OccupyAfghanistan vets Jeremy and Brittany Westmoreland attracted Patriot Shop teabag Jim Kross to their vow to destroy our local occupy. I'd like to say as little as possible about this lamentable development, except to document today's escalation. Occupy Colorado Springs held forth on the sidewalk in front of Memorial Hospital this Saturday, making a plea for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE. Across the street once again were our threat-making stalkers, fortunately not reprising their Westboro Baptist tauntings, but sitting in their truck as OCS's original heckler Jim Kross finished his cigar. We weren't many, but of course the recent news stories didn't help recruit participants, claiming that OCS is so against the troops, that it kicked out members because they were soldiers. And not more accurately, because they initiated a witch hunt against occupiers who weren't showing solidarity with the US military's occupy movement, OccupyIraq, OccupyAfghanistan, OccupyLibya, veni, vidi, vici. We were in the unusual position of trying not to elicit honks of support from the passing traffic, in view of standing outside a hospital, but drivers signaled their enthusiasm in friendly ways. We discussed repeating this healthcare action soon, it was such an easy sell. Eventually Patriot Kross came over to film us as he made his best taunts. The Westmorelands watched from the truck and after Kross was through, they drove back and forth flipping us off. At first Kross denied any knowledge of the dozen fliers we'd found taped and pinned around the hospital's perimeter. The fliers were "wanted" posters which offered a bounty for the eviction or firing of certain occupiers. The fliers bore Kross's email address and website. He conceded they were his, or belonged "to one of [his] identities," whatever, and then he named the reward, said the amount may have grown since he looked online, and then solicited the occupiers present. We had already removed the fliers he'd circulated around the hospital, from trees, street signs, walls and doors. We had found some fliers downtown on our way to the action. This one was taped to the office building door. Jim Kross's animosity for Occupy goes back to the original GAs, when he used to videotape from the circle's center and exploit the opportunity it gave him to counter everyone's statements. He hadn't been harassing OCS actions until last week when OCS held its NO WAR ON IRAN event. Kross made a gleeful reappearance with Raven Martinez counter-protesting what she considered an anti-troop message. Speaking of Raven, I received this Facebook message on Friday, from her daughter's account which Raven uses when she finds her account blocked... Are those the words of an 11-year-old? "WATCH UR BACK"? Neither Raven nor the Westmorelands seem to understand the line they cross with their threats. On Tuesday Raven defended her comment on NMT asking me what I'd do if my home went up in flames. She said I needed to take it in the context of her talking about soldiers, police and first responders, ignoring the context Soldier Westmoreland had created with his vow to burn
Tag: Teabaggers
Right wing blogger asshole Andrew Breitbart died of shame, obviously
More likely gout. Obviously Breitbart's body lacked the bilious elasticity of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. Speaking of which, were you in the loop on this email joke? A young black Limbaugh asks his mom; "Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?" To which his mother replied: "Don’t even go there Rush! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!" Probably you'd find that joke more crude than either a Limbaugh or Breitbart mother would deserve, but imagine that the actual subject of the email was President Obama and his mother. The real story is that such an email was forwarded by Montana Chief US District Judge Richard Cebull to his inner circle, with the following personal note: “Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.”
Happy Earth day, to us!
Four decades in the making, and at the FIRST Earth Day suggestions were made to stop destroying Earth. Which, since any habitable Other Planet is decades in the future, and Earth happens to be our ONLY life support mechanism until then, and the destruction could kill Earth long before then... At the First Earth Day, Public Transportation was touted. Since then, the SUV has taken over the roads, the roads have been expanded, still not enogh to satiate the Single Passenger Car Monster. The Oil and Coal industry fight very hard against public transportation, call it "socialism". There's a growing industry in Solar Power, which the Oil and Coal industries, and the automakers, sick their TeaBag attack dogs on any possibility of Government assistance in the advancement of the technology. While and at the time lining up every budget cycle, or as they call it "Feeding Time", sticking their fat corporate snouts in the Welfare Trough. Disposable packaging was a newer technology, only a few decades old. Now that has mushroomed, (mushroom is a good image, it's the fruiting carpophore of Mold, if you will: the Flower of Decay) as have Disposable Everything. Earth might have given herself a gift in the form of increased vulcanism. Since "our" political leaders can't pull themselves away from the Corporate Welfare Trough or grow any kind of Spinal Fortitude to stop the Oil and Automobile and Disposable Toxins industries from killing our planet, at least it will slow down Global Warming. Maybe long enough for them to get their fat porky Collective Arse in gear. Mama Nature is doing for us what we should have been not-too-damn-greedy to do for ourselves.Not being a killjoy, I hope, We do need to inject a LOT of righteous anger into the discussions today. Not Aggressive Violent Whiny Tantrums like the Tea-Bags throw, but a similar level of energy. Remind the "conservatives" that the root of their name is "conserve". Not, you know, wasting everything in a hedonistic orgy of greed. The ecology is the very root of our economy.
Victoria Jackson plays self at Tea Party
Get over it. Gender equality for the Dennis Miller / Joe Piscopo action.
Tea Partygoers may be embarrassing morons, but they know more than you
TEABAG SPRINGS, CO- Acacia Park overfilled with angry white folks for their Tax Day protest, though talk of actual tax resistance was as unlikely as spilled tea. Instead our local teabags espoused Fox talking points about the illegitimacy of our current government, etc. Aside from the socialist herring, how right they are. The teabags have that over liberals and progressives, they know both parties are irredeemable. Their bucket brigades may be ferrying accelerants, but at least they know the house is on fire. Following Rush Limbaugh's tip for preemptive framing of racist-infiltrator provocateurs, these gentlemen prepared a sign, but set it aside when invariably it pointed to naught but the teabagger beside them. On their lunch hour, a clutch of Palmer High School students decided to march across the park with hastily drawn signs which read "We love Obama." An angry woman (pictured) immediately blocked their way asking: "How old are you? Are you voters?" When they answered no, the woman told them, "If you're not voters, you should leave." But the students marched past her attempts to take their picture and proceeded bravely through the crowd. Their chant of the same refrain "We support Obama" were quickly drowned by the huskier Teabag shouts of "USA, USA." As per the usual musical acts which have accompanied past Acacia Park Tea Rallies, the crowd assembles to what sounds like a Doobie Brothers medley, including Neil Diamond's anthem "They're coming to America," chosen it would seem because "America" figures prominently, and not because it's an homage to immigrants.
Teabonics parlee-voo
While we've been fussing about whether to dub them TEABAGGERS or just TEABAGS, someone's honed in on the pejorative that binds them, TEABONICS --with apologies to African Americans whose variant dialect reflects cultural influence not lack of education or intelligence. Irony of course flies IQ levels above Tea Partygoers, as central to their anti-immigrant anglo-centrism is the insistence that real Americans know English. Here's a Flickr collection of proclamations in Teabonic. My favorite is at right. Today's US exploitation of undocumented workers is a disingenuous equivalent of slavery. Our American economy depends on low wage laborers who can be deported as "illegal" when we want to change them out with cheaper ones. Those tea party faces are the same who opposed abolition and blocked the Civil Rights marchers in Selma.
Tea is the new Kool-Aid
Tea Party Tip #1: THE TEA- You are supposed to dump it into the harbor. You're not supposed to drink it.
Teabag Springs
TEABAG SPRINGS, COLORADO- How did it feel to hear Diane Sawyer talk about our city, poor as dirt, not for lack of resources, landmarks or climate, but so stupid, so corrupt and tax-averse, to have run ourselves straight out of operating funds? Our future has been painted indelibly: dried up parks, extinguished street lights (misquoted as "1/3 of traffic lights," they imagine us that dumb), our services and security compromised, and public spaces boarded until we can float another financial bubble. Not mentioned: the war economy is booming, and many of the private war-profiteers are local. Through whose fingers is the military largess escaping? We knew Springs voters were dumb, our teacup overfloweth, now we're poor folk too.
Tea Party Patriot robes for tiny pee pees
COLORADO SPRINGS- This year for Halloween I'm dressing up like yokel heroes Sean Paige, Richard Randall, Tom Gallagher, and Doug Lamborn, the rabble-rousers behind our local Teabag mobs. They're reveling in the white man anger, against immigrants, ACORN, and taxes for social programs, laughing off accusations of being racist, while probably praying to God their mob doesn't seize upon a passing African American and lynch him. Until recently a Halloween costume like this would have been mistaken to be a ghost, but for the resurgent ugly white man. The Pikes Peak region was crawling with KKK members in the 1930s, and during the Bush years their sons and grandsons snuck to the Texas border to join the Klan's modern incarnation The Minutemen. With a black president clouding the horizon, suddenly these same men and women are rallying. At a recent public meeting, Representative Lamborn chuckled about his fellow malcontents rising up, at "I guess we call them, Tea Parties." A heckler cried out "Clan Rallies." The Lamborn crowd booed, but I bet most of them still have their fathers' robes.
I recognize the voice…
The female voice on the Tea-Party/Konservative Korporate Klan commercials, like “Health Care- Wrong for Colorado, wrong for America, Wrong for YOU”, “Energy Regulation, Wrong for Colorado, Wrong for America, Wrong for YOU!”, “Thinking for yourself – Wrong for Colorado, Wrong for America, Wrong for YOU!” And Demagogues you to Call Senator Udall, tell him not to do anything for anybody but the Corporate Elite Masters. (I can use Demagogue as a verb. I’m from Texas where we make up new words and grammatical rules as we go along. Get used to it) ?It’s the same bitch that does the “Live Crappier, Save Nothing- WalMart” voice-overs. Man, that must suckalot. Her entire career is voiceovers for the Tea Party and other Corporate Whore organizations.
Calling the Tea Party “Patriots” what they really are gets you flagged
On Colorado Springs Craigslist. Chickenshit bastards. They're murderers, pure and simple. Their latest outrage, the LYNCHING of Bill Sparkman in Clay County, Kentucky, just proves their lack of courage, honor or patriotism. But, the outrage doesn't end there... The Local Right Wing are now trying to suppress the reporting of their Shared Guilt with their Killer Koward Komrades.
Teabag Constitution Day, Acacia Park
THE NOT-WITH-MY-TAXES PATRIOTS are holding another tea party tomorrow, to mark Constitution Day Sept 17, 11AM downtown in Acacia Park, where two friends got permission to table there tomorrow to represent the Special Olympics and pass out applications. It's a terrible joke, but these teabaggers bring out my inner idiot. WE ARE TOMORROW going to don robes and false beards and circulate like multi-gendered Jesuses, through the throngs of angry Christians, passing out business cards on which we printed the passage from Matthew, what you did for the least of your brothers... But I'd really like to recruit an intrepid African American male to help me with a hypothesis. I'm pretty sure that at the height of the crowd's passions tomorrow, a single black voice raised against them, without his appearing to have allies nearby, will result in a spontaneous lunge to try to lynch him. Then we'll pounce, with the on-duty portion of the CSPD who aren't attending the event, and arrest the bigots. There won't be anybody left in the park.
No Teabagger, Glenn Beck is a Teabag
We've been calling them teabaggers, the impulsive naysayers to reform and a rededicated social conscience; so named because they decry "taxation without representation." Having lost the election of 2008, their idiocy is no longer represented in Washington by someone they feel they can share a beer with. So they hold "tea parties," minus the jettisoning of capitalist goods. They protest all government spending, question Barack Obama's birth certificate, and rail against immigrants, socialism, and the decline of White America. We call them "Teabaggers," but the term conjures an unmerited sexual act. We should call them "Teabags" instead. I'd like a dittohead wingnut nickname that sounds more like scumbag.
Act Blue is not going to stop Joe Wilson
Progressive websites are raising money to defeat GOP Tourette's poster child Joe Wilson in the next election. Is it going to work? No. You can't stop populist assholes like Wilson, or Vitter, or Delay, or Gingrich, or Lieberman, can you? Incumbent embarrassments have legions of loyal constituents. That's who you have to stop. If you want to stop Wilson you have to insist the South Carolina prosecutor's office isn't dropping charges of domestic violence, disorderly conduct, child truancy, poaching, littering, lying about sales use tax, and loitering at nursing homes trying to register voters. Shroud that crowd in red tape and Joe Wilson's base will head for the hills.
Which Republicans are not assholes?
This Republican has apologized for yelling "YOU LIE" during President Obama's speech to Congress tonight. Does sorry mean anything if he's expecting endless slaps on the back from the Glenn Beck fans? Joe Wilson, Asshole Party house representative from South Carolina is one of the DC hosts of the Teabaggers 9/12 anti-health reform tour. Not one of these honorable gentlemen had the temerity to call George Bush on his obvious lies. At most, President Obama was voicing a difference of opinion. What gave the plantation owner's son from South Carolina a sense that he had an opening to accuse his president of being a liar? Let Representative Wilson make his case. If it turns out President Obama wasn't lying, let them call for a duel. Wilson's confederate sword against the Chief Executive's navy. I'm all for speaking out, but let there be respect for consequences. Maybe the best we can hope for it that Joe Wilson has earned himself a new moniker YOU LIE!
Michele Bachmann urges anti-health teabaggers to slit their wrists, so do it
I may not be not an expert on blood pacts, but I've seen them on TV. You cut your palm or finger with a knife or other sharp edge of opportunity, and let your blood mix with that of your newly-resolved comrade. The Colorado Independent reports that US Representative Michelle Bachmann is calling for a blood covenant from her fellow anti-health reformists, and she wants them to be so determined that they "slit their wrists." We'd like to go the Minnesota congresswoman one further. If the private-insurance-death-panel advocates feel they must defeat health reform because Obama's measures “have the strength to destroy this country forever,” they could prove their resolve by slitting their throats to really commingle their blood!
Tea Party Express bypasses Colorado
COLORADO lost some of its square state stature today when the national teabaggers tour bus took a turn in Albuquerque and went south. The Tea Party Express is headed to DC to protest health care reform, but its two week schedule is going to exclude Rocky Mountain crackers. Coloradans feel the mouth-breathers down our necks everyday, but this marks an evolutionary shift, as ideological cul-de-sac becomes dead end.
Right-wing KVOR radio goon tries to intimidate city council
I snapped this photo at Monday's city council meeting: A stringer for right-wing KVOR radio holds his microphone up to the chamber's amplification system. Curiously, he only assumed this conspicuous stance when the council members were explaining their votes, and then, ONLY for those anticipated to speak against TABOR and its proponents. As the councilmen vied to straddle the fence on the issue, this gentleman would slowly stand whenever someone's reasoning appeared to vacillate against the interests of the anti-tax wingnuts, Local Liberty Action, and teabagger Sean Paige.
Weiss TABOR reform has votes to pass!
COLORADO SPRINGS- I attended a COS city council meeting today, lured by the prospect that Vice Mayor Larry Small was going to call the CS Independent publisher a liar to his face. I'm always excited at the prospect of differences of opinion reaching a level of incivility. Do we care about these issues? Or is it all about liking each other, regardless who's oppressing whom? We gentlemen debaters, after all, are never those affected by the injustices in question. To the city's credit, Small made it a point at the very start of the meeting to make a public apology. He and John Weiss shook hands and that was that. What's more, he cast his vote with Weiss's proposal, a deciding vote, to put repeal of the city's TABOR restrictions on the next ballot. Small is not saying he's for it, simply considering that it might be germane to consult the voters. Where it stands, the city council members declared their intentions on how they will vote tomorrow, and 5-4, they intend to back the proposal. Without any name calling. That said, some pyrotechnics can very easily be a bore. For example, there were grunts from the peanut gallery at this meeting, in particular from ex-editorial page tyrant Sean Paige. The silver-locked loudmouth, now shilling for Local Liberty Action, sat in the back and harrumphed as Weiss gave his reasons for reforming TABOR. Although Paige is no longer with the Gazette, I've seen him gesticulating at local Teaparty rallies. Like his Norquesque mentors, the editorial bully is set on strangling the baby in the bathwater. How satisfying then to see Paige grovel before city council to urge them "not to throw [his TABOR] baby out with the bath water." Paige spoke as if "TABOR proponents" need to be consulted in any ongoing discussions about reforming it. Just because those idiots got the law passed, and doomed municipalities to impoverished services, who is to say their voice should have a grandfather clause? Here's a chance for city council to hear the cries of outrage from Colorado Springs residents who want the damn thing repealed. They want their public services back. TABOR was an initiative which asserted that a citizen couldn't trust their representatives with tax dollars. What does it mean to have councilmen say they "believe in TABOR." They know they shouldn't be trusted? Did they run for election on that slogan? Here's a chance for the city pols to grab the reins. What else are they supposed to be deciding at their jobs? And they took it, with four dissenting opinions. First, Bernie Herpin, who doesn't see any reason to rush to address TABOR's ratchet lunacy. Another no vote comes from Jerry Heimlicher. The meeting's highlight was Councilman Jerry Heimlicher's kiss-fest with Sean Paige. Let Westside voters who rejected Democrat Dave Gardner as an alternative, note what Heimlicher can be very obstinate when he's decided he'd rather give in to the Teabaggers. Two more NOs came from Glen and Purvis. Purvis took the chance to compare proponent
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.