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BLOG'a'Boulder
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Dispatches from Boulder the Damned
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Sunday, April 12, 2009
It's over, or rather this one is. Piracy and kidnapping continue, and the media is conflicted about how to present this with the least work. Apparently negotiations broke down as the lifeboat drifted to shore and three of the kidnappers were killed and one - the negotiator - is either wounded or not, but alive. The Captain of the American ship is fine.
Nobody defends, or over defends kidnapping and piracy, but the facts are that Ethiopia has virtually no other form of income. When people and families are starving, they do what they can. Agreed. And Ethiopia has been treated terribly by the world in general, and this for centuries. They complain that after their government collapsed, Europeans or someone began dumping toxic sludge off their coast and raping their fishing grounds. The term radioactive was used. People are dying because of it, supposedly. Maybe.
But the fact remains that Ethiopia has risen as far as its feudal and idiotic gang-tribe-warlord mentality can take it, and anything better would require the replacement of the half or non educated thugs that rule in various partitions today. They had something better and they screwed it up, albeit not much better. But they had peace for a while. It's a barren, bleak, land.
Going after the thugs on land by air or foot might be in the offering, a sort of terrorism that they really cannot deal with unless it's a set up by al Quada or the like to create a scenario of the US killing Muslims yet again. So it's better if violence involving us remains on the ocean.
I'm still confused how these boats are allowed to get near the big ships, or why the ships are not armed or travel in convoy with escort by sea and air. Really, it's all doable. Anyone displaying a grenade launcher within so many feet is vaporized. The horror, of course, is that they'll hide behind women and children, their own if need be. It could be ugly, and very dangerous.
First, find out exactly what, if anything, is being dumped. Second, use the fleets of warships to protect the legal fishing grounds. Third, tolerate no bluster from the thugs. It cannot be helped.
In Boulder the Damned, the plantlife is infuriated by the city government trying to pretend to 'do something' about liquor deaths of late, which is to say that they want to be seen as doing something without actually doing anything, which would hurt sales or cast light upon the myriad hypocrisies uncovered by such discussions.
So long as their kids aren't killed or put on trial, few actually care. The only way to constructively do something is for the parents to pay with the kids if they're under the drinking age and commit crime.
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Thursday, April 09, 2009
It's time to revisit the horror of QEII with her arm around our First Lady and having it returned. If this is an issue for the GOP, they have lost all semblance of sanity, never mind policy. The horror.
Today, in Boulder the Damned.
Rather unsurprisingly, CU has announced it would fight having to reinstate Ward Churchill in any capacity whatever. Absent some incompetency by David Lane of the level exercised by Bill Owens, the Regents, and others, Churchill may walk away with a cool mil, but he may not, either. I'd hope not. I'd like to see him fade away, as I would Ethnic Studies, and have the topics - or many of them - included in various other disciplines and courses. Say, the History Department somewhere, where they should always have been.
It bothers me when people sob up to Churchill thanking him for telling the truth about the Madan epidemics when it isn't true (or proven to be by Churchill's logic), and revealing that it's just an alternative universe of anti-matter course instruction. He isn't telling them what's true, but what they want to hear, making them perpetual victims, excused because the white man won't hire them. I'd hope Indians wouldn't hire them.
Meanwhile, CU is going to have to cough up something large in his direction. I would hope that Lucero and other regents whose breast beating comments cost the university would have to pay as well. Totally their fault.
The GOP is trying to make Obama's 4% military increase into the biggest cut evah by a sitting president in a time of war. After former GOP Senator and Secretary of Defense under Clinton William Cohen corrected folks on a talk show Sunday, the issue got pretty sticky for the GOP.
Got worse today.
And with all due respect, people, can we move this along a bit? Franken won. At some point, this has got to redound against the GOP and Coleman in particular. The theory exists that he needs to keep it going for protection against the charges pending against Coleman's wife and his campaign.
Oh, and the New York fiasco is now in the Dem's column as well. We'll see.
And.....Peter Groff may be moving to Washington. Good for him but he will be missed here.
And, I am again repulsed by the PR inclinations of the FBI, who are helping the Navy in the hostage negotiations, but by radio, and they made a representative available for the interview about which they can actually say nothing. They are ALWAYS elbowing their way forward, and its both unbecoming and I think counterproductive.
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Monday, April 06, 2009
Well, that's over. We were down for much of yesterday for equipment moves and fixes, and we put an announcement up a week ahead of time, and a big headline on the main page, and some of you feign annoyance. Hey. You guys are apparently the ones television stations are speaking to about changing over to broadcast digital, barely stopping short of crayoning the instructions in and doing it themselves. THAT said.....
The silence in the media about the Churchill horror is most intriguing. Possibly because nobody has any clue what the judge will decide, or when, regarding Churchill getting his job back. The University did such a terrible job that it would be great to see the guilty parties - Owens, Lucero, Rutledge, and virtually all the Regents save Carlisle, who voted to obey the faculty committee verdicts - pay dearly, but they aren't even being charged with perjury and aren't held responsible. The state as a whole is, and the idiot students who don't know any better. That's why they're students, see? I'd be interested to see what offers Churchill gets if he isn't rehired. Few, I'd wager, from universities. Community colleges, and speaking tours, sure.
 Huge earthquake in Italy, just east of Rome, which also announced some cracks in old structures. Being Rome, very old structures, but they've stood up this far. Actually, it was a moderate earthquake absent the fact it was right under some mountain towns of great age, where not only the older stuff crumbled but the newer, earthquake proof buildings aren't looking so hot either.
There is a confusing 'scandal' regarding ignored earthquake warnings, which make no sense to me at all. It's an earthquake zone, they cannot be predicted. Sometimes a lot of little ones means a quake is coming, sometimes means nothing. I don't get this.
The horrible story out of China concerning gender kidnapping and, well, murder, is an awful read. I knew that the northern islands of Japan had issues with infant girls being killed, but had no clue that this ignorance and massive embarrassment and shame was so ingrained in so much of China. Or anywhere. This brain dead worship of the male and the attendent reduction in women for wives, almost mandating a constructed society at war with others rather makes me ill.
The absurdity of the wedding industry - historic and world wide - shows its early problematic mind set here. If people didn't have to bribe men to take their daughters via dowry, this would never have been an issue.
I'm easily set at ease, but somehow the world did not stumble, the civilization did not end when Queen Liz and Michelle Obama gently embraced and sustained for a bit. There are people so demented - they ID'd themselves going ape over the 'terrorist fist bump' between the Obamas during the campaign, then continued with the birth certificate war - and so unaware of their simple racial prejudice, that they gave the most humanizing photos of the Royal Family the full hysteria treatment. I'm old enough to remember QEII ignoring the arms of her heir, Chuck, when he was three after she returned from a trip. One didn't pick up one's son in public ; no one didn't. I have no doubt that Phil and Liz may have been ill at ease at first with the Obamas - they are of their age, station, and mindset, which is to say mildly racist and out of it but civil always - but nobody physically recoiled at the hand on the back, entirely respectful and affectionate. Maybe even contrived, but it worked. The Queen looked human with the looming First Lady.
TABOR may be more likely dead the more the Independence Institute puts it at risk. They keep supporting causes that underline how unpopular the results - as opposed to the theories - are.
It is almost sure that soon there'll be a move to remove it from the Constitution. It was a bad idea - as are all attempts to layer on rulings to compensate for bad legislation in the first place. It's part of a movement that I hope will end with Congress retaking so much of its power back from the executive. Like, you know, war.
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Saturday, April 04, 2009
In the Daily Camera letters today, Saturday, the prancing Wardites are calling for progressive Regents (here-here!) and his reinstatement (eh, no, guys.....) and connecting the two under some airy fairy melding of 'progressive' with 'Indian' because.........well, because.
First, Churchill is as roundly hated in some areas of Native America as he is beloved by those who take his class and get good grades (maybe the same thing....). He is not an Indian by any stretch, may not speak any Indian languages and he is a liar. He did interlace his research with falsehood. He was not qualified for tenure, Department head, or publication by academic houses, which is why - or partially why - he had his polemics disguised as history put out by publishers known for left wing and often incoherent sympathies if not devotion.
This was an OJ case, where America, after centuries seeing black men strung up because often inferior whites were scared or annoyed at them, finally saw a black men get away with murder. It wasn't that anyone really believed him innocent. There was and maybe is a strong subculture or treating women like dirt in the prevailing hip-hop music of the time, and lots of bitter single fathers of all races along with thugs who cheered along with those who just wanted a black man to get justice.
And his verdict WAS just, because the incredibly dense, self-adulating, and incompetent Marcia Clark had decided to use the case for her own professional, perhaps political, elevation into the nation's psyche. She wanted to take a fairly easy murder case and make it symbolic of abuse against women through the ages for prolonged coverage of herself, and so watered down and ignored evidence (the slow-mo escape attempt never made it to court record) to harp on this that she had no fall back when the LA Crime Labs and their personnel were revealed without too much effort as incompetent, and when clearly racist cops trying to pose as Knights Templar were caught perjuring themselves on the stand by recordings of their own words.
Much the same happened here with the pompous gasbags that have been CU's necklace of thorns for decades: when called to the stand their testimony was in blinding conflict with their own pretentious announcements made to the media when they themselves hoped to be seen as blinding super patriots fighting the war on terror hand in hand with the Bushies. This was a silly posture, if for no other reason than they were - almost to a one - chickenhawks who never served, and Churchill had. The puffy faced retailors and 'businessmen' and women who composed the Regents of the University through the years were normally just rah-rah team! types who wanted plum seats at football games with winning teams, and getting to go to championships at someone else's expense.
But the fiscal incompetence of the highly dubious CU Foundation, which seemed to do the football program's bidding and not much else, along with the Title Nine case involving using booze and sex for team recruitment,
along with the budding Medical, Business, and various Science departments in the early years of this century changed all that. CU now had Nobel Prize professors, NASA contracts, and renown not due to Whizzer White and Bill McCartney's beloved teams, and cared less. Rather, they clearly saw football as a detraction and expense of small or no merit. Football was under surprise pressure to produce good press and championships, and they simply couldn't do it without unqualified students who were often ethcially challenged athletes. This led to many problems.
Regarded Senator and past President of two state universities Hank Brown was floored when CU lost the Title Nine cases. He should not have been, being a lawyer, but he clearly didn't understand the law and its application. He was just too old for it. The prolonged and expensive fight revealed CU to be composed of enablers and cavemen chanting about 'plausible deniability' in dead seriousness to various unimpeachable sources.
So, it was probably with some surprise that CU discovered it even had an Ethnic Studies Department, and the eyebrows arched further when it found it had 6' 7" Indian as the Department Head, who had not gone through the normal procedures for either tenure - which he had - or the position he held, which required a PhD. How the hell did that happen?
We still don't know, and we should, and people still living need to be deposed to explain it. Was he sleeping with the right women? Wha?
Probably, he got it because they hoped he actually was an Indian, which would aid the Diversity Project to allow CU not to be seen as a nearly all white institution. That hurt with the Federal Government grants and, eh, the football team. But Churchill is, if nothing else, a chronic liar. He has no known Indian blood even by the ludicrously lax standards of the tribes. He did serve in the military during the Vietnam War years as a projectionist and truck driver, but somehow interviews with him in the Denver Post say he was a paratrooper and LURP (Army sniper type, operated alone often enough). He then supposedly instructed the Weathermen how to make bombs, and was just, you know, present for so many important parts of the romantic left wing history during the hippy dippy years. It bears not a small resemblance to the character played (and played badly) by Tom Laughlin in the Billy Jack movies: the karate Indian, good soldier, finally turned against the contemporary Army which was doing the same things in Vietnam they did under, say, Custer.
Churchill ended up in Boulder where the Native American Rights foundation was created and remains. My one time neighbor, David Getches, was one of the founders. He knew and worked with, around, or against, many of the players still famous in the Native American weathermen battalion: AIM.
What Churchill did or did not do with AIM is unclear, but Russell Means, an increasingly portly and unimpressive presence, keeps showing up here and there in supposed warrior dress as a body guard for Churchill with others. It is on this cusp that the melding of Indian with progressive values dissolves.
Means and Pelatier and others had many good arguments against the US, and still do. The US wanted to steal the land, but ethically, and so burdened itself with Christian treaties and obligations and then, charmingly, failed to comply with any of them. If the Europeans had just announced themselves as a bigger and better tribe, and conquered and enslaved the tribes, as they did to each other, and commit the now genocidal practice of breeding out the victims by impregmenting them with their own warriors's genetics, it would have been awful but the tribes - if any survived at all - would have no standing (or interest, since the oral history would not have survivied) to complain, and would be like everyone else, depending on the variations of skin tone concerns remaining. Those for whom the new world of law holds no attractions - like males who only want to periodically fight and hunt - this is hell, and they'd want the ability for those tenderly qualified to run the shows again. Themselves, for example.
Which is to say, the supposed Indian past often touted are those of rural street gang patriarchies, belief in magic and suppressive religions by easily shifting situational values and ethics. These were inferior civilizations because they could not unite, could not defend themselves, cannot adapt, cannot in bulk survive without the dole. This is a value system of perpetual victimhood not unlike what the Germans did after the Great War: we weren't defeated in battle but by deception, disease, and alcohol. The Germans had their never beloved Jews displayed as the guilty parties, Churchill and others are trying to construct villains in the past. There are plenty of actual villains, but they need more. Rather, they need to be praised for providing more. They want to be loved. And they want to be in charge.
Churchill, far from a progressive, is trying to romanticize the pains of the past, instilling perpetual victimhood, and posing as a savior. That the case against him was bolluxed by incompetence when not world class stupidity neither elevates nor excuses. There is metaphorical charm, though, to see the pompous regents and sputtering expensive law firms humiliated. Just like when some dirt poor tribe discovered oil or put in a casino and now have better schools and subsistence than the average American. No denying it. You can't help but smile.
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Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Lord. The Churchill Circus is over (Can he appeal? I hope not....) It's in the dubious hands of the jury. I hope the payback mentality among many Americans does not mean they punish the GOP by re-employing this fraud.
Meanwhile, the National GOP has offered up its Budget, and it's idiotic while grotesquely pandering to inherited money. The Washington Post gets it right off. And Wonkette, now funny again for the first time since Ana Marie Cox left years back, gives it the summary of the year. "In other words, while last week’s version only included, say, “We will kill puppies,” this week’s adds, “We will kill 47 puppies.” Way to go, you Repub idiots. Tax cuts for the wealthy?
AG Holder has decided that since the Bush DOJ bolluxed the Stephens investigation and case, right up to the point of fraud it seems to me, he's dropping it. Good. No likely rebound for the Tedster at 85 and he's still convicted. Withholding evidence is serious, and I'd be pleased to see the culprits charged.
Joe the Plumber takes it like a wimp from Union guys in Pennsylvania. Doesn't know much, he admits. Odd that he's campaigning against something of which he's apparently totally in the dark.
In less depressing news, President Obama is promising not to look into Putin's soul. That provided such valuable insight before.
It seems Autism and Its False Prophets hasn't made the difference hoped, and people are still wasting money and emotional energy for something that never worked. I hope the charges against the doctors involved go forward.
Snow. This weekend? More snow. And, it's all to the good given the dry winter and spring to this point, dangerously dry. It must be hell in the high country, but we're in need below.
On Michelle Obama. I've met her several times in my long life. Well, not her, but black women totally comparable. Um. Not always black, either. They were the silent executives in all male offices, obviously at first meeting several removes above me, my party, her boss, often more. Never sarcastic, never demeaning, entire paragraphs of communication conveyed, somehow, without any change of expression but full eyed smile in your face. I'm glad she's on our side, and that she's so easy in different environments, from the Queen to kids. It helps, it really does.
I have to say that Queen Elizabeth and Phillip are getting on, looked much shorter, and far more nervous than Mrs. Obama, who apparently forgot or omitted the curtsy to the Queen. Supposedly it went well, and it must be a true shock for the Queen, a good sort but sheltered, to realize the world for which she fought (and her House did) includes Presidents of the United States who may not resemble the last two hundred years' worth of mostly British descendents, of whom she has known by letter or in person about 25%.
She looks more and more like Victoria, albeit in better shape.
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Tuesday, March 31, 2009
"Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot 'em. And there'd be nothing said about that, because they did what was wrong. You don't talk about our troops. You support our troops."
-- Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher
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Monday, March 30, 2009
George Will is terribly upset that the Constitution is beset by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) and, by its current CEO, the administration of Barack Obama. It seems the bailouts and the finance manipulations are powers held by Congress, and that entity seems to be giving them to the executive. Well, yeah, temporarily, and that because the Bush administration (remember, this was passed under Bush) refused to enforce that which it deemed annoying to business and their own particular bottom lines. So far, thought, that is correct, although it was a willing gift with an implied sunset.
Yes, nothing is as permanent as the provisional. But, still.
Will was not offended by Congress extending all war making powers to the Executive, something that Truman found necessary in 1950, but which both Congress and the Executive like to see in a President's hands. He certainly held his toungue when the Patriot Act kept grasping for more and more. That apparently can be excused any number of ways, some not dubious. But it's an open question which is the more powerful responsibility overall, war or financial probity, but Congress seems to be happy to give all the tough questions to the Prez, whoever he is of whatever party, so long as they can posture during re-election cycles. It is something that has to be addressed sooner than later.
If, by chance or intent, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) comes before the Supreme Court, that tub of anacondas will not be re-canned easily. Just one more horror facing this President.
Over the weekend, Rick Wagoner 'resigned' as head of General Motors. He may be lucky. The administration laughed at GM's and Chrysler's recovery programs and demanded, among other things, that GM shut up and face bankruptcy if it couldn't get an adult proposal to them in 60 days. It's possible that Chrysler, which got 30 days, might be bought by Fiat, which to someone my age is like hearing Microsoft is being forcibly taken over by Blizzard Entertainment (they make Warcraft). Even the Wall Street Journal says the Italians just may be Chrysler's best hope. Still going to be a rough road for the bloated automakers. The WSJ thinks that GM and Chrysler "may well require utilizing the bankruptcy code in a quick and surgical way" into a "...structured bankruptcy ..." which "...would be a tool to make it easier for General Motors and Chrysler to clear away old liabilities so they can get on a path to success." That administration is okay with that.
Norm Coleman and the GOP are, essentially, holding the second Minnesotta Senate seat hostage and preventing Al Franken from being seated. They're happy with that. There's a three judge panel that may adjudicate for Franken and an end to this fiasco and any image of the high ethics of Norm Coleman or the GOP.
Of course, this all pales before the horror besetting this nation's Catholic Bishops. Should they shun Obama when he speaks at Notre Dame? You see, the bishops have a policy that says "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our [Catholic] fundamental moral principles." Moral principles that exclude much concern about pedophilia among priests and their victimes till secular law holds a knife to their throat, when they express regret for things that have happened, like criminal conspiracy to cover up these crimes. (Hi, Cardinal Law!)
Taking office, Obama lifted Bush's restrictions on funding for abortions and for embryonic stem cell research, as he had campaigned upon and promised to do. Either or both violate supposed fundamental Catholic principles on the protection of human life. War's okay, rape. But you have to draw the line somewhere.
It should be pointed out that the vast majority of American Catholics are more in line with the President than the increasingly idiotic clergy and attendant clerisy of secular blowhards (named 'Hugh') who want to regress the Vatican back to the mentality that has nearly killed it off in the past.
Here in Boulder the Damned, we watch the start of the fourth week of the Ward Churchill horrendoplasty, and it's playing out as I thought. Churchill is guilty as charged, and CU looks like a bunch of prissy, hypocritical hacks run by politically correct guidelines in conflict with the state's then equally hypocritical Governor and the Chickenhawk Brigade during the Iraq War's first blooms.
An article on the Boulder International Hostel in the paper today; glad they're doing well. I lived there for four years (and worked there) from 1998 to 2002, and it was, overall, a terrific experience. Plus, they were good friends to me and for that I'm ever grateful.
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All material on this site copyright Richard L. MacLeod (Dark Cloud) 1968-2010 unless otherwise stated.
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