Internet purchase wait-period plugin

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Want to buy something online? On a lark, found it on Ebay, need to buy it right away, without checking your closet for the one you have already? Here’s a little browser plugin that might break the instant gratification spell and give you a moment’s reprise to reflect and say oh, no no no.

It’s a browser plugin called the Wait-a-Bit Bug.

Here’s how it works. Once you initiate a purchase with your browser, the Wait-a-Bit Bug kicks in and asks for a validation number. This number will have been provided by your spouse. The rules of this inter-relationship cooperative effort will be that the number come from some object in the home, a serial number perhaps, or an expiration date. The plugin will provide the matching information already provided by your spouse: a description of where the number can be found. The partner wanting to make the purchase will now have to track down the item and type in the requested number. This task should provide the needed wait period in which to reconsider the appropriate quality of the purchase.

If you do complete the purchase, your partner is notified at the first opportunity that another item and identifying number must be selected. In this way, partner notification is enforced, and the purchase can be evaluated from differing perspectives, ensuring that one person at least will not be impartial and or indifferent.

If the buying behavior proves too compulsive to be affected by the wait period, the level of difficulty can be adjusted by selecting household items requiring searches of greater complexity. This strategy can incorporate the hiding of specified items, the specification of items which do not exist at all, as well as the recording of serial numbers deliberately mistyped. Hopefully these options can be agreed upon between the partners.

Donald Rumsfeld, Messenger of God

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The surprising news one learns these days! It turns out that God has inspired new messengers since the Book of Mormon was writ. We learn that Donald Rumsfeld now is a Messenger of God, so says the US high command from high on the Mount. Praise Allah that we have such a leader in our Crusade against the followers of the evil pedophilic Messenger of Satan, called Mohammad. There is certainly no way now our country can lose this war against the world! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill those dirty Hadjis. Go Team America! Or better make that Church America….
 
Here it is, the brief from faraway news24.com of South Africa. Just how in the world did our local Gazette miss it?

Kill Bush, Part Two

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I wrote a commentary here a couple of days back, that was titled “Kill Bush”. It went something like this… Kill Bush, Kill, Kill, Kill! I also called for the violent overthrow of our American way of life. I did stop short of advocating that we spit on images of Christ, or that we batter down church doors with neon crosses. I would like to ammend that, and now call exactly for such things to be done (being an atheist, why not?) So far, my appeals to organize such mayhem have gone relatively unheeded.
 
Still, I feel it is just a matter of time before others, like Julia of California and the al-Quaeda organization of Karachi, Pakistan, join together with me to carry out our attacks on the cartoonish Bush Adminstration. They should be fleeing to their bunkers even as I write this. We will do all this without the ass..istance of the Democratic Party though. They too are in the bunkers, hiding in fear.

Some have told me, “Tony, you are breaking the law by saying KILL BUSH!”. I would like to assure them, that not yet. I am still waiting for the delivery of my surface-to-air missile launcher I ordered from eBay to be delivered. Some have said, “Tony, you cannot shout Fire! Fire! Fire! in the theater. You cannot call for the shotgunning down of Dick Cheney!” But this is the age of NetFlix, and indeed, shouting Fire! Fire! Fire! in the context of watching a film at home is not yet determined by the 9 wise farts of the Supreme Deciders Club.

Some have worried that maybe I am a government agent provacateur, seeking to bring doom down upon our planet of the scattered wanderers without tribe race? That may be. They are everywhere in our matrix of FASCISM these government sperm. One can truly only be safe at the shopping mall these days.

I have heard it said, too, that one can legally call for KIlling Anybody, except but not for calling for the killing of our sainted President from the heavenly state of Texas. In that case, I didn’t say it. But let me just add, that I think we ought to blow up the Exxon Mobil cartel, located in my hometown of Irving, Texas, and start buying more gas from Venezuela’s demon-led CITGO to do it with . Conspiracy buffs might note that Oswald also hung around Irving back when I was growing up there. And I too, have held a copy of the Militant newspaper in my hand. In fact, I went to the school by the Texas schoolbook depository. Coincidence that we both have turned to terrorism? I don’t think so.

So render me if you will? Neighbor, call a torture taxi for me right now! And what a convenient place to have me flyed off from; Colorado Springs. How dare you threaten the King, King George. Heck, we might have let you off if Slick was still in, but this is a crime of immense proportions calling out KILL BUSH.

KIll, Kill, Kill Bush! Shall I soften this for delicate folk and call out only KILL BUSH POLITICALLY!??? Nah. It just doesn’t sound right. And besides, you know you want to do it too, just like Julia and I have done. So stick with your IMPEACH BUSH shtick as you will, and let them call for the terror taxi for me and Julia. Free Speech was once protected in our country. It was allowed to shout OFF WITH HIS HEAD!, even Bush’s. And I think it still is.

Seriously, people. Check out this commentary about Julia and the Visit Counterpunch Maybe it says it better than I do?

Paramilitary chaplains

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What is a military chaplain? Or a police chaplain for that matter? This government is so hung up about outsourcing its work to the faith-based sector, wouldn’t chaplains be a great place to start?
 
Need a priest at the scene of a fatal accident? Call a priest. Need a minister to administer last rites? Call a minister. Need a man of the cloth to give soldiers the pep talk about how God is on their side? Call Anthony Robbins but don’t assert you’ve got a liason officer with God’s office and you have him on your payroll!

Batanga

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Let’s face it. Colorado Springs has some of the crappiest radio stations of any sizable city in the country. I like Spanish language music, but the reception is so bad that 101.9 hardly comes in. And their selection of music isn’t so hot anyway. So you might try checking out this site, especially with high speed access. There are many different styles of Latin music available here for free. Try cumbia, bachata, and baladas for starters.

The absentee election reform solution

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Here is the Democratic Party plan to combat black box voting. Mail in your ballots. That’s the plan to overcome the GOP control over the registration of the voters, over the administration of the voting, over the programming of the electronic voting machines, over the electronic counting of the votes, over the poll taking at the voting centers, over the reporting of the voting results and over the concession by the losing party. The Democratic party plan to enforce an inviolate paper trail? Encourage the use of absentee ballots.

Sit down, it’s already too late to request an absentee ballot if you don’t have one already. And asking for an absentee ballot on the cusp of the deadline increases the chance that you will be struck from the list of voters permitted to vote on election day, as well as receive no ballot in the mail.

The call to encourage absentee ballots was not made very loudly, presumably so as not to diminish confidence in the voting process thereby losing more prospective votes than the Democrats could save. But in the end, whose purpose will that serve? How will we overcome GOP election fraud if we do not cry foul?

Election 2000 was rigged, as was 2002 and 2004. What are the indications that 2006 will be otherwise? Are there now fewer Diebold voting machines? Fewer Republican election officials?

The press reports that a landslide of voters are disenchanted with Bush and the war in Iraq. Yet it’s predicted that many of the candidates are neck and neck. It’s being forecast that Decision 2006 will be a tough call. Wow. Well. Kick in a few more bucks to your party. Is the election really going to be anybody’s call? Or is that anybody making the call already a Republican?

Is this really a democracy?

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I sent in to get registered the last hour of the last day where I could vote this election coming up. But I don’t know why? Every round of this Tweedle Dee/ Tweedle Dum charade they call ‘democracy’ just leaves me feeling more and more alienated. Democracy is when power is contested, but there is no contest for power in America. The corporations run our society, and in fact, they run the world’s. So why do we keep going through this pretense that something will change depending on the result of our vote?

Reach Out And Touch Someone Inc.

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Do you have an internet business which ships its product to regions outside the reach of your delivery van? Are you experiencing difficulties with customers beyond your physical reach? Let the friendly agents at R.O.A.T.S. be your representatives in the area. We’re a long distance, internet fulfillment service with contract agents in every major metropolitan city. Need a housecall? We’ll make the housecall.

ROATS INC is a service for long distance transactions gone awry. Let’s say you’ve delivered on your end of the order, but your customer now wants to take advantage of the geographic distance that separates you. If you have a customer who’s UNJUSTLY initiating credit card charge-backs, enlisting the service of buyer-guarantee programs, taunting you via email, leaving negative feedback, or demanding a refund yet refusing to return the product, let us be of assistance!

We offer two types of Reach Out And Touch Someone TM service. First, we can assist your transaction by visiting your customer to facilitate the return of your merchandise. At this stage we can also negotiate a resolution with the leverage that comes exclusively from a personal visitation.

Our secondary service is offered for transactions already transpired. At this point there are several levels of options, dependent upon the degree to which you feel wronged. Naturally these options are intentionally designed to deter customer misbehavior.

Our service is billed per-action. However there is no charge for merchants to post our transaction protection logo on their website. the ROATS Reach Out And Touch Someone long distance transaction protection and enforcement logo will deter the internet buyer who intends to defraud you from outside your reach. Reassure those customers that you can, if they require it, touch them.

Afghanistan- Our military is full of cowards and criminal murderers of children

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In Afghanistan once again, our US military (NATO) has let go, from ahigh, bombs upon civilians sleeping in their beds. This time they bombed mud huts at 2 AM in the morning full of sleeping children. Lest you say I lie, this is from Fox News, favorite source of our Right Wing’s propaganda.

Legal clarity

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President Bush feels the Military Commissions Act of 2006 will provide “clarity” for American interrogation specialists to know they can torture their suspects with impunity. Because America doesn’t torture, in the dictionary sense of the word.

But there’s a clarity that will hit all the Bushmen when they sober up. They will face the Geneva Conventions and the International Convention on Torture. And there are two further legal principles already in force since the last world war. No one is exempt from international law, and no domestic law may abridge or revoke international conventions.

Pass whatever tortured laws you think can protect you, you can run but you can’t hide.

On the issue of providing indemnity to American interrogators, there is one further principle exercised at Nuremburg. Each of us is responsible for refusing immoral commands. There is no such excuse as just following orders.

The US Supreme Court, rigged as it has been to Bush’s favor, may not strike down his permit to torture, but international jurists will. Bush’s vengefull threat aimed at the already-dead 9/11 highjackers will prove true in a manner opposite his intent:

“Those who kill the innocent will be held to account.”

RIP, Freddy Fender

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One of the greatest musicians of our times died last Sunday. My ex- next door neighbor recorded his Kentucky gospel music at Freddy’s studio in Corpus Christi, which I drove by numerous times before moving to Colorado Springs this summer. But I also grew up with the music of this great musician constantly being played on the radio and elsewhere, and it always lightened the mood for me. RIP, Freddy. You lived in a cruel world, with cruel laws and cruel punishments. Thank goodness you were able to overcome the cruelty of being tossed into Angola prison in Louisiana for merely smoking marijuana, and were able to write and play such beautiful songs that gave pleasure even to those who jailed you. We will miss you.

Good food owes everything to context

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The best anything I ever had was a can of soda, thrown to me in the water where I’d been diving for the better part of a day. My mouth was salty from the seawater taste of my mouthpiece and the dry air from my regulator. The cool sweetness of the soda pop was an olfactory relief never to be rivaled. Ask me now, treading water next to an outrigger, negotiating the waves of the South China Sea, and splashing a Sprite over my mouth, nothing better.

I came to understand this context principle later while camping in the Ozarks with my uncle. After a long hike, making chicken and rice soup over the fire, by combining every freeze-dried ingredient we had, made the best meal I’d ever tasted.

This principle explains man’s imbibing of alcohol entirely. Drinking wine is nothing but context. Alone, wine is a tartish experiment. With a meal it’s chemistry. Ice water is irrigation.

I’ve since improved upon the ultimate repast. Spaghetti with olive oil and fresh Parmesan, shoveled into your mouth from a mixing bowl on your chest as you recline watching a film. I foresaw my destiny as a bachelor when I admitted this was my Saturday Night ne plus ultra.

How to improve upon such elevated culinary expectations? I tried that once too. Unfiltered pear juice, in a hot shower, while peeing. Probably it was just too easy to orchestrate.

Kill Bush

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Kill Bush! Kill, kill, kill. Let’s do it, Julia. In case people don’t know by now, Julia is a 14 year old school girl in California who had posted a photo of Bush with the words ‘Kill Bush’ onto her My Place website. Despite the fact that months went by and Bush had visited her city twice during that time unprotected from Julia, all of a sudden the Secret Service came by. Two big beefy ones, too. Julia had posted this material when she was 13 years old, so their visit was not exactly that of a speedy response team. And it seems that despite the Zillions already spent on Homeland Security bureaucracy, that nationally we still got basically what New Orleans has… which is A Confederacy of Dunces on the security job. So just who called the cops?

Well, we personally don’t know the answer on that one. No doubt, some self righteous super zealot of the Right, since they are all crawling out of the woodwork these days. We got the self-hating red diaper baby, David Horowitz, outing liberal professors all around the country. We got the racist Anglo ‘Minutemen’ calling up cops with info about people not speaking America’s official language, English without acent…. as they compare themselves to Neighborhood Watch, chuckle as you will. And Barnes and Noble has stacks of the excremental works of Bill O’Reilly as you go in. He’s watching you, American liberals! And we got lynch mobs here in Colorado trying to hang Ward Churchill from a pole. If they can’t do that, they’ll probably send him a blanket with small pox on it. And we got the airport security branch of the US military waging war everywhere on our behalf at the airports. Of course, they do do a little collateral damage from time to time. But heck, if you don’t like the gated community called America, then get out, ay?

Just 4 months ago, my high school buddy who I had lost contact with for years and I, reestablished a correspondence. But it got torpedoed for me when he got on the case against a University of Texas prof, an international specialist in lizards, no less! My friend was aghast that this evilutionist expert, Professor Eric Pianka, had just said in a university talk that bacteria deserved to live, whereas mankind really didn’t, since our species was working night and day to destroy the planet. Good Lord, what a crime!

MY high school buddy had heard about it on the Drudge Report. And they had heard about it from some Southern Baptist scientists (yes, unbelievable, isn’t it?) who had called the government alleging that Pianka was advocating biological warfare! And they had called all their Intelligent Design friends, and Drudge, too. So, Homerland Security again went to work. You see, they take our security quite seriously, so they marched out to the Univ of Texas to check out this liberal terrorist. And they examined, under a microscope, all his words of wisdom ever uttered about evolution and lizards. Clear it was, that this non-Creationist had a greater love for lizards and bacteria than he did for humankind. Yet he had not started a biological warfare lab at the U.

Well, in short, both Professor Eric Pianka and Julia remain free. After all, America doesn’t burn witches yet. But Homeland Security does take reports from an alert citizenry, and that’s a citizenry full of finks, evidently. And they do take seriously any jokes at the airport about bombs. We may even begin to see signs saying that ‘This School is a Gun Free School’ posted at our kindergardens. So, Liberals, please join me in my effort to give these nice folk all something to think about.

Kill Bush. Shotgun pellet Donald Rumsfield. Deny Habeus Corpus to Alberto Gonzales. Put Condaleeza in bondage… no… I mean a ‘stress position’. Nuke Washington DC! Go after them in their bunkers, and blow the whole crew to smithereens! Please, do it now.

Liberals, start advocating violence (including the violent overthrow of America’s government) everywhere. If you can’t beat them, then join them. Oops, you do that already by voting for the Democratic Party. So try advocating violence instead. Let it out of your Gandhian souls. Kill, Kill, Kill!

Kill Bush.

Libraries public no longer

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Public libraries have become daycares for the homeless. A recent front page article in the Gazette waxed poetic about the sanctuary libraries provide for itinerants. The idyllic photograph of an prenebriated gentleman scholar was as inviting as a panhandler on the street corner actually. So, up for an afternoon at the library? Do you want to drop your kids off there and let them wander the shelves unsupervised? Followed by the odd mental-outpatient? Do you want them sharing desks and chairs surfaces with the quite less hygienic?
 
The public library is not for you and me anymore. And you know who doesn’t care? Barnes and Noble. Borders. I have a bookstore too, so I don’t care either.

The decay of the American library system plays right into the hands of bookstore owners. Let citizens buy their books. Let ’em buy their coffee while they hang out looking at books they have to BUY.

Those who can’t afford new books? Let them catch lice from the homeless. They’re about as good as a homeless person to the bottom line of the economy.

And let the libraries spend their budget on bestsellers and DVDs. Whatever the public wants. When they need something, a reference item, an item for their own personal edification or continued education, they’ll have to come to the book store!

The rest of the library crowd will be left reading dreck. Another base motive of the capitalists in charge. A healthy democracy requires an educated public.

And I’d like to be more clear. I do care. I’m in the used book business. We sell good books to people who read. Our customer base is not served by communities whose public libraries give them movies instead of books, bestsellers instead of good books. And no children are nurtured well if they grow up having to avoid the library.

A proposed local anti-torture resolution

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We, concerned American citizens and residents of the city of Colorado Springs, call upon our city council to issue a proclamation to both the state of Colorado and the federal government, that as citizens of this city, state, and country, we categorically reject the application of any deliberate mental or physical abuse upon any and all prisoners held by our local, state, and national governments. And further that we call upon our national leaders to have all prisoners held by the US military, be treated according to the regulations of the Geneva Conventions regarding the humane treatment of prisoners of war.

We urge the passing of the following resolution by the City Council of Colorado Springs:
……………………………………………………………………………..

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, categorically reject the current policy of our national government of transferring US held prisoners to other countries, or to US allied armed groups, to have them tortured during interrogation or as punishment. We also reject any policy of deliberate governmental assassination of foreign opponents, whether it be carried out by our own military, or outsourced to US allies.

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, categorically reject the indefinite holding of any prisoners without trial and without charges filed against them, whether foreign or domestic. We reject the systematic denial of timely access to lawyers of the choosing of the prisoners needing legal representation. We reject harassment of the legal councils of all prisoners. All prisoners should immediately have access to the press, so that any mistreatment can be made public. Not to do so, is not in keeping with the processes of a democratic society, whether these prisoners be domestic or foreign.

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs, call upon the US government to immediately prosecute any officials who have abused prisoners, or denied them their due rights. This includes not just the immediate abusers of prisoners, but those in supervisory positions over those lower level employees, who directed the actions of their subordinates. We call upon our federal government to immediately initiate a grand federal investigator commission into these multiple abuses that have already been documented as having occurred, and to have them stopped at once.

Further, we the citizens of Colorado Springs, call upon our state and local authorities to renounce the use of abuse and torture of American prisoners held in local and state facilities. We are well aware that the deliberate use of sexual abuse, solitary confinement, and physical assault is rampant throughout the US in multiple correctional facilities, and that the multiple torture methods and abuse techniques and denial of rights used against our own citizens is now being incorporated into the systematic abuse of foreign POWs held by our military. Calling foreign POWs by any other name does not change their real status as POWs. If the US military has taken prisoner any foreign citizen during military engagements, then these troops we consider to be POWs, and their treatment is subject to the Geneva Conventions.

We, the citizens of Colorado Springs and our city council, especially condemn local military contracting agencies, with their many offices located inside our city limits, that have directed torture against POWs in other countries. Already US troops operating in conjunction with these private contractors have been found guilty of directing torture and abuse of prisoners in their custody. These private operatives have been documented as having shot at foreign nationals and having severely injured and murdered foreign civilians as a result. We do not consider these companies to be good citizens of our community, and urge that appropriate criminal charges be brought against companies that have violated prisoner rights per the Geneva Accords regarding humane treatment of POWs. We call upon the city, the state of Colorado, and the US federal government to cease contracting at once with these companies, and to end their immunity from having charges brought against them for their acts of criminality overseas.

Further, we the citizens of Colorado Springs, reject as dishonest and criminal any government denial at either the state, local, or national levels that these abuses are in fact occurring. The documentation is extensive and overwhelming that the US is mistreating POWs, and also prisoners within its own national criminal corrections facilities. The US government has a known and long history of using torture against POWs. Tens of thousands of US held Vietnamese POWs were tortured to death in the so-called ‘tiger cages’ and during the US “Phoenix Operations.” Similarly, the atrocities on prisoners captured by the US financed ‘Contras’ has been well documented. The US use of torture on POWs is not new. What is new is the open advocacy by federal leaders of what had been covert policy. We condemn, as citizens of Colorado Springs, this open advocacy of war crimes committed by US soldiers. We support our troops by demanding that they not be subject to orders to commit war crimes.

We the citizens of Colorado Springs and our city council, proclaim it time for the abuse to stop, and for humane treatment of all prisoners to begin. To allow our government to abuse foreign prisoners of war is to be complicit in the crime, just as continuing to allow abuse to be inflicted on our own incarcerated citizens. We reject both, and call upon our government, at all levels, to most urgently begin to humanely treat those behind bars.

The passage of this proclamation by our city council to be sent to both the Governor of the state of Colorado and to the President of the United State.

US-sponsored death squads continue to rampage in the Philippines and Colombia

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The US military is holding joint military exercises this month with the Philippine military. Yet, the death squads are rampaging there like they did in the Ferdinand Marcos era. Did Americans think that the US military was truly out of that poor country’s life? And in Colombia the death squads also continue to rampage, with funding from the US for its military operations in the last 5 years at over $3 billion dollars. Tens of thousands have lost their lives due to the US intervention in that South American country. A signal card of many Colombian death squad attacks is the use of the chain saw on their victims. Our US government sponsors terrorism around the globe, and these 2 countries have been among the worst victims of our government’s evil interventions. Lest we forget, Iraq is defintely not the only country shredded by US interventionism. And in all cases the US intervenes, to have different groups of the native populations go at each other’s throats, while US troops direct the carnage.

A north side protest hazard

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Colorado College studentsI would have prefered to get a better shot, but these boys nearly ran us down. On three occasions, at the noon Monday bannering vigil, we were treated with these hecklers. The first time, Esther and I were crossing the street. (To hold a banner on the other side.) We were halfway to the median and this SUV started bearing down on us. We held a banner extended between us. Esther was behind me and as the SUV sped up, I slowed my pace. Esther was oblivious, struggling to hurry across in any case. As their engine roared, I stopped, waving my arms in admonishment as they finally veered around us. There wasn’t time for a picture, neither was I ready when they passed again, this time to swerve toward us on the curb. Yelling the usual teenager profanities, laughing. They saw the camera and on this pass decided to turn away into the alley between Nevada and Weber. I’m meaning to check if they park their car there.

Rove wants to project a sense of humor

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Bushies laughing at Fundies? What a strange story. We learned recently that the Bush White House has been referring to its right-wing fundamentalist base as “nuts.” Rove leaked it, but denies it. Sixty Minutes interviewed an Evangelical leader who professed concerted offense. The GOP biting the hand that feeds it? And right before the election? For whose ears might this story be intended?

Evangelical Christians may be grievously put off, but who else are they going to vote for? Will this gaffe be enough to drive them into the arms of Democratic representatives? Do you think so? The nuts are no doubt used to being called plenty worse by their own grandmothers.

As long as Bush delivers the Evangelical goods, expanding the reach of Christianity by conquest or by killing the heathens outright, the Fundies couldn’t care what names Bush calls them. By gosh, the foul-mouthed idiot has practically delivered Armageddon, that crafty little dry-drunk bastard, who is he calling “nuts?!”

This bit of Rovean egg-on-self is for the benefit of disaffected conservative voters. Voters who might be drawn back to the Bush cabal with even this weak hint of common sense in the Republican administration.

Of course there are signs of intelligence in the GOP. They’re slick as foxes. Unfortunately, they’re in the henhouse and we’re the hens.

Lynne Stewart and our freedom

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There is no recent case more chilling to our civil rights than the efforts by the Bush Adminstration to jail for 30 years, the defense lawyer, Lynne Stewart. Today was her sentencing date, and I have yet to see any news report to how she fared. I think that her letter to the judge that is presented on her defense website shows the type of human being she really is.
 
Compare her to a Dick Cheney or a Donald Rumsfield, who are folk that truly do deserve jail time and in a very big way too. Then one can see how sick our US society actually is in that they get to walk free, while she gets shuffled into a cell for basically just doing her job.

Eavesdropping steak and potatoes

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Israeli President Moshe Katsav, head of the Likud Party, has been charged by the Israeli police of rape and eavesdropping. He is accused by ten women of rape, and he is accused of eavesdropping. He is being asked to resign, and he’s expected to resign.
 
For eavesdropping? How silly!

Rape and eavesdropping. You don’t accuse a killer of murder and loitering. It’s not meat and a side order of potatoes, it’s meat AND potatoes. Rape AND eavesdropping. I guess it’s no small thing, eavesdropping: a president, wiretapping the phones of his subjects and associates.

Our own Chief of Misbehavior is not only accused of eavesdropping, he’s admitted to eavesdropping. He’s confessed. No amount of wrangling with the law retroactively can render illegal actions legal. Let’s ask President Bush to resign. Let him know it’s expected of him.

For the love of our war profits

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The Home Front Cares. This event screams out for parody. The Gazette ran “For the Love of Our Troops” from the website above inside its entertainment pages on Friday, the same time it put the Quaker EWO Boots stuff up on the front page. Here is just a first run idea of how to counter this event:
 
FOR THE LOVE OF OUR UNGODLY PROFITS – HELP US KEEP ON MAKING A KILLING!

$2,500 a Plate Dinner Brought to you by Locknoheed Corporation and the rest of the Colorado Springs Military-Industrial Complex, the trashy local rag, the Colorado Slumlords Association, Mayor Rivera on behalf of Curious George Dubya to thank the US troops for slaughtering off half a million dirty Arab civilians PLUS them dirty Pashtuns of Afghanistan too. So sad some of you good ol’ boys got hurt, too.

5:30 PM, November 8, 2006 Antlers Hotel. Be there, or be shelled! You’ll get food, bad country music, and bullshit philosophy from a basketball coach, and all at the very low price of $2,500 a gold seat!

Leaflet brought to you by peace activist groups who support bringing our Troops Home Now. We’ll be there with you protesting this war without end.

Five thousand Iraqis

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The EWO memorial displays 3000 civilian shoesJohns Hopkins has calculated that 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the US invasion of their country. Six Hundred Fifty Five Thousand.
 
Quite a difference from the 30,000 by Bush’s estimate, “give or take a thousand.” Or the 45,000 by the official media counts. Or Lancet’s original 100,000 and later 250,000. Both those numbers were contested too, even as they were now probably conservative.

Most people who know that civilian casualties have been understated are still refuting the 655,000. ” I’m not sure the count is that high, but it’s high I’m sure.” Critical thinking without the why. Johns Hopkins methods, like the Lancet’s are peer reviewed for all to see. Our government and its supporters are the only ones to refute the number. When have they yet proven to speak any truth at all?

I’ll tell you I believe the new figure. I read about how it was calculated, based on surveys and statistical studies, with the same means as are used elsewhere in other populations and other catastrophes. I cannot believe, cannot fathom, cannot mourn 650,000 Iraqi lives destroyed by American aggression. What I can conceptualize is the 5,000 more. Tell me you caught a fish one foot and one half inch long, and I’m inclined to believe you measured it.

For those who want to compare the 655,000 to how many Iraqis would have died under Sadam’s continued reign, the number is already taken into account. Let me quote the latest study:

As many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions

Eyes Wide Open for friends only

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Attire for a memorial to the cost of war?An Air Force soldier participated in our candlelight vigil tonight. A vigil held at the Colorado Springs Eyes Wide Open Exhibit, for the lives lost in the Iraq War. He spoke about losing a close friend, and about his friends who are deployed in Iraq for whom he fears. He read a poem he’d written about looking at the names of the casualties everyday and hoping, praying it would be no one he knows.
 
Did he miss the point of the 2,700 boots?

If I try to be charitable, I’d say the soldier added a human aspect to the ceremony, not just his grief, and his fear, but the self-centeredness of a soldier’s world view. It certainly made me irritated. The rest of us were here, apparently, to give him company in his fear.

I was not.

He introduced himself, Sam, an Air Force enlistee, and a student at the Colorado College. He’s gone to basic training but has yet to be deployed to the war. I’d seen him recite at a poetry gathering the year before. He goes around campus in his fatigues, often fresh from training. My guess is he’s among many college recruits who serve the military by living among students to project an air of normalcy about the military.

Tonight Sam wore a leather jacket with a skull insignia on the back, with the slogan “where do special forces go when they die? They go to hell to regroup.” (or so)

Enlistee Sam fish-out-of-water spoke tonight of dreading when he’d be sent to war, I was listening but didn’t hear that his disposition toward warfare had changed by developments since the last time I saw him. At the poetry reading he spoke of planning to bringing back his war experiences through the eyes of a poet. Most of the other student poets looked aside as he read. Too polite to roll their eyes. The eyes at the vigil were wiser than mine.

There are some attendees who are turned off by the religiosity of gatherings such as the vigil, I could not bear the banality of this foolish enlistee, worrying for himself and his friends, thinking not at all to question the work he was doing or the profound repercussions upon the lives of so many countless thousand innocents.

Two soldiers remembered

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A sister writes to her brother a week before he was due homeWe traipsed up to Denver to see the RMPJC Eyes Wide Open display in advance. I’d like to describe two pairs of boots in particular.
 
One represented a young soldier from Oregon. Someone had added a snapshot, his smile drew my eye. There was also a letter from his sister, who’d been planning to greet him home only a week later.
 
Another pair of boots represented a Coloradan soldier whose parents had requested his name not be mentioned in the memorial. How sad. People come with flowers and gifts, pictures and flags to adorn the boots. Siblings come, and high school friends, and fellow soldiers.

For every soldier, particularly one who’d been stationed nearby, there are dozens of comrades who come to look for their buddy, to see that he was not overlooked, regardless the antiwar sentiment.

When parents have their child’s name removed, it doesn’t mean the boots. The boots are part of the statistic, the casualties. The number of American soldiers killed belongs to us. Bought and paid for by the US taxpayer. I like to think too, an entry into the accounts payable, for these bastards in charge.

And who are they, those ultra-patriot parents, to take their child’s name from the ranks of his friends? Who are they to presume that he doesn’t want to be visited, remembered fondly, missed, mourned, thanked.

I felt tears of loss for Sargeant Eyerly of Oregon with the million dollar smile, in his uniform, only 23 years old. And I feel sad for the unnamed Colorado boy whose parents don’t think his memory deserves a little more than the short life he got.

No one to remember these bootsTheir son was used by the military, his parents didn’t interfere then. Now he’s being used by the anti-military. But he’s still gone. He probably would not wish that his short life have passed into obscurity without so much refection.

As an organizer for the event, I of course do know the name, and the name of the parents. What immoral prigs to put politics above their son’s memory.

For You

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Some days as fierce as a tiger.
Others as fragile as spun sugar.
Some days as close as skin.
Others as distant as Polaris.
Some days an easy stroll down a shaded path.
Others scree and crampons and dangerous crevasses.
You never know.
I never know.
Don’t give up on me.