Conservative Jews and Catholics- fraternal hypocrites

For centuries the Catholics persecuted the Jews, but today they have an unholy alliance which allows the majority tendency in today’s Jewish faith, the Zionist Jews, to blame Muslims for being anti-Jewish pogromists. What’s involved? Silence and pretense, in short. The Catholic hierarchy gets to continually pretend that it never had anything to do with the fascist and Nazi crimes of genocide, while the Jewish Zionists get to pretend that they are threatened by a supposed Muslim tendency towards committing just exactly that same crime. All the while keeping their traps closed about the Catholic mainstream..

Look how quiet the Jewish community was when an ex-Nazi took over the Pope position. Look how loud they get when somebody innocuous like Jimmy Carter comes along to write a book most Zionists feel quite uncomfortable with because of some truths voiced. A Catholic archbishop in Slovakia this week talked about how lovely it was when the Nazis ruled his region and not a peep is heard from the world Jewish community. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps from Slovakia in that time frame. All the Jewish establishment’s hysteria is reserved instead for one man in Iran whose country the Israeli government wants to bomb back to the Stone Age on behalf of the US. One would think that it was Persians that persecute the Jews in pogroms for centuries, and not the Catholics and other Christian sects.

The Zionist refrain of…They want to drive us into the sea… has now morphed into they want to use a nuclear bomb on us, so we have to use one on them FIRST. All a bunch of garbage used to support US colonialism and imperialism in the Middle East, now entirely backed up by the Jewish Apartheid regime. Screaming loudly that Jews are supposedly under a danger of a Muslim anti-Jewish attack from Iran, Catholics and Jews get to unite to steal Muslim oil while pontificating about justice and freedom. Israel and Bush’s conservative Catholic supporters, united to launch their newest aggression against another Muslim country. No time to talk about the Pedophilic Church of Rome hierarchy, and no time to talk about the Zionist Jewish crimes against humanity in the Unholy Land. Just the total silence of the united fraternal hypocrites, conservative Catholics and Jews.

The US government just got to have Saddam Hussein hanged in a disgusting charade. What would have been much more just, would have been to have the Iranians hold these show trials, and then have them hang Hussein, Bush, Rumsfield, and others of their ilk afterwards. After all, these were the allies that initiated an unprovoked war against their country via iraq, that used chemical weapons on Iranians, and killed hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens. And most of Jewish Israel applauded all this, and then has sat back smugly claiming to now feel threatened by this victim of their US sponsor- Iran.

Jewish Zionists get to push for a secular regime in the US, while pushing for a Jewish Apartheid theocracy in Israel for themselves. That is the core of their other hypocrisies of hugging up to their Catholic and Protestant fundy sponsors here in America. They want one thing for themselves (secular freedoms in the US), and another thing for others (religious and racial persecution administered by themselves in Israel/ Palestine upon others).

The Catholics want the ability to preach on moral issues to others, while whitewashing their church’s immorality on issues like abortion, priestly pedophilia, the Rwanda genocide’s Catholic participation, and their enthusiastic role in the Nazi ranks and other pogroms against Jews throughout their entire history. Today, the Jewish Zionists and Catholic conservatives march together in hatred of today’s other, the Muslim. They have become today’s, fraternal, colonial, imperialist hypocrites. The Catholic Church no longer serves Spanish imperialism against the Native Americans and Jews, but have united in a New Crusade together against the Muslim world on behalf of American imperialism. Oil for Moses and Christ, not gold robbed from murdered ‘Indians’. Religion in service to the Empire.

PPJPC Statement of solidarity in support of foreign-born workers

The Pikes Peak Peace and Justice Commission (PPJPC) condemns the US Immigration & Naturalization Service (ICE-INS) for its Dec. 12 raids at multiple US facilities of the Swift & Co. that racially targetted Hispanic workers for arrest at their place of work. Over 1250 Hispanic workers were rounded up as if they were cattle and not human beings with rights and feelings. Families have been torn asunder, US-born children are being forced to leave for countries they have never known, and an atmosphere of racial intolerance and hatred is being promoted within our communities. This is not the proper role for our government and governmental agencies to be playing.

This raid comes in the context of a president whose foreign and domestic policies are increasing coming under fire for illegally promoting warfare, torture, and military occupations of other countries. It comes also in the context of an increasingly hostile use of laws against other minority groups within the US, such as Arabs and Muslims of varying nationalities, that also has undermined the basis of having a national culture respectful of all of our residents, whether citizens or not.

We at the Colorado Springs PPJPC, are unalterably opposed to reducing certain cultural groups within the US to second class residents subject to abusive, selective, and descriminatory application of US laws. We object to citizens being denounced in block, by federal agencies who allege before trials or convictions, that residents of one ethnic background are guilty as a group of criminal activity, such as “ID theft.” We object to the policy of holding immigrants looking for work in our country subject to criminal prosecution for trying to support their families as best as they can. Most come from countries where the US government has for decades intervened in a hostile and destructive manner. In short, we object and condemn the US government for further persecuting poverty stricken workers looking for a better life in what is a nation of previous immigrants. We condemn the Swift & Co INS raids.

May it also be pointed out, that in the case of Hispanic workers, the overwhelming majority of them are of indigenous Native American background, no matter that they currently speak Spanish as first tongue. To those Anglo-american citizens who shout at these foreign workers that they are breaking the law, and that they should be thrown in jail and never set foot again on Anglo terrain, the PPJPC hopes that they can examine their consciences, examine their souls, and open their hearts to having a more charitable attitude towards others.

Those immigrants with Native American blood were here first before Anglo ancestors chose it upon themselves to ‘illegally’ immigrate to the US shores, often murdering Native Americans and stealing their land and properties. Much of the US territory where Hispanics are now being racially profiled, was land peviously stolen from Mexico by war. It is utter hypocrisy for one racial and language group to call the US borders ‘their’ territory, and theirs alone.

Further, the PPJPC rejects the increased militarization of the US Southern Border, most underlined by the efforts to build a giant impenetrable wall there. This construction runs counter to the desires of the people most effected, citizens of both nations living on both sides of this border. Further, we reject the US govenment support for abusive regimes throughout Latin America. We reject the US war against the people of Colombia, and we reject the US’s imposition of repressive governments across Central America. All these actions create conditions of misery, and a need for people to flee their native lands.

Most of all, we reject the US governmental support to the repressive Mexican government, military, and police. Mexico is the country from which most of the undocumented workers were fleeing when they were caught up in the Greeley Colorado raids of the Swift & Co meat processing facilities. The PPJPC calls on our American government to dismantle US military schools of torture that train members of the repressive Mexican military, stop supporting Mexican government repression in Oaxaca and esewhere in that country, and demand that the Mexican and US governments seek justice for those murdered, tortured, and disappeared in Oaxaca, and elsewhere within Mexico.

The PPJPC, too, is concerned about National Security. But attacking immigrants and foreign nationals on US terrirtory is not the way to make our country more secure.

Download PDF

A real traffic decongestant

Heard about the 24 West project? They are literally building not only a house but a whole apartment city on that toxic waste dump in the west side here.
 
But what of these narrow west side roads, how o how are these new residents going to drive their Hummers and such en masse every morning to their Very Important Jobs in the city each morning? Widen 24! Take out Vermijo street, nobody but trash hippies live there anyways, right, the bicycle trail will have to go, or be moved, bye bye greenspace. The creek will have to be re-routed, all at taxpayer expense.

The widening of the road, without this added bullpoopoo, will cost 250,000,000 dollars count the zeroes that’s right a quarter of a Billion smackeroos and that’s just the down payment.

Now, where does this road widening end up at? Manitou, at the corner of 24 and 24, where the Sinclair station is. You know the one, has a big plastic dinosaur, right in front of the BUS STOP?
I don’t know exactly how much a city bus costs to buy and even operate for a few years. But I would just bet that it ain’t nearly a million bucks a pop, so why not buy a hundred new busses and put them to work?

Extend the bus line out to Divide or Florissant, take some of the REAL traffic off the interstate part? The savings in emergency vehicle, hospital, wrecked vehicle towing and not to mention petroleum products being ripped from the ground and put into the air, would be huge, even if they let the people ride free.

Ok ok i got that last part wrong ESPECIALLY if they let the people ride free. But that would be Communism, wouldn’t it.

Draft the poor

The two biggest Democrat- led events in this past century were the New Deal and the War on Poverty, and a lot of liberals say that these were the true glory days of Saint Franklin and Saint Lyndon, heir apparent to Saint Johnnie.

Fact of it was, even though Roosevelt did do a massive restructure of wealth, and the very richest condemned him roundly as a traitor to his class. They did in fact retain the vast majority of their wealth. And the main focus of the New Deal was buying off a pending revolution which would have made Red October seem more like a delicate shade of pink. The Communist party was extremely strong and organized. The anarchists were extremely strong and not so well organized. There had recently been an election where the Socialist / IWW leader Eugene Debs, campaigning from prison, had garnered enough votes in a presidential race to be included in the next election cycle.

The United States Army had recently been involved in a shooting scrape where they fired on a march on Washington of World War One veterans, who were airing their grievance that the US government had fucked them without grease. (This one I learned from that well known liberal hotbed, the VFW and American Legion)

The country was in ruins, financially and spiritually, people were starving in the streets.

People were so very pissed off they were on the verge of storming the mansions of the mighty and dragging them out, and hanging them in their immaculately trimmed trees, by their own intestines, while they were still alive. Saint Franklin saved their sorry asses.

And Saint Lyndon with the Great Society, the so called liberal handout programs the R’s whine about so much today? The ones which collectively wouldn’t amount to the amount of debt accrued just in the afhani/Iraqi conflict, yeah those programs… They were sold to the R’s as an investment in a future draft.

Yeppers. Seems the poor kids the Army depends on to go and secure the money fields for the rich kids, they had some massive health problems that caused a panic amongst the Draft ‘em All crowd. Problems that could be fixed by a comparatively small increase in nutrition and health care and education. Eighteen year old boys who didn’t have enough teeth to pass the physical. Scurvy and rickets, underweight. Poor eyesight from a lifetime of eating trash food. Ok so it wasn’t really trash food, more like just trash.

Now they are babbling about reinstating the draft. stupid stupid stupid.

Don’t they see, can’t they understand, the money the rich have today is phantom cash? Interest paid on the interest from loans made against the interest of IOUs. What are they going to buy the poor off with this time?

Bush’s latest collateral damage- kid hangings

Can you believe this? At least 3 young kids have died by hanging themselves while imitating the hanging of Saddam Hussein during their ‘play’, and the US media has been hiding this news away from us? The corporate press owners are truly a bunch of whores.

Suck, suck suck for Bush and Dick all the time. See this Houston Chronicle article about the 10 year old boy that died by hanging on New Years Day there while playing ‘Saddam Hussein’. Only now is the news of these tragedies leaking out to us. The article mentions the other 2 children that also died while playing this ‘game’.

Smell Paso Texas

Antique postcard of Franklin Canal in El Paso TexasMexico is falling apart worse than I remember. I used to haunt downtown El Paso/slash/Juarez. The two cities are really one, but Juarez is about 6 times bigger and the poor side of town, and there are armed guards keeping the poor from the rich side of town.

The colonias described, they are on this side of the border as well. And just as illegal.

In 1991 there was a story on one of the El Paso stations, on the video news, a guy emptied one of those honey wagons, the Port-o-potty emptying trucks, into the canal on the mexican side. There are two main canals, the Franklin canal as it is called in El Paso and downstream, and the (don’t dear God hold me to this name) La Victoria canal on the Mexican side. Mind you, this kind of literally “shit” goes on everyday. Only this particular day there was a Mexican news crew hiding in the bushes.

They filmed him for forty-five minutes nonchalantly emptying the crap into the PEOPLES DAMN DRINKING WATER. Then the cops moved in and arrested him AFTER aaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggg. Then they shot some scenes where women and children were getting their water downstream from the incident. To show us how noble the government was in protecting them I suppose. Of course, it might have been a little bit nobler if they had gone up to the people and at least warned them that they were drinking feces. Guess they just figured they would watch it on the TeeVee news in their cardboard shacks which have no TeeVee, which is kinda good because they don’t have any electricity to run a TeeVee anyway.

But in downtown El Paso, you can go to Alameda street and actually just look across the creek, in its concrete-lined bed, looks like a drainage ditch actually, with the concertina-wire topped 12 foot cyclone fence, and see the maquila sweatshops. There are supposedly designed to be modern and convenient and comfortable and all, but the strangest thing about them is that there, a mere hundred yards from the line where things like OSHA and the EPA are such bad wicked naughty whiners that they actually insist on workplace safety(sometimes) and environmental protection (sometimes) as I said dear friends a hundred yards away… in these wonderful modern factories and warehouses, the other side of PRI, used to be the dominant party there, the Unions, are forbidden to organize, and since every worker in Mexico pre-nafta was a card carrying member of the labor unions, the people working there are ordered to disavow their union membership.

You know, I would almost bet that some of those workers were in the video of the women and children drinking shit out of an irrigation canal.

Oddly enough, there was a cholera epidemic that year. as in most years. The epidemic was spread to this side of the border as well. In colonias on the Franklin canal.

Peak Oil and America’s economic unsustainablity

Half or more of the Republican group of voters may disbelieve in major tenets of current scientific theory such as evolution, the warming of the global climate, or even that the earth is older than what the Bible states it as being, but there is one element of scientific reality that Republican leadership is certainly making its plans around, while Democrat leadership is completely lacking. That is the scientific reality that world oil and natural gas supplies have become depleted by overmining these natural resources in the recent past until the very present.

We may not like the road the Republican Party is taking us in trying to deal with this scientific reality of energy resource depletion, but it is still true that the last 6 years of the Bush presidency have greatly advanced the public in beginning its realization that reaching resource peaks will produce real crisis. Not only for Americans, but the entire world population. And also for the energy companies themselves, as public anger is certain to rise in a volatile manner, and is certain to eventually be directed at the energy companies themselves.

Right now, we have both major US capitalist political parties pretending that our new permanent war to secure energy supplies is not in fact just that, but rather is a war to protect the ‘homeland’ from a shadow-like, political rif-raf, which they call terrorism. And neither party has any strategy what-so-ever to conserve energy resources, nor to change our structure of economic activity into more rational alternatives. The big business profit making must go on for these two, even if the world doesn’t, it seems.

So what we are left with is that the Republican big wigs advocate continual warfare to corner world energy resources, while the Democrat Party advocates basically nothing to ward off the impending economic/ecological collapse! And all the liberal voters basically propose nothing more than voting for this do-nothing political party, the Democrats, even as they sometimes point out the need to take ecology into account somehow within a capitalist framework. But can that really even be done? The entire historical foundation of capitalism is the overuse of natural resources. It’s like asking a zebra to change its stripes and behave like a kangeroo.

All of America has been convinced by the business community that socailism cannot work, precisely at the moment when it is evident that capitalism cannot work without destroying the ecologic basis of all life on our planet. So we have a population totally unprepared and stupidly looking around, desperately for some impossible new technological fix to bail capitalism out of its impossible dilemma.

Here is an article in Money Week on Peak Oil that would not have been published even a couple of years ago. It even discusses the various transition periods we will traverse as we enter into increasing energy scarcity. Yes, the Republican Party types are out in front in acknowledging valid scientific theory on this issue. Why we must take Peak Oil seriously

Lee Greenwood’s bloody anthem

Trouble bringing giant Old Glory downI heard the Lee Greenwood anthem today for the last God-damn time.
 
“And I’ll proudly stand up, next to you,
and defend her still today.
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land.
God bless the USA.”

I’ll put this out to everybody singing along, with a special mention to the war bloggers who have been littering cyberspace with falsehood and cannot own up to it upon being exposed, unnotably Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, John Hinderaker at Powerline, Dan Curry at Reverse Spin, Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee, Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse, Dan Reihl at ReihlWorldView, Charles at Little Green Footballs, Curt at Flopping Aces, and SeeDubya at Junkyard Blog.

So STAND the fuck UP you jingoist motherfuckers! Get your big dumb asses up NEXT TO our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and defend this land against the civilians trying to living there. Go kill poor people there to defend our freedom here. Then you can sing this damn anthem. Otherwise shut up. Your bellicosity is distracting you from noticing that we are not singing with you. Scary thought probably, the rest of us are not as dumb-as-fuck ignorant as you.

She refused to be a ‘good Jew’

Tali Fahima refused to go along with the Jewish Israeli policy of assassinating its Palestinian political opposition’s leaders. For that, this courageous Jewish woman suffered 30 months in jail for refusing to be a ‘good Jew’, as she put it.

Assassinating people without jury or trial is considered by most, to be terrorism. Apparently, though, American and Israeli politicians and military think that this only applies to other peoples, and not them. Tali Fahima thought otherwise. When are we going to stop going along with the terrorists that govern us? Thank Moses for good people like Tali Fahima.

Can a congress-critter be impeached?

Specifically congressman Goode of Virginia. I’m not sure of the constitutional procedures for removing such.
However, I read one of the links on the left side of the homepage. On the colorado media reporting. Anyhow he shot himself and his whole party in the foot, big time. He very pointedly said that he, rather than defend the constitution as it stands, intends to pass a law specifically to prohibit the free exercise of religion. I know more about the Bill of Rights than the articles of the Constitution, but passing an unconstitutional law is strecht verboten.
The R’s have this big immigration push going. They keep tossing out that old bone about they have no objections to people who are here legally. And the equally false idea that the immigration laws are not racially inspired.

But what he said, and here is the impeachable part, “I am reforming immigration laws so no Muslim will ever again run for Congress!” whoa, partner.
He is declaring his personal intent to knowingly break the law. The arrogance of it blows my mind.
Next question, should we call them on it now or provoke similar responses from other sponsors of the bill?
Which would show a clear pattern on their parts. Either way, he has (probably unknowingly) killed that bill before it gets to committee. It needs a concerted outcry to push it over the edge, but there are enough people in america who are totally and completely cheesed off over the prospect of being told not only who we can vote for. but now being told who we are FORBIDDEN to vote for.

damn I can’t think of a good title

But I was just checking my yahoo mail. Nothing special, every day I get good stuff to ridicule, applaud, or just plain run through the streets singing “man, check out what those freak peckerheads did THIS time”
which one first which…hhmmmmm
Ok the first one is on the yahell news ticker about bush overhauls iraq team just before the Big Announcement.
now I am putting some of my own words on the title, because they sound better.
One may well ask oneself “Self, what do they mean “overhaul”? are they sending the team to get their brakes checked? Maybe fitting themselves for those prison uniforms that are loosely based on overalls? (one can only hope)

but of course there is the teaser, almost obligatory, that Mr Bonzo ooops I mean Bush is going to unveil his new plan for the New Direction in Iraq. Apparently the media whores have this idea that all of America, left right and in the middle, (and the guy in the rear, burned his driver’s license, but that’s another story) are actually awaiting and anticipating and also anxiously (sorry, got on a roll with the A) but we are sitting on the edge of our seats EXPECTING the trained Chimp to come up with a plan.

Ummmm….. in light of his recent “leadership” experience, I’m not quite convinced that he will. I mean, call me a doubter or a nay-sayer or whatever but I just can’t muster much confidence and optimism.

But if you don’t have any other game plan, fake it and maybe nobody will notice that you are packing your bags to split the country. That’s called “spin”. But apparently this story has been spun so long it should be called a dreidel.
For those not familiar with Judaism that is a sort of a top kids play with and also has mystical meanings.

Then the other is some stock market news, actually an online broker publishing what he hopes I will believe enough to buy into his crazy scheme. I guess I used keywords like capitalism and Stocks and Bonds and money grubbing greedheads enough to make some automated spam program think I was actually interested in sending my money down the hole.

But the header on it was Applications rise greeted as positive sign by investors….

ok. What investors? By applications of course they mean job applications. Which means large unemployment.
and thus less inflation. And more people willing to work for lower wages.

See, to these kids, anything is positive investment news. A flood in China? Buy stock in companies that make sandbags… Nuclear war imminent? buy companies that make survivalist crap to supply your worthless bunker…
Massive cases of people dropping dead of bird flu? Invest in coffin manufacturers. A rise in the Death Penalty? Buy companies that make ropes and gallows. Ok I’ll stop, before giving myself a complex.

The good news is that we can still see the signs. You are still able to read what I write, so neither of us is in jail…. yet.

Meet you at the barricades.

Lions and foxes and bears oh my!

this one is a follow up to the Neighborhood Fox thread I commented about.
We had a cougar. of course. He (or she, I ain’t getting close enough to check its genitals) is apparently coming around more frequently, our neighbor across the alley, not living there any more, but the low roof of the house, had cougar tracks in the snow. On the roof.
We had the large deer maybe elk but I’ll go with deer, a buck, was in the yard New Years. Does are more regular, the bucks are usually up the mountain somewhere.

But yesterday, on the Midland bicycle trail, my landlady was checking on the welfare of some feral kittens who have more or less adopted her. Looked down and saw bear tracks. Big ones. Fresh ones. Then she looked up and saw the bear in person, about a couple of blocks away.

Now, this is very bizarre. I remember somebody telling me once that bears actually hibernate in the winter? You probably know the story.

But with large animals down in the Springs, a cougar who seems to not be wandering far, a buck or possibly elk, and now an extremely out of season bear….
In the middle of what has been told to me is the harshest winter in the last 10 years or so.

Something is going very wrong and the animals seem to know it.

Holey Statistical manipulation, Batman!

I know, the first word is apparently mispelt. Fear not.

I was re-reading the America drowning in corporate legal issues thread. I had a nagging thought to the back of my mind as to something being horribly wrong with the premise stated about halfway by our Resident Provocateur the lawyer. Michael put in a reply using verbatim an OPINION piece written by a man who Michael assures us is black, as though that makes a hell of a difference, but supposedly proves the good nature and all the good things capitalism has done for us.

The writer comes up with some startling “factoids” which look remarkably like the “why do liberals hate america?” bullpoopoo the right wing comes up. The first so called fact was on the lines “everybody knows Hollywood is making anti-business movies”. Ahem.. Everybody knows? Isn’t that an exclusive term, used primarily in statements you know from the beginning are going to be bigoted? Since I speak fluent RightWing Lunatic Fringie, I will pretend to be a conservative thinker and answer with the standard “well, everybody but YOU, obviously.”

And which businesses are being slammed? I haven’t seen many movies lately, but since a little later in the piece the writer was crying about all the middle class type businesses, and in what movies I have watched, even the more radical ones, these guys aren’t portrayed as villains, I see no point to that slam.

Then something about the Average Hollywood Star makes more money than the vast majority of businessmen.
Oh Kay.
Leave me correct the misusage of the English language here. Average and Star is comparable to using the adjective Stupid to describe the noun Rocket Scientist. Or combining two adjectives (Star can be an adjective as well, like star player) like “pretty ugly” or “awful good”.
And which exact Average Stars? Since the entertainment business is in fact a Business, complete with business agents, corporations, and indeed is tied closely with the other information media commonly refered to as the Press, wouldn’t condemnation of their businesses and corporations mean that he himself is Anti Business?

If he meant the Average Producer or Average Actor or Songwriter or Scriptwriter then he is talking about a group of people who make less money off their acting or producing or whatever careers than people make by panhandling in Acacia park.

The nature of the business, as with all capitalism, is that the vast majority don’t become rich.

If I go much further with this, it will be really really extremely long and I will wind up writing St Paul type sentences that last for a long long time and never seem to find an end and speaking of which don’t you just hate people who go on and on and on and never seem to shut up …

Kind of like republican commentators whining about how those poor International Corporations are so badly maligned, and that anybody who thinks otherwise is just plain abusive and anti everything.

Stick that stupid ribbon up your SUV

Profiting on the backs of soldiersI like this group from Austin, The Asylum Street Spankers, and the lyrics to this song. All of their music is great, but this song and dance on the theme of Iraq makes The Dixie Chicks look like the Mary Poppins Trio in comparison. Check out ‘Hick Hop’, also, and the German stuff they do. Stick that stupid ribbon up your SUV… about the real reasons our government got us into Iraq.

The Alamo and the war on terror.

This one is a blatant insult to everybody’s intelligence. It’s one of those “c’mon, man, you’re shittin’ me” type deals.

I was watching teevee a couple months ago, really bad habit and fortunately I never developed it into the stupor addiction that seems to be running across our land like a horrible Biblical plague.

There was one of those History Channel shows, Histories Mysteries or some bullpoopoo title, examining the myth, legend and whatever evidence remains from the battle of the Alamo. One of the most controversial things about the show, they spent 15 minutes of air time(about a third of the entire show) on the subject of the evidence that Davey Crockett didn’t fall in a hail of bullets and flashing swords as depicted so often in the romantic press.

The theory has been, since the seventies, that Mr Crockett and a few others actually surrendered, but were lined up and shot anyway. Which would have been an atrocity, right? Even more so than the order to give No Quarter.
But this one Texas historical society (and there are a lot of them running around, we just usually manage to keep them confined to Texas, where they are safe) insists that the Very Idea of Crockett Surrendering was slander against Mr Crockett. And the others who were apparently shot with their hands behind their backs.
They pointed to the source of the Slander, a Mexican lieutenant, as being proof positive that the thing was made up. Ignoring that the only Anglo types who survived were some women, children and Colonel Bowie’s slave Moses, who was manumitted (legally set free) in Bowie’s will.
And they were held in the chapel until the bodies were disposed of, so there was no way for them to witness whether or not the killing stopped before or after, lacking or in spite of, a surrender by some of the men.
This account was also written down by some of the women in their journals.

And in Texas it is traditional to treat General Antonio Jose y Maria Lopez de Santa Ana as the worst kind of villain, and it is also generally thought that Fannin and his men surrendering at Goliad and then being massacred took naught away from their status as Heroes.

But here is the sicker kicker….
The spokes-dude for the historical society went on and on about the 70s being a time when it was acceptable to question the (undoubtedly) spotless history of morality of the US military.
(and ignoring the fact than neither the Alamo nor Goliad was officially a U.S. military endeavour.)

And then said that not fully believing and accepting at face value the John Wayne portrayal of Davey Crockett’s last stand was so anti-patriotism that it actually encouraged al Qaeda to attack America….

I know, I know…just take a few deep breaths, pick your jaw up off the floor… breathe in, out, relax. ommmm calmmmm ommmmm…

And said that Americans needed the absolute faith in these legends to keep up the Morale of Our Troops while they face down the relentless brown hordes. And made the insinuation that “historical revisionists” were traitors and complicit in the terror America is so bravely fighting now….

And this show has aired at least twenty times in the past year.

This is the mindset facing us.

Dick joke

Maybe I was the last to hear this joke: It followed the quite indiscreet news story that Indian males have less than average size penises. A recently released survey indicated that everybody else-sized condoms are too big in India. (Have you hear this joke already?) The special smaller sized contraceptives now being prepared for the Indian market are none other than the standard US Army issue condoms which the Defense Department has been supplying its soldiers to make them think they have large dicks.

Rose Bowl Impeach Bush Parade

As you can see I’ve been reading and writing a lot. So I was on the pacifism tab. Got to the one about the parade in Manitou.
 
Empire rebellion banner in PasadenaOn New Years, somebody at the Tournament of Roses parade was across from the grandstand, where the cameras would be sure to catch it every time a float or band or whatever passed by, holding up a sign made of each letter on a separate square of cloth, I M P E A C H.
I pointed that out to my landlady, who had oohed and ahhed when the Air Force did a flyover with a couple of fighters and a stealth bomber, right after some insipid songfest about how good and nice everybody in America is, and we should all be so very proud of our goodness and nicene….aaaaaarrrrggggggghhhhhhh!

But for a half hour every float that passed by had the impeach sign flying prominently in the background.

Then the marching Storm Troopers, literally, it was a tribute to Star Wars, and the sign was nowhere in the shot. I noticed that they were keeping the shots kind of tight from there on, so I don’t know if the cops made them take down their banner or if the cameramen had specific orders not to show it ever again.

I mentioned this to my landlady and she said Good,! That’s just disrespectful to put politics into a parade where everybody is just out to have a little fun.

I told her that since we are being shut out by every media outlet there is over the peace marches, she said there is a Proper Time for everything, and some bullshit about working within the system….

And not a word of protest about the government sponsored anti-peace demonstrations.

US gov’t says they had nothing to do

With the execution of Saddam, the timing or the way it is carried out.

Also the independent and sovereign Iraqi government, which of course takes absolutely no instruction from Washington, announced today that they had arrested a couple of the guards/witnesses at the hanging, charging them with being agitators who infiltrated the lynching party, started the Shiite-oriented harassment of Mr Hussein, the comments which are triggering the latest round of “civil” war, and taking the cell-phone videos of the whole charade.
There was also a statement from the officer in charge of the American jail detail which handed Mr Hussein over to the executioners, that the execution IF IT HAD BEEN CARRIED OUT BY AMERICANS would have been more respectful and professionally handled. This all, of course, from Yahoo news, courtesy of the Associated Press syndicate.

The officer also noted that Hussein, until the Iraqis took control of him from the Americans at the door of the execution chamber, was polite and courteous to the Americans. And that he was ALWAYS polite to them.
heh.
You know, I haven’t seen so much B.S. in one place since living on the ranch when I was 8.

The Borriello Brothers secret ingredient

The best pizza in Colorado Springs is made by the Borriello Brothers at the foot of General Palmer’s statue, on Platte Avenue between Nevada and Webber, across from Palmer High School.

I followed some fans from a YMCA basketball game and was warned that addiction would ensue. I can report only that they were right, and I have no idea as to the secret ingredient. I think it’s cheese. I felt like a loser not knowing which delicacies to request for the toppings, but I followed the youngsters’ request for plain cheese pizza. Now there’s no turning back, it’s plain cheese for me, and from nobody but the Borriello Brothers.

Now if they could use only non-BGH dairy products and whole grain ground wheat, I could feel good about my new diet.

The incomparable WET-11

Wireless Ethernet BridgeAre you thinking you’d like to have cable or DSL connectivity without the cable or phone bill? Do you live in close proximity to a number of wireless neighbors? Here’s what you could do: hook up a Linksys WET-11 bridge.
 
Plug the WET11 into your computer with a standard CAT-5 ethernet cable and you’re good to go. The bridge detects any available wireless network transparently. Your OS just acts like you’ve joined a LAN, but it’s the World Wide Area Network. Seamless.
 
ODDLY, the Linksys WET-11 is no longer on the market. Not so oddly, they are a hot item on Ebay.

Time Magazine and You

I just chanced to see the cover of Time magazine at a check-out stand. I’d read about their dubious Person of the Year end-run: it was us, I mean, you. The cover was as I had read about it online, a picture of a computer monitor, over a keyboard, the screen reflecting back whoever had picked up the magazine. Person of the year: You. It stated. Because “You control the Information Age.” I would add one other caption: joke’s on You.

Why didn’t anyone tell me Time’s reflective screen was framed with web-video controls? That’s not the frame of a flat-screen monitor, that’s the frame of a YouTube video! Everyone thought Time was awarding 2006 to the you’s of the blogosphere. They’re commemorating the internet incarnation of America’s Funniest Videos! You, Buffoon! You, Stupid Pet Trick!

I’m as excited as the next about the potential of YouTube, but I think it would be too early to say that someone on a YouTube video has yet merited Person of the Year. The history of dance guy? Congressman “Macaca?” Borat and his trailers?

Time’s hat tip was interpreted as having addressed the internet’s new talking heads, the bloggers. That too I think would be decidedly premature. The tsunami of web public opinion is a phenom no doubt, and Time and its ilk could take more notice, but Person of the Year, that’s false praise for the immodest. And Time has clocked us there, bloggers are self-gloried public diarists.

Time gives it away with their big lie, telling us you control the information age, just as the telecommunications giants have succeeded in legislating a tighter rein. Bloggers and YouTubers are the torrent of information, yes. Time and Co hold the controls.

DG3K, Saddam and New Years Eve

As you might remember, Dead Guy 2K was a Texan. DG3K was also. There is a lot of significance to that, to me at least. While Justin, 22, Specialist, of Spring Texas was being killed Mr Bush was having our own Cindy arrested AGAIN. In Crawford.

At the ranch where he pretends to be a commoner.

An old term for that would be “gentleman farmer”. Somebody who does farming when and if the urge strikes him, … sort of like a hobby.

Oh yeah, I kind of noticed the coincidence (you know our Gubmint would of course never ever lie to us or anything like that) between the rapidly (then) approaching DG3K Before New Year’s event and the sudden hurry-up-and-hang-Saddam event.

But the latter would not and could not have been any kind of diversion to take our eyes off of the former, right?

I can’t really pretend to cry for Saddam, he was after all just another torture freak in the pay of Our Leaders until he decided to go independent on them.

But killing him made a martyr out of him. If they had let him rot in jail for the rest of his life, it wouldn’t have taken much longer, he was after all nearly 70 years old, and he would have been just another old prisoner dying a slightly accelerated natural death.

Instead he has become a rallying point.

They are dumber than a box of dirt.

A Wii of One’s Own

wii.jpegVideo game playing in my household has never been a sedentary activity. I think that my boys, all three of them, came hard-wired with a gene that had lain dormant in human DNA for millions of years, waiting for the Japanese to self actualize. They are video game phenoms.

When my David was barely two, we got an English au pair who had apparently spent plenty of time in Cornwall video arcades. She taught him to play The Lion King. He was an amazing player from the start. He couldn’t speak yet, but he developed a whole video game language….a series of barks and whoops and shrieks reminiscent of Tourette’s Syndrome. He stood and leaned and squatted and ran back and forth. We once filmed him for America’s Funniest Home Videos. I know without a doubt that we would’ve won had we followed through.

We’ve had every Nintendo system invented. My boys reminded me every day for a month that the Wii came out November 19th. “Yes, yes, I know. You’re not getting one. I know what it will take and I’m not doin’ it. Deal with it.”

I’ll admit it. I have standing-in-line-in-the-dark-waiting baggage. The previously-mentioned English au pair once brought home two absolutely cute stuffed animals. A giraffe and a zebra. “Oh my gosh,” I said. “These are incredibly adorable. Where’d you get them?”

My first-born son, Brendan, was about ten at the time. Somehow, because of him, and partly because of my love of all things cute, cuddly and/or sparkly, we fell headlong into the Beanie Baby craze. I’ve stood in line in front of Little Richard’s, clad in a ski parka and mittens, clutching Starbucks and handwarmers, with myriad other weirdo collectors waiting for the “bear du jour” more times than I care to admit. We’ve dropped hundreds, if not thousands (sorry to the poor), of dollars on BBs.

Truthfully, Beanie Babies taught my children a lot about life and entrepreneurial pursuits. Once Bren said to me, “Mom, if I get $800 can I buy a Go-Cart?”
“Well, how much do you have now?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, okay. If you earn $800 I’ll let you buy a Go-Cart.”

Little did I know that my dad, a major coin and art collector, had been lured into the BB web. He took Bren to a weekend BB trading show in Denver and, yep, the boy came home $1000 richer. I was proud and amazed. Mostly I was horrified because Bren was able to purchase an obnoxious, street un-legal, very dangerous Go-Cart. To this day, a decade later, he is persona non grata at the Country Club of Colorado for racing across the greens late at night.

Then there was the Star Wars stuff. I recall when Toys ‘R Us, very inconsiderately, decided to sell the newly-released toys at midnight on a school night. “Oh, Mom! You have to take Brent and me there or we’ll get nothing!” So, gamely, I sat in my car, with pillow and down comforter, while the boys raced around collecting loot for two hours.

McDonald’s added joy to my life by topping their extra-big colas with a Star Wars lid. Brendan insisted that I take him to MickeyDs every day and then he sold the lids on a very new eBay to collectors in Britain for nearly $200 each. From a $2 soda!

You can probably guess the end of the story. My sweet boy, now 21, showed up on my doorstep with a Nintendo Wii for his younger brothers. He had to draft a friend, stand in line overnight, but he got the goods. Just like I used to for him.