Six of the 'TV Lady,' a half-dozen of Michelle

I always know when Michelle Malkin goes on a toot about New Orleans. There's always a spike in traffic for this December post of mine.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the traffic. And the subject of that 2007 post, New Orleans' "TV Lady" -- the racist, rabblerousing public-housing queen who now occupies a subsidized apartment nicer than my house and who watches her stories on a 60-inch high-def television -- remains a living, breathing affront to basic decency.

HOWEVER.

I'm damned sick and tired of self-righteous, hard-hearted "conservatives" rolling out the bad example of the "TV Lady" (and, by extension, my blog post about her) to justify inaction -- or worse -- in the face of a national scandal. That national scandal, which centers on New Orleans, is threefold.

First, it's scandalous -- and criminal -- that the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth can't adequately build or maintain levees sufficient to protect a vital coastal port city. Or Midwestern river cities . . . or hundreds of thousands of acres of the U.S. corn and soybean crops.

Second, it's scandalous -- and criminal -- that more than 1,500 people died because the government of the United States of America is comprised, in large part, of incompetent hacks and political cronies who couldn't organize a one-car funeral cortege, much less a massive relief and rebuilding effort in New Orleans and across the central Gulf Coast.

IN A LAND of McMansions and SUVs -- governed by neoconservative nincompoops who think we have the right and the wherewithal to spend nearly a trillion dollars on the fool's errand that is Iraq -- fat and self-satisfied Americans three years ago were treated to the ultimate reality-TV program. Millions watched as thousands suffered and scores died . . . on camera . . . because Machiavellian blame-gaming was so much more a priority than was saving lives.

That the vast majority of those anguished faces belonged to African-Americans added insult to injury.

And finally, it's scandalous -- and criminal -- that a nation of such outlandish wealth would, before Katrina ever struck, tolerate the existence of a Third World enclave in its midst.

Asked two millennia ago to cut to the chase of what the Father would have us mortals do amid this vail of tears, His own Son -- the second person of the triune Godhead -- boiled it down to two simple things (Matthew 22:34-39):

34
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
35
and one of them [a scholar of the law] tested him by asking,
36
"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
37
He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
38
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
39
The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

IT HAS BEEN SAID the opposite of love is not (as one might think) hate, but instead indifference. If that is so, and if massive indifference is the best America can offer a hardscrabble, basket-case city such as New Orleans -- one which America, through its incompetent government and lousy federal levees, bears the responsibilty for drowning -- where does that leave us?

We're antichrist. Not the Antichrist, an antichrist. But why split hairs?

That's not something we can face, however. No, far better for people like Michelle Malkin and the whole "F*** New Orleans Brigade" to justify their antichrist indifference by rolling out pathetic spectacles like the "TV Lady" to represent the city when a "defaulting deadbeat Dem" visits and expresses concern over its plight:

Someone send a clue to the New Orleans Times-Picayune! They missed the story. They missed the delicious spectacle of defaulting deadbeat Democrat Laura Richardson–she who lives sky high on the hog, leaving a trail of unpaid bills in her wake– parachuting into New Orleans and clucking about the plight of its people.

Rich, just rich. . . .

(snip)

Wonder if she’ll stop by 60-inch-tv-owning New Orleans “slum”-dweller Sharon Jasper’s place. I have a feeling these two would get along.

I'LL KEEP that example in mind if Michelle stubs her big toe and noted war criminal George W. Bush sends his condolences.

That ought to be reason enough to denounce her as a misanthropic, fascist harridan . . . before we haul out a rusty broadax to chop off her leg.

I guess I goofed, huh, Mr. President?

Mr. Prime Minister, we were deeply moved when 12 million of your citizens went to the polls last December. It was really a remarkable statement, wasn't it? Twelve million citizens, who at one time had lived under the thumb of a brutal tyrant, went to the polls and said, we want to be free. And out of that election, Mr. Prime Minister, you and your government have emerged.

We respect the fact that your government represents the will of the Iraqi people. One thing the Prime Minister told me getting out of the limousine, after having flown on the helicopter -- (laughter) -- was that he longs for the day when the Iraqi children can live in a hopeful society. That's what he wants. He wants the Iraqi people to enjoy the benefits that most people in other countries enjoy. It is a simple concept in many ways, yet is profound, because my reaction upon hearing his words was, this man will succeed if he cares first and foremost about the people and the condition of the Iraqi people. If he's the kind of leader like I know he is, who cares about generations of Iraqis to come, he will be successful.

-- President George Bush,
July 26, 2006

"This is not a simple process of passing the baton," the official said, adding, "This is not the United States and Iraq struggling for control of the steering wheel. This is the United States wanting Iraq to be firmly with the steering wheel in its hand, and the issue is, how do we get there as quickly as possible."

(snip)

Today, both men tried to tamp down any suggestion that the relationship was strained. Mr. Bush said yet again that he has confidence in the Iraqi prime minister.

"I've been able to watch a leader emerge," the president said, describing the threats Mr. Maliki said he had received since becoming prime minister, including shells being fired at his house.

The president added, "You can't lead unless you've got courage. He's got courage and he's shown courage over the last six months."

-- New York Times
Nov. 30, 2006

"Prime Minister Maliki's a good guy, a good man with a difficult job, and I support him," Mr. Bush told veterans in Kansas City, Mo. "And it's not up to the politicians in Washington, D.C. to say whether he will remain in his position. It is up to the Iraqi people who now live in a democracy and not a dictatorship."

-- National Public Radio,
Aug. 22, 2007

Oops.

-- White House press office,
July 19, 2008

Let's play Omaha Storm Slam!

It's summer in Nebraska . . . and the spring storm season never left.

What's a body out here on the Plains to do?

I'M GLAD you asked! It's time to play the Midwest's newest and craziest TV game show . . . it's time to play Omaha Storm Slam!

Here's how we play: Keep a close eye on the Channel 7 live radar (click on the picture above). Soon enough, you'll see a line of storms approach the Omaha metro area.

Now, when the big bright-red, severe thunderstorm cells hit the Omaha city limits, everybody yells "Storm slam!" and chugs a PBR. When a contestant gets sick or becomes too intoxicated to enunciate "Storm slam!", that person is eliminated.

And the last contestant standing wins the game!

First prize is dragging all of your falling-down drunk opponents to the basement when the tornado siren sounds. Now, let's play Omaha Storm Slam!

In color.

3 Chords & the Truth: Down a country road

This week on 3 Chords & the Truth, we're going to be thumbing our way down that folk highway, and then take a side trip down a country road.

Either way you go, you'll find some of the greatest music America -- and the world -- ever has produced.

FOR ME, country music wasn't an instant-gratification kind of thing. Growing up in the Deep South in the 1960s and '70s, it was, to a large extent, the background music of my young life, but it wasn't my background music of choice. That would have been The Who, the Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Billy Preston, the Meters, Irma Thomas and Al Green.

And even the Carpenters . . . and (ahem) the Partridge Family.

Country music was the background music of my life in the sense that I couldn't avoid it. It was the music the Old Man listened to on the radio -- and you moved the AM dial away from WYNK, WSLG or WLBI at substantial risk to life and limb.

Same deal with the Porter Wagoner Show on television every Saturday afternoon.

I yearned for "that g**damn hippie music," as the Old Man referred to my generation's soundtrack. But I also ended up knowing the likes of Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, George Jones and "pretty Miss Norma Jean." One of my favorites -- albeit something of an ambivalent favorite -- was "Country" Charley Pride.

And if you don't know that it's C-H-A-R-L-E-Y instead of C-H-A-R-L-I-E, you're a damn pretender, son.

BACK THEN, however, there were two sides to life: yours . . . and your parents'. The existential question of one's young existence -- Which side are you on? -- required exactly no thought.

Whatsoever.

It's a funny thing. Though the question was simple, all kinds of stuff got mixed up in it that really had no business there. The Beatles vs. Porter Wagoner is not a fundamental question of good and evil.

"It's a big world out there," we young'uns constantly told ourselves. Our actions and our prejudices, however, betrayed our lack of believe in our own party line.

In fact, while "Which side are you on?" was -- and is -- the central question in any of our lives, we stupidly applied it to all the wrong areas. And not at all to the Right Area.

Then again, neither did our parents, by and large.

It is possible, and even quite healthy, to like both the Sex Pistols and Ernest Tubb. It's likewise possible to associate with, and even like, both Democrats and Republicans. Squares and hippies both have their virtues . . . and their vices.

The world is big. It's our hearts and minds that tend to be small.

Too small, as a matter of fact, to apprehend exactly how cosmically huge a question is "Which side are you on?"

THAT, IN A NUTSHELL, is what the Big Show happens to be about this week. 3 Chords & the Truth: It's the show where we ask the big questions and where, this week, we're playing all four kinds of music.

Rock . . . and roll. Not to mention country . . . and western.

Be there. Aloha.

Their 2 cents worth

When you start to thinking there's really no hope for New Orleans -- ruined by the Federal Flood, ruined before that by its own dysfunction, ruined forever by grafters and bad schools and bad will between black and white -- you stumble upon a little ray of sunshine cutting through the thick canopy of detritus.

Improbably, you almost ignore the light because you are so in wonder that a layer of dead vegetation, dead people, dead hopes and dead dreams can stay suspended above you -- a defunct version of a once vibrant, verdant ecosystem. But there it is.

A confounding light. A ray of hope. A beacon of excellence amid a world of failure.

IF YOU WANT TO SEE some first-rate guerrilla media from a bunch of kids who refuse to give up on their city, go here. If a once-great city is to be reborn and reformed, it's not going to be at the hands of its politicians . . . or those relics from Washington.

If New Orleans -- if Louisiana -- one day rises out of the muck of fatalism and apathy, it'll be because some young people were too clueless to know it was all a hopeless case, and that they oughtn't have wasted their time trying.

We've seen fire, and we've seen rain

God ain't through acting yet.

I refer not to "acting" in the dramatic sense -- though our recent weather certainly has been that -- but instead in the legal sense. For example, when lightning hits your house and burns the sucker to the ground, it's an "act of God."

Or when a hailstorm comes and busts your windows and beats your crops to a tangled mess, that's an "act of God." And when the big wind comes to lay flat the corn, soybeans and backyard-garden tomatoes, that too is an "act of God."

FOR SOME FARMERS in eastern Nebraska and Iowa -- the ones who've had their corn and beans pummeled, then blown flat . . . and then had what was left pummeled and blown flat again two and a half weeks later -- that's a lot of "acts of God."

If you're living it, it's high drama. If your crop insurance isn't enough to cover the carnage, your finances have just become high anxiety.

If you live in the big city and think food comes from the Safeway plant or the Kroger factory . . . never mind. Rest highly assured it's the Boogie Man hatching yet another nefarious plot to empty your wallet and screw up your life.

And rest safe in the knowledge that "flyover country" means nothing to you or your less and less comfortable life.

On the other hand, maybe God is acting, in addition to "acting." If that's the case, Broadway just went west, young man . . . and Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri are trying out for the chorus line.

HERE'S OUR latest audition, held in and around Omaha, by God, Neb.:

The lightning and heavy rain from the storm that hit the Omaha area Tuesday night sparked house fires, knocked out power to thousands of homes and flooded basements, streets and farm fields.

Hail knocked out several windows in the farmhouse of Junius Lentell, an 87-year-old retired farmer who lives east of Valley. The surrounding farm fields that he rents out to his grandson were flooded, and one of the metal sheds on the property was partially pulled from its footings and thrown atop a tractor.

The storm, which left behind 5 inches of rain on Lentell's property, plus the one that hit June 27 were the worst of his 62 years on the farm, he said.

“This is about the craziest living I’ve ever done,” Lentell said.

Other spots also were hit by heavy rain: About 4½ inches was recorded at 196th and Douglas Streets, and more than 4 inches was recorded at 201st and Farnam Streets, said David Eastlack, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Valley.

A rain gauge in northeast Papillion had 3.7 inches, nearly 3½ inches of rain fell at Boys Town, and Offutt Air Force Base collected 2.75 inches.

One-inch hail was reported in parts of Omaha, Eastlack said.

In an hour, 3 inches of rain pounded Morse Bluff, and in Ceresco, 1½ inches of rain fell in 30 minutes. Both towns are in Saunders County, Neb.

Tuesday night’s storm featured a tremendous amount of lightning.

“It would just flash every few seconds — lightning after lightning after lightning,” said Valley resident Ken Wild, who got 3.2 inches of rain at his house.

(snip)

In Sarpy County, lightning strikes caused two house fires — at 10236 Emiline St. near La Vista and at 14211 S. 65th St. near Bellevue.

In Douglas County, firefighters extinguished a lightning-caused fire at 5101 N. 196th St. in the Elkhorn area.

(snip)

Ed Schmidt, Douglas County 911 operations manager, reported 518 calls from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Tuesday. During a normal weeknight, 911 will handle 100 to 130 calls, he said.

Flash flooding caused cars to stall and required that police direct traffic at 208th Street and West Maple Road about 11:30 p.m., the Weather Service said. Many roads were temporarily closed or underwater in western Douglas County, according to the weather service.

Much of Valley was littered with downed trees. Some streets were covered with water.

The King Lake community and Rainwood Road north of Valley were particularly hard-hit.

Volunteer rescue workers temporarily closed 264th Street near Rainwood Road because strong wind tore a roof from a nearby building and flung it into the road. The building had once been part of a hog confinement facility but had been empty about 10 years.

AND WHAT'S IN our local forecast for tomorrow night and Friday?

Rain. Lots and lots of rain. Some of it in strong storms.

We can't wait.

Pictures flying through the air . . . and other stuff not seen in the paper

Someday, electronic pictures will fly magically through the ether, to play out like a moving picture on a new kind of Radiola . . . right in your front parlor, where your present wireless apparatus sits to-day.

IT WILL BE CALLED TeleVision, and when it arrives here in Omaha, you can be assured that your Omaha World-Herald will be right on top of the story, bringing to you, the Midlands reader, the facts and figures, little comedies and big dramas . . . the story within the story of this modern marvel.

And perhaps someday, you will be getting the news and entertainment the World-Herald has to offer by means of this new, magical medium, as your hometown, home-owned news source embraces the best this century of progress has to off. . . .

OH . . . HANG ON A MINUTE:



WHAT??????? Since nineteen-freakin'-FORTY-NINE!?!?!?!?!

Damn, kind of got behind the curve on that one, didn't we? OK, here's what we'll do. We'll pretend it doesn't exist.

Sure, that's the way to go. People will ignore this "TeleVision" thing. And we'll be around forever . . . long after the novelty of moving pictures through the ether has passed and Midlanders come to their senses.

The WHAT?

What's an Enter Nets?

* * *

OK, I KID. But not that much.

And, face it, my joke is as good an explanation as any why blog readers in San Diego knew almost two weeks ago that Carlo Cecchetto -- one half of KMTV, Channel 3's anchor team -- was leaving Omaha to go back from whence he came. He's going to be the new weekend anchor at KFMB, Channel 8 in San Diego, where he was a reporter before teaming with Carol Wang (another then-newbie) at Action 3 News a year and a half ago.

An Omaha World-Herald stuck somewhere in 1932 also is as plausible an explanation as any that it was a Journal Broadcast Group press release Wednesday that revealed Craig Nigrelli, weekday 4 p.m. anchor at KCTV in Kansas City, would be Cecchetto's replacement. From there, the news surfaced in a blurb on MediaLine.com, then worked its way over to the Omaha TV News blog, and now you're reading it here.

But not in the World-Herald.

AND WHAT you haven't read anywhere yet is that -- if there be any rationality left anywhere in television news, either from a journalistic or a promotions standpoint -- Wang, Nigrelli's new co-anchor, ought to be worried.

Coming to Omaha with the new Channel 3 anchor is his wife, Carol Crissey Nigrelli, whose 20-plus years as an anchor at WIVB, the CBS affiliate in Buffalo, earned her a spot in the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame. She "retired from broadcasting" in June 2002 to marry Nigrelli, a former News 4 reporter then working in Albuquerque, N.M.

Here's what Carol Nigrelli's profile said when she was inducted into the Buffalo broadcasting hall:

Voted Buffalo’s Sexiest Woman too many years in a row to count, Carol transcended both television and news to become the unofficial Queen of Buffalo while anchoring the news on Channel 4 for 23 years. Her appeal as a newscaster and person is on many different levels . . .

She’s the smart, beautiful, authoritative and street savvy woman all women would love to be... and all men would love to marry. Combined with the sense and skill of a good newswoman, her career as a news anchor was a homerun.

Carol Crissey came to Buffalo from Harrisburg, PA in 1979, originally paired with John Beard at the anchor desk. Carol anchored the news at noon, 5, 6, and 11, with the likes of Beard, Bob Koop, Rich Newberg, and Kevin O’Connell until she “retired” to New Mexico last year.

NOW, IF THE perpetual Action Third News were looking to stop the ratings bleeding -- which never happened with "young blood" Wang and Cecchetto at the helm of KMTV's spastic Actioncast -- who's to say that the station won't find itself a new consultant . . . and won't start looking for another new piece to the anchor puzzle.

Maybe someone will get the bright idea to field a husband-wife anchor team. With at least one member a proven anchor talent.

And perhaps the folks at the Action Third News station -- sick of being . . . well . . . third -- will try to change a certain someone's mind about retirement.

"How do you like that? I buried the lede."

What if advertising were fun again?

The NE Creative advertising blog wonders why some of Omaha's abandoned grain silos, for example, haven't been put to good use as outdoor advertising. That's a good question.

I'M NOT AN AD MAN, and I don't play one on television . . . but my late father-in-law was. And in looking at what's left of the massive old silos adjacent to I-80 near the middle of town (Hello? Interstate 80 . . . major cross-country route . . . heavily used by weary truckers, travelers and drug runners), I see gigantic cans of energy drinks.

Like Red Bull.


PODNA, that's an outdoor ad you absolutely, positively can't ignore.

In fact, it's not just an ad, it's a tourist attraction. An honest-to-God tourist attraction.

And what if -- for 100 miles east and west of the giant Red Bull cans -- the maker of the energy drink bought billboard space and used it for oversized Burma Shave signs . . . only for Red Bull. Halfway across a transcontinental expressway. Full of people who absolutely, positively don't want to get drowsy and fall asleep at the wheel on a long, long drive.

Heck, for that matter, why not have an interactive campaign where you get Red Bull drinkers to write the Burma Shavesque rhymes for the billboards. Make it a contest. Best 100 go onto the billboards.

It's not brain surgery, but it sure would be fun.

NOW, IF SOMEONE takes this idea and runs with it, remember that I am not a greedy man. But papa sure could use an iMac and a MacBook Pro.

Quand tu dit Bud. . . .

Budwesier always, to me, tasted like horse piss (or at least what I imagine horse piss would taste like), but at least it was our horse piss.

No more.

The United States is becoming the new Africa -- a ramshackle continent of serfs, beholden to foreign colonial masters. The gory details follow, courtesy of Reuters:

U.S. brewer Anheuser-Busch Cos Inc agreed to a $50 billion takeover by Belgium-based InBev NV, a source familiar with the situation said Sunday, creating the world's largest beer maker.

InBev, the maker of Stella Artois, and Budweiser-brewer Anheuser were not immediately available to comment.

The combined company will be called Anheuser-Busch InBev, said the source, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. Anheuser will get seats on the new company's board, the source said, but it was not immediately clear how many.

The deal brings an amicable resolution to a month-long saga that was becoming increasingly hostile as the two companies sued each other and InBev set the stage to try to replace Anheuser's board of directors.

InBev had proposed its own slate of nominees for the board that included Adolphus Busch IV, an uncle of the current chief executive of Anheuser-Busch.

InBev lured Anheuser to the bargaining table last week by raising its offer to $70 per share from $65 per share, a 27 percent premium over Anheuser's record-high stock price in October 2002.

The difference between Chiquita and plantains

At some point, the story below will hit the American newspapers. Some time after that -- perhaps in the library of the federal prison in Oakdale, La. -- former Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards will see the headline "Bush lobbyist promises access for presidential library cash," throw the paper aside under a guard's wary gaze, then mutter "Son of a bitch!"

And it will occur to the silver-haired old man once again that his big mistake in shaking down casino operators all those years ago was that, in his hubris, he wasn't subtle enough. That he didn't have a distant-enough middle man to give him that certain je ne sais quoi -- Comment tu dit en anglais? -- "plausible deniability."

DAMN THAT George W. Bush and all his Washington money . . . all his Washington lobbyists . . . his damned presidential library. "Why couldn't I have rounded up a lobbyist pal or two?" the erstwhile "Silver Zipper" will think. "Why not a @#$&*!!#$! Edwin W. Edwards Gubernatorial Library?"

Why not, indeed. In today's editions, The Sunday Times (London) outlines how the old grafter could have gotten away with it . . . and stayed out of the federal slammer . . . if he had been Washington slick in addition to Louisiana greedy:

A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.

(snip)

During an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times, Payne was asked to arrange meetings in Washington for an exiled former central Asian president. He outlined the cost of facilitating such access.

“The exact budget I will come up with, but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library,” said Payne, who sits on the US homeland security advisory council.

He said initially that the “family” of the Asian politician should make the donation. He later added that if all the money was paid to him he would make the payment to the Bush library. Publicly, it would appear to have been made in the politician’s name “unless he wants to be anonymous for some reason”.

Payne said the balance of the $750,000 would go to his own lobbying company, Worldwide Strategic Partners (WSP).

Asked by an undercover reporter who the politician would be able to meet for that price, Payne said: “Cheney’s possible, definitely the national security adviser [Stephen Hadley], definitely either Dr Rice or . . . I think a meeting with Dr Rice or the deputy secretary [John Negroponte] is possible . . .

“The main thing is that he [the Asian politician] comes, and he’s well received, that he meets with high-level people . . . and we send positive statements made back from the administration about ‘This guy wasn’t such a bad guy, many people have done worse’.”

WHEN YOU HEAR folks in Washington talk about Louisiana as a "banana republic," what one needs to realize is it's not a slam on the Gret Stet as a corrupt, less-than-democratic kleptocracy where the rich get richer and the poor poorer. Though, of course, the Bayou State is all that.

What your unctuous Washington swell really is saying is "Look at those rubes and bumpkins. They play the game so crudely . . . they are soooooo declassé!"

And the Beltway swell will have a point. At its heart, Louisiana is a country kind of place.

As a banana republic, the Gret Stet is all about Ricky Bobby, two-steps, Chiquita and Abita Turbodog lager. That'll "git 'er done," but you must admit it's lacking in the panache department.

Washington, on the other hand, is the seat of government of a much better class of banana republic. Inside the Beltway, it's all about the National Symphony at Kennedy Center, the horizontal bop with a $2,000 "escort," fried plantains and Cabernet Sauvignon.

NO, GEORGE W. BUSH has his Stephen Payne, and -- alas -- El Presidente probably won't be dressing in khaki jumpsuits and looking forward to a daily "exercise period" anytime soon.

Damn pity, that.


UPDATE: Don't forget to check out this revealing sidebar on what a little -- OK, a lot -- of cash and the right lobbyist can get you from the White House these days:

What Payne did not know was that the third person at the Lanesborough meeting last Monday was an undercover Sunday Times reporter. Nor did he know that the meeting was being recorded.

The Sunday Times had initially approached Dos earlier for help in investigating corrupt practices in his homeland of Kazakhstan. Many business deals there are said to involve the discreet transfer of money between figures high up in the Kazakh regime and western companies.

Dos is exiled from Kazakhstan after setting up his own political party, Atameken, at the end of 2006. He was forced to flee following threats to his life.

Before that happened, however, he acted as an adviser to Timur Kulibayev, the billionaire son-in-law of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the Kazakh president, and a man of considerable influence within the country.

Dos said that in the autumn of 2005 he had been asked by the Kazakh government, via Kulibayev, to arrange a visit by Cheney. The intention was to improve the country’s international standing.

Dos had spent several days negotiating with Payne. A deal was eventually agreed, he said, and he understood that a payment of $2m was passed, via a Kazakh oil and gas company, to Payne’s firm.

The following May, Cheney made a brief trip to Kazakhstan. His visit was remarked upon in the media at the time, both for the lavish praise which he publicly heaped on Nazarbayev and for the stark contrast between this and a speech he had made just a day earlier at a conference in Lithuania in which he had lambasted Russia for being insufficiently democratic. Now he was lauding Nazarbayev, who has effectively made himself president for life and in whose country it is an offence to criticise him.

“Why did Cheney castigate Russia’s imperfect democracy while saying not a word about Kazakhstan’s shameless travesty of the democratic system?” said one newspaper following the visit. “Cheney’s flattery of the Kazakh regime was sickening,” said another.

Dos believes some of the money paid to WSP may have found its way to “entities” connected to the Bush administration.

In order to test which channels might be available to foreigners seeking influence within the US, Dos agreed to approach Payne, at The Sunday Times’s request, with a fabricated story about Akayev wanting to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the world. Akayev was not aware of the approach to Payne.

Dos initially contacted Payne, who is based in Houston, Texas, via e-mail, and mentioned the possibility of making payments to “the Republican party or any other institutions affiliated with the Bushes”. Payne responded quickly, saying he was in London the following week.

The meeting at the Lanesborough began with Payne explaining that later that evening he was meeting a Conservative MP, Mark Pritchard, in order to sign him up as a paid “adviser” to WSP. Also due to meet Payne later was Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, apparently for separate discussions.

Pritchard’s value to Payne lay in his position as chairman of the House of Commons all- party Russia group. The MP, Payne said, had named his price, and it was acceptable to him.

So certain, in fact, was Payne that Pritchard would “cement the relationship” that night that he had already included him in his latest “confidential” brochure as one of WSP’s consultants.

I PREDICT the Russians and Edwin Edwards are going to become pen pals with an axe to grind.

Well, probably not. But you'd like to think. Good grief.

Breaking a few eggs to roust a few Mexicans

The problem with representative democracy is that you can't legally keep fools from voting, and you certainly can't keep them from electing even bigger fools to public office.

RIGHT NOW, there's a frightening example of that right in my back yard, a half hour away in Fremont, Neb., as reported by the Omaha World-Herald. Briefly, what's going on just northwest of Omaha is that some Gomers got together in that small city to elect an even bigger Gomer to the city council, one who now proposes an ordinance that would require all prospective renters be licensed by the city.

To get a city renter's license -- which they'd have to obtain before every rental -- residents would have to undergo a background check to determine their legal right to be in the country:

A proposed law aimed at banishing illegal immigrants from Fremont, Neb., would require every renter —whether they were born in the United States or immigrated here — to obtain an occupancy license through the city.

The proposal has sparked an outcry among advocates for Latinos. Nebraska Appleseed attorney Norm Pflanz said he is confident that many Fremont citizens will join in opposition once they understand the full impact of the ordinance — on their lives as well as those of immigrants.

Fremont's is the first city council in the state to propose an ordinance that would ban harboring and renting to illegal immigrants. Lawmakers in other U.S. localities have introduced similar initiatives, often later struck down by the courts, according to national immigration groups.

Bob Warner, the longtime councilman who sponsored Fremont's proposal, said he did so because residents were "sick and tired" of what he said was the federal government's lax enforcement of immigration laws.

He said Fremont residents want their own immigration laws.

"I'll fight to the dying end to do what they want," Warner said. "I don't know why everybody is making a mountain out of something that is very simple."

The proposal that went to the council for a public hearing this week calls for all renters to fill out an application verifying their legal right to be in the United States. The applications would be submitted to local police for verification, and an occupancy license would be issued.

Every person occupying a rented home or apartment would have to hold an occupancy license at a cost of $5 each. A new license would be needed every time a resident relocated to a different rental unit.

THAT'S RIGHT, in the name of rolling back the Mexican tide from Main Street Nebraska, Gomers like Bob Warner are perfectly willing to re-create a little bitty, corn-fed version of Soviet Russia.

If that's how the people of Fremont roll -- and if the city's Supreme Soviet wants the anti-illegal immigrant pogram to be truly effective -- why stop with $5-a-pop renter's licenses? Why not add provisions for internal passports and random police checkpoints to the measure?

How about a network of informants to alert the authorities to "people who don't belong here"?

AND IF the Fremont City Council goes forward with Warner's plan to cut down a forest of rights to get at the Mexican Menace among us, then we can go ahead and change Nebraska's state motto from "Equality Before the Law" to something more apropos.

Like "Your Papers, Please."

Not of this nation, barely of this world

Louisiana is the kind of place where people get baited like animals, and animals get treated like . . . bait.

From the Baiting Humans Like Animals Department, this from New Orleans City Business:

A pack of Kool cigarettes, a can of Budweiser and a box of Boston Baked Beans sat on the dashboard of an unlocked car with the windows rolled down at 1732 Canal St.

Somewhere nearby two New Orleans Police Department officers watched and waited for someone to reach into the bait car and snatch the items.

They wouldn’t have to wait long, as the police parked the car just one block away from a homeless encampment under the Claiborne Avenue overpass, where dozens of desperate, hungry and addicted people lived in a makeshift village of tents.

The first arrest was made at 12:25 p.m. June 10 when police say the initial suspect took the bait and stole a can of beer. The second arrest was made at 4:05 p.m. when police say a second suspect took the cigarettes, beer and candy.

For stealing less than $6 in items, the police charged the two homeless men with simple burglary, a felony that can carry up to 12 years in prison. Neither suspect had any prior arrests in Orleans Parish.

A month later, the men remain in Orleans Parish Prison awaiting court dates and the possibility they will spend the better part of the next decade in state prison.

“I don’t know what the policing justification is for such an action,” said Pamela Metzger, associate professor of law at Tulane University Law School. “But on a fundamental human level, it smacks of a meanness, a pettiness, a spitefulness that has no place in a city as broken as this one. It’s a way of manufacturing offenses that may not have otherwise existed.”

(snip)

Not only does it take police officers off the street, but it clogs the courts and forces public defenders and the district attorney to use their limited resources and manpower to litigate “trivial offenses” instead of focusing efforts on more serious cases like homicide, said Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.

“People are still dying left and right and yet we’re playing games with baked beans and Kool cigarettes,” Quigley said. “The police officers who did this should be personally embarrassed and their superiors and the elected officials who knew about this should go to confession.”

The NOPD did not respond to requests for comment, but Superintendent Warren Riley has previously defended the practice of arresting people for minor crimes as a useful way of catching habitual offenders.

At a legislative committee hearing in October, Riley said officers will arrest someone for a minor offense such as trespassing if that person has a history of burglary arrests.

But during the car sting, officers not only arrested six people with no prior arrests, they also charged them with felonies.

AND NOW, FROM THAT garden spot of the Deep South, Baton Rouge, we have this dispatch, courtesy of the Using House Pets as Bait Department and The Advocate:

Two men were arrested Wednesday after they allegedly stood by laughing as their pit bull ate a live kitten.

Jeremy Johnson, 17, and Travis Johnson, 23, were arrested in a vacant lot in the 4900 block of Bradley Street after 911 dispatchers received an anonymous tip about the pair, a Baton Rouge police arrest affidavit says.

When police and animal control officers arrived at 11:20 a.m., they saw Jeremy Johnson holding his pet pit bull’s leash while the dog consumed a kitten, according to police spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely and the affidavit.

Animal control officers had to pull the pit bull off the kitten, McKneely said. The officers located another kitten that had been mauled nearby in the grass.

Jeremy Johnson told officers “he was letting the pit bull take care of the kittens because he doesn’t like cats and thinks there are too many of them loose in the area,” McKneely said.

(snip)

The Johnsons, both of 4917 Bradley St., were booked into Parish Prison on two counts of felony aggravated cruelty to animals and one count of criminal trespassing.

Bond was set for both men at $7,500, booking documents show. Their relationship to each other was unclear Thursday.

State law says, in part, that aggravated cruelty to animals includes the torturing, maiming or mutilating any living animal “intentionally or with criminal negligence.”

If convicted, the Johnsons could pay a fine ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 or spend from one to 10 years in prison, or both.

HOW MUCH you want to bet these monsters get off with a slap on the wrist?

Let me tell you a story that explains why I think that.

About three years ago, our elderly schnoodle, Phideaux, had a stroke. Without a second thought, we rushed him to the vet and, after a couple of hundred dollars worth of treatment, he recovered and lived another year. He was 16 when he died, and we miss him desperately still.

About the same time in Louisiana, another dog had a stroke. It was the pet of a friend's sister and brother-in-law, who is a professional kind of guy.

Seeing the dog in distress, the brother-in-law acted quickly. He took the poor creature out back and shot it.

THERE ARE many things I miss about my home state. There are many more I don't miss at all.

It sucks to be second fiddle . . . and falling fast

In the capital city of Louisiana, the mayor is howling at the moon and -- perhaps -- praying for another hurricane.

The Census Bureau's 2007 population estimates are in, and Baton Rouge didn't do so well. The city -- whose population swelled in 2005 with the near loss of New Orleans -- has not been able to hold on to its demographic largesse and now has assumed its historical position. That would be second banana to the Crescent City, which continues to slowly rebuild from its swamping during Katrina and now has a good 12,000 people on Baton Rouge.

NOT ONLY THAT, Baton Rouge's population drop, in sheer numbers, was the third biggest in the nation -- notching another bad-list triumph for Louisiana. In terms of percentage of population lost, the capital city was a solid No. 2, behind front-runner Columbus, Ga.

At least if you believe the federal government's numbers.

According to The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, Mayor-President Kip Holden doesn't:

New Orleans was the nation’s fastest-growing city during the same period, regaining the title of Louisiana’s most populous city from Baton Rouge for the first time since Hurricane Katrina displaced tens of thousands of people in August 2005.
The estimated 2007 population for New Orleans was 239,124, an increase of 28,926 but still just more than half of the city’s pre-Katrina population of 453,726.

Baton Rouge’s estimated population was 227,071.

Mayor-President Kip Holden said Wednesday that the Census report is a flawed estimate that dramatically underreported the city’s population.

“They take a mathematical extrapolation — that they come up with themselves — and come up with erroneous numbers,” Holden said. “Until we have a full census, they would do us all a favor if they would just go away for a couple of years until we can know the exact population.”

Holden said the report contradicts what he said is clear evidence of Baton Rouge’s ongoing growth: steady school enrollment, climbing sales tax revenue and booming business development.

“You can go virtually all over Baton Rouge and buildings are coming up everywhere,” Holden said. “So if that number was correct, would banks be out here loaning all these people money to build condos and apartments and office buildings and restaurants?”

I'M SURE THE CENSUS PEOPLE would be happy to take Holden's contention under advisement, but first they'll have to carve out a parameter in their database for "buildings are coming up everywhere."

They'll get right on that . . . just as soon as they get their giggles under control.

At least one Louisiana demographer is surprised that anyone is surprised by the Census Bureau's estimate.

Shreveport demographer and political analyst Elliott Stonecipher said the simultaneous population drop in Baton Rouge and growth in New Orleans was “anything but a surprise” given the ongoing resettling of Katrina victims.

“To me, it’s just very logical; it was very expected,” Stonecipher said.

Greg Rigamer, a New Orleans urban planner with GCR and Associates, said the shifts in both cities are related and most likely the result of major improvements in services in New Orleans during the summer and fall of 2006.

“When you look at when most people came back to New Orleans, it was really in that period,” he said. “Many of the people from New Orleans were clearly in Baton Rouge.”

The Census report is the second this year to estimate a population drop for the Baton Rouge area.

The bureau released population estimates for parishes and counties in March. That report estimated a population drop parishwide and was also criticized by city-parish officials.

East Baton Rouge Parish had an estimated population of 431,278 in July 2006, but that dropped to 430,317 by July 2007, or a loss of 961 residents, that report showed.

Holden said the estimates are “crippling” for Baton Rouge because federal and state funding is often tied to population. He said Congress should come up with a new method for calculating population between censuses.

WHAT MIGHT BE more useful than trying to convince the world -- and convince it on the sketchiest of anecdotal evidence -- that Baton Rouge can hold its population better than a New Orleans levee holds water would be, instead, figuring out why all those folks (presumably New Orleanians) fled after three years in paradise.

Of course, the pull of home is a strong one . . . particularly for natives of as insular a city as New Orleans. Still, we find that people are leaving Baton Rouge to return to a city that has one of the world's worst mayors at the helm.

They're leaving Red Stick for a city with the highest murder rate in the nation. And that race isn't even close.

They're leaving to return to a city where the school system is still a shambles. And where graft is bigger than Rex on Mardi Gras day.

They're leaving to return to a city that's just a direct hit by a Category 2 or 3 hurricane from oblivion. Again. Likely for good next time.

They're leaving for a city that's still largely in ruins, is a municipal-infrastructure nightmare, suffers under sky-high electric rates and needs patrols by National Guardsmen to stave off utter chaos. As opposed to its normal, everyday pre-Katrina chaos.

I KNOW WHAT IT IS to miss home. To miss one's culture . . . familiar foods . . . familiar music . . . familiar sights and sounds. For reasons transcending all good sense, there aren't that many days that I don't miss Baton Rouge.

But that's not enough to make me go back. And I live 1,100 miles distant from there. Have for 20 years now.

Baton Rouge's former exiles from the Big Easy had found refuge less than 90 minutes away from home. They found themselves relocated somewhere with a somewhat similar culture, closely related cuisine and an identical climate. And any onset of Crescent City delirium tremens would be easily "fixed" by a short road trip.

Did I mention the "one direct hit from oblivion . . . again" thing?

THAT'S WHAT Baton Rouge's mayor needs to be worrying about: Why in the name of Buckskin Bill and Tabby Thomas would people want to leave America's Next Great City(TM) for the corrupt, dysfunctional, beaten-down, dangerous basket case that is New Orleans?

Why would people do that if Baton Rouge is sitting there on the first high land on the Mississippi, just ready to launch itself into greatness?

Could it be that Baton Rouge ain't as wonderful as the mayor thinks?

Could it be that the crime isn't that much lower, the murders not that staggeringly fewer, the landscape not that less dilapidated and the public schools not that much better as to be meaningful to a homesick exile?

Could it be that Louisiana's once-again Second City barely outperforms a crippled New Orleans in the essentials that make a city livable while lacking the kind of vibrant, indigenous culture that makes the Crescent City -- in a very real sense -- the spiritual heartbeat of America?

WHEN MY WIFE AND I LEFT Baton Rouge in 1988, it was pretty much the same size it is now . . . perhaps 10,000 or so smaller in population. That kind of anemic population growth doesn't point to a vibrant, fundamentally sound municipality.

When we arrived in Omaha 20 years ago, Nebraska's largest city was about 100,000 people smaller than it is today. And even then, it still was 100,000 people larger than Baton Rouge is now.

What's the difference?

I think it comes down to this: Leaders of "next great cities" don't waste their time (and the taxpayers' money) trying to mau-mau the federal gummint when census figures don't fall their way. Leaders of great cities (those of "next" or "present" greatness) want to find out why the numbers turned against them.

They want to find out why people left -- or why more people aren't moving in. They want to find out where their city falls short.

And once they've done that, leaders of "great" cities -- or even "pretty good" cities -- move heaven and earth to fix what's wrong and improve what's right. That's not what it looks like Baton Rouge's Kip Holden is doing here.

Nobody likes a whiner, Kip. Not even exiled New Orleanians whose only alternative is "Crazy" Ray Nagin.

Surely, it's the video of the year

You know, we can deal with peak oil and the West being put over a 55-gallon barrel by Middle Eastern extortionists by invading one sand sewer after another forever and ever, amen. And we can do that at the cost of thousands and thousands of American lives as we bankrupt the American nation in the name of our quintessentially American petroleum jones.

Or we can go the unconventional-warfare route, putting the whole thing in the hands of the generals Zucker.

I vote for letting Jerry and David Zucker do to OPEC what they did for the airline industry.

And stop calling me Shirley.

'The man is Ted Baxter.' And was that a threat?

We held back some of this conversation... we didn't feel it had any relevance to the conversation this evening. We are not out to get Jesse Jackson. We are not out to embarrass him and we are not out to make him look bad. If we were, we would have used what we had, which is more damaging than what you have heard. . . .

-- Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly,
airing an off-air, on-mic private remark
by Jesse Jackson on Barack Obama

* * *

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with a small budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done--and are still doing--to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.

-- Edward R. Murrow, in an October 1958
speech to radio and TV news directors

* * *

No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.

-- Mike Rokyo, 1984, upon leaving
Rupert Murdoch's Chicago Sun-Times

The philosopher cop . . . who knew?

Over at BaRou is the New Bklyn, blogger Colleen Kane tells the story of celebrating the Fourth of July in a foreign land.

Sort of.

COLLEEN DESCRIBES how she and her festive crew -- in a city where everybody else already was engaging in a little celebratory "shock and awe" -- were trying to be considerate by shooting off their illegal (wink wink, nudge nudge) pyrotechnics on the wide-open expanse of the athletic field at Baton Rouge High.

Everything was fine, everybody was having a good time . . . but then something happened. Enter Barney Fife: Philosopher Cop.

The cop asked us our ages and where we were from. "You're too old for this," he said, looking about half as amused as we were. Miraculously none of us laughed when he said, "Maybe they do stupid things in Brooklyn, but here in Baton Rouge, we don't do stupid things." In addition, he informed us this wasn't a rural area where you can shoot off fireworks anywhere, and that was a historic school right over there that we were endangering.

MISS KANE and her cohorts have more self-control than I do. I would have asked the cop -- amid gales of doubled-over, gasping-for-breath, gut-busting laughter -- how the hell, then, did he explain the Metropolitan Council and the School Board. And I would have been arrested.

"Maybe they do stupid things in Brooklyn, but here in Baton Rouge, we don't do stupid things."

No, cops just say stupid things in an attempt to get the rest of us to adopt a new Unifying Theory of Louisiana.

R O S E N B L A T T

All things must pass . . . one more once

One of the beauties of baseball is the tempo of the game. It's relaxed enough for even the casual observer to realize that, at the ballpark, the game is only, say, one-tenth of the action.

Or something like that.

Here we continue our photo essays from the College World Series at Omaha's old Rosenblatt Stadium, where we're counting down the seasons until the old landmark gives way, in 2011, to a brand-new ballpark downtown.

It's the long goodbye. And here are some snapshots of Year One of that process.

The game: Fresno State vs. North Carolina.

The date: June 22, 2008.

She loves the game. It's in her eyes.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association wants there to be no doubt about what sport is involved in the College World Series. The NCAA is College World Serious about that particular point. It's BASEBALL.

The old park didn't look like this, exactly, when the CWS first came to town in 1950.

Upstairs, downstairs.