Friday, August 31, 2007

Help us help the children . . . with music!

When the staff of Revolution 21 found her in a shanty town under the Interstate 480 bridge in Omaha, little Stefania was covered with lice, suffering from rickets and listening to awful Top-40 music on Channel 94-1.

Yet she still managed to smile for a visitor to her encampment, a crooked smile that displayed her dirty brown teeth. She looked much older than her 14 years -- sort of like a munchkin charwoman in an asphalt jungle.

One could hardly believe that only a few blocks away were burgeoning and popular condominium developments in the growing downtown of this bustling Midwestern city. Such deprivation amid this expanse of plenty!

Stefania could represent all of the deprived youth shoved aside, denied access to the banquet table of this capitalist society. She could represent all of those who could be just like you and me . . . if only.

BUT THROUGH YOUR DONATIONS, we at Revolution 21 will buy a corporate jet to fly our executives from one charity even to another across the fruited plain . . . and we'll be able to buy more commercial airtime to keep those donations rolling in. Unfortunately, we won't be able to provide little Stefania a nutritious diet and sufficient Vitamin D to get rid of her rickets.

The Learjet payment is due next week, and you know how that goes!

We will, however, will be able to provide Stefania access to the Revolution 21 podcast, enabling her to leave the cultural deprivation of commercial contemporary-hits radio behind forever and instead bask in the richness of the best in contemporary musical genius. All thanks to your generous donations.

Stefania would give you a standing ovation for your generosity . . . if she could stand any longer.

FOR YOUR GENEROSITY, allow us to offer you free access to our award-winning Revolution 21 podcast here. May the wonderful music it provides warm your heart and enliven your senses!

The Almighty is gonna kick our ass . . .
and it won't be because of the gays

My first, visceral reaction to hateful literary diarrhea such as this by little-noted online Neanderthal John Hawkins is to find the creep, lay into him with a baseball bat and then -- while he's laying there moaning and calling for help -- tell him "It sucks to be you" and to get off his lazy ass.

But that would be wrong.

Yet, that's pretty much what has happened to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina, with conservative scumbuckets like Hawkins leading the way.

IN NEW ORLEANS, defective levees and floodwalls -- constructed by the federal government -- were the baseball bat. The "whiners" Hawkins and countless Angry Men of the Comboxes fulminate over are the recipients of the assault. And for the bastard children of
David Stockman to crack on New Orleans after being accessories to its destruction is akin to Charles Manson telling the Sharon Tate family to "get over it."

You'd just as well make me read
swill like this, and expect me not to develop an overpowering urge toward projectile vomiting:

Two years after Katrina, everywhere you turn, there are people carping, whining, and kvetching. Just why hasn't the pity party for the citizens of New Orleans run out of booze and chips yet?

It's not as if hurricanes are a once a millennium event in the United States. In fact, residents of Florida have so many of them that they don't even cancel a barbecue for anything under a Category 3.

Moreover, people lose their homes in this country every day of the year. If it isn't a hurricane, it's an earthquake. If it isn't an earthquake, it's a tornado. If it isn't a tornado, it's a fire. If it isn't a fire, it's a flood. Yet nobody sits and frets about John Doe, age 58, who lost his house in a flash flood two years ago or Jane Doe, age 60, who had her house blown away by a twister back in 2005.

But, we're all supposed to eternally sit around and weep tiny little tears of sadness for the people who really took it on the chin in a hurricane because they chose to live in a city shaped like a soup bowl on the coast. Let me tell all the citizens of New Orleans something that should have been told to them 18 months ago: it's time to stop playing the sympathy card and get over it.

Nobody is owed a living for the rest of his life because he had a bad break two years ago. Yet, we still have people affected by Katrina who have FEMA paying their rent. How sad and pathetic is it that these shiftless people are still leaching off their fellow citizens? Since when is being in the path of a hurricane supposed to give you a permanent "Get Out of Work Free" card?

Is that just too honest for some people? Is it just “too mean?" Well, if your house burns down tomorrow and you're still living on the dole two years from now, are your real friends going to pat you on the back and tell you that you should keep suckling at the government teat for as long as you can or are they going to give you a kick in the behind and tell you to get a job? A real friend would be honest enough to tell you the truth and more people should do the same for Katrina victims.

Want to know another person who needs to be told the truth? It's New Orleans resident Erick Ventura, who said this,

"America really doesn't give a s*** about New Orleans. We forget. The bridge that collapsed [in Minnesota] -- it's gone, it's yesterday's news. The miners -- if they're not digging a sixth hole, we forget about them. We as a society, we really don't give a d*mn."

Guess what, buddy? You're right; nobody does "give a s*** about New Orleans" any more other than a few saints and a lot of manipulative Democrats looking for a political issue they can exploit. That's the nature of life. Today you're here, tomorrow you are gone, and 99% of the time everyone other than your closest family members have practically forgotten that you existed two weeks later -- but at least New Orleans got $127 billion, more than we spent on the Marshall Plan, before people moved on to something else. That's more than most of us get to say after something bad happens to us and it's why the citizens of New Orleans should be thanking the rest of America for our generosity instead of griping.
AND SOME OF THE COMMENTS are even worse. As are many of the comments from fine 'Merkuns out there -- who either need more antacids or a real life -- whenever anyone posts a Katrina-related article on the Web.

Apparently, this is what conservatism has come to in the United States -- not that liberalism has acquitted itself any better, really, on other hot-button issues. And it is precisely because American conservatism has taken "the Cain excuse" to heart is why I cannot be an American conservative.

See, I try to be a Catholic Christian. I'm crappy at it, but I try. And I have determined that to be a Rush Limbaugh-John Hawkins conservative would do to my immortal soul what the U.S. government's piss-poor civil engineering did to New Orleans.

The Limbaughs and the Hawkinses of the world are all about "Am I my brother's keeper?" In fact, they are all about trying to convince the rest of us that we're not our brother's keepers. That is a lie.

IT'S ONE OF THE BIGGEST LIES Satan ever spawned and set loose upon the earth to ravage lives and consign souls to hell.

I don't want to go to hell. Neither should you. And we all should avoid hateful, selfish, self-righteous venom -- and attitudes -- such as Mr. Hawkins' like the deadly plague they represent.

Hey, hey, whadda ya say? Let's bring back the WPA!

Why not bring back a new Works Progress Administration to rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans? Probably because the idea makes too much sense to make it through Congress.

And because many Americans really, truly hate those who aren't prosperous and perfect in every way. (Which, of course, would include themselves. But they haven't gotten around to thinking things through that far.)

KGO television in San Francisco has the details here:

A group of San Jose State University students are trying to help New Orleans rebuild by reviving a 72-year-old work program. The students want to bring back the depression era Work Projects Administration - the WPA.

Thirty or so San Jose State University students, faculty and Katrina survivors are marching today to commemorate the second anniversary of the devastation hurricane Katrina caused to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. CC Campbell is a Katrina survivor who last week visited her home town.

"It's virtually like it was after Katrina sans the water," hurricane Katrina survivor C.C Campbell said.

Campbell is here because the students have formed the Gulf Coast Civic Works Project. It's a form of the WPA created during the depression 72 years ago. The proposed project is now a national effort to try and create 100,000 jobs for gulf coast residents. CC Campbell thinks it'll help.

"Thats what the federal government did not compensate for is loss of jobs and loss of income. If I don't have a job why am I going home?" Campbell said.

Campbell says she will go home after she and her husband rebuild, she also was surprised at what President Bush said today.

"This town is better today than it was yesterday," President Bush said.

"That's mayhem and foolishness is what that is. That is pure hogwash," Campbell said.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

And how's that working out for you?

School leaders at Holy Family say their school
is all about inclusiveness. It is in the school's
motto and in the spirit of their teachings.


* * *

SOMEDAY, WHEN IT IS TOO LATE, Catholics will learn that "be nice" and "inclusiveness" is no substitute for the Cross and the Ten Commandments.

Until then, whatever Catholic schools and religious-education programs are preaching instead of the gospel and Christ crucified will have little power to save even themselves, and they'll keep turning out little hedonists, materialists . . . and Nazis.

OK, we don't know that Holy Family High School in Broomfield, Colo., is turning out actual Nazis. But we do know that they're turning out some pretty vocal white supremacists and bigots. White power, anyone?

And the Holy Family administrators are quite surprised by the development.
Who'd a thunk it???


BROOMFIELD – It started with a simple question and ended with at least one student chanting "white power" in a classroom.

It happened Tuesday in a classroom at Holy Family High School, the Catholic school that sits at the corner of 144th Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard in Broomfield.

The classroom discussion started with the question: Why do students need to learn Spanish?

According to the Archdiocese of Denver, the conversation soon became about immigration and it turned ugly.

"It became a heated discussion and some rhetoric was used that was inappropriate for the classroom," said Jeanette DeMelo, spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Denver.

At least one e-mail sent to 9NEWS said that at least one student started a chant of "white power" and some said that all Mexicans should go back to Mexico.

"Immigration is an explosive topic right now. It seeped into the classroom," she said.

The Archdiocese says they did not expect something like this to happen in their system, which has embraced its Hispanic students. Archbishop Charles Chaput has come forward several times in support of the Mexican community.

"I think the teacher was a little bit unprepared for that type of discussion in a language classroom," said DeMelo.

The archdiocese says the four students who instigated the whole thing have been talked to and supposedly are remorseful. The Spanish teacher also met with administrators.

An e-mail sent to 9NEWS states the Hispanic students in the class at the time asked to leave, but were forced to stay in the classroom.

Holy Family Principal Sr. Mary Rose Lieb, O.S.F. released a statement on Thursday evening about the incident:

"On Tuesday in a Spanish-language class at Holy Family High School, a single handful of students used heated and inappropriate rhetoric in a discussion on immigration. In a class of approximately 30 students, fewer than six students voiced strong anti-immigration opinions. The remaining two-thirds of the class were silent or voiced support for immigrants. At the end of the discussion, one student inappropriately said "white power," two or three times. Most of the students in the class did not hear the comments. Contrary to media reports, there were no chants by more than one student. Two students, who were offended, asked to leave the classroom and were given permission to leave. However, the discussion ended when other students realized how these students were affected and all of the students remained until the end of class."

"When the administration received a complaint regarding this discussion, interviews were conducted of the students in the classroom as well as the teacher. The student who acted inappropriately was disciplined and the situation has been addressed with the teacher."

"The administration treated this situation as a teaching moment - an opportunity to reaffirm that respect and charity should be the foundation of every dialogue and encounter with another."

(snip)

School leaders at Holy Family say their school is all about inclusiveness. It is in the school's motto and in the spirit of their teachings.

"Holy Family is precisely what its name is: a family. And they've always prided themselves on the diversity," said DeMelo.

Dear Bobby: Shut up! You're looking like
part of the problem, not part of the solution

From the WAFB television website:

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. Representative Bobby Jindal has joined a growing number of Republicans calling for the resignation of Idaho Senator Larry Craig.

Craig is finding himself increasingly isolated from his political allies after his arrest in an airport men's room.

Jindal is among a handful of Republican House members calling for Craig to step down. Others include Jeff Miller and Ginny Brown-Waite of Florida, Mark Souder of Indiana, and Ron Lewis of Kentucky.

Jindal is running for governor in Louisiana.

A spokesman for Craig denied widespread speculation in Washington that the three-term senator, who is up for re-election next year, was preparing to quit.
REP. JINDAL JUST NEEDS TO SHUT UP.

Why is that? I'm glad you asked.

Bobby Jindal needs to shut the !@#& up because the more he engages in such rank, self-righteous hypocrisy, the more he looks like a kept man. A party shill. A follower, not a leader.

Louisiana has had enough of followers. It's had enough of grafters, incompetents and lemmings who specialize in following their political patrons right over the cliff -- in turn, leading all their lower-light Louisiana followers over the edge and into the abyss.

I had thought better of Jindal than that . . . despite the disturbing signs of party-line toadyism he has manifested in the U.S. House. Whadda you know? Wrong again.

WHAT'S MORE DISTURBING, however, is that a smart fellow like Jindal apparently is convinced Louisianians are so damned stupid they won't start asking "But what about Vitter?" That Jindal thinks he can get away with such morally inconsistent pandering -- that he needs to engage in such a display of hypocritical moral inconsistency, as opposed to just shutting the !@#& up -- is a disturbing sign Louisianians just might be that damned stupid.

I, however, am not.

So, congressman, what about Sen. David Vitter, R-La.?

Bobby Jindal is a genius. Literally. He certainly knows that the only difference between Vitter and Larry Craig is the statute of limitations . . . and the gender of their booty-call targets. David Vitter is a john who didn't get caught fast enough; Larry Craig is an old poofter who got arrested while looking for a cheap thrill in an airport john.

What's the diff?

Jindal also is an amateur Catholic apologist. Certainly, he ought to be able to answer this: Apart from the fact that Vitter's naughty bits complemented the hooker's quite nicely, what is the difference -- sinwise, that is -- between Diaperman's heterosexual immorality and Craig's apparent homosexual immorality?

THE WAY I SEE IT, Craig is alleged to have committed crimes against God, crimes against his wife and crimes against nature. Vitter has admitted to committing crimes against God and crimes against his marital bond.

So, morally, Jindal is saying rank sexual morality and betrayal of a spouse is tolerable, but that crime against nature thang is the killer?

Homosexual acts aren't the only crimes against nature. And if the congressman is stating "unnatural acts" constitute the straw that breaks a senator's back -- moral wretchedness and legal transgression being the same -- I think he needs to tell teen-age American males, quite clearly, "You're on notice, buckos! Think twice! You may be putting a political career at risk!"

That's just nuts.

And Jindal is engaging in nutty thinking. That, or incredibly cynical thinking.

Louisiana has had enough nuts and cynics on the fourth floor of the state capitol. I had been hoping this election cycle might break the pattern.

Oops! I did it again!

Not eating makes you look like a bobblehead

From The (London) Daily Mail:

Keira Knightley may have arrived in Venice to promote her latest film, but it is her shrinking frame that is attracting all the attention.

The actress looked tinier than ever as she attended a press conference before then attending the opening of Atonement at the Venice Film Festival.

Knightley, who adamantly denied reports of an eating disorder last year, looked shockingly gaunt as she posed for photographers in a full length white and navy gown.

Later, the 22-year-old actress took to the red carpet in a stunning silver diamante Chanel gown with a pink sash around the waist for the world premiere of Atonement, for which she has already been tipped for an Oscar.

From the 'Sent Mail': Get back to class!

From: The Mighty Favog
To: **** ******
Sent: Monday, September 05, 2005 01:19
Subject: Here's why classes need to resume



Prior to Chancellor O’Keefe’s town hall meeting on Friday, I had serious doubts that LSU would be ready to resume classes on Tuesday. I’m now convinced the university will attempt to start again, but now I’m unsure of the wisdom of that idea.

There remains a massive triage operation and special needs shelter on LSU’s campus. Helicopters, buses and wailing ambulances bearing evacuees are still coming in frequently. This operation will be going on for weeks at the very least.

Dear ****,


Here's why classes need to resume this week at LSU: The future of Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina wasn't a catastrophe for just New Orleans; it will have untold effects on all of Louisiana and, indeed, the nation. That's not even looking at the unfathomable human suffering, which isn't my point in this E-mail.

The point of this E-mail is what will happen in terms of "How will we live out our economic and civic lives, then?" In those terms, Louisiana will suffer grievously. Consider: A tremendous blow has been dealt to Louisiana's economy at a time of ongoing budgetary hardship. Really, you don't want to even think of the budgetary hit the state began to take, starting last Sunday, when New Orleans became an economic non-factor.

Louisiana lives by the sales tax, and it is about to die by the sales tax. The tourism industry just shrank to a dim shadow of its former self. No longer can the Gret Stet make a even a hard-scrabble living while remaining one of the most pathetically uneducated and unindustrious of these United States.

A population that remains inordinately poor and ignorant -- and I am not referring to just poor African-Americans in New Orleans, there are far too many white Louisianians who possess far more educational and economic opportunities yet possess even less interest in exploiting them -- just ain't that charming absent a good drenching of Old World charm in dishabille and Jack Daniels. Excitement-starved Ohioans will pay thousands to vomit in a Bourbon Street gutter because it is colorful and exotic spewing.

Throwing up on Chimes Street is just throwing up on Chimes Street. (God, how I miss The Bayou. Don't miss the throwing up or making an ass of myself, though.)

Someone leaving a handbill reading "Good jazz too-nite. Sho start at Elevn O-clok" posted at Tipitina's will leave color-starved tourists with the warm fuzzies about the "local flavor." A similar sign at Val's Marina in Head of Island just makes Yankees think "Deliverance" and "Squeeeeeeal like a pig, boy!"

See?

I think Jonathan Alter put it exceptionally well in the latest issue of Newsweek online:

I haven't seen them yet on TV, but vultures may have already descended on the carcass of New Orleans. We know that human vultures are swooping in. And the hangman prepared his noose this year, when the Bush budgeteers cut the Army Corps of Engineers' request for fixing the levees by two thirds. For the antitax conservatives who rule so much of the Gulf Coast and Washington, this is a comeuppance. Remember Mumford's history: Government matters. Not entertainment.

To survive, New Orleans must rewire its insouciance into seriousness. The city is at once enchanting and exasperating, romantic and fatalistic. Will the Big Easy learn to work hard enough to resurrect itself? Or is it, for all practical purposes, gone—a place on the map and not much more? History can make the argument either way.

The first week augurs ill. If House Speaker Dennis Hastert is saying now—with sympathy at its peak—that pumping billions of federal dollars into restoring a city below sea level "doesn't make sense," then aid from Washington will plummet in a few months when attention turns elsewhere. Some wealthier refugees are saying privately that they've all but given up on the place. The pictures of looting seemed to burst a psychic dam inside them. Invest in this? Pay more taxes for them? That's a recipe for white flight—overnight. On the other side are blacks—well over half the city's population—who are fed up with a power structure that could not keep them alive, much less house and educate them. Whites and blacks in New Orleans were swimming in a fetid swamp of racial tensions long before Katrina showed up.

The "before" is critical. Experts in urban recovery say that the most important factor in how a city fares is not the extent of the damage but the pre-existing trend lines. Chicago was mostly destroyed by fire in 1871 and San Francisco by earthquake and fire in 1906. But both cities had been on the way up beforehand. So while the rubble still smoldered, entrepreneurs were already getting loans to rebuild. Almost overnight, San Francisco constructed 8,000 barrackslike "refugee houses," with six to eight families in each. Within seven years it had recovered enough to host a world's fair.

The same dynamic applies to more recent disasters. Los Angeles, built on a fault line, is as geographically nonsensical as New Orleans. But it bounced back from an earthquake and riots in the early 1990s. The difference this time is that New Orleans has been in decline for decades. The headquarters of almost every energy company in town has moved away, usually to Houston. Its business establishment lacks the entrepreneurial dynamism of other Southern cities. Its work force is largely poor and uneducated.

The good news is that Mumford's litany of doomed cities is less relevant in modern times. "In the last 200 years, city rebuilding has been almost ubiquitous," says Lawrence Vale, professor of urban studies at MIT. "There's a deeply rooted necessity to turn disaster into opportunity." Vale says it was only a few days after 9/11 that he first saw that word — "opportunity" — in
The New York Times.
I was amazed to read this today. The man nailed it. My wife and I, as well as old Baton Rouge friends (none living in Louisiana any longer) have spoken of JUST THIS many times. And not only in relation to New Orleans -- the unfortunate phenomenon isn't confined to what was the Big Easy. It's also a large part of why my wife (an Omaha native) and I no longer live in Baton Rouge.

Compared with the Gret Stet, life in Omaha lacks a degree of color. But it possesses more quality. That requires a certain degree of seriousness, and it damned well requires a level of taxation that Louisianians never have been willing to endure. Good schools and a functional infrastructure cost money.

Sacrifice is a virtue, not just a bummer.

We were in Baton Rouge for a week a little more than a month ago. The positive changes downtown impressed us. The remodeled J-school building amazed us. The growth of Tiger Stadium awed us.

But after spending a week of near strokes every time my mother uttered the words "damn niggers" (all the while sweetly patronizing an African-American professional who had been extraordinarily kind to her . . . and possessed 475 times more education, by the way), after a week of driving past bombed-out looking storefronts on Florida Boulevard, after a week of reading about the troubled state of the East Baton Rouge Parish public schools (primarily because well-off and middle-class whites hauled ass starting in '81), well. . . .

Let me put it this way: As my wife and I sat, and sat, and sat in traffic on Bluebonnet Road, I finally turned to Betsie and asked "Why in the HELL would anyone want to live here?" A month ago, Baton Rouge was a little more than half the size of Omaha but had twice the traffic problems.

Now it's bigger than Omaha. Uh-oh.

What capital does the state of Louisiana have to deal with the challenges the future brings -- a future indefinitely without a New Orleans? Great infrastructure that will make growth easier? A diversified economic base, one with many well-paying jobs? A well-educated population that values intellectual pursuits? A public and a government which will spare no expense or bypass any opportunity to build up and educate its most disadvantaged and vulnerable citizens?

No, no, no and no. Absent an influx of federal aid unparalleled in American history, y'all in big trouble.

Bottom line: The culture matters. It matters on, oh, so many fronts.

It matters if New Orleans is to be reborn. It matters if Louisiana is to survive this catastrophic blow to its economy and its spirit.

The key to Louisiana's surviving and prospering in the future is finding a way to preserve what is charming, enlivening and beautiful in its civic culture while changing what has been shackling and destructive. The job of your generation of Louisianians is to do just that.

Day One of your job is Tuesday. Tuesday is the first day of rebuilding New Orleans and saving Louisiana. Your job lies in the classrooms of Louisiana State University.

The best thing LSU students can do for New Orleans and Louisiana is to get back to work. Don't let the dead of Katrina have perished in vain.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': THEM!

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 22:59
Subject: Re: New Orleans in the throes of Katrina, and apocalypse


Favog, all I can tell you is my brother-in-law's neighbor, who owns an auto body shop downtown, told my brother in law that he and the other mechanics carried pistols all day because thugs kept running in demanding money. I talked to a Natchitoches friend today, and they're having the same trouble there in the area around the refugee center. It's happening, Favog. Not as much as people say, no doubt, but I submit that neither you sitting in Omaha or me sitting in ***** is in any position to tell people living in it that it's not happening, or that they have nothing to worry about except their own racism. (And what would you tell my mom's black woman friend, the one who said she's carrying a pistol these days because she's scared? That she's self-hating?)



****,


If there are groups of thugs menacing people, you get the bloody cops to take care of those thugs menacing people. YOU DON'T HAVE THE WHOLE CITY PACKING HEAT AND LOOKING AT EVERY LOW-INCOME NEGRO FROM NEW ORLEANS AS A SUBHUMAN THREAT TO BE QUARANTINED OR ELIMINATED.

And you shut down the wild-rumor mill. I've been through all this before, after the Black Muslims started a riot on North Street in '72, killed a deputy and left Channel 2's Bob Johnson a vegetable.

We were convinced that blacks were going to be storming predominantly white schools (that was an actual rumor, that they were going to rampage in white neighborhoods), we were packing knives to school -- FIFTH GRADERS, mind you -- and some kids were freely calling African-Americans "niggers" IN FRONT OF THEIR BLACK TEACHERS.

I've been there. It's ugly. It's of the devil. It has to stop.

And that African-American lady in *** ****** ain't self-hating. She's small-town scared at the very mention of "New Orleans."


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': Southern hospitality my ass

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 22:42
Subject: THIS . . . IS . . . WRONG


All,


As I have said, there were reasons we left Baton Rouge. I am beginning to wonder that if, as some Experts in Holiness contend, such cataclysmic events as Katrina are indeed chastisements from the Almighty, whether it didn't destroy the wrong damn city.

I am ashamed for my hometown. Deeply, unspeakably ashamed. These are human beings, created in the image of God. How much must Job be made to suffer?


-- Favog



Wednesday, August 29, 2007

From the 'Sent Mail': Clueless Christian radio types

From: The Mighty Favog
To: Listserve
Sent: Saturday, September 03, 2005 18:23
Subject: Re: [Listserve] Third Day (Katrina Mix)


>> Here's something I produced today you may be interested in airing to
>> support your on-air efforts to stay topical about the aftermath of
>> Katrina. It's the new Third Day single, with news and survivor soundbites
>> mixed in. Feel free to pass this link onto anyone else you think might be
>> interested in airing it.


All,


Being a native Louisianian watching beloved New Orleans destroyed and the Gulf Coast washed away, my emotions are pretty raw this week. Nevertheless, let me try to be delicate about this. I realize that folks are trying to be helpful, trying to be relevant and are doing so with good hearts.

But y'all have to realize that, sometimes, the proper reaction to great tragedy is not to hand out a tract. Sometimes, the proper reaction is merely compassion -- to suffer with, to enter into victims' Passion, their collective submersion into the sorrowful mystery of Christ's agony and death.

If nothing else, those trapped in New Orleans, those staring at empty lots where their oceanfront homes used to be, those whose homes have been crushed by venerable pines and oaks have been doing NOTHING BUT crying out to Jesus. As have both those natives who evacuated with only what could be stuffed into vehicles and those, like me, who moved away years ago.

This thing, this damnable hurricane, has been bad. Cataclysmic. Friday, U.S. Sen. David Vitter said his best guess was that 10,000 may have died IN NEW ORLEANS ALONE. The economic loss, according to preliminary estimates, will reach $100 BILLION.

We -- all Americans -- will see economic and political upheaval that we can barely begin to fathom at this point.

Tracts are insufficient. Only Christ's love, channeled through His people, and elbow grease is sufficient.

And if you really have to play a song, play one that has come to mean much to folks of the area: "Louisiana 1927" by Randy Newman. There have been wonderful covers, as well, by Marcia Ball and Aaron Neville. It's a song that hit many Louisianians where they lived even before this week.

Now it brings us to tears.


-- Favog

Lousy, rotten, hypocritical GOP poltroons


No, I'm not talking about Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, busted by Officer Mancuso in the Minneapolis airport john. The "family values" senator is one sick puppy deep in denial . . . not a hypocrite.

And his wife needs to get tested. Now.

The lousy, rotten, hypocritical Republican poltroons I'm talking about are all those outraged -- outraged! -- by the senator's alleged toilet-trolling ways. They
want him to resign tout de suite as a betrayer of "values voters" and an embarrasser of the party.

These folks are lousy, rotten hypocrites and scumbags because -- apparently in their book -- it's one thing for a Republican social conservative to engage in illegal conduct with female prostitutes (complete with an alleged diaper fetish) and lie about it, but entirely another for a Republican social conservative to engage in illegal conduct with another man in a public-bathroom stall and lie about it.

IN SHORT, where are the Republican senators and congressmen calling for the head of "Diaperman," a.k.a., Sen. David Vitter, R.-La.? (Insert sound of crickets.)

After all, last I checked, boinking a high-class whore is no more or less illegal than a tawdry, anonymous assignation between two men in an airport latrine. The only thing saving Vitter there is the statute of limitations.

And last I checked my catechism, homosexual acts are no more or less gravely sinful than screwing around on your wife with a prostitute.

Neither the law nor the Catholic catechism offers any guidance on diaper fetishes.

And Vitter's wife needs to get tested. Now.


Still, when the poor old Idaho poofter gets caught by the Twin Cities potty patrol, we are subjected to twaddle such as this from Sen. John McCain, taking a break from his flagging presidential campaign to spew thusly:

“My opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn’t serve. That’s not a moral stand. That’s not a holier-than-thou. It’s just a factual situation.”

NO, SENATOR, that's just self-righteous bull. Factual is that you'll never, ever be president, and that's probably a good thing.

And then there's this from Family Inanity Research Council poobah Tony Perkins:

“Exit polls show that was the No. 1 factor in depressing Republican enthusiasm. There is an expectation that leaders who espouse family values will live by those values. And while the values voters don’t demand perfection, I do believe they want leaders with integrity.”
Of course, when the malefactor was the promiscuously heterosexual Vitter -- an old buddy from their days in the Louisiana Legislature -- Perkins was singing from a different page of the hymnal:

The statement by my friend and former colleague, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, was very disappointing. He admitted to a “serious sin” in a statement he released to the press on Monday, prior to news reports revealing that his phone number appeared on a long list of client’s numbers of the now infamous DC Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

In the release David assumed complete responsibility for what he did and that he “asked for and received forgiveness from God and [his] wife in confession and marriage counseling.” These allegations first surfaced about 4 or 5 years ago when David was considering running for governor of Louisiana. He backed away from the race admitting to marital problems and he and his wife sought counseling. This public revelation coincides with that time frame.

While I commend him on assuming personal responsibility and working to make things whole in his life, I cannot defend David’s behavior. Adultery is a serious matter that affects not only the individuals involved but families and the well being of the entire community. Voters have the right to consider issues like this when they assess the character of an elected official.

Having said that, the American people have shown themselves to be very forgiving toward a public official who admits their failures and takes redemptive steps. And despite what some have said since he released his statement, so does God. Proverbs 24:16 reads “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked shall fall by calamity.” I hope to see David back on his feet again.
SIN IS SIN. Illegal is illegal. Vitter's no better than Larry Craig.

Both should go.

And, come to think of it, so should the dishonorable men who have so little legal or moral vision that they cannot discern the obvious when it kicks them right in their Kinsey Reports.

Two years later: More mush from the simp

President Bush appeared today in New Orleans to commemorate the second anniversary of his screwing over the Crescent City in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Here are some excerpts from his remarks this morning at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School for Science and Technology in the Lower 9th Ward.:

Madam Principal, thank you for having us. Laura and I are honored to be here.

Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah -- blah blah blah blah blah blah.

(snip)

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah . . . blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah.

Thank you for your time.

From the 'Sent Mail': The freak-out begins

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 02:52
Subject: Re: The impact of Katrina: One city


****,


The anarchy in New Orleans isn't the only thing that's starting to scare me here. The wild rumors that are spreading in city after city, and the reaction to all of this make me wonder if it isn't only among a portion of the urban underclass that the veneer of civilization is starting to come completely undone.

You don't remember the South in the '60s. I do. And what I'm hearing from all over is starting to remind me of some VERY bad s*** when Watts, Detroit and Memphis burned at the very same time white folk were being told they had to send their kids to school with "the nigras."

I remember in 1970, when Baton Rouge was about to be subjected to "neighborhood schools" as a mandatory integration plan. At that time, BR schools were being integrated by the grade-at-a-time "freedom of choice" method, starting in '63 (I think) with 12th grade. The scheme clearly was a joke.


I was in fourth grade, and I had gone to legally segregated schools all my young life.

Anyway, I remember sitting in Joe Guillot's (Mister Joe to everybody) barber shop as some guy -- horrified that his boy was going to have to go to Istrouma High with the "g**damn niggers" -- vowed that he would make sure Junior was packing heat. Many things I've heard in the last few days are giving me serious flashbacks.

****, with two little ones , don't have a pistol in the house. It's far more likely that they could get a hold of it and shoot themselves than it is ******* would suffer "New Orleanism" and you'd have to fend off the rampaging hordes.

Besides, you probably would be seriously outgunned anyway.

Maybe things are all going to hell in a handbasket. Then again, maybe not. At least not to THAT extent.

What folks need to do is to just stop it. Stop it, settle down, get a grip on their fear/reason disconnect and take a long, deep breath. Because what we might do in reaction to our worst fears could surpass our worst nightmares.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': Political punditry of the day

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 14:56
Subject: Prescient political commentary of the day


Here is the commentary, which is way better than anything by Fox's "All Stars":

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."
-- Favog


From an AP dispatch:
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered with a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "I buried my dog." He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can't do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can't get them down here."

The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.

"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said.

People chanted, "Help, help!" as reporters and photographers walked through. The crowd got angry when journalists tried to photograph one of the bodies, and covered it over with a blanket. A woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm.

John Murray, 52, said: "It's like they're punishing us."

From the 'Sent Mail': Bush blows it

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 23:57
Subject: Re: Bush blows it


Dear ***,


Here's the president's political problem:

Louisiana soldiers are dying for George Bush's sins. New Orleans is dying for George Bush's sins (cutting all the flood-protection money to fund tilting at windmills in Iraq). And then the SOB gives a laundry-list speech of all the great stuff the Great God W. is doing for the Gulf Coast, when just a FRACTION of it is plainly evident on the ground, where refugees are plucked off of roofs just to f***ing die of thirst and hunger because no one can seem to get food and water where people actually can eat and drink it.

I freakin' saw one too many people crying into the WWL-TV camera lens, begging for food and water today. Saw too many hard-assed sheriff's captains and parish poobahs with agony written on their faces, almost in tears, begging the state, the feds, ANYONE to send food and water because people are falling out on Interstate ramps and the tops of levees . . . because evacuation shelters are full of refugees and devoid of food and water because no one will resupply them.

The longtime cameraman who shot one such piece said it was the only time he's ever wept while shooting a story. And then he broke down in tears on the air.

I broke down in sobs at my computer.

Next year in Nebraska, we have pro-life Democrats running for 2nd District U.S. House and U.S. Senate (Ben Nelson). They both have my enthusiastic support.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': More Apocalypse

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com

Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 13:46
Subject: More apocalypse . . . at least hundreds dead in N'Awlins. Maybe thousands.


Again, from the invaluable WWL-TV.


-- Favog



Updates as they come in on Katrina
01:40 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Tom Planchet


1:39 P.M. -- Hoss: Airline Highway is still underwater.

1:28 P.M. -- WWL-TV's Mike Hoss said the I-10/Causeway interchange has turned into a massive first aid station. 50 ambulances are stationed there, and those who need immediate medical attention are being kept there in tents. Black Hawk helicopters and other rescue copters are constantly ferrying evacuees in to the area.

1:20 P.M. -- (AP) Mayor Ray Nagin says at least hundreds of people are dead -- maybe thousands -- in New Orleans. "We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

1:12 P.M. -- WWL-TV's Josh McElveen describes the stench coming from the bathrooms in the Superdome as horrific.

1:03 P.M. -- Mayor Nagin: Medical ship on the way to New Orleans.

12:56 P.M. -- Governor Blanco - Time is not on our side for stopping the levee break. There were two breaches, when we thought there was only one. Communicatiion, or lack of same caused the problem.

12:55 P.M. -- MIAMI (AP) -- Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines says it is considering a federal request that the company use some of its cruise ships as emergency shelters or help in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts in some other way.

12:53 P.M. -- Governor Blanco - thousands still need to be rescued.

12:52 P.M. -- Governor Blanco: We will rebuild.

12:51 P.M. -- Governor Blanco: The magnitude of this is overwhelming.

12:15 P.M. -- Army Corps: 1,200 sandbags that are 20,000 pounds each are being brought in to bridge gap...water level is no longer rising.

12:11 P.M. -- Army Corps: Water has become level with the Lake in the city so no more water should flow into the city, except at high tide.

From the 'Sent Mail': Après le déluge, l'apocalypse

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 11:59
Subject: New Orleans facing the apocalypse



All,


I just saw Jefferson Parish Emergency Operations chief Walter Maestri on TV, via the Internet. He looked and sounded desperate and frustrated. As I understand from the reporters and anchors, this is not a man given to desperation or frustration.

From what I hear, conditions are no better re: food and water on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

God save the people of the Gulf Coast, because the feds and state aren't enough so far. Alas, I can't help but wonder how many Guard and regular Army resources that might be brought to bear are now tilting at windmills in Iraq.


-- Favog




From WWL-TV:


Updates as they come in on Katrina
11:42 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Tom Planchet

11:40 -- (AP) Roving bands of looters are breaking into stores in Carrollton area to get food and supplies. They've also stolen guns and armed themselves.

11:33 A.M. -- Director Walter Maestri: We have no food or water for the evacuees. Says emergency workers have seized the food and water and drinks from Sam's Club, Wal-Mart and other groceries for evacuees, but he said that is all gone. Says water supply is gone. More water expected, but its not there right now. Says evacuees are getting upset and harried.

11:32 A.M. -- Director Walter Maestri: FEMA and national agencies not delivering the help nearly as fast as it is needed.

11:30 A.M. -- Emergency Operations Director Walter Maestri: Evacuees from New Orleans and the east bank of Jefferson are flocking to the west bank, overwhelming the facilities.

10:58 A.M. -- (AP) The New Orleans International Airport has reopened to allow humanitarian flights in and out, officials said Wednesday.

From the 'Sent Mail': Mercy Now

From: The Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 01:14
Subject: Mercy Now



All,


This news photo from the WWL-TV website, I think, says it all. (http://www.wwltv.com/)


-- Favog


Mercy Now
by Mary Gauthier

My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor
Fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over
It won't be long and he won't be around
I love my father, and he could use some mercy now

My brother could use a little mercy now
He's a stranger to freedom
He's shackled to his fears and doubts
The pain that he lives in is
Almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, and he could use some mercy now

My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit
That's going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful
Who follow them down
I love my church and country, and they could use some mercy now

Every living thing could use a little mercy now
Only the hand of grace can end the race
Towards another mushroom cloud
People in power, well
They'll do anything to keep their crown
I love life, and life itself could use some mercy now

Yeah, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don't deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle 'tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now
Every single one of us could use some mercy now

From the 'Sent Mail': New Orleans is lost

From: Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 19:04
Subject: New Orleans is lost.



Go to: www.wwltv.com


From an emergency notice put on the TV station's web site, which mirrors a bulletin they just had on TV (I'm watching online):

****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****>>


As all of us native Louisianians know, the "entire East bank" constitutes all of New Orleans, Metairie, etc.

The question of New Orleans' survival as a city was in some question an hour ago. Now, I think the question may have been answered. New Orleans will not be habitable for a very long time, and then only after the expenditure of unfathomable treasure.

May God have mercy. Lord have mercy. I am out of words for prayer other than that. Lord have mercy.

I think I am going to go cry now.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': Lord have mercy

From: Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 22:39
Subject: Lord have mercy



Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,
Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,
Agnus Dei, qui tolis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.


From the 'Sent Mail': A prayer for New Orleans

From: Mighty Favog
To: "'Listserve'"
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 19:59
Subject: Re: Prayer



Dear ***,


Thank you for that. New Orleans well may cease to exist as a habitable city tomorrow, and many will die. May God have mercy on them all, and on their immortal souls.

I'm from Baton Rouge, and I well remember Hurricane Betsy, which devastated N.O. in 1965 and was no walk in the park 100 miles inland in B.R.

For folks who've never experienced a hurricane, it's hard to grasp the power of even 100 m.p.h. straight-line wind (not counting the imbedded tornadoes). Try picturing a two-inch, heavy-gauge steel pipe used as a birdhouse pole or antenna mast. (Something MUCH sturdier than your average TV-antenna mast.) Picture it turned into a mini-Gateway Arch, bent all the way to the ground.

Now grasp that Hurricane Betsy was a Category 3 and Katrina is a strong Category 5. Now picture that the only things emerging from the waters covering New Orleans quite possibly could be buildings of more than three stories.

And remember that the Mississippi Gulf Coast also will be utterly devastated.

May God have mercy.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': We'll watch N.O. die . . . on TV

From: Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 19:41
Subject: Re: This really is the Big One.


Dear ***,


Compared with New Orleans, Baton Rouge ought to fare just fine. Channel 4 is saying strong tropical-storm to minimal hurricane-force wind in the BR area.

But, yes, we will watch on television as New Orleans -- quite possibly -- is wiped out tomorrow. Many people will die, bless their souls. And the whole country will pay dearly . . . the price of oil surpassed $70 a barrel today.

BTW, I'm watching Channel 4's streaming video on the Internet. Go to www.wwltv.com.

I've been trying to impress upon Mrs. Favog the utter awesomeness of such a force of nature, but she's having a hard time grasping the magnitude, or how that even could be. I was four at the time, but I vividly remember Hurricane Betsy in 1965 . . . and that was riding it out in BR.

Folks describe that kind of wind as sounding like a jet engine. That is true, but incomplete. The SUSTAINED WIND sounds like a jet engine. The gusts sound like screaming demons from the bowels of Hell.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': God have mercy on them all

From: Mighty Favog
To: ***@***.com
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 19:24
Subject: Re: This really is the Big One.


Dear ***,


You can't do anything about the drunken fools in the Quarter, but I'm heartbroken over the poor folks who just won't be able to get out of Da City, and for the folks at, say, Channel 4 and Channel 6, who are going to try to broadcast as long as they can stay on the air.

Doing their journalistic duty well could be a death sentence. By the time they *try* to get to higher ground (or to a high-rise), they might not be able to.

May God have mercy on them all.


-- Favog

From the 'Sent Mail': Katrina nears

From: Mighty Favog
To:
***@***.com
Date: Sunday, August 28, 2005 00:03
Subject: It doesn't get worse than this . . . at least short of Armageddon


Y'all,


Amid the horror of contemplating what may be about to happen here are public-policy considerations that are going to wash across the country like a storm surge: What happens if we lose an entire major American city?

-- How do we maintain refugee camps for what could be hundreds of thousands of people for God knows how long?

-- Where do we put them all?

-- What happens to the rest of the country when we lose as much oil and gasoline production as we're about to lose?

-- When those supplies are cut off indefinitely?

-- When there's no fuel-oil shipments because there's no more Port of New Orleans -- the second biggest in the U.S.?

-- When ag, raw-material and manufactured-goods imports and exports on the Mississippi are disrupted for who knows how long?

-- Is the military prepared (and do we have enough of it left?) to go in and immediately double the size of the Port of Baton Rouge?

-- Will we, in a month, be paying $5 a gallon for gas, and will that tank the whole economy?

-- Is the U.S. government prepared to rebuild New Orleans?

-- What happens to the insurance industry if the worst happens here?


Sleep tight,

Favog

Two years back into the 'Sent Mail'

From: Mighty Favog
To:
***@***.com
Date: Saturday, August 27, 2005 11:41
Subject: Re: Uh-oh



Dear ***,


If that thing ends up tracking just a hair -- and I mean just a hair -- westward of the dead-center forecast, and if it comes in as a Category Four, New Orleans will be obliterated. If it comes in dead center of the forecast track, it will be bad enough, but probably not 20-feet-of-water-in-the-city bad.

Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had better get off the pot. They only have two days -- they need to start getting the poor and the elderly out while there's a chance in hell of doing so. Set them up in shelters in Hammond, Baton Rouge and Lafayette -- all the arena-sized places they can get. The National Guard needs to be starting on that today.

If you keep rolling the dice, figuring "Naw, it CAN'T get THAT bad," sooner or later, you'll crap out. Besides -- and this isn't exactly the Scientific Method, but what the hell -- I think this country has reached a level of depravity and extreme materialism where God is going to keep getting more and more drastic in an effort to get our attention.

Like I said yesterday, you saw the headline here first:

Big Easy's last dance:
Katrina and the waves


And I was only half joking about sending Jonah to Bourbon Street.


-- Favog

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Officer Mancuso goes to Minneapolis

He had to go to the Twin Cities to do it,

I hate Nebraska Nazis


Clip contains rough language. Viewer discretion advised.


You know, the company you'd have to keep makes it really hard to come out foursquare for enforcing this country's immigration laws, securing the southern border and generally doing what sane countries do when they're serious about being sane, cohesive countries.

OK, I'M FOURSQUARE for enforcing the United States' immigration laws and securing the southern border. I don't want to see this country overrun by illegal immigration from any country. I want America to be serious about being a sane, cohesive country -- and society.

But you're not going to see me at a protest involving some of the nativist-leaning wingnuts that such demonstrations already attract. And when the National Socialist Movement -- that's the Nazi Party, by the way -- gets involved, the only way you're ever going to see me anywhere near such a protest (for example, Sunday Saturday in midtown Omaha) will be behind the wheel of Elwood Blues' second-hand police special.

Here's some of the cover story from the most recent Omaha City Weekly:

“We just got one on our front door. It was pretty anti-immigration, not Nazi propaganda but my friend who is from South Omaha got a Nazi flyer,” said Sam Martin.

Sam is one of a number of Omaha residents who were recently inundated with flyers advertising a neo-Nazi anti-immigration rally to take place at the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 1.

Organized by the National Socialist Movement — the disarming moniker of the official Nazi party of the United States — the rally will also include local members of supremacist group White Revolution and is also certain to attract the Minutemen, who held their own anti-immigration rally at the consulate Aug. 17.

“The United States was founded exclusively by whites, and the founding fathers specifically say they were founding this place for the security and happiness of the themselves and their descendants – not that of Mexico,” said Billy Roper, Chairman of the White Revolution, a national organization that has been “leading America to a whiter future since 2002.”

Jeff Scoop, Commander for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), shared a similar sentiment, “When our forefathers came over here from Europe they were not saying, ‘Ok, everyone else has to learn our language.’ They said they had to assimilate. Now there are unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants reaping the benefits of life in the United States and instead of being prosecuted for being here illegally, they are being rewarded. They aren’t coming here to make a better life or become good Americans or assimilate, they want us speaking Spanish.”

“This country was founded by immigrants,” said Cooper Moon, housemate and fellow Midtown leafletee of Sam Martin’s. “This country’s entire existence is based on immigrants. Why should it be any different now? The whole illegal issue? You wanna talk about our forefathers, the colonists? They were storm troopers of death coming over and obliterating the Native Americans, destroying an entire ecosystem. The Mexicans coming over, getting jobs and raising families? Not even in the same ballpark.”

(snip)

The neo-Nazi groups in the last year and a half have organized hundreds of events. In Dayton, Ohio members of National Socialist Movement appeared in Nazi uniforms at a pro-immigration march to protest, in their words, “the illegal wetback scum and Shabbat goy mud lovers.” Most recently, NSM organized a march on the capitol building in Columbia, S.C. where, according to NSM commander Scoop, “dozens and dozens” of supporters turned out.

When they cannot organize in person, the supremacist groups plaster communities around the country with crude anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration fliers like the ones left in South Omaha.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, in Bakersfield, Calif., for example, one community was littered with National Vanguard fliers that read, “Civilization: One Job Mexicans Won’t Do.” Residents of Pasadena, Texas, discovered racist fliers that urged people to burn down the homes of people thought to be illegal immigrants.

“We intend to send a message to the U.S. government that is if they don’t do something about this illegal immigration problem we will replace all of them,” said NSM’s Scoop. “They are political whores to the Israelis, or special interest groups, whoever is paying them enough money to buy off their souls. Even Americans who don’t necessarily believe in our methods are coming to us. People are sick of being lied to. With us there is no lying. We are concerned about white interests and the way America used to be. If the founding fathers were with us today they would be behind us.”

The rhetoric is popular and it’s working. Recruitment numbers are up, money is rolling into the organizations and white power is getting multimedia diversified. It’s not just about rallies and cross burnings; the National Socialist Movement develops and distributes its own video games, podcasts and radio shows. They maintain a Web site, operate a record label and have recently started NewSaxon.com, a white only version of the social networking site, Myspace.

Scoop claims that NSM, the largest pro-white group in the country, has nearly 50 percent or more of their membership placed in the armed forces with others in law enforcement.

The National Socialist Movement can even boast its very own Nazi presidential candidate, John Taylor Bowles, whose first campaign promise is to provide “all White families in the USA, (husband, wife and minor children)” with zero interest mortgage loans “to buy homes fitted with all necessary household gadgets like fridge, TV, computers, etc.”

(snip)

There is no disputing that the immigrant community in Nebraska is growing. According to census date, approximately 41.2 percent of the total population increase between 2000 and 2006 in Nebraska is attributable to immigrants. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) – an organization that is very questionably fair or accurate – estimates the illegal alien population in 2005 at 39,000.

A report issued from the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Office of Latino and Latin American Studies earlier this year indicates that, between 1990 and 2000, Nebraska’s foreign-born population grew faster than that of any other Midwestern state. From 2000 to 2005, Nebraska experienced the eighth-largest proportional increase of foreign-born individuals of all U.S. states, accounting for more than 60 percent of overall population growth.

Many point to Nebraska’s abundance of jobs, a lack of labor force to fill those jobs, and a low level of competition for jobs within labor migrant populations as other major factors contributing to the growing foreign-born population in the state.

(snip)

“Some people may argue that the people organizing and attending this rally are extreme,” said Lee, the Omaha leader of the White Revolution. “But given the projections given by the U.S. Census Bureau, that says non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in this Country by 2050. I think this calls for extreme measures if we are to remain a first world nation and secure the existence of our people and future for white children. I, nor any other average American wishes to see our Nation transformed into an extension of Mexico.

“Already we are a minority race in over 50 of America’s largest cities. By the time our children reach adulthood, we will have more Hispanics in the USA than in Mexico itself. What kind of future will that be for our children and grandchildren?”

“Stupid people make Third World countries,” said White Revolution’s Roper. “Third World countries don’t make stupid people. The more the United States allows these people in, the more we become like a Third World country. That is not something we want to hand down to our children. We don’t want the United States to become a Third World cesspool.”

Some pretty negative sentiments. But the swastika-wearing interviewees insist that their anti-immigrant stance isn’t about hate.

“I myself, nor anyone I know, ‘hate’ anyone,” said Lee. “This isn’t about ‘hate’ for me, it is about love of my country and my people. It is about securing a future for our children and our grandchildren.

“It’s about preserving our heritage, our culture and history. This isn’t immigration, as our grandparents knew it – no, this is an invasion. An invasion like the world has never before seen in all of recorded history.”

“Most Nebraskans and Americans want common sense immigration reform that treats people with dignity and provides a path to citizenship for people who are paying their taxes,” said Darcy Tromanhauser, Program Director for Nebraska Appleseed, an organization that promotes the integration and participation of immigrant communities. “I think there is a small but vocal minority who doesn’t want to see any immigration at all. They drive from views that are racist and what most people don’t believe. I think this rally and its sponsors betray the roots of some of the more vehement anti-immigrant voices. Many of those who first take an interest in these groups out of a concern over immigration quickly leave when they discover the ugly core of the perspective. Most Nebraskans don’t think this way and believe that if someone is working hard and paying taxes, they should have a path to citizenship and full participation in society, no matter the color of their skin.”

“We understand that they are entitled to say whatever they want. As long as they don’t do any damage to the building, that’s fine,” said Jose Cuevas, head of Omaha’s Mexican Consulate. “I believe that they are mistaken as to what we do. But the First Amendment gives them all the right in the world to demonstrate and say whatever they like.”