The Try-Works

I’ve been amused to discover that word has it Ms. Claire Ryder of the Denver Greens is a bit of a drinker.

Okay, word has it that she’s known for appearing falling down fucking drunk at organizational meetings, refusing to appear in public without her ubiquitous Sprite bottle full of vodka, and, to the great dis-ease of all around her, not above the casual groping of whatever young man happens to be in reaching distance of her greasy paws.  Indeed, there is some speculation that her alcoholism might be responsible for her recent selling out to the corporate activists over at CodePink and United for Peace and Justice.

But, you know me, dear reader.  I am nothing if not a believer in unity.  As such, I would like to offer this gesture of friendship to Ms. Ryder:
You’re a tippler, dear, as am I.  There’s nothing I enjoy so much as a good cocktail, and I am a great believer in the sacred visionary qualities of strong liquor.  As such, I’d like to challenge you to an old-fashioned drinking contest.

We’ll meet up at one of the few little dives left in this fast-gentrifying hellhole — some joint lacking in natural light, where the entire human heart can be beheld in all its obscene glory — and then, dear, it’s just me and you.  I’ll let you pick the drink as long as I can pick the music — Billy Joe Shaver, naturally – and whoever hits the fucking floor first loses.

If you win, I’ll shut down the Try-Works.  Immediately, and without protest.

But if I win, if I win, you tell me Adam Jung(k)’s badge number.

Sound fair?

Update: I’m behind the times, as several readers have been emailing me to point out.  Ms. Ryder no longer gets her checks from CodePink, but from the Denver Greens.  Post fixed.  In my defense I have only to offer that when it comes to sleazy, neo-cop, middling, liberal, leftist groups, I never could tell ‘em the fuck apart.

Billy Joe Shaver is, in my opinion, the finest songwriter in country music, and I’ll put one of his albums up against any album ever made: The Earth Rolls On.  It was recorded shortly after Billy Joe Shaver’s wife died of cancer, and the lead guitarist was Shaver’s son, Eddy, who was rapidly losing a battle with heroin addiction, and who died of an overdose after the sessions had completed, but before the album was released.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite songs off the album: “I Don’t Seem To Fit Anywhere.”

And, as a bonus, two more from a set Billy Joe Shaver played in memory of his son: “You Are the Star in My Heart” and one of the best songs ever recorded by anyone in any genre, “Live Forever.”

And, lastly, one of the few songs I could find on You Tube played by Billy Joe Shaver and Eddy Shaver together: “Honky Tonk Heroes.”

Of course, if you know anything about country music, you know that “Honky Tonk Heroes” was the title song on the Waylon Jennings album that kicked off the outlaw country movement.  Nigh every song on that album was written by Billy Joe Shaver, in fact.  Lore has it that Jennings promised to record a whole album of Shaver songs after one too many drinks at a Willie Nelson picnic.  And, after a certain amount of time had passed and still no album had been released, Shaver hunted him down and threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t get cracking.  Honky Tonk Heroes was the result.

Yeah, I posted the same quote last year, but I ain’t found nothing since that better exemplifies the disparity between the horseshit “freedom” Americans like to brag about, and the, shall we say, facts on the ground.

I still remember seeing this right about when Gulf War I broke out. As Ms. Obama said, for the first time in my adult life, I was proud of my country. Or at least of our proud tradition of profane, shit-talking comedians.

I apologize for the delay in sending you off, but know that we’ll miss you, maestro.  You were one of the last roadguards between us and the absolute fucking sterility both sides of the political aisle would foist upon us.

It probably doesn’t need to be said, but every word written on the Try-Works is, in its own way, written for you.

Which ought tell you all you need to know, eh?

A pig is a pig is a pig, and T.A.R.D. are fucking pigs.

Remember this post, where I noted that the geniuses at The Alliance for Real Democracy (T.A.R.D) had filched their front page graphic from Westword?

The graphic which I uploaded so’s we could still chuckle over their corny little thievery when they deleted it?

Well, they’ve deleted it.

Keep reading, T.A.R.D.  I’ll be roasting your asses well into August.

But Try-Works commenter Puck beat me to the punch.

TARD is basically made up of the large, liberal national protest bureaucracies like UFPJ, CodePink, etc. They are the big corporations of the protest movement. And, naturally, they are organizations that quash independent, grassroots, local, spontaneous, radical activism. They quash anything that doesn’t follow their script. Along with this, they make everything they touch bland, safe, boring, rehearsed. TARD is a last minute attempt to co-opt the work that R68 has been working on for over a year. These liberal, national groups show up in town and find a few faces willing to sell out the local community for a few bucks. They also exploit existing splits in the local scene in order to move in. One really has to wonder about the intelligence of those who are are selling out the Denver activist scene to get paid positions. They sell out for next to nothing — it isn’t like UFPJ or CodePink are going to have any use for these Denver sellouts after August. After August, these national groups will cut them loose. In the end, the sellouts are just fucking themselves over by wrecking the Denver activist community. I don’t see how these sellouts can show their faces in public.

My advise to the sellouts: You’ve really fucked up for nothing. You ought to cut your losses. You should come hat in fucking hand back and talk to the right people while they are still willing to listen.

Now, granted, I haven’t really been, how shall I put it, blinded by the brilliance of those shining stars over at The Alliance for Real Democracy (T.A.R.D.). But, even as underwhelmed as I’ve been, I couldn’t help but be a little thunderstruck at the sheer ineptitude evidenced by whoever’s doing the organizing.

Take, for instance, this latest article in the Rocky Mountain News, wherein Mr. Jung(k) pontificates on the lengthy and deliberate preparations he and his cohorts have made in anticipation of 50,000 protesters (their number).

I’d imagine, for instance, that restrooms would be foremost in Mr. Jung(k)’s mind.

His plan?

Jung hopes the city will provide the outhouses.

Really? Hopes? Really? Not having conversations with the city about coordinating the outhouses, he just kinda hopes they’ll, like, appear?

Well, that’s understandable, I suppose. I kinda hope to see Mr. Jung(k) rolled down Colfax in one of those very same outhouses.

Moving on, what about, say, showers?

He plans to ask churches and like-minded Denverites to welcome folks in for showers.

Now that one had me folded up in my chair, laughing. Just imagine, if you will, dear reader, 50,000 motherfuckers milling around downtown, knocking on doors and begging showers.

Naw, that shouldn’t be a problem.

And the best part is that Mr. Jung(k) hasn’t, as of yet, asked anyone to help out with showers. He only plans to.

Hell, we’ve got almost two whole months until the convention. Take your time, Mr. Jung(k).

But, anyway, now that we’ve squared away the facilities, what about food?

Never fear, Mr. Jung(k)’s on top of his game.

As for food, the group will issue participants a list of recommended organic, enviro-friendly local restaurants.

Good. Fucking. God.

Might I suggest, Mr. Jung(k), that you might be better served restricting your logistical talents to endeavors more suited to your capabilities?

Like, I don’t know, stoned trips to Chuck E. Cheese?

Never fear, though. There’s one area that Mr. Jung(k) has down cold.

“Our main argument is, if people are allowed to camp, is that we retain control over the entire event,” he said. “We’re bringing in professional security, so we can direct the energy and we can keep it safe and . . . a very positive event.”

Yep, even I’ll concede that Mr. Jung(k) should have no problem arranging security.

After all, I’ll bet he knows plenty of cops.

The Alliance for Real Democracy has a website. And I couldn’t help but take note of the dominant graphic on their main page (uploaded and displayed below so it’ll still be around when the T.A.R.D.’s delete it):

See, it may be just me, but it seems to bear a certain, shall we say, resemblance, to the banner graphic on Westword’s Demver blog.

Which is a pretty good indication of T.A.R.D.’s modus operandi, ain’t it? Cajole your pasty, narrow-eyed ass into other organizations, lift their ideas, and then start up your own little shindig on their backs.

Hell, with activists like these, who needs cops?

Examples?

Well, anybody notice any similarity between this event, just posted on T.A.R.D.’s website, and this one, which Recreate 68 has been planning for a year and a half?

Even better, however, was T.A.R.D.’s poaching of MC5 guitarist, Wayne Kramer, from Recreate 68’s musical line-up.

What makes that so particularly funny is, of course, that the reason Recreate 68 approached Wayne Kramer is that MC5 kicked off the original 1968 Democratic National Convention protests with the mighty “Kick out the Jams”.

Meaning that, while T.A.R.D. is whining to any journalist who will listen about Recreate 68’s name, the hypocritical motherfuckers are explicitly trying to co-opt their theme.

More to come. Much, much more. One doesn’t get handed targets quite this fucking stupid, bloated with self-appreciation, and full of shit every day. I am gonna be having me some fucking fun.

Update: Well, hell, it’s a start.

Thanks, Daisy.

And, bonus, Buckley also threatens to smash Chomsky in the face.

Update:  Had the wrong video up.  This one’s much more fun.

Denver city officials have released new details about Denver’s, ahem, free speech zone.

Details released Monday

* Wire mesh fencing will be used to mark public viewing area.

* Parade route starts at Larimer Street and Speer Boulevard.

* Parade route ends at Seventh Street and Auraria Parkway, which is the entry and exit point for the public demonstration zone in Parking Lot A.

* Permits are not required for entering or using viewing area.

* People using the public viewing area will be protected from unreasonable search and seizure but could be subject to search and seizure under constitutional standards.

* No one will be allowed to obstruct the public viewing area in a way that would prevent free use of the area by others.

The rest.

I ain’t buying for a fucking second, by the way, that Hickenlooper or anyone else in the city is calling the shots on DNC preparation any longer. This is the pigs at the Democratic National Committee.

And, make no mistake, they are pigs. Anyone who would put you in a cage to exercise your civil rights is a pig. They’re not even crypto-fascists, they’re flat-out fascists, they’re fucking pigs.

A right is a right. The pigs at the DNC no more have the ability to allow you your rights than you have the ability to allow the moon to rise. The only thing they can do is use force to ensure your compliance.

It’s no different than what a mugger does.

Or, for that matter, a rapist.

At least that seems to be the gist of the latest Mike Rosen article about Recreate 68.

Free speech? Let them write a letter to the editor, or a book or take out an ad. It’s no secret what these would-be revolutionaries believe in. The icon of a raised fist on their Web site accompanies the menu of daily protest themes, with each one focusing “on a symptom of the disease of an Imperialist, Capitalist, Racist system.” Glen Spagnuolo, Marxist revolutionary-in-chief, describes his group as representing minorities, anarchists, communists, socialists and radicals. He expects 25,000 people from across the country to join his Denver protest. So what? Whom do they represent? And why should anyone else care? Do the math: Twenty-five thousand people out of a population of more than 300 million is eight one-thousandths of 1 percent. That’s less than one person out of 10,000 in the country. Even if it were a hundred times that number, what would it matter? So what if a hard-core band of “anarchists, communists and radicals” takes to the streets to indulge their rage and self-disenfranchisement. Why in the world should such tantrums affect any rational citizen’s fundamental beliefs or positions on important issues?

HBO recently ran a multipart series based on David McCullough’s popular biography of John Adams. In one of the early episodes, an angry crowd of Bostonians is seen venting its frustration at British soldiers. American colonists often took to the streets to protest the tyranny of King George III imposed by his appointed governors, magistrates and military forces. The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against taxation without representation. One can sympathize with such actions and understand the justification of resorting to property damage and rebellion when no political or legal remedies were available. That was then, this is now.

In our constitutional republic, representative democracy offers ample opportunities for electoral majorities to have their will translated into public policy, with the courts protecting individual rights. I’m not impressed by the theatrics of those who take their politics to the streets. The ballot box is the appropriate venue for orderly change or support of public policy.

Keep reading.

You can be unimpressed, asshole.  That’s your right.  But in this “constitutional republic” the people have constitutional rights.  Those aren’t restricted to writing letters to the editor, nor taking out an ad.  The only way you can state “that was then, this is now” about the First Amendment is to consign the Constitution to the dustbin of history.

Which makes me wonder what the hell kind of conservative you claim to be.  See, I always understood conservatives to be vested with the idea of conserving the Constitution.  Your kind?  Well, I don’t even know what to call you.  I kinda like all the Bill of Rights, both those unpopular to the left and to the right, and I have no idea where the fuck you’re coming from.  You, you ain’t a conservative of any sort that Thomas Jefferson would recognize, you’re more like that kind that’s best exemplified by William Jefferson Clinton.

Constitutional rights aren’t negotiable, they’re rights.  Having the right to vote doesn’t negate the First Amendment, and your argument as such only shows how willing you are to gut the Constitution to your own ends.  You ain’t a conservative, you’re the kind of shitheel our founding fathers would’ve thrown in the Boston Harbor with the tea.

One can’t be all Re-create 68 all the time. Now and then one must sit back, roll a cigarette, and smell the Evan Williams.

Ladies and gentlemen: your wholly-non-violent, always-opposed-to-exercising-their-own-rights, happy-to-let-cops-beat-them-over-the-fucking-head, Re-create 68 splinter group.

The Alliance for Real Democracy.

Otherwise known as T.A.R.D.

Anything else from me would seem superfluous at this point.

(Thanks, exeter.)

If he were alive today, Thomas Jefferson would shoot Mayor Hickenlooper in the fucking face.

Protesters who want to march to the site of the Democratic National Convention will have to end their processions several blocks short of the Pepsi Center, according to the route released Thursday by Denver city officials.

The special parade route, put together by the city to balance the desires of protest groups with the needs of downtown businesses, angered the protesters, who had hoped to be able to end their marches within sight and sound of the convention hall

“This is not an appropriate parade route,” said Re-create 68’s Glenn Spagnuolo. “I’m not being able to march in front of the event site at the Pepsi Center. That’s the target audience. Your political protest is completely ineffective if … you’re not even allowed to march to where your intended audience is.”

The route begins at Civic Center park and runs down West Colfax Avenue to the southbound lanes of Speer Boulevard until it reaches Larimer Street and ends. A wide divide separates the end point from the Pepsi Center, which will hold the delegates from 4 to 9 p.m. nightly Aug. 25-28. The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the convention, has yet to release its security perimeter.

Keep reading.

(A guest editorial by Try-Works reader, Business Major.)

Over the past few years, Jim Paine, PirateBallerina’s self-described Moonbat in Charge, has revealed more than enough about his views on taxation to firmly establish his credentials as a member in good standing of the Let Them Eat Shit School of “Free Market” Economics (otherwise known as rabid “Milton Friedman groupies”).

Hence, among other repugnancies, Paine’s continuous whining about “every dime of taxpayer money” expended in efforts to better the lot of “colored folk,” even as he’s displayed all the rhetoric elegance of Geraldine “How dare you state the obvious?” Ferraro in trying to counter suggestions that his is a profoundly racist outlook.

Heretofore, we’ve simply referred those seeking to unravel the implications of what Paine passes off as “principles” to The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Kline’s brilliant analysis of the unspeakable misery resulting from the imposition of Friedmanism upon country after Third World country since 1973.

To this, we can now add a local dimension. As was reported in the New York Times on June 11, “Colorado experienced the nation’s largest rate of growth in impoverished children from 2000 to 2006.” By the latter year, “180,000 children—15.7 percent of the state total—were living in poverty in Colorado…a 73 percent increase since 2000.”

Nor was Colorado’s “leadership” in this area in any sense marginal. The second-highest rate of increase in child poverty occurred in New Hampshire, where it was 47%. In other words, Colorado led its closest rival by a whopping 26% (i.e., a full lap in a 4-lap race).

There’s more. While the increases in states like New Hampshire and Delaware—the latter, with a rate increase of 45%, placed third among the 50 states—were suffered disproportionately by communities of color, such lopsidedness was nowhere near so pronounced as it has been in Colorful Colorado.

The rate of increase pertaining to Colorado’s black children, for instance, was 116%. While no data was reported by the Times regarding Latinos, but among American Indians—a group against which Paine has consistently voiced an especially virulent loathing (all the while pretending to be doing exactly the opposite, of course)—the rate of child impoverishment rose by a staggering 473 percent.

Tellingly, the median income of Colorado’s burgeoning white urban population actually rose during the same period.

How to account for the so-called Colorado Paradox? How about the fact that during the years 2000-2006, Colorado served as a veritable national showcase for implementing the very economic model Jim Paine so vociferously champions?

Not only was the Bush program of corporate welfare and tax cuts for the most affluent in place during the entire period, but, in Colorado, the effects were amplified immensely by Bill Owens’ control of the governor’s mansion, and by certain services provided to the state’s lily-white elites by such unsavory types as Bob Beauprez, Tom Tancredo, and Benny “The Scotsman” Campbell in the U.S. House and Senate.

With this cast of characters running the show in behalf of its “natural constituency”—a population guaranteed to induce snow-blindness when viewed without benefit of dark lenses—it’s no wonder that what little remained of Colorado’s social contract after passage of the “taxpayer’s bill of rights” in 1992 was quickly shredded.

While the portion of the state’s public revenues devoted to sustaining everything from social services to education stagnated or declined, appropriations to expand policing and prison capacity rose steadily. At the same time, the tax codes were utilized to “stimulate investment and development”—read, “profitability”—to an unprecedented degree.

All told, the 2000-2006 period came as close to economic nirvana as anything Friedmanites like Paine have yet experienced on the domestic front. Indeed, his only real complaints have been that Colorado’s duly-elected “stewards of free enterprise” weren’t able to privatize the state’s infrastructure altogether.

Maybe if all those newly-impoverished black and Indian children had literally starved or died for lack of home heating, Herr Eichmann would have been satisfied that “economic justice” has at last been delivered to Colorado’s master race.

But probably not. Some forms of moral depravity know no bounds.

Be that as it may, one thing couldn’t be clearer at this point. And that’s that the price of the several “well appointed bathrooms” adorning Jim Paine’s utterly unearned country estate has been paid in suffering by an untold number of the hungry, shivering little “darkies” upon whose very futures he’s pronounced himself entitled to foreclose.

This from the Rocky Mountain News.

On Monday, the city told protesters the demonstration area will be 50,000 square feet somewhere on the much larger Lot A, or VIP parking lot at the Pepsi Center. It will be surrounded by a fence that will allow people outside to see and hear the protesters, and vice versa, an attorney for the protest groups said.

Keep reading.

Fucking idiots.  Quick, trolls, name one kind of quickly erected fencing that doesn’t allow those inside to see those outside?

For the life of me, I can’t think of a concentration camp in the world that doesn’t have a good concertina wire fence, which meets the city’s proposal to the letter.

But, hey, on the bright side, it’ll give Medea Benjamin, Leslie Cagan and Adam Jung somewhere to pretend to be relevant.

The rest of us, those who actually have some respect for our rights, we won’t be in pigpens.