Monthly Archives: February 2010

Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many – The Denver Post

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

– From a January 31st story on the problems about to come to fruition in Colorado Springs


This is what happens in the Capital of Conservatism when you stop caring for your fellow man and hoard your earnings all to yourself.

The notion of community, of nation, of common purpose and security is gone when it comes to the Talibangelicals. The lights are on at Focus on the Family, but the streets of Colorado Springs are about to get that much more dangerous because of these “me first” pseudo-christians.

Screw ’em. I hope they get what they deserve for poisoning our politics and bringing our nation to it’s knees.

Haiti, Bill O’Reilly and The Myth of the Dark Savage

It seems that every time there is a natural disaster, some conservative has to mock the survivors for doing what they can to survive. In both New Orleans and Haiti, anyone digging through the rubble for a loaf of bread was a “looter”. As long as their skin was dark, at least.

It’s not just the purview of the worst of our media. Seemingly all media organizations do it reactively. It just seems that FAUXNews-types take joy in criminalizing dark people in dire straits.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Republicans — Not Obama — More Often on Wrong Side of Public Opinion

Someone really needs to remind the president that the people are mostly behind him on nearly all his policy goals. He is never going to be looked on well by the racist Republicans so he honestly, at this point, stop trying so hard to get them on board.

As long as they are preaching secession every time they lose an election, they aren’t coming on board. Even for policies they themselves have offered. When they start acting like adults, and American ones at that, include them. Until then, lead decisively and in the best interests of the nation.

Activist Historian Howard Zinn’s Obit Causes a Firestorm – NPR Ombudsman Blog : NPR

While I’ve been posting positive and respectful homages to Howard Zinn, NPR has continued it’s slide to conservative BS “journalism” with a biased and insulting interview concerning Zinn’s passing.

At least this time at least one of their number understands that shitting on the dead is in poor form. Normal for conservatives, of course, but still the hallmark of a cretin.

BBC News – Men At Work lose plagiarism case in Australia

So, the person who wrote the “Kookaburra” song (who has passed on) either didn’t see the similarity or didn’t want to sue. But the corporation who didn’t have anything to do with making either song only sees the opportunity to make a buck sues and is trying to rip off the 80s band Men at Work.

It’s probably just a coincidence, at worst it’s an uncredited homage. Either way, the suit is frivolous, the judge is an asshat, and the whole damn thing is ridiculous. I hope the final settlement is for, say, a dollar. Anything more is just insulting to any artist doing any kind of work.