Happy Christmas from John & Yoko: Imagine Peace

Washington Monthly: The Army's other Crisis: Why the best and brightest young officers are leaving.

HuffPo: Jane Smiley: Muddle-Headed, Fear-Mongering, Bushco Shills still have a right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded Theater

Treehugger.com: Solar is the World's fastest growing energy source

Ultra Marathoner Anton Krupicka - Indulgence

A New Year's Day mountain hike

A Cry from Guantanamo

Why I oppose a fence on the Mexican border

Jaguar's habitat will be restricted: HCN: Bordering on Crazy!

Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project

Other wildlife will suffer: Audubon Magazine: Border Jumpers

Also, it won't work anyway. It will be billions more of money we don't have, wasted.

Hullabaloo:

But I try to remain optimistic about the future of the country, and though it's at times damn near impossible, people like Lt Cdr Andrew Williams make it easier. He was a JAG officer in the Naval Reserve who resigned his commission because the America he believes in doesn't torture.

Gary Snyder, former Beat poet, has an important new essay: Writers & the War against Nature

Truthout Video: Naomi Klein on the Shock Doctrine

DailyKos: An Inconvenient Timeline: Cheney Fights for Global Warming

The Incline, Manitou Springs, Colorado
Steps carved into the red rock, Red Rock Open Space, Colorado Springs

Andrew Sullivan: The Torture Tape implicating Bush as a War Criminal

Elizabeth Kucinich talks about Voting Integrity

Elizabeth Kucinich - Politics and Religion

Since it is obvious that the Bush Crime Family is using propaganda and lies and fear tactics to deceive us into wreckless wars we need to look to the past for more deceptions perpetrated on the American people in order to be on guard for future False Flag terrorist events.

Daniele Ganser, professor of contemporary history at Bale University (Switzerland) is interviewed on NATO's Hidden Terrorism.

Google Video: BBC documentary on Operation Gladio: Behind False Flag Terrorism and 9/11

Fela Kuti - Teacher Don't teach Me No Nonsense

Fela Kuti in performance (1971)

If you want to see a passionate African for justice check out the documentary "Fela Kuti: Music is the Weapon".

Happy Christmas (War Is Over)

Christmas w/ Mike Gravel

Barr Camp Run on the Solstice

Naomi Klein

New Orleans under the Shock Doctrine

If you've read Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" you will know the script. If you haven't read it yet you need to so ASAP. She blogs on HuffPost about the current situation in New Orleans. Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! the War and Peace Report has been reporting all week on the destruction of public housing in New Orleans along with the protesters being tasered and pounded by police. This is our Orwellian world now. Thanks America for voting for Bush twice!! The dumbest fucking country in the world.

The Gravelian Rebellion

Dem.Pres.Candidate Gravel at J/J Dinner in Vegas 11/15/07

Mike Gravel - Converting Vegetarians

Mike Gravel, Nobody's Kooky Old Uncle

Them Bones playing Dynaflow (by Art Pepper)

Twelve Days of Kantmas

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Gil Scott Heron

Rational Response Squad: The Triumph of Reason

Guernica: Six Stories edited by Francis Goldman

Is junk media making you sick???

Bush Blog 2: SCHIP Veto

Bush Blog 3: Wiretap

Bush Blog: Scooter Libby

Repost, but needs to be seen again. Classic.

Bishop's Castle

An hour and half south of Colorado Springs in an obscure corner of the Wet Mountains an eccentric by the name of Jim Bishop is hard at work building a castle.

High Country News: Wake up to the West, Wannabe Presidents.

The Story of Stuff

This morning on the Barr Trail

Longs Ranch Road is a long uphill slog on the slopes of Pikes Peak. Spaced about 12 minutes apart at my pace are three J-Pipes. Longs Ranch eventually tops out before dropping down to join the Barr Trail.

Pikes Peak from upper Longs Ranch Road

Shooting War, a graphic novel set in Iraq in the year 2011, has been chilling readers and making headlines about its vivid and surreal depiction of the war zone. Alternet reviews it here.

The Pacific Crest Trail

When I retire... PCT, AT, CDT

The Crazy Ones

Lance Armstrong-The Inspiration

The End of the World

rx2008 is back and he is great.

Our Depraved Justice System, (Continued)

Evidence of Innocence Rejected at Guantanamo

Extraordinary Manitou

My home town Manitou Springs, Colorado on Springs Culture Cast

Our depraved justice system

The signs of fascism are evident and alarming. Without habeas corpus we have no rights. If you don't defend the despised among us they will come for you later. Wake up. They will come for you. The good Germans thought they were free. Until the Gestapo came knocking on their door because they were an intellectual or because they expressed their opinion.

Laila Al-Arian speaks out on "My Family's Nightmare" on her father, Sami Al-Arian's ordeal under the Bush regime's war against the Constitution. The documentary of her father's ordeal, "The U.S. vs. Al-Arian" has won three awards. It needs to be seen more widely. Germany went from a democracy to a totalitarian nightmare in a matter of months after Hitler garnered 31% of the vote. The Reichstag Fire came less than a month after Hitler was sworn in. The alarm was immediately sounded that Communist "terrorists" were amongst the German people and that all measures had to be undertaken to fight against the shadowy "terrorists". Rights were readily given up. Any country will have 25 - 30 % of the populace who are Right-Wing-Authoritarian Followers who espouse sloganeering like "My Country Right or Wrong" and other jingoistic nonsense. The danger comes when they take power. That is where we are now. We are on the brink of becoming a fascist state. Unless we speak out forcefully against injustice we are in dire danger of going down the slippery slope. IT CAN HAPPEN HERE.

Read the transcript of a discussion following a showing of the movie in Tampa Bay, Florida: The scene of the Show Trial.

An Excerpt (concerning the two of the ten jurors who refused to acquit on several counts):

"They wouldn't tell us why they said guilty," the juror said. "They came up with really bad reasons, but most of the time it was 'I don't have to tell you. I don't even need a reason. I can just say he's guilty because I think he's guilty, and that's all'."

Both Ron and another juror interviewed in the 100-minute documentary said that prosecutors tried to pressure them to convict my father by essentially telling them, "Use your common sense." Actual proof was an afterthought.

Annie Lennox sings on AIDS in South Africa.

Longevity -- Eat Less

One day after returning from his first visit to Iraq, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb called again for ``robust regional diplomacy” and suggested the impact of President Bush’s troop surge has been overstated.

The human face to our depraved policies: 'I will never leave Guantanamo'

Run to the Horns on N. Cheyenne Mtn

Though I was supposed to be the "guide" for today's mystery run up to the Horns the weather gods had something else in mind. When I stepped out of my house at about 6:30 this morning my feet went out from under me on the slick ice and I went horizontal with a sudden screaming pain in my shoulder as it slammed into the stone stair. I proceeded intrepidly the rest of the way down to street level, but prudently decided not to attempt driving down the sheet of ice that had been Ruxton Avenue. I called John Courtney to say I was not going to make it, but he said he'd come pick me up because he had studded snow tires. I started walking down Ruxton staying to the side off the slick pavement where possible. When I got down to the Cog an employee told me that no one could make it up Ruxton and that he had walked. Sure enough as I got down near the Miramont Castle there was a line of about 20 cars idling -- unable to go up or to turn around. I met John at the Loop. Just down the road a City Bus had slid into a garbage truck on Canon Ave. We arrived at Old Stage Road at 10 till 8, saw John Genet's vehicle and started up the road.

About half a mile up Old Stage Road we climbed up an embankment and were on the Sunrise Trail. No sign of any new footprints though and I figured the rest of the party had just run up Old Stage Road.

We reached the old abandoned toll road in about 45 minutes and after several switchbacks were at the restaurant ruins in another 20 minutes or so. We had only been there about 10 minutes when Eric B. and Rich M. came around the corner. Rick H. And John G. were not far behind. They had quite a time mostly bushwacking up to the old toll road since they never found the trail. After poking around the restaurant ruins I took them up to my the house on the top of the mountain where I plan to move after I retire.

This web site has some more info and history. I couldn't find much more on the Internet on the history of the restaurant. Maybe Penrose Library or Tuft Library on the CC campus would have more.

Today's pictures are here.

Mike Gravel: Power to the People -- Give Peace a Chance

Colorado Springs Culture Cast producer Craig Richardson interviews Peggy Shivers, founder of the Shivers Fund at the Pikes Peak Library District. She had done a lot for our community. This is what is possible from leaders and philanthropists who truly care about their community.

The Oil Drum: Worst Case Scenario

Is Waterboarding Torture? Graphic Protest of Mukasey

Pakistan's Gun Market

Who owns Dennis? The American people!

Frederic Chaubin, who was born in Cambodia of a French father and Spanish mother, is chief editor of the French magazine Citizen K, and also a photographer who has been attracted by strange architecture in the former Soviet Union. The photos he takes in countries like Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Georgia, reveal an extraordinary, almost sci-fi world. Today, PingMag takes you to the world of Soviet style architecture with Frederic Chaubin himself.

I found this site from Collective Perception

Top of High Drive: Dan V., John G., me, and Rick H. about midway through a four-hour run this morning.

In chilly 10 degree temps, we started at Memorial Park, Manitou Springs at 7 A.M.; wound our way up Crystal Park Road to the Intemann Trail, joined the Red Rock Loop to High Drive, ran to the top of High Drive, picked up the Buckhorn Trail, and looped back on the Jones Park Trail--about 24 miles.

Ski the 14ers

Chris Davenport skis all 54 of Colorado's 14,000 foot peaks in one winter.

John Fogerty: I Can't Take It No More

Revolving Door: jazz performance: Art Pepper

Some info for you

I'm watching Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose as he talks about the new Amazon Kindle book reader device they released today. I'm wondering about the "paper-like" display that has been tauted for years now. Have they achieved it? I'm ready. I will be the first to storm the gates. Way ahead of the I-Phoners. I am a reader. Make it readable on a screen and I am in like Flynn.

Running the Numbers
An American Self-Portrait

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on.

Excellent Amazon review of Lou DuBose's: Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency

Robert D. Steele

This book is vastly more detailed, and covers more high crimes and misdemeanors, than either State of Denial, which misunderstands Bush as being in charge, or Crossing the Rubicon, which focuses primarily on Cheney's role in first permitting 9-11, and then working assiduously to cover up his malicious malfeasance. See also Ron Susskind's book, "One Percent Doctrine," which crucifies Cheney, Rumseld, and Rice.

I take this book so seriously that I urge everyone to get the "Do It Yourself Impeachment" kit. He should be required to immediately resign or be impeached. He should not be allowed to serve another month in office.

For the sake of brevity, here is a list of impeachable offenses documented by this book:

1) Secret meetings in violation of the law to include exclusion of government experts
2) Refusal to honor demand from Congress for a list of participants
3) Lies to the public about Iraq, while holding maps of oil fields and already having in mind a US-only domination of those oilfields (he first focused on Iraqi oil while serving Secretary of Defense Brown)
4) Over-ruling of the Environmental Protection Agency on very important matters including its concern over Halliburton's reliance on hydraulic fracturing that uses chemicals that contaminate aquifers--Cheney personally ensured that the EPA's wording was replaced with Halliburton's wording.
5) Consistent and pervasive usurpation of Congressional authorities and consistent and maliciously deliberate avoidance of appropriate disclosure.
6) Fostered attacks on Sy Hersh, and considered authorizing a break-in on his home.
7) From the 1970's, see also Ron Susskind's One-Percent Doctrine, subverted the authority of the Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller, and teams with Justice Scalia (then an assistant attorney general) to increase executive privileges and push back reforms.
8) As a Congressman personally blew off Russian offer in 1983 for arms cuts, and subverted the authority of the President and the Secretary of State then serving.
9) As an extremist Republican, supported Ollie North and the White House in violating the Congressional prohibitions on aid to the Contras, and obstructed justice thereafter.
10) Page 78 has a lovely discussion of how Cheney and North were "in the zone" in deceiving the public and Congress during the televised hearings.
11) Adopted as his own the lunatic report by Khalizad (who is a very lazy scholar, see my review of his rotten RAND book on revolution) and Libby, on how the US as a superpower should be able to do ANYTHING.
12) Attempted to undermine due process and keep tactical nuclear weapons in the Army inventory.
13) Subverted the authority of the Secretary of State (Colin Powell) by allowing his daughter to overrule Ambassadors and meet privately with various heads of state.
13) Lied repeatedly to the public about his continuing financial equities with Halliburton, and was so involved in giving Halliburton up to 16 billion in no bid contracts.
14) Shut both foreign competitors and more cost-effective indigenous contracting solutions, severely harming the national security of the United States by fostering an environment of unproductive looting by Halliburton, Bechtel, and others.
15) Ignored his dual mandates on terrorism and intelligence. The book suggests that Bush was not briefed on Al Qaeda for the first eight months he was in office (the Vice President's priorities were energy and missile defense).
16) Personally impeded negotiations with North Korea after they proved amenable to diplomatic engagement.
17) Personally rejected Iranian overtures for negotiation conveyed by the Swiss in 2003
18) Personally reinforced Rumsfeld on use of torture, by-passing the President's more measured restrictions.
19) Conspired with Speaker Hastert to subordinate the House of Representatives, using a special office of his own (first time in history) so that Representatives could be brought to him rather than his calling on them.
20) Manipulated the President into numerous "signing statements" inconsistent with the will of Congress that ignored legislation then in force.
21) "Bureaucratically emasculated" the President (page 177--if the President has a friend that reads this review, PLEASE get the book and the review to the President--he really may have no idea his balls have been cut off)
22) Contemptuous and manipulative of the CIA, refusing to accept their best professional judgments based not only all source intelligence, but on a extraordinary effort by Charlie Allen in running line crossers into Iraq to document beyond a shadow of a doubt that there were no weapons of mass destruction there.
23) Lied repeatedly, over and over, to the public, to Congress, to the President, to foreign leaders, even after the lies were exposed he continued to repeat them.

The book does not discuss the 9-11 situation and emerging findings that place the Vice President at the center of our deliberately inept response.

Two gems apart from the impeachable offenses:

1) The search for a Vice President was a complete fraud, he was picked from day one, and made a fool of every serious candidate, while also personally leaking to destroy Keating just to ensure the only real rival would not be considered at the last minute.

2) The discussion of Joe Lieberman's refusal to confront Cheney with all that was known to be wrong with him was explained at the time as "taking the high moral road." I am not so sure. I speculate that Lieberman is actually a neo-con and has been playing the Democrats for fools while minding the interests of his Wall Street masters.

On page 147 the authors discuss how Cheney accused Clinton and Gore of "extend[ing] our military commitments while depleting our military power." Lovely. And now?

The authors conclude that Dick Cheney is "nakedly amoral." I agree.

One final scary note: in the many doomsday drills that Cheney participated in across his career and inclusive of his Vice Presidency, they always failed to reconstitute Congress.

Dick Cheney has done more damage and is a greater threat to our Republic and others, than Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined.

Marlene Dietrich : Sag Mir Wo Die Blumen Sind

A Pete Seeger classic auf Deutsch

Pete Seeger-Waist Deep In The Big Muddy

Pete Seeger on the Smothers Brothers 40 years ago. He keeps singing and stays on message his life long.

A HuffPost Project: Posterizing the GOP

Another Huffpost from my brother Doug: Drought and the Power of Prayer

Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer: Wonder Twins?

The Inexorable Wheels of Justice

Bush/Cheney/Gonzales are going to jail

Beware of Ron Paul

Supporters of Ron Paul should avoid drinking the kool-aid given to them at his functions. A cursory look at some of his 2007 legislative proposals destroy the myths his campaign has been promulgating.

H.R.300: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.

This an attempt to decrease The Federal Courts' Constitutional Powers by simple legislation, outside of the Amendment Process. Worse it does not even pretend to be an equal application, because it would restrict the Courts' oversight only in controversies relating to: the free exercise or establishment of religion; any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; and any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation.

Paul doesn't want to destroy the whole 14th Amendment with unconstitutional legislation. His real agenda is for the 14th to carry force to give American citizenship to foetuses at the very moment of their conception.

H.R.2597: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.1094: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.

There is no wink and nod to State's Rights here, nor is there any chance for a less intrusive government. Every woman who has a miscarriage could immediately find herself the target of a homicide investigation. These proposals arrogantly disregard potential maternal life-threatening possibilities that come with pregnancy. As an example of this: Ectopic Pregnancy is now estimated to occur in 2% of all pregnancies in the U.S. The fetus will not survive gestation, and by not terminating the pregnancy, the mother risks future infertility, and severe complications, a few of which could result in her death.

Big bad Paul endangers pregnant womens' health to push his religious ideology upon America with the biggest single entitlement to American citizenship ever legislated.

H.J.RES.46: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.

This cannot be defended as original intent. One of the Declaration of Independence's listed causes for America's claim of a natuiral right to sever their British citizenry was that King George had:

"...endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."

This should be exposed for its ugly reality. It is a bill of attainder that works a corruption of blood upon humans born within the Sovereign Territory of the United States of America. It is Unamerican to force children to be punished for the crimes of their parents. It also makes a mockery of any who claim there can be a positive comparison made between Thomas Jefferson and Ron Paul.

"My opinion on the right of Expatriation has been, so long ago as the year 1776, consigned to record in the act of the Virginia code, drawn by myself, recognizing the right expressly, and prescribing the mode of exercising it. The evidence of this natural right, like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of kings. If he has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, he has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode; and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which Nature has traced, for each individual, the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness. It certainly does not exist in his mind. Where, then, is it? I believe, too, I might safely affirm, that there is not another nation, civilized or savage, which has ever denied this natural right. I doubt if there is another which refuses its exercise. I know it is allowed in some of the most respectable countries of continental Europe, nor have I ever heard of one in which it was not. How it is among our savage neighbors, who have no law but that of Nature, we all know."

The Writings of Thomas Jefferson; Definitive Edition, Albert Ellery Bergh, Editor
Copyright, 1905, By The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association; Volume XV; pp 124,125

Step It Up Colorado Springs

From a couple weekends ago. My report has a few new comments and additions: http://events.stepitup2007.org/november/reports/2361

Christopher Hitchens on the death of Jerry Falwell-CNN 360

Kucinich weekly campaign update 11-12-07

My house is the brown one in the center. The house to the left is the last home on Ruxton Avenue and is a straw bale house.

Senator Mike Gravel as Rocky

The Iraq War: Legal or Illegal?

24-minute video of "The Pinky Show". Effective and edifying.

BLACKWATER : THE SHADOW WAR

Be Careful What You Say

Senator Mike Gravel as Rocky

Mike Gravel Talks Debate Censorship

Transform Space into Place.

Excellent Diary on DailyKos: Kucinich's new Playbook for Speaking to the Media

Norman Mailer, icon of the times, is dead. The Nation has a good piece on his life: Norman Mailer Brawled with Bush to the bitter end

KUCINICH: Takes House Floor, Moves for Cheney Impeachment

DENNIS KUCINICH ON MSNBC TUCKER NOV 06, 2007

Afterdowningstreet has best update on Kucinich attempt to bring Cheney impeachment to vote. Kucinich is the MAN!!!

War Crime Commission for Bush and co. : American Empire Project

My brother Doug posts on Huffpo on why our health care system sucks compared to say... Denmark...

DFA pulse poll of 100,000 + shows Kucinich in wide lead for Democratic nomination... Why is that so at odds with the conventional wisdom?

Dennis Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment against Vice Prez Cheney and updates on House floor vote

DailyKos: Gore Slams Bush Regime

Denver's October 27, 2007 Iraq Antiwar Rally.

Crude Realities

Matthew Simmons says $300/barrel oil coming soon.

Keith Olbermann: On Waterboarding and Torture

Olbermann Special Comment (video)

The Oil Drum: Six Steps to "Getting" the Global Environmental Crisis

Growth is Madness!

Center for Constitutional Rights: Beyond Guantanamo, Rescue the Constitution

Naomi Wolf Interview

I just started Naomi Wolf's "The End of America". MUST READ for all patriots. The hour is getting late. Germany and Italy were both democracies before their societies were shut down. The exact same steps to close an open society are being taken in America RIGHT NOW.

Houses with a view

More ice in Bear Creek...

Mischief cools off in icy Bear Creek.

View to Colorado Springs from the Tenney Crags--destination of my run-hike this morning.

StepitUp 2007

Under bluebird Colorado skies and temperature in the 70's, 150 people gathered for a relaxing afternoon on the grounds of the historic Rockledge Ranch on the Garden of the Gods.

Here is my report on the Colorado Springs action for StepitUp07 for awareness and action on Global Warming.

IMPEACH DICK CHENEY

Dennis Kucinich is going to bring his Impeach Cheney resolution 133 to a vote next week.

Harper's "The Torture Litmus Test" for Mukasey

1 Cubic Mile of Oil (CMO) -- how to grasp the scale of what we will lose when oil production diminishes as it must, sooner or later

TomGram: Michael Schwartz: Iraq Policy floating on a sea of oil

Considerations on the state of the world's oil supply