hair and clean-cut description did fit.
When asked to present evidence of Pring-Wilson’s whereabouts on the 2002 date, lawyer Jeffrey Denner produced emails and credit card charges as proof that the suspect had been in Boston. Pring-Wilson had “accessed a Boston server” to send his mom an email. Likewise his credit card was charged on the next day. Naturally Colorado Springs police regarded this evidence as inconclusive.
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But circumstantial evidence drawing Pring-Wilson to Colorado Springs grew. Pring-Wilson maintained a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend in Colorado Springs. And friends recall seeing him regularly at his alma mater. A fellow CC rugby forward estimates seeing Pring-Wilson back on campus “maybe 10” times in the two years following their graduation in 2000. On a map showing the locations of Colorado Spring’s downtown bars, including Jose Muldoons which featured a Raggae band that night, and Pring-Wilson’s residence, the most likely route between the two points intersects with the corner where Jocelyn Sandberg’s car was accosted. It should be an easy thing to prove or disprove: flight schedules, cell phone statements, Colorado College alumni events or no. Certainly his girlfriend Janice or his parents should be able to say either way. |
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Pring-Wilson’s family and friends are petitioning the governor of Massachusetts to reduce his sentence for the Boston stabbing. By their descriptions Pring-Wilson seems like a nice enough guy: accomplished, dedicated, compassionate, gentle -when sober, no doubt. No mention of his drinking. And according to everyone he was unassailably non-violent, notwithstanding having been captain of the Rugby team, playing forward, the offensive position. And how many gentle souls carry around four-inch Spyderco knives? Pring-Wilson’s drinking companions in Boston recall seeing the knife in the bar that evening. Seeing the knife in the bar?! Not everyone is agreed obviously that it’s such a common thing to carry around.
Could it be we’re talking about a sweet guy -with a drinking problem? Friends who haven’t signed the Pring-Wilson petition do attest that he was an obnoxious drunk. So we’re talking about an obnoxious drunk with maybe a chip on his shoulder and certainly a knife in his pocket. Maybe we’re talking about a 200 pound drunkard who cannot be dissuaded to do anything but whatever he wants. A person who parties hard, then wants to walk home, to walk it off, a couple of miles whatever, alone.
In October 2004 Pring-Wilson was convicted of the voluntary manslaughter of American-Puerto-Rican teenager Michael Colono and sentenced to six to eight years. The killing was found not to have been in self defense because the evidence indicated that Pring-Wilson had fisted his knife before the altercation began. Also, if he was jumped by the two teenagers as he claimed, Pring-Wilson came out of it relatively unhurt. Most damning, the knife blows were struck straight into Colono from a position above, not from wild slashing from a defensive position beneath, as Pring-Wilson claimed.
In their petition to Massachusetts Governor Romney urging him to remand their son to home-custody, the Pring-Wilsons threaten: “You must know that if any harm should come to Mr. Pring Wilson during the duration of his sentence you will be held accountable along with the Commonwealth of Mass.”
Strong words from understandably desperate parents, but who then shall be held responsible for the death of the Puerto-Rican teenager? Jose Cuervo? Spyderco knives?
Why do the parents not suggest, at the very least, that their son promise to disavow heavy drinking and knife-wielding? Nothing against gentle 200 pound rugby forward Alexander Pring-Wilson, it’s his knife-carrying drunken alter-ego that might be a danger. (Knives, drinking, middle of the night personas? A combination not unknown to the annals of crime or western literature.)
How often exactly did Pring-Wilson drink and insist on walking home alone, after his friends had taken cabs? Once a year? Spring break? One less aggressive drunk guy on the street with a deadly knife on Saturday nights would be a good thing for everyone.
There are also hundreds of Jocelyn’s friends in Colorado Springs who would like to hold somebody accountable for her death. Maybe Pring-Wilson could step up to the plate so that we could eliminate the possibility it was him. The sooner we can identify the aggressive man who stabbed Jocelyn Sandberg, the sooner we can prevent him from picking a fight with someone else’s car.