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BLOG'a'Boulder
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Dispatches from Boulder the Damned
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Thursday, August 28, 2008
You have to love this. Britain gets the Olympics next, and because Peking was so, well, damn near perfect - at least to the television audience - keeping up with the Soongs might be a tad difficult. They find small inspiration from the result of their last, eh, thing. That being the Dome, which was to be, I guess, like the Crystal Palace was to the Victorians, a sort of combination of Trade Fair and Art Festiveal, and, er, roller rink and every damn thing and it closed within a year. This partially explained the result, according to one was involved, of "instead of having world-class art, world-class architecture, you got installations some of which looked as if they were designed by people whose last job had been to make a stand for British Gas at a trades fair in Antwerp." Which, eh, is pretty accurate.
Still.
Bill Clinton was masterful Wednesday. I keep forgetting the poor guy has had quadruple bypass surgery. He looks great, he sounded great, informed, and man he's the best speaker out there, better than Obama in that he can touch the common vibrations in all of us. Simple things. Power of our example, not the example of our power. He made that his, and Obama would be foolish not to use it. He may not have won over Michelle - she looked fearful with anger just under that if Clinton did something wrong - but he did not, and the crowd had been given their cue and their love for the guy was thunderous. Even the young, black, and Hillary dubious among them were just shaking their heads in admiration. And gracious thanks. If it was a zipper with Hillary's speech, Bill's was surgical, scarless perfection. He made Obama his descendent, sure, but that was the way to do it.
The Clintons are just too damned good, sometimes, and it arouses suspicion about evil or self profitting that probably isn't there. You could not sell that speech if you didn't believe it. He sold it.
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008
She did good, I thought. It must have been god awful to go through all that, and it is to be hoped Obama is grateful, because there but for fortune and all that.
It bugs me the GOP thinks the VP is a step up in either power or anything over a powerful Senator with seniority. They don't, but after our own people destroyed the school system, few know this, and it seems like the GOP counts on ignorance to win. Irritating.
All of which comes down to Obama himself, who hasn't been Mr. Charisma of late, and has a tough act to follow with his wife and Senator Clinton's speeches. His weakness is that he's something of an empty suit with a lot of potential. Everyone sees that as well as the extraordinary promise. He's smart enough to prime the emotional pump and prepare for a speech for the ages, and that on the anniversary of MLK's "I have a Dream" at the Lincoln Memorial. I keep thinking of Joe Pesci in "My Cousin Vinny". "Let's see, could I possibly put MORE pressure on myself?"
It's Wednesday afternoon, and we wait for Bill Clinton after his wife led a major party nomination for an African American male. One who is as 'white' as any social climbing caucasian could want: smart, educated, productive, and funny. His children just beamed at him, and you cannot fake that. Hard not to be proud. Barack Obama is exactly what we've hoped would emerge from the Great Melting Pot, the Great Experiment, the Democratic Experiment. It came faster than a lot of us imagined, in our heart of hearts. And there he is, smiling, competent and ready to go. Soon, it will be a woman.
The dumb ass barriers are gone, and Dr. King, thank you and those many now forgotten and killed in that struggle. You won for us. We remember. Obama remembers.
Next week, in aggregate with the banking industry just announcing their second worst quarter ever, Hurrican Gustaf might be shredding New Orleans again during the Republican Convention. Aside from the expense and pain, a nod to poetic justice if so. Even nature is insulted enough by the GOP they're getting their face rubbed in it. It will be interesting.
Cannot say that I'm finding the news coverage, or at least the local coverage, objective. Channel 9's team by vocal inflection alone is obviously Republican enthused. Doesn't matter, I don't think, but it's annoying. That sort of stuff has since Tom Brokaw hosted social events for Reagan. Journalists shouldn't do that stuff.
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Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Mrs. Obama came across - her whole family came across - as not just graceful, poised, and sweet, but as someone I'd enjoy talking to and listening to in the elevator, subway, office. She's hot, to my aged eye which has no peer, and smart and funny. Her kids, her brother, and her Mom - a grouping awash in memories of a hardworking man who had debilities and would be in 7th Heaven were he still with us - were not just acceptable to the most vicious bigot's eye but quintessentially American and of the working class who made it. Like I say, you can safely judge people by their dogs and their kids. The Obamas are clearly as American as the sod and flag.
Further, she is so poised and effective that I fail to imagine she won't be a plus factor in campaign and administration. In fact, I was enjoying the prospect of not just a black man being President, but his wife disarming and charming a world I suspect is prepared not at all for her presence and warmth. I really liked her, and I realize on stage is not real life, but real life isn't something likely she'll inhabit for her duration.
Of course, there were assassination plots and people have been taken into custody. Idiots, for the most part, and white supremacists without any ability or possibility of exhibiting such supremacy. In any crowd there'll be plots and insane folks planning to be the next Mark Chapman, but it's only monumental incompetence or the luck of the draw that would allow 'success.' I can well imagine that Invesco Field will be a security nightmare, but we've got to deal with this all the time now.
I suspect a lot of Hillary diehards are, as they claim, old white women bitter their demographic failed to get the nod over Obama. But I also think many supposed Democrats who voted in the primaries were Republicans or further rightests who just wanted Clinton in office because it appeals to their fears and they want that old, known, enemy. Obama is a blank slate, both good and bad in a long campaign. In any case, no Democrat of any intelligence could vote for John McCain. Frankly, neither can any Republican, because McCain has never shown much brain power, and his status is the POW guilt trip he is now inflicting upon the United States. Had McCain not been shot down, we'd have never heard of him. Cruel, but true.
Since the GOP has been far more visibly corrupt than the Clinton years, including numerous gay pedophiles and sexual predators, the response hoped for among the Republican base isn't what it was. Still, they try to flame Clinton and pose as family value giants, where they're nothing of the sort. They can certainly utilize Clinton's attacks on Obama against him, unless she just says "he beat me, that's experience, a learning curve mastered, an accomplishment the GOP never had."
One amusement has been the utter lack of much interest in, or support for, the Recreate 68 idiocy of 'protests' and events. So low has the number of protesters been that streets were reopened long before they were expected to be free. Tens of thousands of predicted protesters are in reality and at most several thousand, and some events had a hundred or so. Peace Vigils on Pearl St. Mall here in Boulder have had more participation.
I take it as a good sign that we've grown up, and no longer associate noise and bombast with creative protest worthy of the name, and that the Sixties are, for a while, dead as a doornail.
Of course, Pakistan - a nuclear Muslim power - had its government collapse, and it doesn't look like thinkgs will change even if Bhutto's widower is given control. That's a huge story, but we have to focus on Clinton, apparently. The incompetent and irrelevant Condi Rice continues her career of ineptitude.
Update: the child predators fear a decline in potential victims, state their case.
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Monday, August 25, 2008
I thought China - heinous government, etc., and all that, of course - did one hell of a job at the Olympics, given everything. The ceremonies were spectacular, and poor England looked rather wan with their presentation for their upcoming games, but who the hell could compete on that level? I think a lot of the complaints I've heard have been hypocritical and forced when not actual malarkey of the first water. Further, I want to visit, surely a momentous event to both the world and the Chinese in particular. This, primarily because I like to eat, and China has the world's best chefs along with France. War and poverty over the centuries do that.
And if 'national spirit' exists, we saw it. The people looked thrilled and concerned for the happiness of the visitors and while all children are cute, Chinese children affect me as if they were my own, and I have none, but you get my point. You can't tell kids to look adorable and happy below a certain age. I judge everyone by their dogs and kids, and I have to say, absent dogs, I like the Chinese based upon my intimate knowledge gained by reading some books and electronic face time at staged evernts. They certainly are one of the world's most attractive people, overall. I say that as someone who sighs over Paz Vega, Ana Faris, and Leslie Bibb, or would sigh if I were within eight generations of their age group.
Anyway, it was a memorable Olympics, and it's always cool when some tiny, obscure nation (Hi! Jamaica!!!!) hauls in a disproportionate number of medals, annoyingly golden in color.
But. China's over and the DNC is here in Denver and all hell (plus surprises!!) is ours till my party waddles out of town. I hope it demonstrates Obama to the standard we have hoped for, and I hope it resonates. I'm not convinced he's up to it, because he has no executive record to judge, but there are signs he is, and he says the right things. He's smart, but there is so much riding on all of this. And that's forgetting the racial issues, which I mention only because it is of huge interest to our hidden bigots.
This is a different election and important - not because of the candidates - but because of the guy they'll replace, easily the worst of the worst Presidents. Our mystique, our competence, our power are all called into question because of his weaknesses, which are legion, and because of his ignorance of his weaknesses. That Dick Cheney is in Georgia puts the kabosh of Rice's supposed influence, and on Bush's supposed supremacy. This is Halliburton's war and Halliburton's world, and we just pay for it.
Fox News has been attacked! Well, no, not really, but their booth is wet.
But, these things are a waste of time, energy and money. Even the dissent is as scripted and worthless as half the speeches and all the commentary. It reminds me of the promoters who hand out lighters for the audience to 'spontaneously' wave them for video moments.
 I would ask that everyone read Christopher Hitchens' piece about the Czech invasion by the Soviets forty years ago, while I was a college newspaper editor and rather clueless. He has a way of summation with the effective evidence that I greatly envy, and why I admire him.
Cheney, and not Rice, is in Georgia and will stay overseas during the Democratic festivities. Cheney is our vice-president yet the major stockholder in Halliburton which has thrived with government, no compete contracts and is therefore our biggest war profitteer. I don't want another VP with anywhere near that clout: placeholder if needed, on the way up newbie, that's fine. No power based VP. That way lies coup.
Good points about Joe Biden in Slate. Not a great choice by Obama, but better than Clinton. People don't understand that only in a weak presidency like Dubya's is the VP powerful. It's a dangerous thing.
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Friday, August 22, 2008
Virtually every day, I cross the small park on the corner of Pearl and Folsom with a memorial to Susannah Chase. Whoever did it should be thanked. It's located, on one side, next to the offices of a huge international environmental protection group, with brick and solar panels and a clean, positive tone to its form. Closer, the park has swings upon which puddleducks shreik and laugh while parents push and laugh with them. Just beyond, a single unit slide and play structure for the under four kids. Then, there's about an acre of open grass.
At the northeast corner, there is a basketball court, always used.
 The memorial is a stone seat with an inscription quite positive in warm feelings towards someone we did not know, except as a name and picture in the paper. The chirpy children from all over - English, Spanish, Japanese, Nepalese, Hmung, and German are the languages I've heard - these puddleducks and their exhausted parents use it a lot to munch sandwiches after using the swings, or playing catch, or just from travelling the paths of Boulder. In the fall, it's covered with the colored leaves of the deciduous, and in summer it's an attractive adornment to the grass and gardens. In winter, it absorbs enough heat to make a surprisingly comfortable stop to adjust your boots.
Susannah Chase, just before Christmas in 1997, was abducted while walking home, beaten near to death with a baseball bat, raped, and driven a block and kicked out of the car. She died the next day. No inroads on the case for a decade till a DNA match was made with a prisoner in Wyoming. He faces trial with a public defender, and now - reality - only sentencing remains. He was a near necrophiliac.
Here in Boulder the Damned, our DA isn't accepting calls for the death penalty for this thug. Of course, the anonymous posters scream for blood, then compare justice to that meted out to football players or men in general or blame the DA for no public pre-trial lynching for a crime a decade old. No, wait. Eleven years ago. My God. A highly decent young lady, from all accounts, met death at the hands of a genuine piece of offal, and a slow torture by fire would be only minimally satisfying to public sadism. And frankly, this guy as emblem of Macho and Misogynism deserves some pain and humiliation. To scream in fear and agony as an utterly innocent young girl once did. If he did it.
But I can see the DA's point: it's an international case, given the murderer is a Chilean, and they don't have the death penalty and if we spend the time and money for vengeance of sorts - money we don't have - it could cost more in the long run if another of our own citizens runs into trouble down along the southwest coast of South America. I mention Chile's location for CU ethnic study and history graduates.
Boulder has experience with its citizens in jail in foreign lands, and once vengeance appears, it becomes like the Balkans or the Caucausus. Or any place where Honor and male vanity is higher than law. Apparently, the Chase family - and peace and relief to them - weren't yowling for blood. There's been enough.
I never met Susannah Chase, who was dumped a few blocks south from her monument. At the time of her murder, I lived only a few blocks beyond that, in the halfway house on Canyon, and there were people I would not be surprised to learn had committed murder, even murders this awful. I didn't like them, and it would be of the level of petty satisfaction to read they were nailed for something like this. Of such emotion are lynch mobs constructed, and I can see it today in the on-line posts to the Daily Camera by the anonymous.
When I read the stone bench's inscription, though, describing Susannah as seeing beauty all around her, I choose, as the family no doubt intended, to honor that request, silently made, and recall our beautiful city once elevated and charmed by her presence, and to see only beauty and the better angels of those about me, and not cave to the cerebral cortex impulse for vengeance.
Aside from the bench, which may be now worn where I frequently rest, and for keeping our eyes on what's important, I thank you, Susannah Chase. And, I will remember. Many will.
The temporary lull in violence in Iraq is not due to the Surge, but to our coming election and the fact that once we're gone, the militia's will hammer it out. Only children and cynics believe otherwise. Iraqi and U.S. negotiators have agreed to a timetable that has all U.S. combat forces withdrawing from Iraqi cities next year and from the country by the end of 2011. This is Obama's plan offered a while ago fleshed out. Both the U.S. and Iraqi governments must sign off on the accord before the U.N. mandate for the occupation expires at the end of this year.
Further, the agreement must still be approved by the Iraqi prime minister and parliament, and being seen as going along with what the U.S. wants is politically unsavory to Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. Some Shiites protested the agreement in Najaf. The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government is growing increasingly hostile to the leaders of U.S.-backed Sunni guerrilla forces known as the Awakening, a movement that began in 2006.
While the rise of the Iraqi army is offered as the chief reason for the improved security - the Army Bushies stupidly disbanded at the beginning - it's the realization that we leave when we can with some semblance of victory that is tamping down the violence. Then they'll go to real civil war.
Oh, for God's sake. McCain's hypocrisy is showing. A man who married wealth after dumping his first wife cannot recall how many houses they own. This is only important because he says Obama is out of touch with the Amerian people. McCain says $5 million a year denotes if you're rich or not, which excludes the Obamas, and he's the one in Italian loafers and so rich he cannot recall how many houses he and his wife own.
Argh. The Bush administration yesterday announced its plans to support a regulation that allows federal health officials to yank funding from any health care providers that don't allow employees to refuse services offensive to their personal beliefs. Critics and supporters of the regulation agree that it covers not just abortion but contraception as well.
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Thursday, August 21, 2008
I wonder how many of our so called gun enthusiasts actually served in the military? Or how many are going to enlist? What about this guy, who subjected the CU Regents to a tirade against preventing He-men such as himself from carrying guns on campus? I'll suspect he's just a Chickenhawk who hoped for just that response, because he himself doesn't want to be on the hook. But, he still can pretend to hero status for 'calling attention' to the supposed problem, one for which there is no solution.
It's pretty well past time that we acknowledge that crimes of passion are often unthinking, and somebody wants to kill their girlfriend because she dumped him is not going to be prevented by knowledge people are packing weapons, nor will he be deterred because he knows he'll be killed. That's the point, idiots. The only thing that would prevent those sorts of crimes are metal detectors that prevent anyone from packing, or carrying large knives.
Fair amount of violence in Boulder last few days, much involving Hispanic surnames, so the Plantlife is in a tizzy over illegal immigration, although there is no evidence any of that is relevant here. Stabbings between drunks at local bars plus one idiot, after head butting a pit bull, got his ear ripped off, for which he should consider himself lucky. Sorry to the dog, who may now have to be euthanized. Sorry, frankly, that the dog's owner and the idiot cannot share the same fate. Such brain power will lead surely to an utter innocent getting ripped apart at some point.
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Wednesday, August 20, 2008
One thing apparent from your first visit out here in the West is that the land, not excluding the mountains, is seemingly designed for mass transit. Mass transit at speed. I love to drive still, but the appeal of a train ride through the Rocky Mountains into tunnels and through forests unseen otherwise is a huge vision, and one I hope is expanded upon.
The flat plains scream for high speed trains and/or monorails. It would make so much sense for DIA to have a zippy monorail down to Colorado Springs, and owned in aggregate either by the airports or the airlines that currently provide that trunk service. To land and change planes, wait for takeoff, wait to land because of overcrowding, is counterproductive both from ecological and business senses. We need to start thinking about some things as utilities, like health and transportation, rather than businesses. Yes, for short periods the capitalists instinct will provide better service and make money. In bad times, they collapse, go on the dole to try to survive, sometimes make it, sometimes not. Meanwhile, other businesses dependent upon them and their employees are in turmoil, and often the nation is as well. Like, now for example.
In any event, it's time to make it easy for the right decisions to be made by private companies. Tax benefits and/or exclusions are a logical way to go.
Here in Boulder, we're up against RTD, a schlerotic and easily spooked private public something that has elected officials and an awful lot of money. It has a quite decent bus system, and light rail in Denver has been a plus and an attractive one. Without it, the Democratic convention would be, if even in Denver, a confusing mess, which it may be anyway. But what was originally to be a light rail of electric propulsion to Boulder and Longmont biodegraded into diesel powered olde school heavy rail usage between the coal trains. I can see it working in theory, and I can see how it can be believed that it won't affect traffic much at all. I can also see that the first time there is an accident - inevitable - the backups and traffic will be a horror, and being America, a huge and baseless reaction will be launched against it.
It strikes me as a real good idea to have - and Simpsons be damned - monorail service between Boulder and Larimer Square. Park and rides with lockers big enough for bicycles. Ten minutes to Denver. No parking fee, no waiting, time to sip coffee standing or sitting, you can sleep later, get home quicker, and likely in a better mood without rush hour. It can be made cheaper. Some trains stop at Flatirons mall area. Others. But getting the express to Denver is a must. Every person aboard nearly equals one less auto.
In Boulder, more people commute in to work retail jobs. You know that from just driving morning rush hour. Their vehicles are a big issue with downtown parking, partly alleviated in recent years. Imagine them saving money and time, even arriving on time, and in far better mood. If they party after, the numbers of drunk driving charges are reduced.
In short, I like mass transit for everyday transportation, and I suspect most people do. We like our cars, but why send the children of pay parking lot owners to Harvard? Why burn gas and accrue irritation?
Hell, if you have to walk a total of four blocks, you might be able to reduce your supposed weekly visits to the gym. Boulder would love this on principle and would actually do it. Others might take a while.
Things are settling down in Georgia, at least temporarily. Russians and Georgians are claiming the usual genocides in the separatist provinces, which opted to join Russia in 1992, but were withheld. I'm afraid the result before us is due to the very dangerous and foolish Bush administration, which gave the wink and nod okay for Georgia to militarily rush in to suppress what could be called the freedom movement in the two provinces.
Russia no doubt was waiting and drooling at the prospect of Bush's stupidity paying off for them, so they've been rubbing our faces in it for two weeks. They have no regard for Condoleeza Rice, and less for her boss, whom they clearly consider, as even his allies consider him, an idiot of the first water. Georgia was feeling her oats, thinking she was backed by the faith and power of Uncle Sam, and discovered as the Shia did in 1992 and the Hmong did in the seventies that really tough guys don't posture and talk tough like Nixon and both Bushes did and do. They really thought, apparently, that US military might would protect them, but that might is elsewhere.
In any case, we're not prepared for a war with Russia.
Obama and McCain are in a statistical tie, and nine percent of American voters say they would be uncomfortable with a black President. I'm surprised its that low, and assume that only the outright bigots would admit it. The soft prejudice of many would be covered by outright lies.
We're supposedly on tenterhooks because Obama will announce his vice president soon, if not today. He'll do it by text messaging, to jump aboard that popular annoyance. There is talk that Clinton will be the surprise choice, but I doubt it, and doubt it because it would sublimate the Clintons beneath Obama. I'm quite sure the Clintons are seriously worried that Obama isn't up to it, and for the same reasons I am: he's had no executive experience nor been under the gun enough. His rise has been too fast, in many ways. The promise he offers subsumes all that to many, and maybe hope and promise are a big part of what is needed. But if Obama fails, she wants to be ready in four years, able to say she told us so.
In any case, I hope we do not see a powerful vice president again. Bookmark or intern, fine, but no power who can operate outside the power of the executive office as Cheney has done. She almost certainly wouldn't accept even if chosen, but since Ralph Nader thinks she's the one, she certainly won't be.
Whoever gets in, the electoral college and war profiteers in office are two big things that need to be eradicated. Cheney is the biggest stockholder in Halliburton, still.
Henry Cejudo, whose parents are illegal aliens here, won a gold medal for us yesterday in wrestling. Hale!
I have to say I really enjoy watching women's beach volleyball, because I certainly find the viewing pleasing. It strikes me that there are an awful lot of fouls not called for the superstars, like Walsh and May, as they are not in the NBA. But, I don't really play either sport and may have missed some rule changes. Our reigning twosome are damned good and damned good together. They do not repeat many mistakes and are blood thirsty when on a roll. I watched a Belguim team get off to a good start against them and at one point you could almost hear the Americans go 'enough of this shit', and they put it away in commanding form.
I don't get diving points whatsoever.
I'm glad the Americans are dominant again in basketball, because we should be. I think getting humiliated in recent Olympics was an effective bitch slap that teamwork and good shooting at distance matter, because this team is a lot more mature than even the original Dream Team.
I understand that China is still a totalitarian state and quite harsh and demanding. That said, they have put on a great Olympics, and I hope they are given credit and a lot of it. It's due. I don't think it unreasonable that if they feel the love, they might extend some. Their sense of inferiority - or, rather, their knowledge of being considered inferior - for several centuries won't vanish, but this will give them a sense of pride well deserved. It will not be treason for the United States and other nations to take the time to make nice.
Although John McCain thinks Iraq is the front of the War on Terror, Iran and Afghanistan might provide evidence to the the contrary. This weekend the Taliban attacked an American base, not a good sign, and thus our worst casualty week in that war was achieved, with the French dead.
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All material on this site copyright Richard L. MacLeod (Dark Cloud) 1968-2008 unless otherwise stated.
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