Saturday, December 09, 2006

Dear Peggy, we welcome you to commie-lib.com.
We hope you enjoy your stay on the blacklist

Peggy Noonan has done it now.

The erstwhile conservative writer has demonstrated a disturbing level of independent thought, and the Red (State) Channels crowd is about to blacklist her butt. And the rest of her, too -- particularly the fingers she uses to type her weekly Wall Street Journal column.

May God have mercy on her Commie-Lib soul.

You should SEE what this TRAITOR to Our Maximum Leader wrote this time!
Wait a sec; I'll SHOW you what this (and spew spittle when you say this) denizen of the mainstream media said in that lib'rul crapper of a column (and don't forget to try to sound like Douglas C. Neidermeyer when you say "crapper of a column")! Here:


He stood there at the podium, the kind of podium he'd stood at 5,000 times in a long political life, and talked to the kind of audience he knew well: supporters and loyalists, old friends and new. He knew how to play them, how to use the old jokes and have fun. And suddenly he was sobbing.

He had referred to his son Jeb's first campaign for governor. He had seen some "unfair stuff," but Jeb "didn't whine about it, he didn't complain." The old president began to weep. "The true measure of a man," he then said, "is how you handle victory, and also defeat." And here a sob tore out of him and he could not continue.

It is not fully right, or fully fair, to guess about another's emotions. But no one who
knows George H.W. Bush thinks that moment was only about Jeb. It wasn't only
about some small defeat a dozen years ago. It would more likely have been about
a number of things, and another son, and more than him.

Uh oh, Sparky. It's a-lookin' like she's castin' aspersions at our Commander in Chief. This can't be good.

Surely Mr. Bush knew -- surely he was first on James Baker's call list -- that the report would not, could not, offer a way out of a national calamity, but only suggestions, hopes, on ways through it. To know his son George had (with the best of intentions!) been wrong in the great decision of his presidency -- stop at Afghanistan or move on to Iraq? -- and was now suffering a defeat made clear by the report; to love that son, and love your country, to hold these thoughts, to have them collide and come together --this would bring not only tears, but more than tears.

And the younger President Bush, what of his inner world? He has been shorn of much --his place in the winner's circle, old advisers. A man who worked for Richard Nixon reminded me the other night that when Nixon fired Haldeman and Ehrlichman, "he lost his asbestos suit." He lost his primary protectors and loyalists. President Bush is now without a similar layer. Old staffers gone, Rumsfeld gone, Cheney marginalized, Condi and Karen off representing. And the ISG. And the loss of Congress.

AAAAAIIIIEEEE!!!!!!!!!! That thar woman done become a Democrat!!!!

Unlike anguished wartime presidents of old, he seems resolutely un-anguished. Think of the shattered Lincoln of the last Mathew Brady photographs, taken just weeks before he was assassinated. He'd gone from a bounding man of young middle age who awed his secretaries by his ability to hold a heavy ax from his fully outstretched arm, to, four years later, "the old tycoon." Or anguished Lyndon B. Johnson sitting in the cabinet room by himself, literally with his head in his hands. History takes a toll.

But George W. Bush seems, in the day to day, the same as he was. It is part of the Bush conundrum--a supernal serenity or a confidence born of cluelessness? You decide. Where you stand on the war will likely determine your answer. But I'll tell you, I wonder about it and do not understand it, either what it is or what it means. I'd ask someone in the White House, but they're still stuck in Rote Talking Point Land: The president of course has moments of weariness but is sustained by his knowledge of the ultimate rightness of his course . . .

If he suffers, they might tell us; it would make him seem more normal, which is always a heartening thing to see in a president.

But maybe there is no suffering.

Maybe he outsources suffering. Maybe he leaves it to his father.

(SFX: Sound of right-wing echo chamber having collective case of the vapors. Punctuated by the occasional THUD! of fainting without benefit of a "fainting couch.")

And now we cut to the
OpinionJournal.com reader responses to Miss Noonan's column. Keep in mind, now, that the following ARE NOT parody:

When or if we lose in Iraq, it will be in large part because of a liberal media that has done everything in its power to undermine the decision to go to war, turn the American public against the war, predict defeat and proclaim defeat while ignoring successes.
***

I see the current President Bush as a visionary and I believe that someday the world will thank him for going to Iraq to liberate the people. Things are bad there now because the terrorist do not want the President to succeed in Iraq. Yes, some mistakes were made but mistakes happen in wars and this is the war on terrorism and I hate the American people who do not understand that. The American people need to support President Bush and show a united front against the enemy and what did they do during the last election. The stupid voters elected a bunch of dingbats who are going to make matters much worse you just wait and see.
***

I'm not enjoying Peggy Noonan's recent snarky blind sides of our sitting president. Just because a president doesn't include you in his inner circle doesn't mean he should die from a thousand cat scratches from someone who couches her attacks in therapy-speak.
***

After reading Peggy Noonan's offering today I'm a bit confused. Is it the aim of former friends and forever foes to "break" our current president? If so, he must be driving everyone nuts because thus far it appears that is not going to happen. Questioning his "mental capacity" keeps sneaking into columns. Someone should address the "mental capacity" of Baker/Hamilton, et al The ISG is a very bad joke pushed off and supported by Democrats, has been Republicans and major media. I smell lots of rats. I enjoy your writing and have for years. Not today's offering.
Lord, have mercy. The final act of lemmings -- chucking the dagger at the Independent Thinker before diving off the cliff. Or drinking the Kool-Aid. Whatever.

Here's my favorite line. If there's a Dumbass Remark Hall of Fame somewhere, this needs to be in it:

Yes, some mistakes were made but mistakes happen in wars and this is the war on terrorism and I hate the American people who do not understand that.
Well, start by hating me. I am not amused that there are 2,928 American soldiers dead from a war we were railroaded into by the Bush Administration. There were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no working relationship between Saddam and al Qaida.

There are, however, those dead sons and daughters of American mothers and fathers. And those dead mothers and fathers of new American orphans.

And there are the 22,057 wounded, many grievously so.

That, of course, doesn't count the wounded capability of an American military that's being run into the dry, sandy ground. And that's not counting this country's wounded credibility.

And that's not counting the next president's wounded ability to govern a nation inclined -- after Vietnam, Watergate and, now, King George's Plague (Iraq + Katrina lies and bungling) -- to go outside and check every time he (or she) tells us the sky is blue.

Nekkid Britney! Lewd Lohan! Babes in Boyland!
(Hi there! Now that I have your attention . . . )

Britney Spears! Underwear-free zone! Party all the time with Paris!

Lindsay Lohan! Girls gone wild! Admitted to Harvard as Lit major!!!!!!!

Hey, how ya' doin'. Just in from the search engine are we? If you're looking for nekkid Britney pics . . . you really should consider going to confession. Soon.


She's somebody's mama, now, man! Get a grip!

(ahem)

ANYWAY . . . on the Big Show this week, we're exploring some of this past week's Grammy nominations. Bob Dylan, Irma Thomas, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, Beck . . . you get the picture.

Ever notice how much of the really good stuff this year has something, somehow to do with the near-Atlantisizing of New Orleans last year? What do they say about great art coming out of great tragedy?

Maybe, from a Catholic perspective, we can look at this amazing artistic output related to such a calamity as just one of God's means of teasing good -- bringing beauty -- out of the awful and the ugly. What is right and good gets the last laugh, in a cosmic sense, so to speak.

Well, that's the Revolution 21 podcast in a nutshell. But nutshells aren't half as fun as listening, now, are they?

So get to it. Listen. The player's to your right, at the top of the page.

Friday, December 08, 2006

If Barney Fife had gone gangsta

Or, Laurel and Hardy do Columbine. (Link requires free registration.)

Thank God. A non-doofus could have pulled off mass murder at this Omaha high school Thursday.

The lights were out in the Northwest High School classroom Thursday morning so the students in the child development class could take notes off the overhead projector.

Their teacher had said it was all right to talk, so Michael Brannon was standing up, chatting with a girl, said Michael Betts, a senior in the class.

Brannon had his hands in the pocket of his hooded jacket.

Then came a loud, booming noise, Betts said. The teacher said, "What was that?"

Brannon "didn't cry out, didn't shout or nothing. He just looked scared," Betts said. "He started saying, 'I didn't do it! I swear to God, I didn't do it!'"

Robert Michael Brannon, a 17-year-old sophomore, had accidentally shot himself in the finger. The bullet also grazed his thigh before it hit the floor, Omaha police said.

Betts said once the students realized that Brannon had been shot, girls screamed, the teacher -- who thought it was a firecracker -- called for security and Brannon ran.

Brannon went from Northwest, at 8204 Crown Point Ave., to Immanuel Medical Center, a mile and a half away at 6901 N. 72nd St., where he was treated for his injuries. It wasn't clear whether Brannon got to the hospital on foot or by car.

Betts said that a few minutes after the gun went off, students noticed a hole in the carpeting about four feet from where Brannon had been standing. A shell casing was a couple of feet from the hole.

Students leave Northwest High School after the school was locked down Thursday.

En route to the hospital, Omaha Public Schools spokeswoman Luanne Nelson said, Brannon called his grandmother to say he had been injured by a firecracker and was headed to the hospital. A school administrator later called her to tell her that Brannon had left the building.

The grandmother told the administrator of Brannon's phone call, and the school resource officer, an Omaha police officer, went to Immanuel.

Brannon hid the gun somewhere between the school and the hospital, police said.

As young master Brannon is now finding out, happiness is NOT a warm gun. Bang, bang. Shoot, shoot . . . OW!

Thursday, December 07, 2006

She didn't make y'all look like anything

In the New Orleans-area congressional runoff between Democrats Karen Carter and William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson, the parish poobahs of Jefferson (the parish, that is) are lining up behind the alleged crook, Jefferson (of the $90,000 hidden in the freezer, that is).

Now why would they do that? Apart from the fact that it's Louisiana, that is.

Well, the rulers of Jefferson Parish, which lies immediately to the west and to the south of the Crescent City, are P.O.'d that Carter, a 37-year-old state legislator, said less than nice things about the "unwelcome mat" Jefferson (the parish, not the cold cash man) officials put out for desperate, mostly African-American residents of New Orleans trying to escape the waterlogged, hellish city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina last year. As an Associated Press story puts it:

A popular but pugnacious suburban sheriff unleashed an attack this week on Jefferson's opponent, state Rep. Karen Carter, because she called officials "inhumane" for stopping thousands of people from walking across a Mississippi River bridge to the less-impacted west bank to escape New Orleans after Katrina.

Jefferson faces Carter, a fellow Democrat, Saturday in a runoff that will decide one of the last unresolved midterm congressional elections, its lateness tied to Louisiana's multiparty open-primary system.

On Tuesday Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee called a news conference and railed against Carter for nearly 20 minutes, charging "she wanted to run her fat mouth" to get attention by laying down racist charges.

Carter, 37, is well-financed and politically connected. She's seeking to become the first black woman from Louisiana ever elected to Congress.

The incident opened old wounds and the images of chaos after Katrina, which continues to haunt the lives, and historical record, of leaders in Louisiana.

"When their obituary is written one day, the main point will be that during Katrina they did this or they did that in the city's darkest hours," said Douglas Brinkley, a Tulane University history professor and author of a criticized book chronicling Katrina.

Last spring, the mayoral election was dominated by Katrina. Ray Nagin managed to wade through the fallout from the Aug. 29, 2005 storm to win re-election. Next year, Gov. Kathleen Blanco is up for re-election and she faces questions about her performance after the catastrophe.

But the congressional race had marched to a different beat.

"It's hard to overshadow Katrina as an issue, but Jefferson has managed to do that with his bribery investigation and the $90,000 in the freezer," said Susan Howell, a political scientist with the University of New Orleans.

Jefferson's troubles surfaced last year when the FBI raided his homes and offices in Washington and New Orleans in an investigation into African telecommunications business deals. The FBI alleges agents found $90,000 in bribe money in his freezer. Two Jefferson associates have pleaded guilty in connection with the probe.

In the fallout, Jefferson was stripped of his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and a posse of candidates was lured into the race to unseat the embattled congressman. Jefferson has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.

So, Lee's outburst has interrupted a campaign that had settled into a somewhat predictable mudslinging contest between Jefferson and Carter and provided Jefferson a breather from attacks against his moral standing.

Carter's comments were aired during Spike Lee's in-depth documentary on Katrina. In one segment she says: "There's no question that the officials there were wrong, absolutely wrong, and they need to be reprimanded accordingly. It was unjust, it was inhumane, and it was unacceptable."

Lee, who looked rattled and acted belligerent toward reporters during the news conference, said he was "incensed" by her comments and that he could not stomach the idea of having Carter represent his parish, which makes up the populous western and southern parts of the metropolitan area.

"She makes us look like a bunch of yahoos down here, a bunch of racists, that we kept black people out of Jefferson Parish," Lee said. The people of Jefferson Parish, Lee countered, "think we are heroes for what we did, and there were no racial overtones whatsoever."
Sheriff, Karen Carter didn't MAKE y'all look like anything. Any resemblance of Jefferson Parish officials to yahoos and racists is . . . more or less on the mark, actually.

If readers are interested in exploring exactly how ugly that scene on the Crescent City Connection (the river bridge in question) was that day in 2005, I cannot recommend Brinkley's book "The Great Deluge" highly enough. Your eyes will be opened.

Unless you're from Louisiana, of course. Then your worst realizations will be reconfirmed.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

It works like the 'daisy cutter' . . .
only with hydrogen and methane


NASHVILLE (R21 People's "News") -- Authorities removed an alleged dirty-bomber from an American Airlines flight here early Monday after the jet made an emergency landing, and government officials said the nation narrowly averted a cataclysmic demonstration of the confluence of two explosive technologies -- the "dirty" bomb and the fuel-air "daisy cutter."

Pilots made the unscheduled Tennessee stop after passengers reported that a flatulent passenger was repeatedly lighting matches. A Dallas-area woman was questioned by federal agents as all 99 passengers were rescreened before being allowed back onto American Flight 1053.

The woman -- who authorities allege was trying to set off a fearsome new IED known as the "Fart Blossom" -- was not allowed back onto the plane.

Washington sources report that President Bush has ordered the Pentagon to gear up for an imminent invasion of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, which Bush today declared was "full of flatulent women" who could be "deployed against American cities and exploded with virtually no warning."

"The enemies of America are out there -- many of them in the Metroplex -- and, by God, we are not going to lose a city as long as I am in office," Bush said. "We are gonna show them Dallas people some real 'shock and awe,' and with God's help, and that of the 82nd Airborne and the 1st Armored, we are gonna let loose the transformative power of freedom in North Texas. Uncle Sam will once again make Dallas into a place Tom Landry could be proud of."

Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi decried the White House war talk.

"Uh, couldn't we just airdrop some Beano into North Texas, instead?" Pelosi asked at a midafternoon press conference. "Can't we just all pass on the cole slaw and baked beans, instead?"

White House spokesman Tony Snow accused Pelosi of "aiding and abetting terrorists" and wanting to "cut the cheese and run."

Film at 11.

Now this is rich. Priceless, even

Pore Britney is daid . . . drunk. Or something like that.

And looking back from Kentwood, La., on the Hollywood monster she helped raise -- or not, as the case may be -- The Britney Mama (a.k.a., Lynne Spears), is fit to be tied over her newly separated daughter's non-stop carousing with Everybody's Favorite Bimbo, Her Right Skankitudinousness, Paris Hilton.

As my own Louisiana mama might say, "Dem tings happen."

Lynne rang up Britney and begged her to calm down, but the pair ended up having a "ferocious bust-up".

Family friend Marina Watts told Britain's Star magazine: "Lynne is absolutely devoted to Britney and really only wants the best for her. She has seen TV footage of Britney showing off her backside, displaying her boobs and generally partying up a storm with Paris and thinks it is tacky."

Lynne, 50, suggested Britney, 25 -- who filed for divorce from Kevin Federline last month after two years of marriage -- should move back to her hometown in Kentwood, Louisiana, for a quieter life.

She reportedly told Britney: "You're going off the rails, can't you see?"

However, the 'Toxic' singer apparently ignored her mother's pleas, saying she didn't want to be back among the "rednecks".

Oh, Britney! Sweetiepie, don't you get it at all?

Are you too blind drunk to see that you ARE the "rednecks."

Honey chile, the way you're acting is no different from Tee Bubba and his (ahem) buddy, Wanda Sue, out on a bender at the Moonlight Inn just off of La. 16.

Well, that's not exactly right. There is a difference -- two, actually. You do not own a bass boat, and you do have more disposable income.

But "white trash with cash" is white trash, nonetheless. The tragedy is that God don't make trash.

That, child, you have done all by your lonesome. With an assist, probably, by a now-distraught Britney Mama who ought to have figuratively kicked your butt while she still had the legal standing.

Sigh.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Spot the metaphor

The New Orleans Times-Picayune's Chris Rose has written another stellar column, this one in Sunday's paper. I think it's a gigantic metaphor, dripping in meaning and symbolism about modernity's murder of any notion of a humane society.

I think it's a classic case of telling a little story as a means of conveying the big story

But that's just me. What think you?

As far as crimes go in this town, the incident in the parking lot on South Clearview Parkway outside of Marshall's department store on Oct. 26 was hardly a blip on the screen.

An elderly woman was walking with an armful of packages. A couple of guys pulled up in a car. They grabbed her purse, knocking her to the ground. They drove off with a haul that amounted to 40 bucks.

Witnesses ran over to help the victim. The cops came. A report was filed.

In an era of brazen daylight shootings, horrific gangland executions and post-disaster fraud schemes that run into the millions of dollars, this was just a petty annoyance, a piece of paperwork, a statistic. Except for one lingering detail.

The victim, 85-year-old Ellen Montgomery, broke her left hip when she hit the ground. She had an emergency hip replacement operation at Ochsner Hospital and spent three days in post-op and then nine days in rehab.

Her son Jamie picked her up and brought her to his house in Gentilly. By mid-November, she was making good progress with a walker; despite her age and injury, Ellen Montgomery's life had been marked by an unbending will to get by on her own.

But on Friday, Nov. 17, she complained of shortness of breath and had trouble with her balance. Sunday the 19th, she collapsed in the kitchen. An ambulance rushed her back to Ochsner where doctors tried to revive her. But in the end, she died of a pulmonary embolism -- a blood clot in the lung.

The Jefferson Parish coroner's office determined that the blood clot was a result of the hip surgery and therefore a direct result of the purse snatching and thus she became another member of the mounting murder victim roster in Jefferson Parish.

(snip)

Ellen Montgomery was my friend and, at times, my muse.

In the Days of Pain that followed Hurricane Katrina, she was my only neighbor and it's funny; I guess as a result of some sort of ageism on my part, during the weeks we spent together last fall, I always had this self-delusional notion that I was taking care of this old and eccentric woman, helping her get through the traumatic aftermath of Katrina when, in fact, she was taking care of me.

But I bet she knew it the whole time.

We had first met shortly after I bought my house on Magazine Street in 1992. Her house had the classic pack rat/cat lady look to it, all paint-peeled and overgrown, hidden from the street by an iron fence and tangled trees that conjured Boo Radley or some other kind of weird or scary resident therein.

She lived there alone -- unless you count her 33 cats.

Our single encounter way back then wound up being a small life-changing event for me. I was single, reckless and in a world of financial and legal trouble. My car was wrecked and my phone service cut off for months because I couldn't make the bill.

My home had been burglarized three times in a six-week period, pretty much relieving me of all my possessions and distractions. I think I can say with certainty that it was the roughest patch, both personally and professionally, that I had ever known and would know until the fall of 2005.

I was 32 years old and welcome to any new idea or direction that might drag me out of my self-pitying ways. Miss Ellen had heard about me -- the troubled soul on the block -- and she offered what she thought was the key to happiness: a stray dog.

Lord knows where she got the thing, but its presence in Miss Ellen's house was none too welcome by the feline masses that had been living there for years. The dog needed a home and I needed something, anything, and that's how I wound up adopting an exotic silvery-blue mutt of some sort of husky derivation whom I named Alibi and who taught me the notion of unconditional love and who gave me something to do, something to love and something to look forward to in an otherwise bleak time.

Alibi left a lasting impression. In the years since, I have adopted four more homeless dogs.

After that, I rarely saw Miss Ellen. Truthfully, she had made a great impact on my life but in my typically self-absorbed way, I never really kept in touch with her. She had her life, I had mine, and there weren't many opportunities for a shut-in cat lady and a gregarious party boy to commune.

And that was my loss, not hers.

Read this column. Just go read it. Now.

Friday, December 01, 2006

What we're all about . . . redux

It's been a while, so I thought I'd rerun this blog's opening post just to make sure a few things that need to be said keep getting said. After all, Revolution 21 IS kind of, well, unique.

So here goes, a blast from the recent past:
Greetings. The Mighty Favog here. Welcome to Revolution 21.

Let's get something straight right now, O huddled masses: Revolution 21 ain't your grandma's radio podcast. It ain't your typical Catholic radio thing, and it ain't your typical corporate, over-researched, same-boring-playlist rock radio thing, either.

But is it really useful to define Revolution 21 by what it's not? So sorry, my plebes! My bad.

Let's just say -- plainly -- what Revolution 21 is. Revolution 21 is radio that aims to reflect life as it is lived by screwed-up, struggling, inspired-yet-bumbling children of God sorely in need of His grace and forgiveness.

Revolution 21 realizes that Catholics like the Mighty Favog -- your host and the master of dysfunctionality -- live life with one foot in Heaven and the other in the gutter with all the other schmucks called Humanity. We strive for holiness, we occasionally achieve it, and sometimes the best we can muster is Holier Than Thou.

Oh, well. Blame it on Eve and that damned apple.

For his part, the Mighty Favog -- though a great and mighty Favog -- is a Bad Catholic. It is to be hoped, however, that he is capable of decent radio . . . and a stellar podcast.

And he's trying most mightily to become, at the least, a Mediocre Catholic.

So, like us believing schmucks, Revolution 21 is a mixture of the sacred and the secular. The serious and the foolish. Rock . . . and roll. And blues in the night.

But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch (probably out of fear of some Matter-Antimatter cataclysm).

Or something like that.

Well, Revolution 21 LIKES IT when things get blowed up good. We say put that Faith Thing and that Life Thing in a bag, shake it the hell up and see what happens.

I mean, ain't that a lot more fun than alienation, ennui and life in Schizo City? Or, if not always fun, at least always a lot more interesting and, ultimately, rewarding.

But then again, it's not All About Me -- or All About You -- is it, now?

Enough blather, proclaims the Mighty Favog, your potentate of New Media!

Let us now proceed with trashing preconceived notions of radio formatting and stale bourgeois convention. Let us now do radio like we ought to be living -- faith and life together, recognizing only two kinds of music. That would be Good and Bad.

The bad, we don't mess with.

My favorite conservative

I don't consider myself a conservative, at least not politically. A social conservative, yes. But politically, I'm more like the Last New Deal Democrat.

(OK, kids. Go to Wikipedia and look up Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Then look up New Deal. I'll wait for you.)

That said, I love Peggy Noonan. (Don't tell my wife.)


I would love to spend an afternoon with Peggy at Caffeine Dreams -- or at the watering hole of her choosing -- and solve the problems of the world as I tried not to look all gaga or something equally lame-o. (Again, don't tell my wife. WHAT?! My wife READS this blog?!? Hi, honey. LOVE the new shoes.)

ANYWAY, this is why the onetime speechwriter for Ronald Reagan is My Favorite Conservative:

America is turning against a war it supported, for the essential reason that no one is able to promise a believable path to a successful outcome, and Americans are a practical people. It is not true that Americans are historical romantics. They are patriots who, once committed, commit on all levels, including emotionally. But they don't wake up in the morning looking for new flags to follow over old cliffs. They want to pay the mortgage, protect their children, and try to be better parents in a jittery time. They are not isolationist. They want to help where they can, and feel called to support the poor and the sick wherever they are. They are also, still, American exceptionalists, meaning they believe the creation of America--the long journey across the sea, the genius cluster that invented the republic, the historic codifying of freedom--was providential, and good news not only for us but the world. "And the glow from that fire can truly light the world."

Much has been strained. We were all concussed by 9/11--we reeled--and came down where we came down. For the administration, extreme events prompted radical thinking. American exceptionalism was yesterday. They would be universalists, their operating style at once dreamy and aggressive: All men want the same thing, and we're giving it to them whether they want it or not. Now the dreamers hope to be saved by men--James Baker, Vernon Jordan--they once dismissed as cynics. And the two truest statements on Iraq are, still, Colin Powell's "You break it, you own it" and Pat Buchanan's "A constitution doesn't make a country, a country makes a constitution." Iraq has a constitution but not a country.

When history runs hot, bitterness bubbles. Democrats who should be feeling happy are, from what I've observed in New York and Washington, not. The closest they come to joy is a more energetic smugness. Republicans are fighting among themselves--or, rather, grumbling. They haven't, amazingly, broken out in war, and if they did, no one would be debating if it were a civil war. It would be like Iraq, like a dropped pane of glass that is jagged, shattered, dangerous.

We will need grace to get through this time: through the discussion of the Baker-Hamilton report, through debate on the war, through a harmonious transfer of legislative power in January, through the beginning of the post-Bush era.

People often speak of an absence of civility in Washington, but that's not quite the problem. Faking civility is a primary operating style: "My esteemed colleague."

What is needed is grace--sensitivity, mercy, generosity of spirit, a courtesy so deep it amounts to beauty. We will have to summon it. And the dreadful thing is you can't really fake it.

A very small theory, but my latest, is that many politicians and journalists lack a certain public grace because they spent their formative years in the American institution most likely to encourage base assumptions and coldness toward the foe. Yes, boarding school, and tony private schools in general. The last people with grace in America are poor Christians and religiously educated people of the middle class. The rich gave it up as an affectation long ago. Too bad, since they stayed in power.

The latest example of a lack of grace in Washington is the exchange between Jim Webb and President Bush at a White House Christmas party. Mr. Webb did not want to pose with the president and so didn't join the picture line. Fair enough, everyone feels silly on a picture line. Mr. Bush approached him later and asked after his son, a Marine. Mr. Webb said he'd like his son back from Iraq. Mr. Bush then, according to the Washington Post, said: "That's not what I asked you. How's your son?" Mr. Webb replied that's
between him and his son.


For this Mr. Webb has been roundly criticized. And on reading the exchange I thought it had the sound of the rattling little aggressions of our day, but not on Mr. Webb's side. Imagine Lincoln saying, in such circumstances, "That's not what I asked you." Or JFK. Or Gerald Ford!

"That's not what I asked you" is a sentence straight from cable TV, from which many Americans are acquiring an attitude toward public and even private presentation.

Yep.

Dammb Blakbery!.

Lindsay Lohan's publicist DID NOT like it when the press marveled at the spectacle . . . um, movie star's truly impressive atomization of the English language in a condolence E-mail she sent to the family of late director Robert Altman.

Lindsay is not an illiterate boob, says spokeswoman Leslie Sloane.

"When I got the reports that he had died, I reached Lindsay on her cell phone, and she had no idea. She was devastated. She started crying," Sloane told Reuters. "She quickly put something together on her Blackberry."

"Here was a girl who found something special in this man that she felt so close to," Sloane said. "And she was completely shocked and blown away that he just died. It was written very quickly and it was from the heart."

Lohan titled her November 21 e-mail "Dead is hard, Life is much easier," a quote she attributes to actor Jack Nicholson. In it, she sent condolences to Altman's family, adding, "I feel as I've just had the wind knocked out of me."

The film star, who is famously estranged from her father, also describes Altman as "the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I've had in several years."

Days after the missive was made public, Los Angeles Times columnist Patt Morrison ridiculed it on a Web site as "alarmingly incoherent," apparently referring to misspellings and grammatical errors by Lohan, and wrote that Altman himself might find it "comedic."

Andrew Gumbel wrote in the London Independent that the letter, which ends with the odd sign-off "Be Adequite," had become the talk of Hollywood.

Leslie, sweetie daaahling, the problem the press has isn't that this poor child wrote an incoherent, misspelled mess of an E-mail to Altman's survivors. The problem the press has is that this poor child wrote an incoherent, misspelled mess of an E-mail to Altman's survivors, then self-servingly released it to reporters of her own free will so that the world might be duly impressed with her (ahem) profundity.

That, and the fact that Lindsay -- who truly, more than anything, deserves our pity -- has spent the past couple of years or so making a royal ass and spectacle of herself.

Still, Ms. Sloane's point about quickly and distraughtly dashing off messages on teeny weenie keypads is well taken. I'm sure Lindsay Lohan DID NOT mean to type "Be Adequite."

What she meant to type, I am confident, is "V2 #d2@U-tE."

Who do people think Lindsay is, after all? Britney Spears?

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Why we fight (but not too hard)

Here's the deal, the problem with our Iraq debacle and the sociopolitical underpinnings of it:

The Iraqi Muslims (no matter how odious their cultural assumptions and/or methods of fighting) are fighting for their collective lives, faith, culture and identity.

We are fighting for the Almighty Orgasm and another PlayStation 3. And gas for the SUV.

Who do you think is going to win? Both short-term and ultimately.

Exactly.

You'll fight to the death for something bigger than yourself -- your god . . . your family . . . your people. Why would you, on the other hand, fight to the death for things that are worthless to you if you're dead?

And Lord knows America's reserves of Meaning ran out, oh, about 1966, if I'm figuring correctly. For the Full Monty on where we're headed now, read this incredibly important essay in Commonweal.

An excerpt:

The global “war on terror” represents the Bush administration’s effort to do just that-to change the way that they live. “They,” of course, are the 1.4 billion Muslims who inhabit an arc stretching from North Africa to Southeast Asia.

The overarching strategic aim of that war is to eliminate the Islamist threat by pacifying the Islamic world, with particular attention given to the energy-rich Persian Gulf. Pacification implies not only bringing Muslims into compliance with American norms. It also requires the establishment of unassailable American hegemony, affirming the superiority of U.S. power beyond the shadow of doubt and thereby deterring attempts to defy those norms. Hegemony means presence, evidenced by the proliferation of U.S. military bases throughout strategically critical regions of the Islamic world. Seen in relation to our own history, the global “war on terror” signifies the latest phase in an expansionist project that is now three centuries old.

This effort to pacify Islam has foundered in Iraq. The Bush administration’s determination to change the way Iraqis live has landed us in a quagmire. Today the debate over how to salvage something positive from the Iraq debacle consumes the foreign-policy apparatus. Just beyond lie concerns about how events in Iraq are affecting the overall “war on terror.” Expressing confidence that all will come out well, President Bush insists that historians will eventually see the controversies surrounding his Iraq policy as little more than a comma.

Rather than seeing Iraq as a comma, we ought to view it as a question mark. The question posed, incorporating but also transcending the larger “war on terror,” is this: Are ongoing efforts to “change the way that they live” securing or further distorting the American way of life? To put it another way, will the further expansion of American dominion abroad enhance the freedom we profess to value? Or have we now reached a point where expansion merely postpones and even exacerbates an inevitable reckoning
with the cultural and economic contradictions to which our pursuit of freedom has given rise?

Linzee iz adequite att beeng illedderut

Thee brilliyunt moovee stare Linzee Low Hand haz reeleesd ay kondolens lettr shee rote too thuh famlee of thee layt dur rectur Robrt Alt Man. Aye fownd thee lettr too bee kwite mooveng an verree profown inn ayn unnkonvenshunul mannr inn thez posemawdernt tymz.

Itt iz two bade thate them snottee englands iz makeing funn of linzee, ass them doo nawt evn spel moste of the wordz wee uze in englissh rite. skrewe themz all, aye saye!

Fawr yer reedeing pleshure, aye wil poste ann x-surpt frum thys liturrary masturpees thayt wille liv forevr inn thee harts uv alle thoz hoo luv thuh englissh langwidg:

The 20-year-old actress, who scored a part in Altman's last movie, A Prairie Home Companion, made the interesting decision to go public with a condolence letter she wrote to the Altman family in the wake of his death from cancer last week. The passion was certainly there - she, like many dozens of actors before her, clearly adored the experience of working in Altman's characteristic freeform style - but the letter was also spectacular in its incoherence and disregard of basic grammar and spelling.

"I am lucky enough to of been able to work with Robert Altman amongst the other greats on a film that I can genuinely say created a turning point in my career," she began, less than certainly. "He was the closest thing to my father and grandfather that I really do believe I've had in several years... He left us with a legend that all of us have the ability to do." A little lower down, she fell into improv philosophy, apparently riffing on the notion that life is too short to waste: "Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourselves' (12st book) - everytime there's a triumph in the world a million souls hafta be trampled on. - altman Its true. But treasure each triumph as they come." And she signed off, "Be adequite. Lindsay Lohan."

Aynt shee wundrfull? Cee, drynking harde duzz mak yew smrte!

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Powell calls sky blue. Bush not there yet.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, unlike his old boss, looks at what's going on in Iraq and proclaims the deadly obvious.

"I would call it a civil war," Powell told a business forum in the United Arab Emirates. "I have been using it (civil war) because I like to face the reality," added Powell.

He said world leaders should acknowledge Iraq was in civil war.

Powell outlined the case against Iraq at the U.N. Security Council ahead of the war, which was based broadly on intelligence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

President George W. Bush denied on Tuesday that sectarian violence had reached the scale of civil war. He said the latest wave of violence was part of a nine-month-old pattern of attacks by al Qaeda militants aimed at fomenting sectarian tension.

THIS, OF COURSE, begs the question of how long, exactly, the United States can endure a chief executive whose default existential position is to close his eyes, cover his ears and yell "Neener, neener, neener! Cancel! Cancel! Cancel! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!!!!!!"

In other words, we in trouble, y'all.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Trickle-on economics soaks the wrong folks

Bueller . . . Bueller . . . Bueller . . . Bueller . . . .

Congress . . . Congress . . . Congress . . . Congress . . . .

Bush . . . Bush . . . Bush . . . Bush . . . .

Anyone? Anyone?

Anyone care to answer Ben Stein's challenge to Republican Holy Writ about how having America's rich pay less in taxes as a percentage of income than, oh, teachers and cops and pipefitters and disc jockeys furthers either basic economic justice or deficit reduction? Stein, the original Cheerful Republican (not to mention lawyer, economist and cult-movie icon) has a Big Gun at his side on this one, none other than the "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett:

Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.

Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.

It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

This conversation keeps coming back to mind because, in the last couple of weeks, I have been on one television panel after another, talking about how questionable it is that the country is enjoying what economists call full employment while we are still running a federal budget deficit of roughly $434 billion for fiscal 2006 (not counting off-budget items like Social Security) and economists forecast that it will grow to $567 billion in fiscal 2010.

When I mentioned on these panels that we should consider all options for closing this gap — including raising taxes, particularly for the wealthiest people — I was met with several arguments by people who call themselves conservatives and free marketers.

One argument was that the mere suggestion constituted class warfare. I think Mr. Buffett answered that one.

Another argument was that raising taxes actually lowers total revenue, and that only cutting taxes stimulates federal revenue. This is supposedly proved by the history of tax receipts since my friend George W. Bush became president.

In fact, the federal government collected roughly $1.004 trillion in income taxes from individuals in fiscal 2000, the last full year of President Bill Clinton’s merry rule. It fell to a low of $794 billion in 2003 after Mr. Bush’s tax cuts (but not, you understand, because of them, his supporters like to say). Only by the end of fiscal 2006 did income tax revenue surpass the $1 trillion level again.

By this time, we Republicans had added a mere $2.7 trillion to the national debt. So much for tax cuts adding to revenue. To be fair, corporate profits taxes have increased greatly, as corporate profits have increased stupendously. This may be because of the cut in corporate tax rates. Anything is possible.

The third argument that kind, well-meaning people made in response to the idea of rolling back the tax cuts was this: “Don’t raise taxes. Cut spending.”

The sad fact is that spending rises every year, no matter what people want or say they want. Every president and every member of Congress promises to cut “needless” spending. But spending has risen every year since 1940 except for a few years after World War II and a brief period after the Korean War.

The imperatives for spending are built into the system, and now, with entitlements expanding rapidly, increased spending is locked in. Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt — all are growing like mad, and how they will ever be stopped or slowed is beyond imagining. Gross interest on Treasury debt is approaching $350 billion a year.
And none of this counts major deferred maintenance for the military.

And, you know, there's a biblical aspect to all this. It's not terribly complicated; it's just Luke 12:48. Read the whole chapter, though.

"Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. "

Or, in the much more elegant language of the King James Version of the Bible:

"For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more."
And a few years back, the Iowa Catholic bishops had something to say on this matter. Now, I don't usually -- OK, never, actually -- think "Aha! Catholic bishops!" when I'm looking for cogent public-policy analysis. But this, by God, makes sense:

Applying Catholic social thought, with prayer and consideration to the economic issues of taxation in the State of Iowa, we find that there are two basic moral principles that should govern the collection and distribution of taxes as they benefit the State of Iowa and its people.

The principle of contributive justice, as explained in the US Bishops. pastoral letter, Economic Justice for All (1986), suggests that all members of a society have a responsibility to contribute to the common good. A just and equitable system of taxation ensures that everyone contributes to society according to his or her ability to pay. Through contributions collected by taxes, we share the blessings that God has given us so that these resources can be used for the good of all.

The principle of distributive justice, also described in the economics. pastoral letter,
suggests that the distribution of wealth among the members of a society should first address the basic material needs of all people. As explained in the pastoral letter, the goal of distributive justice is to obtain a just and equitable distribution of income, wealth and power. This goal should be evaluated in light of how this allocation affects the poor and most vulnerable in a society.

On the basis of these moral principles, we make the following suggestions as a guide for tax policy in the State of Iowa. We understand that these applications of moral principles do not have the same moral certainty as the principles themselves and that people of good will can agreeor disagree on the application of moral principles.

1. Spending by the State of Iowa should first assure that the basic needs of all people -- especially those who are poor and vulnerable - are addressed as a priority before other
appropriations are made. Just as in a family's budget, spending for recreation and entertainment should come only after paying for shelter, food, clothing and other necessities.

2. All citizens have the right and responsibility to contribute to the common good through the payment of taxes.

The collection of taxes is an important and justifiable role of government. Taxes are an individual's contribution to the common good. In any society, the common good should be viewed of greater importance than the good of any individual or special interest group. Paying taxes is one way that citizens give something back to society.

(snip)

4. Taxation in any form should be based on one's ability to pay. If Iowa tax policy is to
remain faithful to Catholic teachings, it should first assure that the system collects taxes according to one's ability to pay.

Catholic social teaching supports a more progressive form of taxation. Our contribution to the common good should reflect our blessings. From those to whom much has been given, much should be expected. Those who make the most profit from our economic system benefit most from the structures and infrastructure that make economic enterprise possible. Tax exemptions and tax incentives should not change the fundamental requirement that taxes should be based on one's ability to pay.

OK, go ahead and call me a communist now. It would seem I'm in pretty good company.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Happy Thanksgiving!


Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow . . . I'm hoping you'll be watching football and not beating one another to death fighting for the last Elmo or PlayStation 3 at the local Big Box store.

Enjoy your family and friends. And turkey. And sweet potato pie.

Be thankful for what you have, not covetous of what you don't. Be laid back. Be happy.

Just be . . . for this long weekend, at least. God bless.

God Bless America, my a**

Most of my life, now, has been spent witnessing things happen that no one in their right mind would ever think could happen. In this country, at least. (And I'm only 45.)

Still, this stunned me. You cannot exaggerate what this portends for our American society -- such as it is.

"WHAT!? WHAT!?" you, no doubt, are screaming at your computer screen about now. Well, THIS is what.

A Minneapolis Top-40 radio station (owned by Clear Channel, of course) decided to have a bit of fun Tuesday morning, asking listeners whether they'd be willing to part with their babies for 24 hours in exchange for a Sony PlayStation 3.

Let me make this even clearer. The "deal" was this in the station's gag: You give us your baby for a day; we give you a PlayStation 3.

The St. Paul Pioneer-Press picks up the story:

"We got more calls than we could handle," said Ryan, who referred to the practical joke as a "social experiment." "They were lined up willing to turn their kids over to strangers
for a freakin' PlayStation."

KDWB morning show executive producer Steve "Steve-o" LaTart said he was surprised how many people were interested in the bogus swap, which consisted of handing over your child to LaTart for 24 hours in exchange for a PS3.


"There were a lot of phone calls that we didn't even get to, and I would say three- quarters of them were serious," said LaTart.


People with babies of all ages — including a 2-day-old and a 1-week-old — made it on
air. One of the more serious sounding calls came from a woman named "Katie," who
agreed to give up her 1-month-old for three days. She wanted to sell the PS3 on eBay to make some extra money for the holidays.


"In a way it's flattering that we've built up 13 years of trust and that's great … yet at the same time, hey, we thought we knew Kramer too, you just never know," said Ryan referring to Michael Richards, who played Kramer on "Seinfeld," and his recent racist
comments.


After the KDWB crew admitted on air that it was all a hoax, Ryan was dumbfounded when "Katie" called back.


"She said, 'So, does that mean I don't get the PlayStation?' I'm like yeah, you're a dumb a—, and you don't get the PlayStation.

MY GOD.

MY. GOD.

Seriously, is the end of us near -- at least in the context of our American "liberal" society?

Think of it . . . KDWB's phone lines were hopping with mental and moral imbeciles apparently dead serious in their willingness to give up their children -- their infants -- for a day, to strangers, in exchange for a (Anglo-Saxon expletive deleted) game console. (Listen here.)

At least when Islamic extremists happily sacrifice their offspring, they believe it is for the glory of Allah. Our kids . . . s***, we'll sacrifice 'em for a flippin' PlayStation.

One can only wonder whether those PlayStation 3 consoles come with a free Disciples of Molech: Tempting Doom game disc.

IDIOTS. Knuckle-dragging, morally retarded, mouth-breathing idiots.

All I can say is "Lord, have mercy." But, to be really honest with you, it's getting harder and harder to even make that simple entreaty to the Almighty. Because you know we have it coming. We really, really do have it coming.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Jesus is not 'gnarly.' He is God.



HANK: Can't you see you're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock 'n' roll worse.

PASTOR K: You people are all alike. You look at us and think we're freaks. Come on, even Jesus had long hair.

HANK: Only because I wasn't his dad.

What Stephen Baldwin needs is to have a looooong talk with Hank Hill. And he needs to stop beating the word "gnarly" to death, perhaps by stretching his vocabulary to include -- oh, I don't know -- "bitchin'." Or something.

The youngest Baldwin brother, as you may know, has found Jesus. And has decided his mission in life is to spread the gnarly gospel to gnarly teens through gnarly means. Here's a bit from an
ABC Nightline profile Tuesday night:
After his conversion, Baldwin says he quickly found that Christianity lacked a certain edge. So Baldwin decided to fill Christianity's gnarly niche by starting a youth ministry that evangelizes with skateboards, bikes and motorcross.

"I'm here to reach the youth culture of America that's dying everyday spiritually," Baldwin says. "They're overdosing, they're committing suicide, they're doing this and that. And the thing that transformed me was coming into the understanding the things of God and the spirit of God. And I want to share that with people — and I want to share it in a fun way."

We interviewed Baldwin on a skate ramp in Houston, a recent stop on his evangelical road show, "Livin it Live." Baldwin says the stakes are high: no less than a "spiritual battle" for the souls of young people.

Before the "Bikers for Christ" and the "King of Kings skate team" could start the show, Baldwin insisted his riders take a safety precaution of a higher order — an invocation.

"I just ask that every skateboard and bicycle and motocross bike, Lord, have a legion of angels all around them," Baldwin said, as he led a group prayer.

The "gnarly" niche, unconventional though it may seem, is proving very effective.

Baldwin is now one of the most influential up-and-coming evangelicals in America. He and his holy rollers regularly sell out stadiums, and he's put out one of the best-selling skateboard DVDs of all time.
I am all for Christianity having a certain "edge." But, then again, didn't it always? Christ was not killed for being a milquetoast, nor were most of the apostles martyred on namby-pamby grounds.

If Christianity lacks "gnarly" cred, the fault lies in various warped American subcultures that have attempted to mold God instead of letting God mold them. Now, to fix that, Baldwin seeks to create yet another gnarlier-than-thou subculture which, of course, is attempting to mold God instead of letting God mold it.

I think it's time now for the "King of the Hill," ol' Hank himself, to have that little talk with Stephen Baldwin. Heck, it could be the same talk he gave to his teen-ager, Bobby, after the younger Hill did the Full Gnarly:

BOBBY: When I turn 18, I'm going to do whatever I want for the Lord. Tattoos, piercings, you name it.

HANK: Well, I'll take that chance. Come here, there's something I want you to see. (Hank takes down a box from the shelf and opens it up) Remember this?

BOBBY: My beanbag buddy? Oh, man, I can't believe I collected those things. They're so lame.

HANK: You didn't think so five years ago. And how about your virtual pet? You used to carry this thing everywhere. Then you got tired of it, forgot to feed it, and it died.

BOBBY (looks at a photo of himself in a Ninja Turtles costume): I look like such a
dork.


HANK: I know how you feel. I never thought that "Members Only" jacket would go out of style, but it did. I know you think stuff you're doing now is cool, but in a few years you're going to think it's lame. And I don't want the Lord to end up in this box.

(snip)

BOBBY: Hey, what's this picture? Mom used to have blonde hair?

HANK: Farrah Fawcett was very popular back then.

I don't think Jesus is interested in gimmicks. I don't think He is interested in bait-and-switch events. I don't think He is interested in looking cool.

I do, however, think Jesus is very interested in having a close, profound relationship with every one of us, both personally and communally . . . meaning in the context of a church body. Specifically, from my perspective, the Catholic Church, which WAS founded by Christ Himself.

And while the Church absolutely needs to be "salt and light" -- absolutely needs to impact the culture in a major way -- the Church (and that's all of us in the Body of Christ) ought never slip into Hucksterism for Jesus. What it has to offer -- not sell . . . offer -- is compelling and powerful enough to render gimmickry superfluous.

Gimmicks just get in the way.

Not that I have anything against BMXers and skateboarders who are Christians, and who attempt to bring their faith into what they do. After all, here at Revolution 21, we are Catholics trying to bring our faith into what we do . . . which, in our case, is radio.

There is a fine line, however, and it shouldn't be crossed. That line would be where you start to be nothing more "Bread and Circuses for Jesus."

That line would be where you are sooooooooo focused on getting people through the door and manufacturing "New Christians" that you forget about getting them grounded in their newfound faith.

That line would be where you forget about preparing them for a lifelong voyage on sometimes stormy seas.

What Stephen Baldwin needs to be asking himself is whether -- as "gnarly" and "cool" and popular as his Skateboarder Jesus might be now -- in five years some sad-eyed parent will reach for a shoebox, a shoebox tucked away on a top shelf in a closet somewhere in America, and in that shoebox will lie Skateboarder Jesus . . . dusty, scuffed and very forgotten.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Next, they'll accuse him of charming water moccasins

Here is a press release from the Louisiana Democratic Party. Read it, and then I'll explain a few things:

PRESS RELEASE


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.......................................
CONTACT: Julie Vezinot
Nov. 16, 2006.......................................225-336-4155

THOU SHALT GO FORTH AND SEEK CONTRIBUTIONS

Jindal Claims Divine Intervention Has Directed Him to Raise Money
But Not Commit to Governor’s Race

BATON ROUGE – Piyush (Bobby) Jindal has finally admitted to a partial divine revelation that he wants to be governor. This revelation has told him to seek out his most valued supporters, ask of them large amounts of money while he continues to pray for an answer to his most burning question – Should I be Governor?

Someone would have to been living under a rock not to notice that Jindal has been criss-crossing the state over the last several months during his “supposed” re-election campaign. Funny, I didn’t think the voters in DeRidder or Monroe could vote in the 1st District? Never the less, Jindal kept at it as he so smugly rested on the assurances his re-election was in the bag.

And now, to his loyal voters who put him back in Washington, he’s telling them – Wait a Minute – I changed my mind – I want to be governor. For someone who is supposedly intelligent and claims not to play politics, Jindal’s actions are insulting and should be called to question.

“How dare he ridicule Gov. Blanco for raising funds for her re-election campaign,” said Louisiana Democratic Party Chairman Chris Whittington. “Gov. Blanco has never hid her intentions to run again and had enough respect for the people of this state to tell them so.”

Gov. Blanco took the reigns of this great state with a mission – improve the economy, health care and education standards for Louisiana. Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita threw a wrench into her timeline, but our governor is not one to give up and she has stated she will work hard to see those goals achieved.

Instead of Piyush praying for a decision to run for governor which everyone knows he’s made; he ought to pray for humility and maybe even a conscience.

# # #

First, we're talking about the Deep South. There are people in the South who go by nicknames so entrenched that friends of 50 years would never dream of calling them by their given names.

In more than a few cases, friends of 50 years MAY NOT KNOW their given names. That is why in the newspaper obituaries, the deceased's nickname is a must item.

Honest to God, when my wife (an Omaha native . . . and I ain't talking Omaha, Ark.) and I were first married and living in the Gret Stet, she was completely taken aback by the obit for "Crap Ear." As in John "Crap Ear" Doe. But if you want all "Crap Ear's" cronies to show up at the funeral home, you gotta do it.

So now we come to U.S. Rep. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, R-Kenner. Only in public, he doesn't go by "Piyush."

His congressional website says "Bobby." Every Louisiana newspaper and TV newscast says "Bobby." Hell, for all I know, everybody in Louisiana says "Bobby."

And without the quotation marks. That is, except for the Louisiana Democratic Party.

What's next, Democratic Party TV ads with clips of Kwik-E-Mart proprietor Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from The Simpsons? Claims that the furriner -- "Kinda looks like a nigra, don'tcha think Bubba?" -- is out to take the governor's job from a red-blooded American, Kathleen Blanco?

Forget that Bobby Jindal was born and raised in Baton Rouge. Forget that he's Catholic, too. AND, FOR GOD'S SAKE, FORGET THAT HE'S WELL-EDUCATED, COMPETENT AND ACCOMPLISHED!

Just remember that he's one a them dark-skinned furriner Indians. And vote for whatever incompetent or crooked -- or both -- candidate the Louisiana Democrats put up for governor. Like incompetent, er, incumbent Blanco.

This kind of behavior was inexcusable 50 years ago, and it's execrable today. But dat's Louisiana for 'ya!

Then again, it does not surprise me that Louisiana Democrat pols would be A) so brazen, B) so idiotic or C) both as to try race-baiting Bobby Jindal a mere three weeks after Democrats nationwide screamed bloody murder about the GOP's race-baiting of Harold Ford in the Tennessee U.S. Senate election.

And you have to -- in a warped sort of way -- admire the Louisiana Democrats' ability to smear a man on account of both his race AND his religion, mocking him for praying about big decisions. Not an easy feat, and the mark of a determined cabal of slimebags.

Obviously, Louisiana -- a.k.a. "The Poor Man of America" -- has a high tolerance for dungheaps of every sort.

After all, here's a picture taken at Bobby Jindal's alma mater, Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

BRMHS is one of the state's very best schools, yet you have to wonder whether it would be in a lot better physical condition if more of its students were Regular White Americans (TM), instead of blacks, Asians and Indians like Piyush Jindal.

And you thought I couldn't work an ongoing Louisiana outrage into a post about the latest Louisiana outrage.