Though the contingent from Colorado Springs was small, this year’s nuclear disarmament protest drew 50 activists to remote Weld County, home of N-8, one of 49 missile silos in the state of Colorado. Activists joined in from Denver, Fort Collins and Boulder, and drew the interest of a local Fox-TV Affiliate. See the M.A.D. Mutually Assured Destruction Minuteman III Mockups in Loring’s pictures at CSACTION.ORG.
Poor Richard writes that his bookstore will neither carry the Ted Haggard expose nor host a book signing by its author Mike Jones, sex worker to reluctant habitue, Ted Haggard. Skorman can do what he wishes, but to say the reason is because the book is badly written is a cop out. Any bookseller in this city has to admit they carry a not inconsiderable mass of atrocious dreck. Bad books sell, and alas Richard’s stand for a higher literary standard is the first to my knowledge.
I think Jones’ choice of an incompetent writer to ghost his Haggard Days memoir is likely spot-on for a Colorado Springs audience. What’s the best selling book here? The home-grown LEFT BEHIND series! I guarantee you a fourth grader has not encountered less inspired writing.
Not that our city is atypical, even today’s NYT bestsellers play to a descending literary IQ. From Dan Brown to whoever is your cheesy favorite I’ve no doubt. This phenomena was clocked most distinctly when Stephen King was given the 2003 National Book Award for his contribution to [the sales of] American Letters. What a banner year it was, 2003.
So why pick on poor male escort Mike Jones? I think it’s pure political cowardice. The New Life Crew and their fallen gay-bashing leader have done irreparable harm to the progress of acceptance of homosexuals. Here’s a chance to teach them something about from where comes their misplaced hatred, and Mike Jones stands without allies to do it. Jones is not an opportunist, he’s a hero doing a dirty job. Maybe the right man for the dirty job, to crack a cheap joke, but if Jones was truly out for himself, he’d have taken a mega-fortune from a conglomeration of fundie gay-hating institutions interested in keeping Haggard in the pulpit. Remember Bill O’Reilly’s non-consensual phone-sex while penetrating himself with a lifelike vibrating phallus? He and Fox paid an undisclosed fraction of a BILLION to make that story go away.
If I knew THE BOOKMAN could handle the heat of accusations that we were only doing it for the attention –we’ve exceeded our limit, thank you KVOR creeps particularly– my bookstore would of course host this reading and book signing. And I commend Jones for tastefully steering past whatever might have been the unwelcome lascivious play by play.
I believe the Ted Haggard comeuppance is of capital importance for Colorado Springs, not to gloat about Haggard’s suffering or about the humiliation of his flock, but to lift the veil from their self-hatred of homosexuals. Haggard is unrepentant about this by the way, and if I might offer a simplified analysis, he hates gays because he hates himself. What reason has he the temerity to suggest that we should hate them?
Let’s welcome Mike Jones to our town. Jones unmasked the Haggard hate monster, let him claim the lair. Jones can satiate our curiosity, feed the spectacle, accept our thanks for showing personal integrity, and move this story along. I most certainly think it took a lot of bravery for Mike Jones to do what he did. He showed the kind of courage we can’t even summon, as we deliberate about whether to extend him our hand.
Perhaps as a community of independent booksellers we can do it. Why ever are we afraid of the religious right? They don’t buy our books. When Christians do buy a book they buy it new from an Inspirational Bookstore, because it feels like a more deliberate investment in their faith, I’ve heard it explained, sort of like paying down on a tithe or Indulgence.
Do I fear the Fundamentalist wrath? If they’re under-educated, under-literate, bigoted ditto-heads, of course I do. I fear them like I would Brown Shirts or union busters. Fundamentalist have a terrible tradition for that kind of immorality. Ask anyone in retail, if a customer declares themselves to be a Christian, you actually have to watch them closely because experience has shown they are more likely to try to steal or cheat. Probably because that’s the sort of conflicted person who is drawn to simplistic religious dogma in the first place.
Of course I fear them. But Ted Haggard’s fall must not go without every spotlight we can summon. He’s still behaving like a bastard and we really should shout him down. Jones has given us Haggard’s Achilles Heinie/ [Meth]Habit, let’s use it! If no one is really going to step up to ask Mike Jones to town, I most certainly will. I’m sorry I came late to this discussion but good grief!
President Putin and Gorbachev have been in the news, both denouncing the US’s military expansionism and encirclement of Russia. Also in the news, is the increased US government interventionism into Africa. Assisting them in this effort, is the interventionist liberal Left that helps hype the US government case against ‘Arabs, China, and genocide’, linking all 3 into excuses for supporting their own government’s imperial interests in Africa.
China gets one third of its oil from Africa, and the US wants to lock that off. White American and British liberals want to help Blacks out, just not so much in the home countries. It’s a touchy feely thing for them, and especially also for the Hollywood types, that seem so drawn to the liberal interventionist cause. And liberal think tanks like the Carter Center and Bill Gates Foundation, too. Darfur is now celebrity cause #1, edging out Tibet, celebrity cause from the past.
Of particular comic interest, has been the Condi Rice response to Putin’s and Gorbachev’s remarks against NATO and the US government. Rice accuses them of being locked into prolonging the past’s antagonisms, and chides them for not still believing that the US Right Wing imperialists are just mighty good friends of Russia!
This sort of line shows how determined that the US is to crush Russia, and is believable only to American six packers watching Fox for their propaganda feeds. And maybe some of the nitwits that work for the Gazette management team, perhaps? There, they are locked in a heroically stupid battle to convince their readers that the earth’s environment is being well protected by corporate interests. Good luck, Nitwits. lol…
Meanwhile at home in the proPeace camp, all seemed to be hypnotized by concentrating all their attention on just 2 things: Iraq and Darfur. That’s good prep for the coming elections for them no doubt. Then, the Media and the Democratic Party will turn that focus into trying to get us to cheer lead Hillary against Rudy, or some other such nauseating carnival. Activists around cheer leading a DP candidate will try to convince all the Peace Movement that the best hope for Darfur and Iraq will lie in voting into office the Democratic Party pushed Saviour.
All this makes one wanna weep, as the Pentagon, CIA, and legions of US/ British/ Israeli mercenaries continue their project of winning the destruction of China’s and Russia’s future in our new and drained corporate-led world ecological fall.
Mad Max beyond belief, and even Biblical in proportions. Yet another Great Flood perhaps is under way? This time with toxic and radioactive waters, too…
It was not censorship for Venezuela to not renew a public TV license to RCTV, a station that fabricated news coverage during the US backed coup effort against Venezuela’s government in 2002. If any TV station tried to do the same in the US, its top officials would go to jail for years on charges of treason.
In the US, even top Democratic Party officials are having to deal with the same sort of manipulation of information by news outlets, like Fox News. Certainly governments have a right to ensure that national news outlets don’t cooperate with foreign powers in trying to foment presidential coups. See also the ZNet published commentary, ‘Venezuela and Media: Fact and Fiction‘ that comments about that.
Luckily for Venezuela, the people of that nation were able to thwart the ruling elites of their society from helping the US government kidnap their president in the same way and manner that Haiti’s president, Aristide, was kidnapped by the US military. Below is an excellent 1 1/2 hour long documentary about how Venezuela’s private corporate media cooperated in trying to install that made-in-US coup d’etat into power that can be seen free from youtube in 8 parts.
If you are interested in conspiracy theories like those surrounding 9/11 and the Kennedy Assassination, then check this film out. This was certainly a conspiracy carried out against the Venezuelan people from Washington DC.
Llaguno Bridge: Key to a Massacre
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Now the question is how much heat can we apply quickly?
Not advocating the use of Molotov Cocktails or anything, but that is a predictable result of continued Bush-league dictatorship.
We struggled uphill, against an Attorney General, Supreme Court, and an Army of dead voters in order to send people to Congress who were going to Stand Up to the Commander Guy in Chimp. It’s things like this which make me an Anarchist rather than a progressive.
There are those on the Hill with consciences, but no consensus.
What I’m hoping most for, right at this minute, is that it’s a subtle trap, that it’s designed to make the stupid mother fucker get on DumFox Noise and start gloating about how he is the new dictator, all shall bow before him and the rule of law no longer applies…
Which would then hasten the coming revolt and the mutiny that is growing in the ranks of the military.
Or his stupid ass being dragged out of the White House in handcuffs.
Now I think we can begin to put a precise figure on the high cost of idiocy. Here is what it took the Australian government in OZ dollars to get Hicks back out of direct US hands. A mere 1/2 million dollars for one single one way flight!
I’m sure boondoggles like this one in the name of the so-called ‘War Against Terrorism’ are bound to continue to just really please the folk down under. Aw Hell! The tax payers don’t really need the money spent on reality anyway, do they? It’s just paper…. Who ever knew that torture would cost so much? Wonder if Fox’s hit show ’24’ ever mentions this sort of stuff on their ‘reality’ program?
ANOTHER chance? Good God where have these reporting agencies had their noses (and the rest of their heads) shoved for the past 4 years?
Every day, in every way he has consistently said “I am the Leader, you MUST follow me, and Billy Graham says you are an Heretic if you don’t”
Which has been and is the same “defense” he has made since the Big Announcement of last monday. or was it the monday before last?
I’m so confused….
There was a report on DumFox, somebody post a link for it if you can find it, that “militant insurgents” dressed as American soldiers passed through three check points, onto an American base, killed several Americans and escaped….
uuummmm… How do they know (since the killers escaped) that they were in fact insurgents, and not American insurgents?
Or American insurgents cleverly disguised as jihadi insurgents cleverly disguised as American soldiers to throw off the logic trail?
How, in fact, do we know that DumFox news was not, in fact, LYING THROUGH THEIR COLLECTIVE ear about this?Sanity claws.
that last is a link from my canadian perspective.
But we get the Chimp’s Big Announcement, redux.
I hope this time he does dance nekkid at the podium while singing “I’m a little crackpot, hear me shout” the entertainment value would make it worth tuning in.
This is a link to a transcript (an Official Court Document) (unlike what Fox might put out on their shows, we would have to take their fair and balanced word on it.) of a hearing over the alleged “trademark infringement” of DumFox news and Bill O’Really, (see, I parodied their names so they can’t sue ME for libel, like the whiney little tittie babies they actually are)
In the accusations of Mr Al Franken putting on his book cover the images of GW, his Vice-chimp and everybody’s favorite dick, Bill O’Really and Ann “the pie in the face was a terrorist act, really!” Coulter, alongside Al Franken, and using an interview on DumFox news as a backdrop.
And made the almost believable claim that listeners and regular viewers of “The Oh, Really? Fiction ”
would be easily confused enough to buy the book thinking it was somehow sanctioned by DumFox News.
The attorney for Fox Networks mentioned first the idea that Fox had 80 million subscribers. On a network where nobody needs to subscribe to begin with, and the judge questioned the assertion, by asking if since his Basic cable package includes DumFox (my word not his) News channel, as do ALL basic Cable packages, would that mean that he himself was a “subscriber”?
The attorney backed off the 80 million claim very quickly, and said that well, the cable companies have a way of counting how many viewers tune in the show more than 1 minute per week, which lets out channel surfing, and said the number of viewers who watched that regularly (!) (!!!!!) was 19.5 million.
Now watching 1 minute per week wouldn’t make me a regular subscriber of anything, or so I would think.
And those like Al Franken or our friends at Media Matters or just any independent thinker who would actually take the time to see what other people are saying before putting them down, would actually be included in DumFox’s bizzare accounting scheme.
Then she (the lawyer was a lady, or at least female, but I am a nice guy and would call just about any woman on the earth a lady…) comes up with this amazing piece of twisted accounting that
“as many as 8% of the regular audience might be deceived” (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Ummm… eight percent of the people who watch DumFox news are so confused that they would think a book by AL FRANKEN was actually supported by either Mr Oh,Really? or DumFox in general…..
gee, that must mean that all the times they put down Mr Franken BY NAME and with his picture prominently displayed, are wasted on 8% of their regular viewers..
8 percent out of nineteen and a half MILLION people are supposed to be that stupid. That would be more than a million and a half people are so STUPID they can’t be trusted to not buy a book, without being assisted by the Legal Team of DumFox News and the enforcement of the courts.
and these are the ones DumFox proudly trumpets are its hard core audience.
Let me tell you, that means that Fox Networks not only believes that ALL of Americans are too STUPID to be trusted to make their decisions without the leadership of themselves, but the CORE of their audience are too stupid to be trusted even WITH their guidance.
Maybe they themselves are not the great leaders they trumpet themselves to be?
Cheney said on DumFox news last night that the president has the final say on the course of the war, Mr Bush is about to make the same announcement tonight, I think in a few minutes.
Cheney also said that the policy course is going to be for the next 3 or 4 decades.
Apparently congress doesn’t matter, and neither do the American People.
Also on Yahoo news they finally admitted to the kids hanging themselves, added 5 more to the list and said that there were others, but not confirmed.
Squeaky, baby, hang in there and we still love you_
She was the one who walked up to President Ford on the golf course and pointed a loaded .38 in his insipid face… then pulled the trigger, nothing happened, a swarm of Secret Service thugs wrestled her to the ground while she was still frantically pulling the trigger and screaming “the fucking gun won’t go off” over and over.
Interesting side note, not one but Three war criminals Ford and Nixon et al supported died in jail this year. Slobodan Milosevic, whose mass murders outnumbered Saddam’s by at least 5x…. Agustin Pinochet of Chile who only turned in a modest 2.5x performance, And lastly the saddest sack of them all last Friday.
Did you notice that Pinochet is referred to on DumFox news as the Chilean “Strongman”? Not tyrant, criminal, despot, dictator or whatever… Strong Man… has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?
I came across an article today that makes me really chuckle. For years now, a certain type of tourist has been going in groups to places like Cuba, the former Sandanista Nicaragua, and in earlier times, to China and the exSoviet Union. The purpose? Why to see what a revolution was really like! This type of travel by liberals and radicals earned the derisive label, ‘revolutionary tourism’ from conservatives.
Today, the biggest sponsor of this type of excursion for the liberal Left is through the organization ‘Global Exchange’. There are a very few other miniscule companies also that compete for liberal centavos, but Global Exchange is the big one. And head of that group, Medea Benjamin, is a diehard Democratic Party liberal voter, despite a brief Green fling. Today, she is a pilar of the Progressive Democrats of America and the Anybody But Bush mindset. So it really freaked me out, to find that Rupert Murdoch is now promoting travel that can only be described as the polar sameness to Revolutionary Tourism, which would be Reactionary Tourism, of course! What a brilliant man. Look in the travel section of his Sun newspaper chain for further details.
Well, I lied. Reactionary Tourism, as founded by Murdoch, cannot be found within the travel sections of his tabloids, but rather in the ‘news’ sections. We can probably look for Fox News to fill us in more about this reactionary way of travel in the days ahead, too. But what genius to found this idea of reactionary travel that Murdoch has had! And here are the people, Peter Worthington, noted Canadian homophobe, his noted Canadian hyperZionist father-in-law,David Frum, and that old adorable Reagan buddy, Ed Meese. Look ’em up in Wikipedia. The threee musketeers of reaction! But where to send them to?
See the luxury of Guantanamo!
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.
There must be a file somewhere to which political strategists turn if they need a media diversion.
Is it filled only with pedophiles?
Unpopular war? Bring in Michael Jackson. Really atrocious Zionist behavior? Reel in JonBenet’s wannabe. Congress renounces human rights? Paging Representative Foley.
Apparently Foley had been chasing congressional pages for some time and the GOP knew about it. That’s the point isn’t it?
The GOP lack of concern for the protection of America’s high school pages is less relevant to me than the Republican choice to play the Foley card now. They’re sacrificing one of their own, but look, suddenly the Republican congressman from Florida is not one of their own! According to Fox News, and the AP, Mark Foley is… a Democrat. And Hastert too! Look at that! Those dirty child-buggering Democrats! And right before an election!
Let me say, too, how I think this reflects on the congressional pages. We’re told these are the cream of the crop of America’s high school students. What kind of cream is it that rises to Washington eager to be playthings for politicians? Do we excuse their precociously licentious misbehavior as owed to being star-struck? What kind of high-gradepoint cream is that? Star-struck by pedophilic attention. Are our highschoolers so bright that they recognize immediately how to get ahead in Washington, selling your ass to your elders?