Homeless in Denver: Gitmo By the Platte
Vol: 83 Issue: 18 Monday, August 18, 2008
The City of Denver just passed a new law making the possession of urine or feces a crime. The law was passed after news reports circulated saying an entire house was being set aside to store up such noxious substances.
The suspects aren’t nefarious operatives working on behalf of the Republican National Committee. Instead, it is a group of ultra-liberal Democrats that calls itself “Recreate 68”.
According to Denver’s NewsNine, the city has converted a warehouse into a giant jailhouse necessary for the mass arrests anticipated during the Democratic National Convention.
The makeshift holding center, dubbed “Gitmo on the Platte” is located on city-owned property near Steele Street and 38th Avenue. Newly-installed security cameras guard the exterior, chain-link fences and barbed wire form cells inside.
“We feel the city should be ashamed of this secret prison they’ve set up,” said Re-create ’68 organizer Glenn Spagnuolo.
Spagnuolo and other activists gathered outside the formerly-secret facility on Friday to protest the city’s plan to use it as a processing center for all those arrested outside the DNC.
“The public was never going to view this place, it was just found out,” Spagnuolo said. “They got caught with this place. They told our lawyers in negotiations that this place didn’t even exist.”
Denver, as one of America’s most liberal cities, is fast becoming a showcase of liberal elite hypocrisy.
One local news report recalled that the Democrats scoffed at McCain’s proposed gas-tax holiday as it reported that the DNC had been gassing up its vehicles at city-owned (tax-exempt) pumps.
When that was discovered, a spokesman for the host committee was quoted in the Rocky Mountain News as saying they were using the city pumps for ‘safety and security reasons,’ to make sure the gas was not ‘tainted’.
(Who knew all those extra taxes could make gas go bad?)
Denver’s biggest problem is how to keep all its homeless people out of the public eye. Of course, that’s not how liberals see it. They aren’t ‘hiding’ their homeless problem, they are ‘helping’ them.
According to the Denver Business Journal, “Officials said they are working to find safe indoor places for the homeless to go during the Aug. 25-28 convention.”
They say the homeless may feel ‘overwhelmed’ by the event, but insisted those efforts are not aimed at moving street people out of sight of delegates and visiting news crews. Of course not.
There will be “hustle and bustle in Denver that we’ve probably never seen before,” Greta Walker, spokeswoman for the Denver Rescue Mission said.
“And so our goal is to make sure that we have an alternative place for the homeless to go. . . ”
Not permanently, of course. Just while the convention is in town. Homeless people who ordinarily sleep in areas near the convention center will be ‘relocated for their safety’ — but just during the convention.
(But after all the Democrats leave, the streets will once again be safe enough to sleep on?)
Jamie Van Leeuwen is the project manager of Denver’s Road Home, the city s multi-year anti-homelessness initiative. He explained that this is all about protecting them during the convention.
He explained that officials want to “make sure that the homeless individuals … do have a place to go where they can stabilize and be safe. We’d much rather have them indoors in a safe and stable place than in an emergency room.”
So the city has made plans for the homeless to get free tickets to the movies, free tickets to the zoo, free tickets to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and is re-opening some homeless shelters and extending the hours of others.
Evidently, the homeless in Denver ordinarily keep regular business hours. But while the liberal Democrats are in town, the homeless never had it so good.
Said Nan Roman, president of the Democrat’s National Alliance to End Homelessness,
“Denver has once again shown national leadership and taken an exemplary approach to making sure the homeless are safe and secure” during the DNC, adding that she “applauded the city’s efforts to educate delegates about what’s happening in Denver to end homelessness.”
It goes without saying that, had the RNC chosen Denver for its convention, Denver’s homeless would be painted bright orange and shot out of cannons to ‘educate Republican delegates’.
But since its the Democrats coming to town, the liberals are in a tizzy worrying about how to keep them all ‘safe’ during the convention.
(Who knew Democrats could be so dangerous to the homeless)?)
Assessment:
The ‘Recreate ’68’ group hopes to turn the Denver Convention into a reprise of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention.
In 1968, the party was split down the middle over the war in Vietnam. President Johnson refused to run for a second term, leaving the field wide open.
The two front-runners were anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey, who supported President Johnson’s handling of the war.
McCarthy ran in the primaries, but by convention time, buyer’s remorse had begun to set in and the Democrats knew there was no way McCarthy could win.
So they added Humphrey’s name on the convention floor, and Humphrey won the nomination over McCarthy by a three to one margin.
Chicago exploded into rioting, all of which played out on the nightly news. When the convention was finally over, Chicago police had arrested almost six hundred demonstrators. One hundred demonstrators were injured in the clashes.
On Friday, Barack Obama set the stage for another DNC convention debacle when he agreed to allow Hillary Clinton’s name to appear on the first round of balloting with his.
Obama allowed the vote to placate Clinton die-hards who have promised to vote for McCain if Hillary isn’t on the top of the ticket.
By allowing Hillary one more vote, he hopes that Hillary’s supporters will see that Obama is the choice of the majority and will get on board his campaign.
“I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton’s historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong, united fashion,” Obama said in a joint statement.
It is a grandstand play by the supremely confident presumptuous nominee, but the undercurrent of buyer’s remorse is almost as strong for Obama as it was for Gene McCarthy in 1968.
According to Representative Laura Sanchez, (a Hillary supporter), as many has half of House Democrats by end up voting for Hillary over Obama.
The New York Observer recently surveyed several wealthy Clinton backers like Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild who claim to be committed to making the case for Hillary in Denver.
And this just in: According to a report in USAToday, the same committee that stripped Florida and Michigan of their delegates for violating party rules by holding early primaries is poised to suggest those delegates regain their full voting powers when the convention starts.
To Clinton supporters, that would mean that Hillary Clinton received a greater share of the popular vote during the convention process than Obama did.
It is at least theoretically possible that Hillary Clinton could hijack both the Democratic Convention and the presidential nomination, making Chicago ’68 look like a tea party.
Through it all, I keep hearing 2nd Timothy 3:1-5 playing over and over in my head. It is as if Paul were outlining this year’s DNC talking points:
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof . . .“
And coming to your living room next week, courtesy of the Democratic National Committee.
Omegaletter 