Casting a HARRY POTTER spell to lure you

Here are some of the early reviews of this week's Revolution 21 podcast, which isn't the new Harry Potter novel, but comes close in wonderfulness (Is that a word???):

The Revolution 21 podcast is a spellbinding romp through the musical magic that represents of the American experience. It beguiles, it enchants and it leaves the audio connoisseur totally entranced and marveling at the sheer brilliance of Revolution 21's host, The Mighty Favog.

-- Vincent Candy,
The New York Thymes

Amazing! A wonderful musical journey! I couldn't believe The Mighty Favog played that! The latest episode of the Revolution 21 podcast only confirms this program's place in the Pantheon of American culture!

-- Nola Contendre,
The Street (of Laredo, Texas)

I was enthralled by the Revolution 21 podcast and its brilliant host, the inimitable Mighty Favog, even more than I was by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

This show is a musical tour de force, and it ought not be missed by anyone who cares about the arts -- or just good tunes. Good show, old man!

-- Reg U. Lation-Tripe,
London Royal Flush

SO, THAT MAKES IT UNANIMOUS! You can't miss this go 'round of the Revolution 21 podcast.

Be there. Aloha. (And Expecto Patronum!)

Evangelicals bring 'idolatry' to a Wal-Mart near you

As a Catholic, one of the things you learn to deal with is Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians cracking on us devotees of Popery for "worshipping idols."

Statues of the Blessed Virgin and the saints in churches? Bad. Promotes praying to idols. There is only one God, and they ain't Him.

Statues of the Blessed Virgin and the saints in your front yard or flowerbed? BZZZZZZZZT! Idolatry alert! Idolatry alert! Cancel! Cancel!

AAAIIIIEEEEEEEE!

SO WHAT THE HELL is a Catholic boy like myself supposed to make of this development? Here's some of an article from USA TODAY about Tales of Glory toys:

Wal-Mart is about to bring religion to the toy aisle.

Early next month, 425 Wal-Mart stores nationwide will begin carrying faith-based toys from One2believe that target parents who would rather that their kids play with a Samson action figure than a Spider-Man action figure.

It's the first time the world's largest retailer has carried a full line of religious toys. "We're seeing interest from parents in faith-enriching toys," says Melissa O'Brien, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman.

Religious products have become a multibillion-dollar business, and the toy move comes as it targets a younger audience. Fox recently created FoxFaith, a 20th Century Fox unit to distribute family movies with Christian themes. In January, Universal Pictures will release The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything - A VeggieTales Movie, based on the spiritual characters by Big Idea.

But until now, most faith-based toys have sold successfully only in specialty religious stores, not at mass-market retailers, warns Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes magazine. "Once children turn 4, parents tend to get them what they want. And right now, kids are asking for Transformers."

About one-sixth of Wal-Mart's 3,300 stores will carry the One2believe line, which will get 2 feet of toy aisle shelf space, says O'Brien.

One way Wal-Mart decided where to carry them, she says: Stores that sell a lot of Bibles will carry the new line.

"We view this as an opportunity to reach that audience," she says.

But one religious leader does not consider Wal-Mart in the fold.

"They'll carry anything that sells," says David Croyle, president of FamilyLife, a non-denominational ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. "This simply signals intelligent buying within Wal-Mart."

For David Socha, CEO of One2believe, it's a dream come true. "Our goal is to give the faith-based community an alternative to Bratz dolls and Spider-Man," he says.

The toys are based on biblical stories. For example, there's a set of 3-inch figures based on Daniel in the lion's den for about $7. A 12-inch talking Jesus doll is about $15. And 14-inch Samson or Goliath action figures are about $20.

The toys target kids from pre-school to age 12, he says, and also are sold online at one2believe.com.

HMMMMMM. Well, then. Perhaps I'd better go to the one2believe website to get some more info:

This program represents a huge opportunity for the faith community as it is the first time a worldwide retailer has opened-up shelf-space for a strong Bible-based toy product, like Tales of Glory! However, this is only a test-run. In fact, Wal-Mart will only have Tales of Glory in about 500 stores and only for a limited time (August through January). They have temporarily made the product available, and are waiting to see the response from their consumers. The success of this program is up to us… we need to take advantage of this amazing opportunity!

This is a chance to let our voices be heard. By supporting this program we can send a message to other retailers and toy makers letting them know that we, as a Christian community, are truly concerned about the toys that our children play with! We are aware of the influence that toys have on our young children’s impressionable minds, so we would like to see more God-honoring options available. It’s a “Battle for the Toy Box”!

OK, SO IT'S NOT JUST little graven images encouraging the kiddies toward inappropriate worship -- There's even a MARY DOLL, for pity's sake! -- it's a crusade to save the chirren through "God-honoring" toys and show the Godless marketplace that We Mean Business.

So if selling this stuff at Wal-Mart, this shrunken religiious statuary with movable limbs, is both God-honoring and a weapon in the Culture Wars, whats's wrong with the stuff you can see in Catholic churches for free?

If I were a cynic, I'd say that good Evangelicals think such stuff is idolatrous only until they figure out how to make a buck off it.

Who says black folks ain't equal?

I spent 20-something years in the deepest Deep South watching racist white people cut off their noses to spite their faces -- all because they couldn't abide the black man.

Or black woman.

Or black children going to school with theirs.

When I graduated from Baton Rouge Magnet High in 1979, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system was something like 65 percent white. It had 67,000 students. Baton Rouge was a majority white city.

When the federal court ordered a new desegregation plan involving busing, the white exodus began. Now, within the city limits, the population is majority black.

The school system has 45,000 students in 2007. It's 80-plus percent black. And it's a mess.

WHAT ONCE was a boomtown wasn't anymore . . . until Hurricane Katrina and the federal government did the inland state capital a dubious favor by destroying New Orleans.

It's not just the Baton Rouge school system. Noooooooooooo. Across the board, the Gret Stet can be found at the bottom of all the good rankings and at the top of all the bad ones.

And Louisianians, black and white, seem to think it's anybody's fault but theirs.

Notice that I said "Louisianians, black and white." White folks, like those bigots and rednecks I knew all too well in my upbringing, have no monopoly on racism. Neither do they have a monopoly on cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

One lesson we're learning every day is African-Americans are every bit the equal of the white man in their basic capacity for self-destructive racist leanings.

TAKE, FOR EXAMPLE, the benighted city of New Orleans, ruined and chaotic in the wake of Katrina. The murder capital of the country. Saddled with a district attorney who dropped charges against a quintuple-murder suspect, all because he couldn't find the witness.

That DA Eddie Jordan's staff couldn't find the witness speaks volumes, being that the notoriously corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department found her in three hours . . . after the charges were dropped, of course.

But it is a testament to the capacity of many African-Americans to hate whitey more than they love their own lives -- or their children's -- in this Baghdad on the Bayou that Jordan came before a New Orleans City Council hearing with a contingent of backers ready to mau-mau "the racists."

If you have a strong stomach, try to read this excerpt from the Times-Picayune story on the hearing:

For a second time in a week, Councilwoman Shelley Midura asked Jordan to resign. During a tense, 2 1/2 hour hearing devoted to the district attorney's office, Midura said she voted for Jordan, but now feels his management style is costing the city lives.

"Your mismanagement has come at the expense of the families of five murdered, young, impoverished African-American teenagers," Midura said, referring to the 2006 Central City massacre case that Jordan's team dropped last week, blaming a missing eyewitness that police claimed they found within hours. "You are only one player in a massively broken system, but your mistakes have stood out in that broken system."

Jordan, the former U.S. Attorney in New Orleans elected district attorney in 2002, replied, "You are scapegoating me. You're making me solely responsible."

(snip)

Midura's reference to the line of black murder victims in New Orleans was followed by her comparing Jordan to the disgraced former district attorney in North Carolina, Mike Nifong, who ruined his career by pursuing a shaky rape case against Duke lacrosse players.

That changed the tone of the meeting and derailed further calls for Jordan's resignation.

Earlier Wednesday, political consultant Allan Katz told reporters that Richmond and Morrell planned to ask Jordan to resign at an afternoon press conference outside City Hall. Instead, the two representatives said they will "evaluate" Jordan's office and work with him.

"J. P. absolutely told me they were going to call for his resignation," Katz said. "Obviously they lost their nerve."

But Richmond said late Wednesday that he and Morrell had always wanted to give Jordan some time to improve how he runs his office before taking such a drastic step as asking for a resignation from an elected official.

"We wanted to let him know we were leaning toward it," said Richmond, in a phone interview after the council's hearing.

Richmond and Morrell said that unless they see improvements over the next few months they will also consider making a move in the state House to impeach Jordan. The state constitution provides a mechanism to file articles of impeachment against any local or state official, Richmond said, which has to be approved by the House and then sent to the Senate for a trial.

During the hearing, though, it was clear that Midura's harsh words for Jordan bolstered support for the DA from audience members, largely along racial lines.

Morrell said, "I do take issue with the comparison of Jordan to the DA in the North Carolina case. That's apples and oranges. We're talking about crime in which African-Americans are disproportionately dying in the streets."

Jordan had his supporters in the crowd inside the City Council's chambers, including a number of community activists who said there are more critical failures in the criminal justice system than any single official could be held responsible for.

"We are outraged at the scapegoating of Eddie Jordan," said Ursula Price, of Safe Streets/Strong Communities, a Central City-based group. "The one man fighting corruption in the police department is now being criticized? Why is he the first one to be on the chopping block? The resignation of one public official will not resolve the dysfunction of the criminal justice system."

Malcolm Suber, a longtime activist who is generally opposed to the entire criminal justice system, also rose to defend Jordan.

"This is a railroading of Mr. Jordan under the pretense that people care about the lives of poor black people," said Suber. "We know better. This is an attack on the black leadership. You should really look at yourselves before attacking this man."

Keith Hudson, 47, who lives in Central City, said, "I see a witch hunt. You're all used to that Connick persecution thing. Without evidence, without witnesses, sending people to prison."

Speaking to Jordan directly, Hudson added, "They're fans of Harry Connick. They ain't forgot you're black."

SORRY. This white boy ain't buying what the mau-mauers are trying to sell.

Competence -- or, in this case, incompetence -- is a colorblind measuring stick. Another factor arguing against Jordan as a) a poor, tolerant, discriminated-against black man, and b) anything other than the vilest of political hacks would be this:

In early 2005, a federal jury found Jordan guilty of racial discrimination after he -- three days after taking office in 2003 -- fired 56 DA's office staffers. Fifty-three were white.

Jordan then proceeded to hire 69 new staffers. Sixty-four were black.

Here's a tidbit from a 2005 Associated Press story on the trial, which resulted in a $3.4 million dollar award to the plaintiffs:

Among the non-lawyers, the number of blacks nearly tripled, while the number of whites in the office declined by about two-thirds. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in a preliminary determination, found evidence of racial bias.

Veterans with years of experience in law enforcement were replaced by younger blacks, some of whom had never done police work.

One white man fired by Jordan testified that he was one of the few fingerprint and ballistics experts in the district attorney's office. The résumé of the man who replaced him showed he had little experience other than being a lifeguard and doing some office work at a law firm.

Arthur Perrot, a fired white investigator, had a perfect 24-of-24 score when interviewed by Jordan's transition team, but was fired, while a black investigator who scored 16 out of 24 was retained.

GEE, I THINK THAT EXPLAINS A LOT about why the DA's office has a hellacious backlog of cases, and about why it can't keep track of its witnesses. And why a historically-pathetic felony conviction rate in New Orleans has neared single-digit territory under Jordan.

Here's an article in City Journal that will explain a lot more about New Orleans' deep dysfunctionality as a municipality.

But, noooooo. Folks are out to get Eddie because he's black. In a city where most of the political establishment is black. Riiiiiiiight. . . .

To me -- a son of the Deep South who grew up listening my old man (and too many other white men and women) blaming everything from crime to inflation to political unrest on either "the niggers" or "them nigger lovers" -- the rhetoric in support of a racist incompetent sounds awfully familiar.

In a photo-negative kind of way.

Getting right on the Culture of Death

I once called Kathy Shaidle's public dismantling of her critics one of the more entertaining spectacles on the Internet. Well, maybe I'm about to find out how it feels, because I think this post on her Relapsed Catholic blog is way, way beyond the pale:THIS BIT OF SNARKY, mindless cruelty is a prime example of how things can go terribly wrong when one who's made a name for herself as a snarky, blogospheric misanthrope becomes a minor media celebrity in a small, cold country.

Of course, what makes it even worse is it's just riffing off of the insouciant name calling of Rush "I've got my millions, screw you" Limbaugh, who was "commenting" on Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' poverty tour:

I got these pictures here. He's on the poverty tour. The first picture he's on a street in the ninth ward, and he's talking to a woman wearing an ACORN shirt, which is a liberal activist group. She's pointing out nothing because there's nothing there to point at. The hair looks great. He's wearing cool little blue jeans, matching little light blue Oxford, sleeves rolled up, looks cool. Black loafers. This woman that he's walking with is a tub. I mean, she is fat. This is a poverty tour. The next picture is of Edwards and his wife walking, no big deal there. She's looking at him. He's not looking at her. The next picture is Edwards watching and laughing while his wife talks to another resident of the ninth ward, another obese tub. The last picture is of Edwards, I swear when you look at this picture you will think that he's got his hand on a part of her anatomy where it shouldn't be, where the bra is but it would be hard to know because this woman is so big that... I mean, this is a poverty tour. Edwards is surrounded by fat people. I'm not making fun of them, don't misunderstand, folks. I'm just saying there's something about this that doesn't work. We may have to do our own poverty tour.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Oh, no! Limbaugh -- well-known former fatass -- wasn't making fun of portly poor people. Nooooo, he was just . . . ummmm . . . pointing out their obesity to . . . ummmmmmmm. . . .

Hell, yes he's ridiculing the obesity of poor folks in New Orleans. Hell, yes the right-wing radio blowhard is making fun of people who probably lost what little they had to the Federal Flood -- touched off when Katrina caused defective, federally built levees to collapse.

And now an obscenely rich ex-dopehead in Florida and a middle-class blogger drunk on her minor celebrity in a minor country think it's amusant to make fun of the poor.

How charming.

IT'S WELL ESTABLISHED how the Daily Kossacks of the world contribute to the Culture of Death. What I would like for Shaidle and Limbaugh to explain is how they aren't when they spew toxic waste at the near-helpless, just for kicks and bon mots.

Slavery is freedom. Hate is love. Death is life.

I am a bit unsure what requires a bigger Orwellian bent on the part of voters today -- backing the Party of Greed (Republicans) or the Party of Lust (Democrats).

Like it makes any difference. Either way you go, you get standard-issue Death.

Vote for the GOP and you get more death of our soldiers in a pointless war. More torture of "enemy combatants," to hell with treaty, law and morality. More selling out of middle- and working-class interests to the highest bidder. More illegal immigration . . . and more depressing of American blue-collar wages.

Vote for the Democrats, you get more slavish devotion to the Contraceptive Deity. You get more pandering to Muselix America -- every fruit, nut and flake with enough cash to start a hard-left interest group. More Christian-baiting from the fever swamps of the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground. More illegal immigration . . . and more depressing of American blue-collar wages.

And, of course, we'll get more death of unborn children in an attempt to render Western Civilization, literally, fruitless as we seek after the Almighty Inconsequential Climax. Not that the GOP, mind you, has been any great shakes at slowing down the Culture of Death.

Thus, we come to John Edwards' altruistic Presidential Campaign for the Poor. (Ignore that preening rich man behind the curtain!)

The North Carolina Democrat thinks it's a terrible, terrible thing what this country has done to its poor people. (So far, so good . . . but why do I feel like a shoe is going to drop?) According to CNN:

Edwards started the four-day tour on Sunday in the poor, mostly black, Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, whose once-submerged neighborhoods remain largely deserted.

On a brief walk through the district, he and his wife Elizabeth met Henry Phipps, 63, who lives in a government-issued trailer as rebuilds his house flooded nearly two years ago.

"You getting any help paying for it (the house)?" Edwards asked.

"Nah. I ain't getting no help," said Phipps, who said he had owned a bar and other properties before the storm and is now retired.

"We're proud of you," Edwards said.

"Working poor: two words that should never be used in combination in America," Edwards later told a few dozen people gathered at the nearby Martin Luther King Charter School.

"A lot of Americans think of people who are struggling on low incomes as people who do not want to work. And that is complete nonsense," he said.

BUT IT SEEMS Edwards -- and the other front-running Dems -- might have less than uplifting ideas about how you solve poverty in America.

As in, slicing, dicing, chemically burning and vacuum aspirating tiny poor children into oblivion -- eliminating poverty in America one teeny little socioeconomically challenged wretch at a time.

The Chicago Tribune fills us in on Edwards' Orwellian bent:

Elizabeth Edwards said Tuesday that her husband's health-care plan would provide insurance coverage of abortion.

Speaking on behalf of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards before the family planning and abortion-rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Edwards lauded her husband's health-care proposal as "a true universal health-care plan" that would cover "all reproductive health services, including pregnancy termination," referring to abortion.

Edwards was joined by Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at the group's political organizing conference in addressing issues at the core of the political clash between cultural liberals and conservatives, including abortion rights, access to contraception and sex education.

(snip)

Obama, who earlier gained the endorsement of Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty, offered the group a vision of equal opportunity for women, tying a call for improved access to contraceptives for low-income women with a call for an "updated social contract" that includes paid maternity leave and expanded school hours.

Asked about his proposal for expanded access to health insurance, Obama said it would cover "reproductive-health services." Contacted afterward, an Obama spokesman said that included abortions.

CLUNK. I told you I felt like a shoe was going to drop, here.

But you gotta love it. Only in America do you have Democrats sucking up to Planned Barrenhood, that committed advocate for the poor and downtrodden (as if), founded by bourgeois white people for the express purpose of eliminating the poor and downtrodden.

How many Planned Parenthood clinics do you find in well-off suburban areas? How many are in or close to the 'hood? Exactly.

Slavery is freedom.

And if the purpose is to "help" minority and low-income individuals, where are the accompanying Planned Parenthood food pantries? The Planned Parenthood free pediatrician? The Planned Parenthood pay-what-you-can family-practice clinics?

No, Planned Parenthood is there to make sure there are fewer children in the world. To make sure women -- particularly low-income and minority women -- can screw without consequence. Because Those People just can't control their primal urges, you know.

And this is the kind of group to which Democrats suck up. Grovel, actually.

See the picture topping this blog post? Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood . . . getting ready to speak to a 1926 Ku Klux Klan rally in New Jersey.

Here's what she said in a 1939 letter, expounding on her group's plans to wipe out blacks:

"We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."

THERE ARE LOTS MORE choice quotes by Sanger available through The Truth About Margaret Sanger blog. That blog's proprietor was able to find out all about Planned Parenthood's genocide-loving past. I was able to find out about Planned Parenthood's genocide-loving past. So do you think people like John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton suffer from invincible ignorance about their patrons' genocide-loving past?

Hate is love.

John Edwards can get his overcoiffed head onto every network newscast, crying Evian tears over the plight of black people in the Lower 9 . . . as he pledges fealty to the aims of a group that -- regardless of its modern-day rhetoric -- is killing poor, black and poor black babies at a rate totally consistent with Sanger's stated aim to "exterminate the Negro population"?

The man must think he's running for president of the Animal Farm. Then again, maybe he is.

Death is life.

UPDATE: The above photo is a Photoshop job. I ought to have noticed that straightaway (the lighting and contrast on Sanger isn't quite right), but I didn't. Mea culpa. The point remains, however, that she did address the Klan, and Kluxers liked the way she thought about eugenics.

Keeping track of Kristy

This past Lent, I told you about Kristy Dusseau and her yearslong struggle with a hellacious and rare cancer -- and the side effects of the treatment that saved her.

Side effects, such a sterile term that is. Side effects, which in Kristy's case meant debilitating chemotherapy. A bone-marrow transplant that saved her . . . and almost killed her. Losing her house, her job, her health, her fiancé.

Running up more than a million dollars in medical bills.

Now factor in what all of the above would do to your head. You can get up to speed here, here and here.

Well, Kristy's brother Rob -- who's been trying to raise enough money to buy Kristy a condo or to let her finish her college degree -- has been slammed at work the past few months and hasn't had the chance to do another monthly video . . . yet. But he does provide an update on his sister at www.kristyrecovers.com. Here's part of it:

Healthwise, Kristy has been doing really well. She's gained some weight and is actually starting to look like she's growing YOUNGER. That's good to see. She still has the feeding tube, but she's gone from using it 20 hours a day to once every 5 days. It leaks all of the time, whether it's being used or not, and has ruined lots of her clothing.

She sleeps a lot, gets tired after being up and around for a few hours, and has good and bad days. They've recently cut back on her steroids (she's thrilled about that), which has had her feeling ill lately as she tries to adjust to it.

Her fiancé .... well ... let's say he's fallen off a cliff, which is what Kristy would tell you if you asked her. I'm not one to judge. Really, it's something I just don't do for spiritual reasons, but that guy turned out to be a bum. His commitment to her during the first half of her illness was very commendable, and it won't be forgotten by this writer, but the guy turned into a leach onto Kristy and my family. Living with my parents, disappearing for days, drunk and disorderly all of the time, enough said about that, there's many other things but what's the point? The guy is hopefully gone for good now.

Kristy I know you really cared for Greg, but your roads have taken drastically different directions, and what he became on his path wasn't good for you. Your future spouse will be good for you, trust me on that.

Emotionally Kristy's been upset. I never reached my goal of raising enough money to purchase her a condo (which would have meant she would be eligible for a nurse). So she's living at home with mom as her nurse. That's tough on both parties involved, because of where they are in their perspective lives.

Her self image is in the gutter. Silly as it may seem, she actually thinks the fact that she can't have children will make her undesirable to men. I chuckled a bit when she told me that with tears in her eyes, and assured her that it wouldn't be a problem. Especially with men. It might be more of a problem if she were a man, but she's a very pretty young lady, and the idea of adopting makes her concern a mute one.

There's many other emotional hurdles she's climbing over right now, and she's climbing them, but I wouldn't be much help with that. I don't know what's it's like to go through something like she has. She told me she was checking out planetcancer.com and talking to people, and I hope she's still doing that. I was actually hoping she would take over this site, but that just didn't happen. She's not much of a computer fan like her brother is.

THERE WAS A BRIEF FLURRY of Internet attention focused on Kristy's plight, and the contributions rolled in for a brief while. Now, not so much so.

We Americans have the attention spans of fleas, and it's gotten worse as "progress" comes up with more and more crap to distract us from what's important. Like Kristy, who just happens to be our sister in Christ.

And she's had a damned rough go of it.

So, if you have a few bucks to spare, how about going to www.kristyrecovers.com and dropping some scratch in the kitty. Or, more importantly, drop Kristy a line just to say "Hey!" and "Hang in there!"

I mean, the Wide World of Suck could crash down upon any of our heads at any time. If it did, wouldn't you want all the help -- and friendship -- you could get?

* * *

P.S.: Hey, Kristy! Mrs. Favog had cancer some years back. We can't have kids. I still like her just fine . . . got no plans to trade her in for the new Babymaker model.

So quit yer worryin'!

With apologies to Molly the Dog

The Imperial Dog, otherwise known as Molly the Dog, is going to be upset about this post. More precisely, she would be upset about this post if she could a) read or b) had opposable thumbs, allowing her to operate the computer.

Molly the Dog can spell, however. Luckily, that's limited to E-A-T. And O-U-T. Sometimes, F-U-D (sic).

So I think I'm more or less OK in saying Harley the Dog (above), as pictured on NOLA.com, might be the cutest puppy ever. I love Molly the Dog, who hasn't officially been informed she's actually a D-O-G, but we do have to be objective about these things.

Insanity

George Bush is nuts and the general staff has no testicles. Is that clear enough for you, Skipper?

Let's start with the castrati first. From The Associated Press:

The U.S. military is weighing new directions in Iraq, including an even bigger troop buildup if President Bush thinks his "surge" strategy needs a further boost, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace revealed that he and the chiefs of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force are developing their own assessment of the situation in Iraq, to be presented to Bush in September. That will be separate from the highly anticipated report to Congress that month by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander for Iraq.

The Joint Chiefs are considering a range of actions, including another troop buildup, Pace said without making any predictions. He called it prudent planning to enable the services to be ready for Bush's decision.

NOW, LET'S TURN to the Crazy Guy in Chief as he slips into the Full Queeg and begins the search for his missing strawberries:

And Bush, asked how he can continue to prosecute a war which has lost the support of a majority of the American people said he will retire – at the end of next year – comfortable that he has hewed to “principle."

“The question now is, do we pull back and allow the polls, allow the Gallup Poll or whatever, to determine the fate of our country?’’ Bush said. “Sometimes, you just have to make the decisions based upon what you think is right…. My most important job is to help secure this country."

“Everybody wants to be loved," said Bush, leaning into the new podium of a renovated West Wing press briefing room getting its debut press conference. “Sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don’t allow you to be loved… (When he retires) I will be able to look in the mirror and say I made decisions based on principle, not politics."

I KNOW THEY'RE WORRIED about maybe getting Vittered, but how many semi loads of Get a Clue does the Stay the Course crowd in Congress need to have dumped upon it before the right honorable Members and Sinators finally provide a veto-proof margin in favor of putting a stop to this insane expeditionary war in Iraq? That the notoriously conservative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has called President Bush's plan to "stay the course" a "prescription for American suicide" ought to have been, even for the densest GOP lawmaker, a clock radio turned up to 11.

For pity's sake, the newspaper even went so far as to question Bush's sanity.

Meanwhile, the AP takes us back to the high pitched in the High Command:

The military must "be prepared for whatever it's going to look like two months from now," Pace said in an interview with two reporters traveling with him to Iraq from Washington.

"That way, if we need to plus up or come down" in numbers of troops in Iraq, the details will have been studied, he said.

Pace, on his first visit since U.S. commanders accelerated combat operations in mid-June, said another option under consideration is maintaining current troop levels beyond September.

There are now about 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, reflecting a boost of about 30,000 to carry out the new strategy Bush announced in January. The plan is focused on providing better security for Iraqis in Baghdad, but the intended effect—political reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites—has yet to be achieved, and many in Congress are clamoring to begin withdrawing troops soon.

Pace said the administration must consider not only what works best on the battlefield but also the growing stress of more than four years of war on American troops and their families.

He repeatedly mentioned his concern about soldiers and Marines doing multiple tours of duty and the decision in January to extend soldiers' Iraq deployments by three months, to 15 months.

WHAT? Planning for an even bigger "surge" while fretting about how stressed our troops and their families might be?

That's nuts. Actually, no. The President and his True Believers are nuts, but the joint chiefs merely lost theirs somewhere along the road to ruin.

And our valiant Hessian military is going to pay the price so suburban America might not trouble its unserious mind with unpleasant things.

There's not enough money in the world

It's not enough.

The $660 million the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and its insurers will be paying in a settlement with men and women raped, groped, sodomized -- or all of the above -- by perverts in Roman collars cannot restore shattered minds and tormented souls. Cardinal Roger Mahony, now free to issue a lame and self-serving "apology," cannot even come close to restoring victims' peace of mind . . . or their lost innocence.

No amount of money and no amount of groveling can fix the violence those wicked priests and their enabling prelate have done to those poor people -- have done to the whole Body of Christ.

“I’m not so sure that we can necessarily call it justice,” said plaintiff Carlos Perez-Carrillo. Perez-Carrillo's accusations against the Rev. John Anthony Salazar go back to the 1980s, when he says the priest molested him repeatedly at St. Bernard High School in Playa del Rey.

“Mostly what I’ve gone through is being shunned by Catholics and the Catholic Church,” Perez-Carrillo said in an interview with MSNBC. “I’ve always felt that I’ve been viewed as a pariah because I actually came forward and actually denounced what was happening.”

Perez-Carrillo and other victims said they regretted that archdiocese leaders, especially Cardinal Roger Mahony, would not appear in court to acknowledge under oath what had happened to them and others over the past 70 years. Many victims accuse Mahony of having swept the abuse problem under the rug by transferring accused priests from parish to parish.

Mahony offered an apology at a news conference Sunday, but Perez-Carrillo dismissed it as inadequate.

“When you’ve been dealing with this and going through the process and dealing with spin doctoring and covering up, you’re really quite skeptical about whether an apology is genuine,” he said.

“It’s just a little bit too little and a little bit too late,” added Perez-Carrillo, whose alleged abuser, Salazar, later moved to Texas and was convicted of sexually abusing an 18-year-old man. He is serving life in prison.

Esther Miller, who has accused Michael Nocita, who later left the priesthood to marry, of having abused her at St. Bridget’s of Sweden in Van Nuys during the 1970s, insisted that “in no way does it come close to apologizing.”

But Miller, who said the trauma of her abuse led her to develop an eating disorder, said many of her fellow victims were in dire straits and had nowhere else to turn.

“Many of us have secondary issues,” she said. “Obviously, my drug of choice was food, [but] some of the other survivors have opted for alcohol addiction, for cocaine addiction.

“So now what we can do with that settlement money is to apply it do self-care and try to make our lives a little bit better.”

Mahony reiterated his apology after the hearing Monday, but he declined to comment further because “this day in particular is a day for the victims to speak.”

WHAT RECOMPENSE can there possibly be when you have a virtual mafia of gay priests, pedophile priests, horndog priests and Those Who Cover for Them which has successfully equated Jesus Christ and the Church He founded with abject evil in the minds of victims and the general public? How many millions of dollars and crocodile tears can fix that blasphemy?

There is no adequate recompense. Not in this life.

Back to the MSNBC story:

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholz approved the landmark settlement Monday morning at a dramatic hearing marked by the sobs of victims and their attorneys.

The archdiocese itself is on the hook for a quarter-billion dollars, more than a third of the final settlement, raising questions about whether the archdiocese could meet its obligations without going into bankruptcy. The rest will be paid by insurance carriers, other church sources and litigation with religious orders that did not participate in the arrangement.

Mahony has promised that no funds directly relating to the church’s mission would be used. He said the archdiocese had been segregating funds to pay for the litigation for some time.

Still, archdiocese officials told NBC News, an undetermined percentage of parishioners’ offerings would be paid out to alleged victims, and they said they would likely have to sell some church property unrelated to direct ministry, such as underused hospitals.

Key to the settlement is the church’s agreement not to try to block the release of accused priests’ confidential personnel files, which it will turn over to a retired judge for review.

Some records, such as psychological examinations, cannot be released. But plaintiffs lawyers said they expected many details of alleged abuses by more than 200 accused priests would be brought to light in the months and years to come.

The father of one alleged victim, who he said was repeatedly abused as a youngster by a “dear friend,” said the release of the records was a big victory for the plaintiffs.

“We want to know that our house is clean,” said the man, who asked NBC News not to identify him to protect his child.

ONE CAN ONLY HOPE that -- with the rock lifted and the Church's clerical creepy crawlies exposed to cleansing sunlight -- some good will come of all this. One can hope that humiliation and scorn might help end some bishops', clergy's and functionaries' worship of mammon over the Messiah. Of the shadows over the Light of the World.

Maybe when the Church is poor, it will once again be holy. But will that be too late?

It'll never work

Sony Repair Center, how may I help you?

My TV's broke.

What happened when it stopped working?

Well, it came on, then started changing channels by itself, then it'd cut off, then on, then off, then on, then change channels, then off . . . and on . . . and then it blew up.

That's not good.

It sucks, actually.

What were you doing when it went haywire?

Playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with my kid.


* * *
From Friday's Daily Mail in London:

It sounds like the perfect invention for all those couch potatoes who find even using a remote control just a little too much like hard work.

Scientists have come up with a box that lets television viewers change channels, switch on the DVD player or switch off an irritating presenter with the wave of a hand.

The controller's built-in camera can recognise seven simple hand gestures and work with up to eight different gadgets around the home.

Not only will it be a godsend for lazy viewers, it could also save hours of fruitless scrabbling among the sofa in search of the remote control.

The all-seeing wave controller is the brainchild of Australian engineers Dr Prashan Premaratne and Quang Nguyen.

They believe it could be on sale within three years, ending the frustration involved in finding and using remote controls.

Dr Premaratne, of the University of Wollongong, said: "We all rely on remote controls to manage an increasing number of items including TVs, set-top boxes, DVDs and hi-fis, and the range of goods will continue to increase.

"Apart from the frustration of sometimes mislaying the remote control just when you need it, they do tend to have different sets of commands which have to be mastered.

"People have tried to replace remote controls with voice recognition or glove-based devices but with mixed results."

The device is designed to sit on a shelf or table which has a clear line of sight to the television and the owner.

Its software recognises simple, deliberate hand gestures and then sends the appropriate signal to a universal remote control, designed to work with most makes of television, video recorder, DVD player, hi-fi and digital set-top box.

In tests, published in the Institution of Engineering and Technology's Computer Vision Research Journal, a prototype worked in all kinds of lighting, and at a range of distances.

It was able to switch equipment on and off, alter the volume, change channels, play and stop. Dr Premaratne says anyone can learn the gestures within five minutes.

Send lawyers, guns and money

It's a sad fact of radio that some of the most compelling -- and real -- broadcasting you'll ever hear comes when, to finish the Warren Zevon line in the hed, "the s*** has hit the fan."

At WWL, the New Orleans blowtorch on 870 AM, Garland Robinette seems to be the epicenter of compelling radio, as he and his beloved city try to dodge what's been flying out of the fan since Aug. 29, 2005.

He was on the air as people called the station on their cell phones as the floodwaters rose around them in their attics. On the air as Katrina literally blew apart WWL's high-rise studios. On the air as he held on for dear life when the windows blew out, fighting against being sucked into the maelstrom and to his death.

Likewise, Robinette was on the air in the chaotic aftermath of the storm, when Mayor Ray Nagin called in, desperate, demanding that the state and federal governments "get off your asses and let's do something, and let's fix the biggest g**damn crisis in the history of this country."

NOW, AS NAGIN fails to heed his own advice of nearly two years ago -- as New Orleans continues to slide into mayhem and anomie -- Robinette is still there to chronicle the devolution of a crippled, dying city.

And as a once-grand city literally fights for its life in a sea of ruin during a reign of murder (the 2007 homicide count already has surpassed 100) it is saddled with a district attorney who barely can prosecute -- and certainly can't convict -- anyone. For Robinette, and for many other New Orleanians, the last straw came last week, when DA Eddie Jordan dropped charges against an alleged quintuple murderer because he couldn't find the witness.

After he dropped the charges -- without consulting the police department -- homicide detectives tracked her down in three hours. She was still willing to testify.

Thursday, Robinette devoted all three hours of his afternoon show on WWL to calling for the resignation of Jordan, laying out his case against the DA far more effectively than Jordan's prosecutors have against the Crescent City's burgeoning criminal element.

Friday, he did the same, expanding his assault by acknowledging the elephant in the parlor -- an African-American power structure in New Orleans that keeps incompetents like Jordan in office, directly adding to the misery (and to the continuing slaughter) of their fellow African-Americans in the city's Third World ghettos. Robinette cited Jordan -- the protege of indicted U.S. Rep. William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson -- as the poster child for that corrupt, self-serving system.

Then, a bit later, the veteran New Orleans broadcaster expanded his assault yet again to Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti, who served 30 years as the Orleans Parish criminal sheriff. Foti, at the behest of Nagin, Thursday announced an "investigation" of Jordan's office.

But, according to Robinette, the embattled Jordan -- who Foti is supposed to "investigate" -- is the only district attorney on the roster of Foti's political backers. No conflict of interest there, eh?

That's the background of the host's first question to Foti when he called in to the show Friday: "Why should we trust you to come in and fix this?"

When Foti launched into a litany of his glorious deeds as Louisiana AG, Robinette was having none of it.

"Let me read you a long list of. . . . The DA is the only, the only DA -- Jordan that is -- on a long list of your supporters. That gives us pause as to whether or not you can do anything," the broadcaster began.

"Second of all, your comments about Dr. Pou and the two nurses . . . we've had legal ethicists on this show that said what you did was unethical, so we've got. . . .

Foti interrupts. "I . . . I think you're trying to turn the conversation."

Robinette plows ahead, though.

"No, no. I'm saying 'Why should we trust you?' Why should we trust you, of all people, to come in and fix this situation?"

Foti responds by reciting his resume . . . and yet more of his post-Katrina wondrous deeds. And a testimonial to his "longstanding love affair with the city and the people."

Robinette: "Here's a quote from Allen Usry, supposedly your political alter ego for 30-something years. . . ."

"I don't want to hear a quote from Allen Usry. Thank you, Garland." (Click.)

But Robinette is undaunted. He keeps going.

"I'll tell you what he says, 'cause I know he's still listening, 'I've known Charlie Foti for 32 years. My problem with Foti is he's not reliable.'

"Think I got any apologies to you? Think again."

AND A MINUTE LATER, the WWL host throws the high, hard one:

I'm tellin' ya. . . . This is the man the mayor brings in, our power structure brings in to fix this? Gimme a break.

Tellin' ya' New Orleans, one man's opinion . . . maybe I'm crazier 'n' hell . . . you better wake up. You had better wake up; you better understand what's happening here.

This is not just about a district attorney. This is about a city that's broken. This is about a crime . . . about a judicial system that's horribly broken, and it needs to be fixed. We've got leaders who have told you for a year and a half to come back to this city.

I just spoke to an attorney general that's probably been more responsible for driving doctors and nurses out of this city and state than any other person. We just spoke to a gentleman that has 30-year friends on record as saying he's not reliable -- and this is who the mayor brings in.

We've had legal experts here tell us today that by bringing in the national DAs, you can't do much. By bringing the special prosecutor of the Supreme Court, you can't do much. This is beginning to sound like a statement that says to you 'This crime problem can't be fixed. To hell with the poor black people of this city that are being. . . .

(breaks down sobbing)

A CITY FIGHTING FOR ITS LIFE. A radio host trying to start a revolution armed only with righteous anger, guts and a microphone. The old guard trying to avoid the Full Ceausescu. That's drama.

That's compelling radio, and you don't know how rare that is today. Well, maybe you do, being that statistics show you don't much listen to radio anymore.

But once in a very blue moon, someone with passion and talent still commits compelling radio in a valiant attempt to serve the public (a lost concept in broadcasting). This week -- and for much of the past two years -- that person has been Garland Robinette of WWL in New Orleans.

And, in a world crying out for just the manna Robinette's audience is lucky enough to feed on, someone needed to point that out.

LISTEN to the audio.

Playing to the echo chamber

This week's description for the Revolution 21 podcast is by our guest commentator, the Imperial Pet, Molly the Dog. . . .







WOOOOOOOOOOOO! Woowoowoo! WOOOOOOOOOOO! Grrrrr.

Thanks, Molly! And thank you for dropping in for this freaky, echoey edition of The Big Show. Proceed to downloading now. Get it here.

Be there. Aloha.

Back from Iraq, they're yesterday's trash

I am too angry to trust myself to say much about the story you will see excepted below, and the accompanying video link.

I will say that ABC's Bob Woodruff and crew have done yeomen's work in reporting the latest outrage heaped upon our fighting men and women by a "grateful" nation. Apparently, it goes something like this: After dealing with one too many IED or rocket attacks, a soldier develops Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and/or traumatic brain injury, with all the symptoms that entails.

Then, when the soldier is no longer fit for duty or seeks medical help -- either before or after a PTSD diagnosis -- he or she is pushed into an immediate discharge due to a heretofore undiagnosed "personality disorder."

The military is rid of a "problem" soldier. The military health-care system is rid of another damaged combat veteran. The overwhelmed VA health system picks up another damaged combat veteran.

And the military sends the "unfit" soldier a bill for thousands in bonus money he or she no longer can pay off with via military service.

Pretty swift system, huh?

Here's a small bit of the story from ABC News:

It is known as a "Chapter 5-13" — "separation because of personality disorder." The Army defines it as a pre-existing "maladaptive pattern of behavior of long duration" that interferes with the soldier's ability to perform his duties.

In practical terms, this diagnosis means the personality disorder existed before military service, and therefore medical care and disability payments are not the military's responsibility. But some veterans and veterans' advocates have been vocal in their belief that personality disorder is being misdiagnosed in combat veterans.

"A significant percentage of the ones who are discharged with personality disorder truly have it, but there is another percentage that are put out simply to eliminate them from military service. … It's done maliciously or as some sort of a policy," said Russell K. Terry, founder of the veterans' advocacy organization, Iraq War Veterans Organization.

Since 2001, more than 22,000 servicemen and women from all branches of the military have been separated under the personality disorder discharge, according to figures provided by the Department of Defense.

(snip)

Donald Louis Schmidt of Chillicothe, Ill., was being treated for post traumatic stress disorder after his second combat tour in Iraq. His commanders at Fort Carson later decided he was no longer mentally fit and discharged him with personality disorder.

"They just slapped me with that label to get me out quicker," Schmidt said. He said superiors told him "'Everything will be great. Peachy keen.' Well, it's not."

The discharge left Schmidt ineligible for disability pay and benefits. He was also required to return more than $10,000 of his $15,000 reenlistment bonus, but he said no one explained that to him until it was too late.

"If I didn't have family, I'd be living on the sidewalk," Schmidt said.

"It's not right that they would do this to him after him going to war for us," Schmidt's mother, Patrice Semtner-Myers, said. "They threw him away. They're done with him. He's no use to them anymore so they say, 'We're done. … Thanks for nothing.'"

Schmidt and Town say Army doctors misled them about the consequences of the personality disorder discharge. Town said he was told he would receive his benefits and it would be like a medical discharge, only quicker.

In the course of reporting this story, ABC News spoke with 20 Iraq War veterans who believe they were misdiagnosed with personality disorder.

A Marine who preferred not to be named said, "Most docs won't diagnose you with PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] because the military has to treat you for the rest of your life."

IT OCCURS TO ME, having seen this story on Nightline tonight, that the Culture of Death -- as the late Pope John Paul II called it -- only begins with abortion. It comes into full flower with the sheer expendability of our fellow human beings in every facet of our corporatist, dysfunctional American society.

You are a mere cog, worth jack s*** only so long as you're of some worth to your betters.

I am in the same leaky boat. And our fighting men and women -- the ones in the boat with Old Faithful gushing through the hull -- are the most expendable of all, good for cannon (or, in this war, IED) fodder but as worthless as yesterday's trash once the cannon (or IED) finds them.

And what do you do with yesterday's trash? You give it a Chapter 5-13 discharge, that's what.

This president, this Congress, this military and this country are wholly unworthy of "the last full measure of devotion" so willingly offered by young men and young women we send off to a pointless war in a meat grinder called Iraq.

I would say "God have mercy on us all," except that I expect He will have about as much mercy on our spoiled, selfish, SUV-driving selves as we've shown to those kids thrown away because they're no damn good to us now.

See the video report here.

Garland Robinette is a great American

I've pretty much blown off all I need to get done this afternoon to listen, enraptured, to the webcast of the Garland Robinette Show on WWL radio in New Orleans. What I'm hearing is a talk-show host absolutely on fire, full of righteous indignation and desperately -- literally desperately -- trying to make a difference.

And it makes for amazing radio.

Here's the background: Orleans Parish (same as a county, and Orleans Parish equals the city of New Orleans) District Attorney Eddie Jordan dropped charges against a man accused of gunning down five teen-agers last summer because he said the key witness had disappeared and was unwilling to testify.

He never told the cops what the problem was before dropping all charges. After the police chief got the news from the evening news, it took New Orleans cops just a few hours to track down the witness elsewhere in Louisiana.

And she's still willing to testify.

AND THAT'S THE SMALL STORY that tells a big part of the Big Story of why the criminal justice system in New Orleans has all but ceased to function after Hurricane Katrina. Before Hurricane Katrina, the criminal justice system in New Orleans had only more or less ceased to function.

Robinette -- who for years was a popular anchorman on WWL-TV and launched his radio show just before Katrina -- wants Eddie Jordan gone. Out of office. Now. And the host has a simple rationale for his big push today: He's afraid public outrage will eventually die down like it always has in New Orleans -- and Louisiana -- meaning that things just never change.

"What you're seeing and hearing today is an uptick like what you see on an oscillograph," Robinette told his radio audience. "This has been going on for 30 years, and we only get upset whenever it's a white person that gets killed, or a tourist."

He's afraid that Mayor Ray Nagin's public outrage will result in nothing more than his convincing the state's attorney general to "investigate" when Jordan's resignation is the cure for this particular civic illness.

"We don't need an investigation that's going to allow us to forget," Robinette said. "We don't need an investigation that's going to allow us to calm down."

AND THAT, the radio host says, is what the city's power structure is counting on -- the anger dying down.

"It's just a bunch of black kids gettin' blown away, right? That's what the white community should think. But the white community is furious."

Robinette says he learned a valuable lesson about problem solving as a soldier in the jungles of Vietnam, when a grunt's life depended on dealing with big problems. What he learned was there's three kinds of problems: Those you can solve, those you can partially solve . . . and those you can't solve and need to get the hell away from.

"You ever shot anybody?" Robinette asked a caller. "Do you know what it's like to kill somebody? It's a horrific thing, and it's incomprehensible that you're gonna let somebody who's done that walk the streets.

"I DON'T WANT TO BE RACIAL," he said a bit later. "This is not racial. This boggles the common sense as far as the behavior of anybody on a survival basis."

Robinette insists Nagin must march into Jordan's office and say "Young black men are being slaughtered. . . . The ability for us to live in this city is being threatened by you. We need you to resign."

When Jordan, in all likelihood, refused to do so -- being that the mayor can't make another elected official quit -- the broadcaster says the mayor needs to call a press conference to tell an outraged citizenry that, in their name, he asked the DA to quit and the DA refused.

And Robinette wants the citizens of New Orleans to put the heat on C. Ray? (Not Lately) Nagin to that effect.

"I'd like before I die -- after living in this place my whole life -- to see something done along these lines," Robinette said. "Because it's the same thing, just different people. . . . It's just one man's opinion, but I want to see this district attorney resign."

If you're in New Orleans and agree with Robinette, here's the contact info for your mayor:

ray.nagin@mayorofno.com

(504) 658-4900

UPDATE: Listen to the show in podcast form off of the WWL website. Here are the individual file links:

Hour 1

Hour 2

Hour 3

The Right Combination

OK, now I've been thinkin' about The Porter Wagoner Show all night. And it occurs to me that the hokey down-home trappings and its popularity with Southern working-class folk like my parents obscured some cultural treasures.

You look at the show in all its 1960-1980 Nashville glory, and what meets the eye is pickup trucks and Red Man. But from 1967-74 -- the tenure of the young Dolly Parton -- what you had was a pairing of a country-music legend and a country-music legend to be.

What you also had was, in Dolly Parton, one of the best songwriters ever. And a parade of guest stars encompassing the golden era of country music.

Sponsored by Black Draught laxative. That's so whack . . . it's cool.

So sit right back, friends and neighbors, and watch this great duet by Porter and Dolly, "The Last Thing On My Mind."

Hello, Sadie?

When I was a kid in Baton Rouge, Saturday afternoon meant the old man got control of the TV and, dammit, we were gonna watch The Porter Wagoner Show. Back in the '60s and '70s, the traditional country music of Porter and Pretty Miss Norma Jean -- or later on, Porter and Dolly Parton -- wasn't exactly an adolescent draw, you know?

And I had no need of Black Draught laxative. Or to "snap back with Stanback" headache powder.

I have to admit, though, that watching Dolly -- she of the big hair and bigger . . . never mind -- was educational for a young male.

Well, OK. I was partial to Buck Owens and "Country" Charley Pride. And Dolly did have that big hair and those . . . never mind.

Anyway, there was no cable and I didn't have a TV in my room for much of that time. So I watched. And I absorbed. And then something happens to your DNA, I swear to God.

You get to college and hit your 20s, and then you find yourself hitting the Cotton Club on Highland Road on Saturday nights because the seafood is good, the beer is better and all the good Patsy Cline songs are on the jukebox. Welcome to growing up in the Deep South sometime Back in the Day.

Lots of us in the South back then -- we who cut our teeth on rock and soul -- also had to come to grips with the hillbilly music imprinted upon our genetic makeups. The music we couldn't escape. We had to make room for Dolly, Pretty Miss Norma Jean . . . and ol' Porter and the Wagonmasters.

And come to think of it, Speck Rhodes was kind of funny.

And now -- even though I'm still partial to rock, punk and soul -- sometimes late on a Saturday night, there's nothing quite like firing up the old tube-type AM radio and carefully coaxing WSM in through the static to hear Porter play host on the Grand Ole Opry, where today's Nashville suits exile the people who built country music.

In a world of Rascal Flats and Faith Hills, the Opry gets to be the Island of Misfit Legends.

But there's something the suits don't realize.

In a world where phoniness reigns, suddenly folks like Porter, Dolly and Pretty Miss Norma Jean are cool. Because they're real.

And now they have something to say. As Newsweek tells us:

Slouching slightly in an easy chair as he watches ESPN, Porter Wagoner suggests a kindly grandfather. His voice has thickened with age, his pace slowed by an abdominal aneurysm that nearly killed him last year. But those lady-killer pale blue eyes sparkle as he leans forward, conspiratorially. "I used to run around a lot with women; I enjoyed that," he says. "I'm not really serious with anyone right now. I got some grandkids, and I'm kinda into them." At the moment he's watching NASCAR, relaxing a little before commanding the Grand Ole Opry stage to celebrate his 50th anniversary as a member of country music's most elite hall of fame. "You can always tell if a guy knows where his roots are," he says. "I like the real thing."

At 79, Wagoner knows a little something about keeping it real. With 60-odd albums under his belt, he's just released another, "Wagonmaster," and later this month he'll open for the hottest act in rock: the White Stripes—at Madison Square Garden, no less. Wagoner isn't the only roots-based, hard-country musician approaching 80 who has refused to step out of the spotlight. Merle Haggard, George Jones, Charlie Louvin, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson—they're all on the road again. Actually, they never really left, performing and recording as if they're on some magical musical Viagra. Wagoner isn't even the oldest guy out there. Last month Louvin and Ralph Stanley, both 80, separately appeared at Bonnaroo, the four-day rock festival in Tennessee. Their stamina is all the more impressive given that Nashville rolled up the welcome mat with the slick ascent of Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks and a roster of telegenic younger artists in the late 1980s. Almost all the kings and queens of country now record on independent labels from Los Angeles to—gasp!—New York. And yet the oldsters are thriving just as contemporary pop country seems to be losing its way.

Tune in, and it becomes clear why contemporary-pop-country sales are down more than 30 percent over last year, its fans either downloading illegally or jumping ship altogether. "Everybody knows what real country music is," says George Jones, 75, who has had 167 songs in the top 100 since 1955. "And it's definitely not what's happening today." On the radio you'll hear "American Idol" pretty girl Carrie Underwood, Big & Rich's tedious covers of both Donna Summer and AC/DC, the insufferably whiny Rascal Flatts and even Bon Jovi, a hair-metal band from Jersey. The hallmarks of country's current crop are crisp production, pop phrasing and cheesy lyrics. "It sounds like '80s rock ballads with fiddles," says actor Billy Bob Thornton, who has played drums with Wagoner. But classic country is caught in a Catch-22: the radio stations that play it often won't touch the older singers' new stuff, and the contemporary stations won't play their new music because the singers are, well, too old. "They're looking for a younger demographic with disposable income," says Wade Jessen, Billboard's Nashville director of charts. "It can be awfully disheartening."

And, if you see these guys performing live, it can be plain ignorant. The pierced and tattooed audience at Louisville's ear X-tacy record store is not the kind of crowd you'd expect for an 80-year-old in New Balance sneakers. But Charlie Louvin is invigorated by the turnout, one of 100 shows he'll do this year. When Louvin (half of the brimstone-breathing Louvin Brothers, who rose to fame in the 1950s) tears into classics like the murderous "Knoxville Girl" and "The Kneeling Drunkards Plea," you get why Grandpa might appeal to the whippersnappers. The music is stripped down to bass, guitar, drums and Dobro. Louvin's voice isn't what it was when he sang with his brother, Ira, but there is a pureness to the sound. "Stuff like Charlie Louvin's is old, and it's the real deal," says John Timmons, ear X-tacy's owner. "It's new to kids."

I WONDER whether they'd like The Porter Wagoner Show, in all its cheesy 1960s glory, these kids in search of Real.

Probably.