The Colorado Springs Gazette was not amused. Nor was the Denverite about my testimony yesterday in US district court, seeking an injunction against the Denver International Airport’s free speech permit. The city attorney tried to discredit me by forcing me to recite for the federal judge the full unabridge text of the sign I held at DIA. It was a riff on anti-Nazi cleric Martin Niemöller’s oft-paraphrased parable: “First they came for the Socialists, but I said nothing, etc”, this time foreshortened as a visceral response to Trump’s Muslim Ban: “-and we said NOT TODAY [strong expletive]!” We argued about whether my message was “welcoming”. I assured her that it was very warmly received and could not be interpreted as anything but uniquivocal solidarity. So I read it forcefully, resisting the inclination to lean into the microphone on the last word. Afterward my attorneys assured me it’s a good day in their line of work when you get to say MOTHERFUCKER in court! Judge William Martinez restricted hearing testimony to the single day (Wednesday) and promised to rule on the preliminary injunction by Friday, February 17.
Tag Archives: Colorado Springs Gazette
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.
Legalismo
This is a direct copy of the email i sent earlier today and then copied and pasted some before it dawned on me it would be much easier and more effective to post it here. Collins is a law professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His referenced comment appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette on 18 Oct, after my arrest but before the paper got the news to rectify a time-frame misconception i tossed around earlier. The version of that story is dated 17 Oct, but the paper version came out the following morning.
I remain without legal representation and will accept any offer to confer, but no tapdancers to take the case. I’m not so stupid as to imagine i can learn the Byzantine procedure of Our shameful legal system before the 8th of November well enough to get the point across if i represent myself, but neither will i accept representation from someone who will not take my approach.
Professor Collins:
I am the guy arrested for camping in Colorado Springs.
Although the perfectly certain fact has yet to sink in amongst many of my cohorts here in Colorado Springs, i am well aware that the point you made for the CSpgs Gazette the other day is entirely true. No-camping ordinances are by no means unconstitutional. This fact highlights the argument against the amendment of that original document by many of our founders fearful that the enumeration of some rights would expose others to attack. Current events managed to plop a soapbox and peculiarly focused bullhorn directly in my lap. I intend to plead not guilty on grounds that no-camping laws violate the pre-constitutional right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that this case is exemplar of the general and drastic erosion of human rights in the U.S., and across the entire globe. I am not particularly concerned as to the outcome of the case, but extraordinarily pleased at the opportunity to publicly state a few sentiments i believe by observation to be both common and woefully unarticulated.
I remain unbacked by any legal practitioner and i’d love your input, discussion, advice, council, suggestions, or connection, in any “and/or” configuration that suits your fancy.
Warmest Regards,
Steve Bass
“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” –Oscar Wilde
(Reprinted from Hipgnosis)
OMG the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph agrees Obama is a Tar-Baby
YES OF COURSE my surprised is feigned, but not my embarrassment. How in the world does a newspaper of not insignificant distribution (okay, readership perhaps) not restrain itself from supporting a bigoted remark like Congressman Lamborn’s? Whether the racism was inadvertent or idiotic, at best the comparison of America’s black president to a “Tar-Baby” could have been remarked upon, if one didn’t want to condemn it, but the Colorado Springs Gazette chose to support its Tea-Party libertarian by belittling criticism that the reference to the Uncle Remus stereotype was racist. In historic perspective it recalls the days when Colorado newspapers endorsed lynchings, and later the Klan. In essence that’s not ancient history. People no further away than Denver can dismiss Lamborn as typical of Pikes Peak mouth-breathers, and the Gazette editorial page confirms them. Indignation doesn’t begin to touch it.
No America, justice has not been done
This didn’t always need explaining– lynching and body snatching are INJUSTICES. There used to be an understanding of what “taking the law into your own hands” meant. Killing someone outright doesn’t bring them to justice, and I’m not alone to assert that killing someone -even after a trial- is premeditated murder. We’re not hearing any such voices on the media unfortunately. Even in the days of mob lynching, the crowd once drained of its blood-lust would sober to the crime it committed, often masked. That said, the press has always responded with statements of pitiable glee. In Colorado, even the most gruesome lynchings, race-related and otherwise, prompted congratulatory editorials from the Colorado Springs Gazette, the Rocky Mountain News and the rest. However, political leaders were usually more careful not to be celebrating extra-judicial revenge killing.
Today even world leaders seem to be piling on with attaboys. Dispiriting really.
The facts emerging from bin Laden’s killing just get worse and worse. If Osama was indeed in a military-secured compound, a whole secured zone apparently, what reason could possibly be given for why every usual method would not be used to bring him into custody? Where was he going to go? Did we need to kill his entourage like we did Saddam Hussein’s sons? The fact that this raid is purported to have been planned for months makes the assassination all the more purposeful.
And then we learn his body was buried at sea, which the media uncritically recite is “in accordance to Islamic tradition” even as Muslims refute it. Besides of course suggesting that today’s raid was only Kabuki theater for disposing of OBL’s ten-year-dead corpse, conveniently making the body disappear makes dark humor of mocking Habeas Corpus. Where already America disregards the fundamental right of a trial of your peers.
Bin Laden’s colleagues are denied the jury of peers and instead judged through kangaroo military tribunals, patently illegal by international law. Lynching of course dispenses of even that formality.
But lynching victims of the earlier times were not deprived of their bodies. How dare the US declare itself judge, executioner AND God over Osama bin Laden’s remains?!
The pretext is that they don’t want a shrine made of wherever his family would have chosen to bury him. But of course, that will not be ours to decide. At the very least the site of bin Laden’s murder will already be a shrine for those in Islamabad. It will certainly be ironic if the WTC in New York City will be the most significant memory of Osama bin Laden’s deeds and become ground zero for his enormous fame worldwide.
Scriptmatix “penny auctions” such as Quibids are less scams than pure fraud
Shell games tempt only the gullible, don’t they? So long as YOU don’t fall for them, what’s a little income redistribution among wretches? That’s an attitude shared only by the uninitiated. So-called internet “penny auctions” exploit human vulnerability like trust and avarice, leaving victims to blame their own stupidity or greed. You may shrug off getting burned as a lesson learned, but all confidence tricks count on that. Websites like Quibids and Scriptmatix’s PennyAuction are neither novel discount methods, adventure shopping, gambling scenarios or lotteries. They are con games that lead you to believe you are getting something for your money, until you don’t.
Just because YOU can figure it out -from an objective distance- doesn’t mean Quibids is not patently dishonest. US laws governing fraud are enforced by local statutes, but common law is enough to define this internet scam as representation of falsehood with the intent to profit. Whether or not the auctions use shill bidders, or fail to honor unprofitable outcomes, as have been accused by disgruntled victims, the websites are misrepresentations. The former are obvious illegal practices. The latter is fraud. Or are we so cynical that we accept this kind of scam as merely “predatory capitalism?”
Wikipedia defines fraud in layman’s terms:
1. a representation of an existing fact;
2. its materiality;
3. its falsity;
4. the speaker’s knowledge of its falsity;
5. the speaker’s intent that it shall be acted upon by the plaintiff;
6. plaintiff’s ignorance of its falsity;
7. plaintiff’s reliance on the truth of the representation;
8. plaintiff’s right to rely upon it; and
9. consequent damages suffered by plaintiff.
In particular this scam begin with what’s known as the advance-fee fraud except this buy-in is ongoing and lasts until a mark is tapped-out.
Quibids and ilk call themselves “penny auctions” as if there is such a thing. Onlooker suspicions are assuaged by the inherent implication that if a business scam has a name, it must not be a crime.
Are penny auctions a veritable thing, besides the self-defined new crook on the block? Well, yes, but. The “penny auctions” of yesteryear had nothing to do with these pay-to-play auction schemes where bidders buy vouchers for the privilege to ante into a bidding pool. Penny auction refers to the Depression era strategy of sabotaging farm liquidation auctions by forcing the auctioneer to accept bids in increments of one penny. Aided by cooperative neighbors, bankruptcy victims were able to grind their creditor’s actions to a halt, for a time, because collusion was itself unlawful. Obviously this is a far cry from the neo penny auctions which require customers to buy “bids” with which to place dibs on a desired item, increasing its auction price by a penny each time and prolonging the bidding for another fixed period.
On Quibids, price and time increments can vary between auction items to confuse watchers trying to do the math. As an average, a bidder might pay 60 cents each time he wants to put his name on the desired item, raise its price a penny, and extend the auction expiration by another ten seconds. The last person to cease paying money to keep the auction up in the air gets the item for the final price. But the final cost includes of course what he paid to play.
Imagine musical chairs except you pay 60 cents for every successive measure, an unlimited number of party-goers circling a solitary chair. So long as somebody pays the piper, everyone gets to stay in. Except they’re not “in” are they? Only the last person who put money in gets to take the chair.
The music stops when the next to last person refuses to ante up.
On the internet, the victory or loss is experienced alone. Your embarrassment is “shared,” but anonymous. Now imagine a convention hall, full of sidelined bidders who dropped out as they realized the insanity of paying into a potentially endless kitty whose real value to them represented a diminishing return. Imagine dozens or scores of former adversaries looking on as the last man standing gets the chair, everyone else leaves empty handed and empty pocketed, while the house rakes in the pot worth many times the value of the chair. Think that scam would fly in a non-virtual world?
In the real world, marks who’ve fallen victim quickly learn that there’s a racket of onlookers quick to step in and silence any complaints. Try to warn off the next bystander who looks like they’re about to fall prey and you’ll see exactly what criminal muscle lurks behind the charm of the charlatan.
Oh, it’s a silly, silly hook this penny bidding scheme, and online it’s hard to tell how many dupes are actually taken in. We have only the Quibids customer relations departments to assure us that none of the other bidders are phantom bots or paid shills. It would be so easy of course for the javascript to be otherwise. The same voices explain that Quibids can afford to offer its auction items at these unbelievable discounts due to the income derived from its inventive bid-selling process.
Simple math suggests they could award a winning lot several times over and still keep a tidy profit. Yet their FAQ explain that 50% of their transaction result in an operational loss. If indeed this is true, that percentage is factoring the auctions they offer for packages of “bids,” where customers place bids to win more bids. One can only hope that buyers are given the upper hand on these transactions. Otherwise the 50% percentage tabulates the auctions by number and not their dollar value. Quibids’ losses are phantom, worthless bids sold at a fraction of their worthless value, versus their profitable ones, where $200 consumer goods net $1000 or more.
That kind of scheme resembles a lottery where more tickets are purchased for a fixed-sum reward. Quibids deflects categorization as a gambling scheme by explaining that auction losers have the option to apply their losses toward the retail price of the item, if they elect to purchase it as consolation. How many players take them up on such an offer, only they know.
Upon losing the Christmas raffle, would having the option to buy the turkey at above retail price be reassurance enough for you to prove the affair wasn’t in reality an unregulated raffle?
First of all, the sites use very clever software, and a money-changing scheme to defy the average grasp of math. But the trap mechanism well oiled, the more duplicitous energy goes into the promotion. Quibids is using social networking and email to expand the reach of the news outlets they ensnare. Our attention was drawn when this week the Colorado Springs Gazette directed its readers to this exciting new discount website.
A scan of the various “penny auction” websites would seem to indicate they are using identical software. That opens a whole other can of worms, doesn’t it? This could be an installation one can license, just as one would WordPress or Zen Cart. In fact there is a PHP setup marketed by Scriptmatix who charge $1,250 plus for an installation. First they nail people greedy enough to want Nikon D90s for next to nothing, then they turn their dupes into willing con artists themselves.
Here’s a screen grab from the Scriptmatix brochure, where they explain what kind of return eager entrepreneurs can expect on their $1,249 investment.
It might look like a safer legal recourse to franchise the “penny auction” scheme and let client operators do the defrauding and ultimately face the authorities. Maybe selling the blueprint to a confidence trick does not constitute a crime. Unless of course you are pretending to peddle a fully legitimate business model that you know is actually against the law. We’re back to fraud.
Of course the key to convincing users that your site is not a ripoff lies with successful PR. It’s very likely that many of these multiple installations are Quibids figuring out how to outrun Google searches of Quibids+Scam. Aptly-named rival Swipe-bids for example looks more to me like a designated heavy, meant to make Quibids appear to be honest by comparison. Who knows how many websites this operation has used to elude tar and feathers.
Here’s the SWIPE-BIDS website whose main page stream a promotional video, actually for a competitor, as if it was its own. On watchdog sites, Quibids cries foul, but it’s hard to tell what argument is authentic.
Does “swipe” seem a term well chosen to inspire trust? It’s as obvious as a black hat in a wrestling match. Of course “Quibids” is the most poetic choice for truth-in-tradenames. “Qui” is French for who and doesn’t that account for the mysterious identity of who is bidding against you?
And the watchdog websites sprouting up to monitor the penny auction eruption are themselves shadow operations. Any “penny auction watch” that prefaces their posts with the concession that some auction sites are good and some are bad, is obviously shilling for someone. They may be a village idiot with no concept of the scamming afoot, or they’re innocent at all. But this is speculation.
By all appearances, these sites are reaping Keystone times six, and simply drop-shipping the goods.
A legal indictment of Quibids can precede a formal investigation based simply on their of self-promotion. Theirs may look like expertly crafted PR, and these days of diminished expectations about the objectivity of our media, it may suit many to congratulate the charlatans on their savvy, but Quibids’ self-promotion documents their intent to defraud.
Layers of press releases and paid editorial columns appear to shore up a single real news item which the Quibids outfit eked from an Oklahoma news team earlier this year.
At right are stills from KWES NEWS9 reporting about Quibids, as far as they were told, a home-grown auction website.
Quibids hasn’t chintzed on PR, but they do appear to lack for real faces to front their operation…
According to their own site, Quibids was the brainchild of Oklahoma City entrepreneur Matt Beckham, joined by Shaun Tilford, Jeff Geurts, Josh Duty, Bart Consedine, and spokeswoman Jill Farrand. The 27-year-old Beckham’s identity is confirmed by the Quibids.com domain registration.
Have a look at who NEWS9 is interviewing for the so-called customer testimonial. The kyron reads “Zach Stevens” who purports to be thrilled with the deal he’s gotten on Quibids.
Do we know whether this interview footage was pre-packaged for the NEWS9 team? The distinction is unimportant, but we might note that the cuffed sleeve does not belong to the female reporter.
This TV segment streams on the upper right corner of the auction sites, serving as a de facto suggestion of the site’s legitimacy. The footage streams in a very small window.
But enlarged in these captures, a closeup of “Zach’s” laptop and username reveals this “customer” is none other than Quibids’ owner Matt Beckham, smiling like he has no idea the perp walk that awaits him.
DUI gone postal
News 5 is trying metaphorically to crucify the Postal Service and especially the Postal Workers union because a mail-carrier wasn’t fired for being convicted of DUI. So I thought to myself (as I often do) “Self, I bet Freedom Communications has literally hundreds of people working for them who have DUI convictions”.
Their piss-and-moan about it is (allegedly) that the Postal Service is losing money. This from minions of a Corporation that’s in bankruptcy. And one of their subsidiaries, the Colorado Springs Gazette, has just laid off half their employees.
But whenever a person takes the stand in court, either as a witness or a defendant, he has to state where and for whom he works. So, fair being fair, posting a partial list of the employees of their Corporate Masters who have criminal convictions would perhaps be in order. I thought of doing it myself, look up the transcripts and report thereof…
Leaving out the names of those who work labor jobs for them, drivers, warehouse, the temps who stuff the circulars into the Sunday and Wednesday papers and assemble the mailings… cut those guys a lot of slack. They already are in wage bondage to a hostile employer anyway. Edit to add… they were the first to go in the layoffs.
On the other hand, there’s a TV reporter from Dallas and who I believe works for one of the Denver stations now, Leeza Gibbons., who was convicted of joyriding on I 30 from Grand Prairie to the west side of Ft Worth at 110 miles an hour and leading the po-pos from 8 different municipalities, 2 counties and the State Department of Public Safety on a high speed chase. And this kind of event isn’t really all that rare. That would be the type to publish. Also any who would fit into a suit and tie on a regular basis.
The ones who slither in and out of their corporate boardroom. The ones who are serving up the Union-bashing and the ones who ordered it done.
It’s also convenient that the Union Bashing is done at a time when two of their Loyal Corporate Partners are demanding that the Grocery Workers Union accept a really arrogant “Last and Best Offer” contract.
2p, 2p and Honduras… and Mexico… and Nicaragua… and…
I don’t know if I’ve published this here or not or how I packaged it. But for background, the “p” stands for “piastre” a South VietNamese coin that was worth a little less than a quarter of a U.S. penny. This was the “Great Free Market Opportunity” our government was sending people to fight and die to defend. The way I heard it on some occasions it’s used to condemn the VietNamese people.”How nasty and vile and filthy they are” for living in such poverty.
But it was the VietNamese version of a washroom attendant, a little old granny lady… “Wipe your ass for you, GI… 2p, 2p do extra good job 2p, 2p…”
Yes, we were there, so it seems, to give the people such a wonderful Free Market and the opportunity to wipe our asses for less than a half a cent per “use”.
And to despise them for being so desperately poor.
I wasn’t there, my sources were, so what if you say it’s false?
Talk to them, those who are still alive that is.
Now there’s a war going on in Honduras, backed exclusively by U.S. and Canadian corporations, to topple a “Dictator” who was going to nationalize the resources of Honduras and make the U.S. and Canadian corporations pay more than the 3-4 dollars a day for the labor of the People of Honduras.
The police and military have been battling in the streets for a week now, busting the heads of “elitists” who are trying to “enslave” everybody in Honduras. They did this in a Military coup ahead of an election that the “Dictator” probably would have won.
That there’s no CIVILIANS out busting the heads of these “elitists” and “Communist Radicals” tells a far different story than you might hear on, say, Fox News or in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
In Nicaragua the goon-squads were called “Contras” and backed by the same people who bring us Fox News and the Gazette. They bombed and shot up schools, orphanages, churches and hospitals, and “our” government called them Heroes and Freedom Fighters.
In Mexico, the PAN party has been running the show for a while now. They took over from the “socialist radicals” in the PRI party and for the same reason as Honduras, and Nicaragua, and South VietNamese, to give the people “Freedom” and the unfettered “Free Market” and all the benefits of Capitalism.
Doug Lamborn and Tancredo and Michelle Malkin tell us so, thus, it must be true.
They also tell us that the economy in Mexico after two and a half terms of a PAN controlled “Free” government, so filled with opportunity… is somehow oh.. how does one make this sound logical… fueling a massive wave of Illegal Immigration into the United States. By people seeking to feed their families.
Record Numbers in fact.
My my my my my… give them all the Benefits of a Reagan-inspired Libertarian Free Market and their country falls to shit and more of the people have to flee poverty and come here to find work.
Like the KTEL commercials used to say “Now how much would you pay? BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!”
They’re wanting to expand the same Corporate Free Market Rule all across the United States as well, promising us such wonderful Economic Freedom and Opportunity…
Wipe your ass GI, 2p, 2p…
Tea Party Tax Revolt ignorance-mongers rally their usual Republican supporters
COLORADO SPRINGS- The corporate media led by Fox News, local talk radio led by KVOR, and the Gazette editorial page itself, herded their red sheep into Acacia Park today for lunch-time speeches full of hate, ignorance, and good old-fashioned unapologetic self-interest. They didn’t understand my sign, but knew enough to scowl.
Gazette representative Maria St. Louis-Sanchez was live-blogging the event, sitting on the ground beside the stage, which gave her an appropriate lack of perspective for the coverage she intended. For example, this online exchange:
12:33 [Comment From Guest] Is it basically an all white gathering?
12:34 Tough to tell. There seems to be a good mix of people here.
Oh my goodness. The crowd was ALL WHITE! With the lonely exception of deposed-councilman Ed Jones, who delighted the crowd when he proclaimed he was not an African American, he was an American, and derided those critics who would call him an “Uncle Tom.” The crowd cheered Jones, there were even chants exhorting him to run for governor. But if this had been nightfall, and one depression earlier, this is the mob that would have lynched him.
And I’m inclined to imagine that had Jones been Hispanic American, judging from the anti-immigrant rhetoric, they would have jumped him in broad daylight today.
These were ugly Americans, led by their representative uglies, hate-radio DJ Richard Randall, representative Doug “Porky” Lamborn, the illiterate Quixote Douglas Bruce and business-homophobe Ed Bircham. All pure archetypes of disgruntled white males.
The demographics in my estimation were all white, mostly male, with ugly carved into everyone’s faces from years of being disagreeable and bitter. And a plentiful predominance of pasty obesity.
Ted Haggard is less shifty than New Life Church
COLORADO SPRINGS- Ted Haggard’s inconvenient sex life surfaces again! And this time the scandal is all New Life’s. Ted Haggard’s PR talk show onslaught to remake his image has prompted an altar boy to go public. But it seems this violates an agreement the young man made with New Life in the aftermath of the Haggard prostitute meth-habit scandal.
According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, New Life Church leader Brady “Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.”
First let’s clarify what New Life has failed to make clear. The young man was in his “early twenties” when he approached the church about the relations between he and Haggard. According to Boyd, the “inappropriate, consensual sexual relationship” had gone on for “a long period of time.” The church denies that the young man might have been a minor when it began.
Second, according to a letter sent to its congregation members as a result of the new revelations, New Life Church admits now that it has “received reports of a number of incidents of inappropriate behavior.”
In light of Ted Haggard trying to repaint himself as a victim in an HBO documetary, and on Oprah Winfrey, and an upcoming Larry King Live, the New Life ex-volunteer now wants to go public with his story.
While the church told the public, and its congregation, that Haggard’s impropriety did not extend beyond the Denver prostitute, it looks like New Life Church deliberately kept this story under wraps, despite an “overwhelming pool of evidence” to indicate otherwise. In the face of the hush-up coming to light, their official response is even more duplicitous.
“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance – certainly not hush money. I know that’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”
An agreement to keep quiet appears to have been what New Life Church thought “it was.” Asked whether the church will pursue legal procedures against the young man, Boyd replied:
“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to.”
Ft Carson shredding casualty records
IS THE US-ARMY-BEDMATE-GAZETTE GOING TO REPORT THIS STORY? Salon Magazine was leaked helmet-cam video showing the 2006 deaths of two US soldiers in Ramadi, by friendly fire, which the US Army is still attributing to Iraqi insurgents. Within hours of breaking the story, soldiers working in Fort Carson offices were ordered to shred the documents relating to the slain PFCs. Fortunately Salon was leaked this development as well.
Watch the video. Pay no heed to the warnings of graphic violence and profanity. What the tape reveals is the inanity of all the soldiers’ conduct. First, a very imprudent peek through a window at a US tank, which more than likely prompted the tank to fire. As a result, the helmet wearer is knocked to the floor, a soldier on the floor above is wounded (and dies), and another on the roof is killed. What followed was discussion about whether the tank had fired the single round, countered by the commanding officer repeating that the official attribution would be mortar fire until a report proved otherwise. Despite that fact that all the soldiers coming up to the commander are reporting that the tank had fired, and he tells them “I agree with you–.” Also, during the entire sequence no other shot is heard.
It will be interesting to see what Fort Carson intended to accomplish by shredding the records of PFCs Albert Nelson and Roger Suarez. In particular because some of the documents were spirited aside and sent to Salon. Was the Army intending to produce revised versions to support their official report of the soldiers deaths?
El Paso County resists blue trend how?
Two articles caught my eye in this morning’s Gazette, and I’d like to thank the editors for putting them side by side. The first lauded El Paso County’s strong Republican push-back to the Obama landslide, the other illuminated Clerk and Recorder Bob Balink’s dubiously legal measures at the EPC polling stations. Do the Gazette editors think, as I, that one of these stories could have a bearing on the other?
The first article was written with the partisanship we’re used to from the Gazette. In face of this election’s “blue tsunami,” El Paso County remained high and dry. Can we read this any other way than meaning “safe” and Republican (red), in the face of the Obama danger? The article detailed how El Paso County voted against the prevailing tide. Even the Democratic candidates who won elsewhere were “stomped” here. Stomped –like cockroaches?
The adjacent article was about the Clerk and Recorder. It reported that on election day, the media had been banned from the local polling places. This measure was in defiance of common practice and, the question was raised, even election law. Apparently, lawsuits may follow.
Mention was also made of Balink’s attempt to intimidate Colorado College students.
Did the media ban mask inappropriate election worker activity? Had the CC letter deterred student voters?
The article did not mention a yet-to-be investigated story, the mysterious fire alarm at Centennial Hall, a half hour after voting closed. Everyone had to leave the building. By the way, the fire alarm tactic is a recurring theme if you’ve watched video reports of past election irregularities, in this new age of the self-deputized citizen poll watcher.
Centennial Hall was not only the main poll station downtown, and the chief early voting location, it was the central office into which all the El Paso County precincts reported their election results. Might there be a story here?
The article also didn’t address why in El Paso County, paper ballots were not permitted for early voters. Only Diebold touch-screen machines were available for the early birds, who one might guess would have been the most activated of the new wave.
The Colorado Springs Gazette favorably headlines local Communist Party activity in our fair city!
This is, as all presidential election years are, a circus year of American comedy at its best! I mean, we got a gift from John McCain of his female Dan Quail, Sarah Pale In town even! Still, imagine my surprise to see today’s edition of our Far Right Wing daily paper (The Gagzette) with a prominent headline for our city’s only active Communist Party member, Vivian! She’s been the deliverer of the Communist Party’s national newspaper around town for years now (and a reporter for that paper, too!), but apparently our Gazette ‘reporters’, ‘editors’, and ‘newsmen’ are unaware of that!????? Go figure?
They probably are aware though, that Barack Obama is a Big Bad American Communist? I mean, we are dealing with world class geniuses over that at Freedom Communications, Inc… lol. I hope that they do not now inform the national crowd about Barack Obama’s connections to Colorado Spring’s Communist Movement, now that they are getting the real scoop about my friend Vivian, the CP reporter and paper deliverer?
OK, here’s the link to the Gazette’s pro- Communist Party activity, though you have to buy the paper’s hard copy to get the full effect, as their website really doesn’t give a good idea of how much they actually headlined their pro-CP coverage. I’ll be laughing through the next year over this one, you can bet on that! Campaigners on different sides, but have same passion
Go Vivian! I love you even if you are an evil commie! Give me a call so we can get together some! I’m not surprised that you are pushing for Obama.
Could it be that the Colorado Springs Gazette’s editors are Lenin’s useful idiots? For more about the American Communist Party, go to The Gus Hall Fan Club website …I know that our local paper would want you to do that! Go useful idiot team at our local Gagzette! Good work! I’m still not voting for Barack Obama though.
Latest vote suppression from El Paso County Bob Balink should land him in jail
COLORADO SPRINGS- The Colorado Independent has reported a new salvo in El Paso County’s Clerk & Recorder Bob Balink’s usual anti-election measures. Balink is IN CHARGE of all local polling outlets, he’s partisan as GOP SHIT, he’s faced accusations before, and this latest move seems to betray what he thinks he can get away with. Though Balink’s election-year tradition of intimidating Colorado College students was this time rebuked, his comeback should land him in jail.
Every election year, Colorado College are warned by El Paso County administrators that if they try to register in the county, they might be breaking the law. When the same strategy was tried this year, the students struck back with a newspaper article dispelling the untruthful scare tactic. Bob Balink’s staff had to backpedal in public, but the CC journalists have received another salvo.
This letter was sent to CC on behalf of El Paso County, drafted by a Denver attorney. It explained that registering in El Paso County:
“can have cascading effects”
“could affect the students and their parents financially.”
have “ramifications that go far beyond where they cast their ballot.”
“could result in criminal penalties.”
“can jeopardize their parents’ ability to claim the student as a dependent”
“could end up costing the parents the $3,500 tax deduction.”
“could impact … health insurance plan or auto insurance policy.”
“could have a rough awakening”
Here is the full text of the letter:
The September 24th article [in the Colorado Springs Gazette], “Balink under fire for error on CC voter registration”, gives significant attention to whether Colorado College students are able to register to vote, yet little attention is given to the consequences of doing so.
Advocates, such as Senator John Morse, Martha Tierney, and Pat Waak, are correct in stating that there are no prohibitions on Colorado College students registering to vote. Nevertheless, out-of-state students should do so with their eyes wide open. Registering to vote in Colorado can have cascading effects that could affect the students and their parents financially.
When an individual registers to vote in Colorado, they make an affirmation that they are a resident of Colorado. The statement of residency exceeds merely being present in the state. The affirmation also includes abandoning prior residency in other states. Additionally, it makes departure from the student’s home permanent rather than temporary.
This distinction of a student living here temporarily or establishing a domicile has ramifications that go far beyond where they cast their ballot. Colorado law allows students who are here temporarily to maintain vehicle registration and drivers licenses in their home state. Once an out-of-state student registers to vote and declares Colorado as their state of residency, all the additional obligations of residency attach. These obligations include both vehicle registration and obtaining a Colorado drivers license. Failure to do either of these acts could result in criminal penalties. Are the students who are the targets of voter registration drives informed of these consequences? Are they aware of the big picture impact of signing the voter registration form?
Beyond the student’s new obligations related to Colorado state residency, there are other potential consequences to establishing residency as a student. Out-of-state students who are claimed as dependents by their parents can jeopardize their parents’ ability to claim the student as a dependent on their taxes. Establishing a new domicile outside of the parents’ home state could end up costing the parents the $3,500 tax deduction. The establishment of a new domicile could impact the student’s dependency status that is required for eligibility under the parents’ health insurance plan or auto insurance policy. Students who intend to return to a state school in their home state for graduate school could have a rough awakening when they find out that they have to pay out-of-state tuition because they have lost their previous in-state status. These are complex issues that must be addressed.
It is worth noting that an out-of-state student can still participate in the election by requesting an absentee ballot from their home state, if that is where they are registered. The voter registration drives that are targeting Colorado College students have a moral obligation to inform them of the impacts of their voter registration and to suggest that they consult with their parents prior to registering.
While groups that work to increase involvement in the electoral process should be applauded, blindly pushing students to register in Colorado, even when doing so could be to their detriment, is wrong. Registering out-of-state students in Colorado without fully disclosing the potential impacts of such registration borders on exploitation.
For further information contact:
Zakhem-Atherton LLC
303-228-1200
Mr. Erik Groves
Denver, CO
In other news…
The Gag-zette is going whole hog trying to get people to read their Noose-Pooper. I was going to say their Toilet Paper but there’s a fairly entertaining and even more informative underground paper in town with that name, The Toilet Paper.
The Gag is almost to the point of paying people to read it.
It’s painfully embarrassing to watch. They’ve lost all sense of dignity and self esteem.
Of course, you knew, didn’t you, that a newspaper which has as part of its official editorial policy, the notion that Freedom means the duty to do what you’re told to do when you’re told to do it… Ain’t gonna last forever.
The Independent, which gives its paper away free, and only once a week, is making more money than the Zette. How very humiliating that must be!
The mellow waters of the Springs
Last week the Gazette reported that Colorado Springs had been found to have methadone and Valium in our tap water, making us one mellow city indeed. Drugs found in Springs water This news was reported in the Denver papers, too, but nobody mentioned where the drugs were coming from?
You probably thought it was coming from drug addicts in their private castles, right? Well… wrong. And don’t look for investigative reporting from the local papers to correct your lack of info either. From the national AP we learn from where these drugs were most likely released into our tap water, and it may surprise you, or not? Tons of Drugs Dumped Into Wastewater
The drugs probably came into the Colorado Springs water supply by way of the local hospitals, Penrose and Memorial? Hey, they wanted the waters to be mellow in the Springs! Don’t grow old waiting for The Gazette to do some follow up reporting on this one. It most likely just won’t happen…
US Christians stay mum about Hindu violence against Christians in India
For months now there have been Hindu attacks on India’s Christian communities but America’s Christians remain silent about their cohorts abroad just as they previously have remained silent about Jewish attacks on Christian communities in the Middle East. Orissa mob attacks police station
Christian Rightists in America are too busy trying to whip up an anti-Muslim hysteria in the US to be distracted by the antics of India, which is a country they want to use in their Holy Crusades. Besides, who really cares about the lower castes of India anyway? Certainly not American Christians who support a caste system just about everywhere, with American Christians to be located exactly as the top caste. Christian America has kept entirely quiet about this violence in India, a violence they used to cry about when India was a more ‘non-aligned’ country (more aligned with the evil communist Soviet Union, say..) .
Speaking of how crazy the American Christian community can get, did anybody notice The Colorado Springs Gazette editorial today? No? … lol… Well it railed and ranted against what they declared was an atheist who wanted to behead 2 people for merely being Christians! I kid you not! They called the gun toting neighbor who knocked out one eye of the drunk (for that’s all this fight was really about, a drunk acting out) a ‘hero’, since he had guns! Oh Whooptee Doo!
Yes, it seems that with Sarah Palin now in the act nationwide, that the Right Wing Christian community thinks its time once again for their rampaging loonieness to prevail big time? God save us from your followers, PLEASE. And God save us from The Gazette’s editorial nutiness, too.
And, God, you might notice that some of your good people are getting the shit kicked out of them in India? Oh so what? It’s forward march to kill some more Muslims time, is it not? God is great! America is God! Forward Christian soldiers!
OBSESSION: anti-Islamic documentary is 2006 Zionist election year propaganda
COLORADO SPRINGS- If you’re not going to watch the propaganda on CNN/FOX/”24″ they’ll bring it to you! Inserted in this morning’s Gazette was OBSESSION: RADICAL ISLAM’S WAR AGAINST THE WEST, a DVD distributed by The Clarion Fund and promoted by Alan Dershowitz. Why a free copy of a 2006 crockumentary now? This “non-partisan organization devoted to educating the public about national security issues” wants us to check out www.radicalislam.org because “it’s our responsibility to ensure we can all make an informed vote in November.” And the DVD insert went to newspapers in SWING STATES!
The DVD wrapper features a blurb by Michael Medved, the pro-war Zionist cloaked as mild-mannered film critic. Says Medved, “Obsession is one of the most powerful, expertly crafted and undeniably important films I’ve seen this year…” No mention that the year was 2006, and the made-for-a-previous-US-election quasi-documentary has already been widely debunked as racist propaganda. An executive producer of “24” intones: “… required viewing for everyone.”
Oh, and of course Edmund Burke’s helpful nudge: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Bad enough that this insert went to the Gazette’s 100k readership, it also went out with the newspapers below. This is more than the FREEDOM COMMUNICATION chain, it includes the NYT and the WSJ.
Do you detect a Swing-State pattern where Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia predominate?
Paid Advertising Supplement to: Akron Beacon, Altoona Mirror, Ann Arbor News, Blade, Bucks Co. Courier Times, Centennial Citizen, Chronicle of Higher Education, Cincinnati Enquirer, Claremont Review, Clovis News Journal, Columbus Dispatch, Daily Camera, Daily Commercial, Daily Nonpareil, Dayton Daily News, Denver Post, Des Moines Register, Detroit Free Press, Erie Times-News, Examiner, Flint Journal, Florida Times-Union, Fort Collins Coloradoan, Ft. Lauderdale El Sentinel, Ft. Meyers News Press, Gazette, Grand Rapids Press, Greeley Tribune, Green Bay Press-Gazette, Hobbs News-Sun, Iowa City Press Citizen, Janesville Gazette, Journal News, Journal Times, La Crosse Tribune, Lansing State Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal/Sun, Miami-El Nuevo Herald, Miami Herald, Middletown Journal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Morning Call, Morning Journal, Nevada Appeal, New Appeal, New Hampshire Union Leader, News-Leader, New York Times, Ocala Star Banner, Orlando Sun Sentinel, Palm Beach Post, Patriot-News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Portsmouth Herald, Quad-City Times, Reading Eagle, Reno Gazette-Journal, Repository, Rio Rancho Observer, Sioux City Journal, South Bend Tribune, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, St. Petersburg Times, Sun-Gazette, Tallahassee Democrat, Tampa Tribune, Toledo Blade, Tribune, Tribune-Review, Vindicator, Virginian-Pilot, Wall Street Journal, World Jewish Digest.
The Blue states of Iowa, New York and Wisconsin seem also to have been targeted…
I’ve got a few documentaries to recommend for everyone. In particular Colorado Springs. First, how about FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO about the means American Fundamentalist Churches sow division and hatred between peoples. Its climax is set in the Springs, but no local commercial movie theater will dare screen the film. It did visit Colorado College, so we’ll have more to report on the film and its director later.
FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO -Trailer
Next, a recent investigation into the forces moving behind the sensationalizing of NINE/ELEVEN. It’s called FABLED ENEMIES and you can view it online.FABLED ENEMIES
Also online is an investigation of the tragedy of the USS Liberty, an American Navy surveillance ship that had the misfortune to witness the Israeli preemptive attack on Egypt in 1967. LOSS OF LIBERTY recounts how Israeli jets were forced to attack the Americans to cover their tracks, killing 34 sailors and wounding 171, and the US administration had to cover-up the incident because it was determined to keep portraying Israel as America’s ally.LOSS OF LIBERTY
In the good judgment of the cops
‘Sign here on this ticket for speeding and failure to wear a seat belt (of course!). The bad news is that you have to go to court on this one.’ Thus spoke the cop as the woman sped toward her escape from being raped! In the good judgment of the cops one cannot depend, this case in point.
From our favorite paper, The Gagzette… Woman says traffic cop ignored her claim of rape This story has the ring of truth to it, as anybody stopped by the ticket-writing happy CS PD before surely can sense.
The Gazette stalethinkers
COLORADO SPRINGS- The comical Gazette editorial staff today ranted against the Colorado Springs area’s atheist community in a headliner opinion piece, where the stalethinkers of The Gazette pedantically explained in their Bible Talk editorial opinion column ‘why rude guests are not welcome’.
The highlight of this comic strip was the stalethinker writer claiming that the atheists were ‘rude’ just from calling themselves ‘freethinkers’. That hurts their Christian feelings…booh-hoo-hoo… bring out the red, white, and blue hankies now. They claimed that ‘a few atheists have their panties in a twist again’ unlike the ever so courteous Gazette stalethinkers!
The stalethinkers base all their beliefs, they would have us believe…lol, because they are not free enough in their thinking to not follow the Bible all the time (but not so literally since they love killing so much). They believe in a stalethinking brand of Christianity that says the rich are God’s Chosen Ones, because they can freely and stalely kick the poor around all the time. Not to mention blow them up, shoot them down, and waterboard them at will.
I love these stalethinker farts from The Gazette! They called me up recently (3 weeks ago) and said that my subscription had expired several months ago, whereupon I replied let it be so! I’m still getting the staleness though? What should I do, tell them that I shall sue them unless they pay me for delivery to my house of their rag? I feel like I am ecologically personally destroying the planet by allowing this stalemate to continue. Adverts for Kohls, Safeway, Kroger, and Albertsons be damned! I don’t got religion like the stalethinkers at The Gazette do!
Tattoos and Ayn Rand Thought
———– The Gazette editorialist got out his little Ayn Rand ‘Atlas Shrugged’ book last Monday, waved it in the air, and pronounced it a good thing that El Paso County (Big Bad Government!) was no longer going to inspect tattoo parlors in the area. This is the same nut case at the paper that is all ‘for the troops’. Well, who does he think goes to many of these tattoo parlors? Well, it is the troops, Sir.
The Gazette is run my a bunch of sad sack ideologues who are always against Big Government, except when Big, Big, BIG GOVERNMENT is destroying somebody else’s country and making Big, Big, BIG BUSINESS a killing in tax payer paid government contracts. But when it comes to protecting the troops from getting AIDS or Hepatitis at the tattoo parlor, well The Gazette is against the County checking out the sanitation there! Sick. See below…
———————————-
July 14, 2008 – 9:57PM The Gazette
SELF-POLICING TATTOO JOINTS
Don’t involve county in body art
You walk into Bob’s Tattoos seeking service. You want a bone through your nose and the Virgin Mary etched into your arm. Something’s not right. You’re struck by the stench of kitty litter and other strange smells. You’re introduced to 300-pound Bob, the parlor’s founding partner and managing artist. Bob wears a grubby muscle shirt and Dolfin shorts to show off his own tattoos. They don’t look so good, but that’s OK because Bob explains he got them in prison, and not at Bob’s Tattoos. What do you do?
A. Look for a certificate from the county that says Bob’s OK to pierce your nose and jam ink into your skin.
B. Leave, and do some research. Speak with multiple peers with good body art, and ask them which parlors do it best. Find a reputable shop, check it through the Better Business Bureau, and then personally assess the risks.
Unless you’re ultra brave, the correct answer is “B.” After all, even Bob’s Tattoos could look good on the day of a county inspection. And even a once-good tattoo business can go downhill after getting a stamp of approval from the county.
The right tattoo on the right part of the right person can be a fine thing. But good, safe results aren’t something the county can or should try to ensure. If ever there were an activity in which the buyer must beware, it’s the business of shopping for body art.
The mere fact that so-called painful cuts to El Paso County’s budget involve the elimination of tattoo parlor inspections indicates fiscal excess. The health department has no legitimate reason for spending nearly $30,000 annually to inspect tattoo parlors.
It’s not in question that dirty body art tools can lead to infection and disease. But nobody is required to commission a tattoo, and the majority of citizens never do. It’s a risk anyone can easily avoid by simply choosing against body art. Those who do seek tattoos and such ought to be responsible for assessing the risks themselves. The tattoo-free public shouldn’t be forced to subsidize needless, private, elective bodily expressions.
The county’s Board of Health plans to vote Wednesday on whether to permanently eliminate inspections, and most certainly they should. Tattoo artists are organizing to converge on the meeting, however, urging the county to maintain inspections.
The fact that responsible tattoo parlors favor county inspections isn’t surprising. An approval certificate is like a valuable reward for good, clean practices. The inspection requirement creates a layer of bureaucracy that serves as a hurdle to entry. It dissuades cheap, startup fly-by-night operators from wanting to set up shop and compete. It also eases concerns of customers who might otherwise ask lots of questions or chicken out of getting tattooed.
Tattoo artists, however, don’t need government to give them a useful stamp of approval. Reputations speak for themselves, and stamps of approval are best obtained through private associations of professionals. Free publications that sell advertising, for example, pay private auditing associations to verify circulations. Without the audit, it’s hard to compete. Lawyers join private associations, such as the American Bar Association, that enforce standards on members and offer assurances to customers. Good tattoo artists, if they wish to separate themselves from the riffraff, need to form a credible organization that sells a stamp of approval to those who qualify.
No stamp of approval, however, should weigh in too heavily when it comes to letting someone inject ink beneath your skin. Few transactions require more personal information and diligence than the purchase of a tattoo. Good, safe tattoos aren’t something the county can or should guarantee. Nothing can replace the ages old advice: Buyer beware. Besides, tattoos are free-spirited expressions of individuality. Don’t involve the county in what’s otherwise a solid act of rebellion.
Community should learn to welcome immigrants
Imagine my surprise today, to open up The Gazette and see the Metro section of the paper with a column by opinion writer Barry Noreen titled “Community should learn to welcome immigrants.” I have read this paper for two years now and had not yet found any commentary by its opinion writers that I agreed with 100%. And here it was at last!
Noreen spotlighted the efforts of Megumi Nakamura and others in the community to befriend immigrants coming into the US, rather than to persecute them. Reminds me kind of the All- American holiday Thanksgiving even, where American immigrants made an annual meal to thank those that were kind and gave them assistance. For Megumi, everyday should be Thanksgiving American style, rather than persecution American style with ICE, which is the new name La Migra has given to itself.
One thing missing from the commentary though, was any thought that most immigrants are fleeing from countries that our own US government has Big Time helped mess up. Fact is, our own government is all over the world right now, messing up the lives of other peoples. It has been this way for decades now, too. So we should try to stop allowing government officials to do that so that maybe we would have less poor people entering our US Borders looking for a new life, for their families and their kids. And we should learn to welcome those that do enter meantime.
Barry Noreen, thank you for being brave and bucking the Far Right trend over at The Gazette. It was a brave thing to have written the column the way you did. Thanks.
SUV sales crash, oil up, GM on verge of going under
I just put a bumper sticker on my car that states simply that ‘America needs an oil change’. That’s code for America needs a policy change on energy issues, which won’t be easy, because the US is still run by THE STUPIDS.
Take our press full of dimwit papers like our own local Colorado Springs Gazette. At the Gazette, they are still into denial about Global Warming, climate change,, and declining world energy supplies. They are sill pushing for unrestricted suburban sprawl, unrestricted Pentagon-military-industrial welfare, and maximum consumerism. ‘What crisis?’ is their motto, which is reminiscent of Alfred E. Newman’s line ‘What me worry?’ Reading the Gazette is a little like reading Mad Magazine, except they’re not joking and really believe the madness they push!
Meanwhile, nobody can unload their lead balloons, the SUVs of America. Detroit is going under (I know that we thought it already was under, but..) big time, and all THE STUPIDS can do is plan a war against Iran! What geniuses they are!
America needs an Oily Dick change, but is the new one of Oily Barack going to be much better? America stands by with their thumbs up their butts hoping so, but the future looks grim, since THE STUPIDS are still running the entire show. That would be the business men.
Pro-militarism Gazette puff pieces have helped endanger GI lives
The Colorado Springs Gazette is always promoting military contractors and pushing for more warfare to keep that weapons industry moving, and has done this hiding behind the great pretense that they supposedly only care about American troops. That’s their big lie and many readers fall for it.
But let us look for a moment at KBR, one of those war profiteers that The Gazette has done puff pieces in their paper for previously in the not so distant past. KBR is in the press now once again for their company policy of having deliberately exposed American soldiers to toxic chemicals that are deadly fatal. See The Boston Globes recent article titled Witnesses link chemical to ill US soldiers
So cut back to The Gazette’s puff piece for KBR titled WORKING FAR FROM HOME By the way, KBR is actually the name of Halliburton these days, the company Dick Cheney came from. Notice how The Gazette puffed for these guys in 2001 like they were God’s gift to America. We in Colorado Springs need to expose the lying propaganda of The Gazette, and point out how it helped expose American soldiers to deadly poisons. What a sorry ass newspaper!
Protesters forget thinking cap stamina
COLORADO SPRINGS- Such an unfortunate characterization of the J&P.
In the Gazette coverage of the Air Force Academy graduation, the paper featured this teaser on the front page: “War protesters bail early.” The article on page 8 began: “Air Force Academy cadets apparently are made of sterner stuff.” We can’t deny “while the cadets and their families sat through the early morning fog and drizzle, war protesters left rather than wait for the late-arriving President Bush,” but Springs activists rarely show anything but tenacity in making their point. Why would they leave early and give the media such a predictable pot shot? Do we chalk it up exclusively to our antagonistic local daily newspaper?
While it might be unfair to compare the brawn of military officers to that of septuagenarian activists, I fear this was a test of brains, and the space cadets came out on top.
The AFA had announced that President Bush was expected at 9am. His motorcade not having turned up by then prompted diverse deductions: he might have sneaked through another entrance, he might have choppered in, or he might have been called away to emergency affairs of state. Activists might also have become discouraged by the diminishing flow of cars into the event. A lack of passersby is the surest way to take the wind out of a protester’s banner. But the number of incoming having petered to nil would have been the giveaway to Bush’s impending arrival.
A presidential motorcade along an interstate has few escape routes, and so cannot begin before all vehicles have been cleared from its course. Escorts block all on-ramps over 30 minutes before to ensure the procession will encounter nothing to threaten its pace. That the AFA gates were advertised as open to attendees until 9:30am puts to lie the suggestion that Bush was expected by nine. The path would not have been unencumbered until the later time. Indeed police did not begin emptying the interstate until after nine. The motorcade sped into the North Gate by 9:45. Bush was not due to speak until eleven.
Did the protesters lose heart and/or heat? I think what the participants forfeited was thinking for themselves. Through the PPJPC, activists let the AFA relegate demonstrations to the minimally visible North Gate, and they let the AFA misinform them about Bush’s ETA. Compound this to the lukewarm organizing effort and contradictory announcements of the action plans. It’s hard to see how the J&P could have done worse if they’d tried. Low turnout, TV interviews of unprepared interviewees, and the rag-tag bunch ultimately offering the Gazette a pithy swipe at their capitulated spirit.
These are otherwise very determined activists. Usually their self-sacrifice does not include their very mission.
Here’s the full text:
AFA graduation notebook
May 28, 2008 – 5:15PM
By BILL REED and LANCE BENZEL
THE GAZETTEProtesters miss late-arriving Bush
Air Force Academy cadets apparently are made of sterner stuff than anti-war protesters.
While the cadets and their families sat through the early morning fog and drizzle, anti-war protesters left rather than wait for a late-arriving President Bush.
By the time Bush, whose motorcade was behind schedule, passed through the North Gate, a solitary protester – carrying a sign reading, “War is not the answer” and flashing a peace symbol – was all that remained of a band of 20 people who planned to greet the president.
The rest cleared out amid slate-gray skies before the president pulled past the gate at 9:45 p.m., 45 minutes after his scheduled arrival.
South of the academy, five other protesters stood on a hillside overlooking Interstate 25 near the Fillmore exit and unfurled a cryptic message.
Their 50-foot long banner read, “Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin,” an Aramaic phrase meaning, “It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided.”
The biblical figure Daniel interpreted the so-called “writing on the wall” as a judgment against the king Belshazaar, determining that his acts had been weighed and found deficient and that his kingdom would be divided.
“We wanted to speak to him in a language he purports to listen to, which is the Bible,” said Eric Verlo. “It was a great location for the motorcade to see us.”