Listen and win!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present our last best hope for financial security amid our present economic desolation and tribulation.

Unfortunately, that cash train left the station in 1978. Our Lady of Listen and Win on the Big 910, pray for us.

He didn't see that one coming

Noted trends forecaster Gerald Celente, a favorite of Russia Today and American conspiracy theorists, thought he was being prudent by investing in gold futures.

After getting waylaid by a trend called Jon Corzine and MF Global, Celente tells the RT anchorette exactly what he thinks the "MF" now stands for. I wonder what that is in Russian.

Hang on. . . .

мать ублюдок. Thanks, Google.


HERE'S a trends forecast that I think Celente might sign off on -- and, I think, already has. Occupy Wall Street is just the first wave, the rash bunch of weirdos, freakazoids, hippies, eccentrics, commies, anarchists . . . and a few normal people.

They're being dealt with by the state security forces -- something the Russia Today producers might know a little bit about.

But if and when the next big economic shock hits -- maybe a financial tsunami of sovereign defaults rolling across the Atlantic from the Eurozone -- people just might be back in the streets. And it won't be the hippies and freaks and weirdos and other unserious folk.

Goodnight America, wherever you've gone.

The left calls out Obama

This is about to get big. As if it weren't already, this whole Occupy Wall Street thing.

What we have here (above) is a pretty damned effective piece of propaganda -- one with at least a grain of truth to it. It's on a MoveOn.org forum and featured on the organization's home page.

In other words, the left is calling out its own man, President Obama, juxtaposing administration rhetoric about the rights of Middle Eastern protesters with footage of New York's finest beating the crap out of peaceful Americans "occupying Wall Street."

AND NOW, later this morning, New York cops aim to evict all the protesters from the park they use as a home base. All hell is going to break loose, barring one side or the other blinking first.

MoveOn has raised the stakes here, giving its de-facto imprimatur to the notion that Cairo's Tahrir Square equals New York's Zuccotti Park.

Does that make Michael Bloomberg our very own Hosni Mubarak? And what does that make Obama, according to his own erstwhile supporters? Something even worse . . . or just the feckless hypocrite in charge?

TUNE IN in a few hours. The country in which we lay us down to sleep may not be the same one where we wake up in the morning.

Pleasant dreams . . . because our American reality has become nightmare enough.

Copping a feel

Because they're just a bunch of young anti- Americancommunistdirtysmellyweirdoanarcho-socialistdope-smokinghippiepinkofags, we can just do what we want to them, right?

Because, after all, they deserve it and are a threat to the American way of life. (No, look here, not at what's going on in corporate boardrooms. Tattoos! Look! Freak! Un-American!)

They're just a bunch of outside agitators, is what they are! Give the cops that 007 license to kill!


Police brutality good! Liberal wackos bad!


Let them eat cake! Or pepper spray. Whatever.

Corporations now! Corporations tomorrow! Corporations forever!

They were expendable

This about covers the entire category of America Today.

It has brought me to my Jeremiah Wright moment.

If this posting doesn't hit you where you live. . . .

A few days ago, my mother was told she was going to be laid off. She’s a receptionist at a medical office. She’s been there for 16 years.

It was out of the blue, and as she sat on my couch in shock and sobbing, and as I sat there in the rare reversed role of comforter, I began to realize what she was most upset about was not how she would pay her bills, though that is big concern, but rather, how hurt she was.

She saw them as her family. New doctors, multiple office managers, ever-changing policies, she had been there through it all—not for the money—but because she cared.

She may not look as important on paper as a doctor or a nurse or a medical assistant, but she knew the name of every patient and drug rep who came through that door.

She wasn’t just a receptionist, she was an advocate.

She was the one who fit you into a jammed schedule when you were too sick to wait, the one who got you the paperwork you needed, the one who got you in with the specialist during the scariest moment of your life, the one who saw you struggling with a newborn baby in a waiting room full of illness and shuffled you into a room, no questions asked.

And she came home that day with the very hard realization that the very people she loved and devoted 16 years of her life to saw her as disposable. It broke her heart.

It got me thinking about my parent’s generation. I come from an honest-to-goodness blue-collar family, my father working for the Ohio Turnpike for over 30 years. Come December, he too, will be laid off, replaced by a machine that takes quarters through a slot over a smile and a hello.

IF THIS is the totality of our future as a country . . . may we not have one as a country. If this is how we roll, if this is how expendable we consider ourselves and others, then may God damn America.

In that eventuality, may God damn America, because America will have become an empire of things -- rank utilitarianism . . . societal objectification . . . callousness . . . dehumanization -- not a country of free men and women, one nation under God, indivisible, yadda yadda yadda.

Once upon a time, we fought wars against empires kind of like us, that thought kind of like what now is in vogue here.

Enough is enough, and humans are not things -- no matter how hard we try to make them so. Occupy Wall Street.

And K Street.

And Main Street.

Sic transit gloria mundi

Steve Jobs is dead.

He died today at 56, about 35½ years after he co-founded Apple -- the company from which our capitalist society derives the worth and breadth of his existence.

From CBS News and CNET:

Jobs also set the company on the path to becoming a consumer-electronics powerhouse, creating and improving products such as the iPod, iTunes, and later, the iPhone and iPad. Apple is the most valuable technology company in the world, and has a market capitalization second to only ExxonMobil, which Apple surpassed multiple times this past August.

He did so in his own fashion, imposing his ideas and beliefs on his employees and their products in ways that left many a career in tatters. Jobs enforced a culture of secrecy at Apple and was an extremely demanding leader, terrorizing Apple employees when he returned to the company in the late 1990s with summary firings if he didn't like the answers they gave when questioned.

Jobs was an intensely private person. That quality put him and Apple at odds with government regulators and stockholders who demanded to know details about his ongoing health problems and his prognosis as the leader and alter ego of his company. It spurred a 2009 SEC probe into whether Apple's board had made misleading statements about his health.

In the years before he fell ill in 2008, Jobs seemed to soften a bit, perhaps due to his bout with a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004.

In 2005, his remarks to Stanford graduates included this line: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."

Later, in 2007, he appeared onstage at the D: All Things Digital conference for a lengthy interview with bitter rival Bill Gates, exchanging mutual praise and prophetically quoting the Beatles: "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead."

Jobs leaves behind his wife, four children, two sisters, and 49,000 Apple employees.

THAT IS our measure of this just-departed man. Late was the day that even Jobs himself started to seriously question the limits we placed upon his worth . . . and upon the true meaning of his life.

Sic transit gloria mundi is a concept that bedevils us. Always has, always will as we scratch and claw here in a desert land well east of Eden.


UPDATE: My old 1993 Mac. Started right up last summer after a decade in the closet. Despite the point of the above posting, you gotta give the man, and the company he founded, their technological props.

Wir fahrn, fahrn, fahrn auf der Superbahn

What this country needs is a good, old-fashioned socialist revolution that's not on behalf of investment banks, multinational corporations or professional sports franchises.

We've had enough of the other socialist revolution -- the one that brought us accountability-free Wall Street bailouts, the military-industrial complex and states fighting over corporations like whores fighting over a john with a big . . . wallet. The one that ushered in the members-only welfare state. The one that treats corporations like people and people like trash. The one that socializes risk and privatizes reward.

You can have that socialist revolution. No . . . wait. I want that socialist revolution. I'll bet you would enjoy it, too.

But if you promise not to blab it all over, I'd probably settle for something as simple as the American Dream . . . which we all thought well within reach back when we still dared to dream.

OK, here's my bottom line, which still might be a bridge too far in this age of country-club kleptomaniacs and the best government campaign donations can buy: Is it too much to ask that if taxpayers are going to shell out major dollars for giant public-works projects, that government at least maintains the pretense the work was on the public's behalf?

Take sports arenas and stadiums, for example. Remember when you could remember their names?


REMEMBER when you could remember which ballpark was in which city?

Remember when you could remember what the one you helped pay for is being called this week?

In this age of steel-and-concrete commercials for corporate interests, we were down to just a handful of stadiums you could figure out. One was the Louisiana Superdome.

The Superdome opened in 1975, when I was in ninth grade. Building it was a stretch for a poor state like Louisiana, and we still didn't have too much we could hang our civic-pride hats on even after the Dome opened. But, by God, we had that.

And what a "that" we had.

It was a marvel in 1975 -- about the only thing you could say was world-class about the Gret Stet back then, other than the food and the music -- and it's a marvel today. And still, it's about the only thing you can say is world-class about the Gret Stet, other than the food and the music.

And it was the LOUISIANA Superdome. Take that, Mississippi. And did you know you could fit the Houston Astrodome inside the thing?

Take that, Texas.

But the Houston Astrodome is now the vacant and dilapidated Reliant Astrodome.

And the Louisiana Superdome -- the pride of a state, the landmark whose ground was hallowed by great suffering during Katrina and which rose from the muck like a swamp phoenix -- is about to become the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

Take that, Louisiana. At least you can take small comfort in knowing that German money will be paying billionaire Tom Benson to keep the Saints in New Orleans, and not the cash-strapped state government.

WHAT I WANT to know is this: If a German car company will pay the New Orleans Saints craploads of money to rename the domed stadium built by the people of the Gret Stet of Louisiana, thus keeping the NFL team fat, happy and in town . . . what else could we get the world's corporate titans to pay for?

For instance, New Orleans is a mess. If any city in America needs a bailout, a makeover and a little domestic nation-building, it's New Orleans. Well, Detroit, too . . . but that's not important now.

Trouble is, Louisiana is still a poor state. And one not particularly inclined, or able, to pull off an urban-renewal project of that magnitude -- especially since Katrina trashed the place. So, what if we sold naming rights to it?

I don't know about you, but I think Exxon-Mobil, La., has a certain je ne sais quoi. You think the advertising value is worth, say, $10 billion for 10 years?

C'mon down! And don't forget to visit the Exxon Extra French Quarter and put a tiger in your tank!

Or how about Apple? The hip factor alone should make Crescent City naming rights attractive to the ubercool tech colossus. Apple, La. Short . . . sweet . . . has pizazz.

Wait! Wait! Three words: The Drunken Apple. Now, that's a good 30-percent funner than the Big Apple.

PERHAPS I could get used to this selling-your-soul thing.

Maybe Corporate America even could be persuaded to help out Louisiana with its finances. I think that if we could come up with the perfect naming-rights deal, it just might give the ol' coffers quite the stimulus package.

By jove . . . I think I've got it!

The Trojan Magnum State Capitol

American unexceptionalism

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

-- Declaration of Independence,
July 4, 1776

Throughout its 235 years as a nation-state, the United States of America has done many remarkable things.

Amid that exceptionality stands the glaring absence of something that would be exceptional, indeed. Living up to our foundational principles . . . and our advertising.

From the scourge of slavery to the near-genocide of the American Indian, from Jim Crow to the Japanese internment, from the excesses of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century to the excesses of the Jazz Age of the 1920s . . . and now the massive societal inequality and Wall Street thievery of today, one thing we Americans have been remarkably consistent about is our rank hypocrisy. And that's not exceptional at all -- that's remarkably ordinary.


IN FACT, those who govern the affairs of the United States -- unelected capitalists and the elected officials they rent -- have come to resemble more a "Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant" than they do the rebellious colonials of 1776.

Today's tea partiers have considered this and decided, in the name of "liberty," that somebody "is unfit to be the ruler of a free people." Unfortunately, their ill-willed and often grammatically challenged rebellion takes dead aim at the "life" and "the pursuit of happiness" of a supermajority of Americans.

I hold these truths to be self-evident. If you do not, you might yet if you look at the data and past the self-delusion of American exceptionalism, a Hypocrite's Gospel preached by some for all they're worth and believed by others because it's less challenging than the one preached long ago by some pinko Nazarean hippie freak.

Help! Help! They're being repressed!

I am one of those Catholics who believes in God, not cultural self-identification.

I believe that God exercises a "preferential option for the poor." I believe that's in the Bible -- somewhere toward the back.

I believe that how we govern ourselves, and how our governing structures implement a basic vision of social justice, is a direct reflection on a democracy's citizenry, which grants consent to its agents.

I believe that God does not sleep, that nations come under judgment and that we are in big, big trouble.

I ALSO BELIEVE that Louisiana -- my home state -- is working hard to sink from mere banana republicanism to fascistic banana republicanism, and that this stinking turd some self-righteous collegiate twerp left on the opinion pages of LSU's student newspaper is Exhibit A. From the soiled July 28 edition of my old stomping grounds, The Daily Reveille:

Obama and the Democrats love to paint a picture of the "poor" as innocent people "just trying to stretch every dollar as far as it will go."

I wonder how many Democrats have ever been to a Third World country to see what poor really means. For two weeks I stayed with a family in Costa Rica who had no air conditioning, no hot water, no washer or dryer, and the roof of the house was raised above the walls so that air could circulate in and out. And yet they washed all my clothes, gave me meals every day and never complained about it.

There are definitely some Americans who are truly needy, but it would be ridiculous to think the 47 percent of Americans not paying federal income tax are eating food out of dumpsters.

It's sickening to hear Obama and the Democrats portray the poor as blameless people in dire need of government help when our poor live lives of luxury in comparison to the poor of other countries.

It isn't the rich who are paying less than their fair share in taxes. To the contrary, they're paying much more than everyone else. It's America's poor who get free health care and new SUVs who aren't sharing the sacrifice.

And if we don't start taxing the rich, Obama wants to withhold Social Security checks. How about the government withholds welfare checks from the "poor" instead of Social Security to those who have actually paid their fair share?

It's about time the so-called poor Americans share the sacrifice and pay their fair share of taxes.

BACK IN MY DAY, the "f*** the poor" crowd complained about "welfare Cadillacs" and ghetto dwellers buying bottles of Mad Dog and Colt 45 tall boys with food stamps. Now, apparently, it's "free health care" and "new SUVs" that are the problem.

My assumption, though, is that the faces behind the stereotype are still brown ones.

What I don't understand is why the smug Reveille columnist, Austin Casey, didn't aim lower for whom he considers real poor people. Why not starving Somalians instead of Costa Rican peasants?

That could have made him feel even better -- or worse, depending -- about how rich America's poor are in the grand scheme of things. After all, it doesn't look quite so bad that the richest 1 percent of Americans controls 40 percent of its wealth and takes home a fourth of its annual income if we get to put quotation marks around our poor.

Sorry, make that "poor."

OF COURSE, the whole construct of inequality in the United States is unique to "socialists" like . . . well, me. I actually give a rat's ass about stuff like this. Austin Casey and the rest of Tea Party America don't.

When Austin Casey encountered the poor of Costa Rica, they sheltered him, fed him and wished him well. When Austin Casey encounters the poor -- sorry, "poor" -- of America, he pouts, stamps his feet and screams "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

Tea Party America is not the land of e pluribus unum -- out of many, one. Instead, it is the land of ad te sorbet -- it sucks to be you.

Jesus has an opinion on that. It's in the Bible -- somewhere toward the back.

Miami Vice 77, America's Future 0

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The good news is the United States has all the money it needs to slash the national debt.

It has all the money it needs to maintain critical social services, too.

And to stimulate a sick economy.

It has all the cash necessary for rebuilding our crumbling national infrastructure.

We also have all the money we need to help poor children and their families.

The bad news is that we'd rather spend it all on s*** like this instead of stuff like that:

A University of Miami booster, incarcerated for his role in a $930 million Ponzi scheme, has told Yahoo! Sports he provided thousands of impermissible benefits to at least 72 athletes from 2002 through 2010.

In 100 hours of jailhouse interviews during Yahoo! Sports’ 11-month investigation, Hurricanes booster Nevin Shapiro described a sustained, eight-year run of rampant NCAA rule-breaking, some of it with the knowledge or direct participation of at least seven coaches from the Miami football and basketball programs. At a cost that Shapiro estimates in the millions of dollars, he said his benefits to athletes included but were not limited to cash, prostitutes, entertainment in his multimillion-dollar homes and yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs, jewelry, bounties for on-field play (including bounties for injuring opposing players), travel and, on one occasion, an abortion.

Also among the revelations were damning details of Shapiro’s co-ownership of a sports agency – Axcess Sports & Entertainment – for nearly his entire tenure as a Hurricanes booster. The same agency that signed two first-round picks from Miami, Vince Wilfork and Jon Beason, and recruited dozens of others while Shapiro was allegedly providing cash and benefits to players. In interviews with federal prosecutors, Shapiro said many of those same players were also being funneled cash and benefits by his partner at Axcess, then-NFL agent and current UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue. Shapiro said he also made payments on behalf of Axcess, including a $50,000 lump sum to Wilfork, as a recruiting tool for the agency.

ALSO, there's this to consider:

While there may not be many boosters with such an over-the-top story, Shapiro knows he wasn’t the only fan doling out the under-the-table money. Maybe most damning for the sport is the fact that while he took care of current players, he says Miami coaches never asked him to buy a football recruit. Mainly because they felt it was fruitless.

“Miami is not the school where payouts are made to prospective student athletes,” Shapiro said. “Miami is a private institution, it’s in a transient city. We didn’t have the money to pay recruits. There is so much more money in big public universities. In the SEC, the money is an endless river.

“If Miami relied on cash payoffs for players to come to Miami, they’d be out of business. They’d lose every bidding war.

SO, YOU SEE the problem isn't, per the Republican Party, that poor little rich people couldn't possibly afford to be "job creators" any longer if they had to pay a tax rate commensurate with Joe Six-Pack's.

No, the problem is that the priorities of well-to-do Americans are, too often, completely f***ed up. Come to think of it, so are ours.

We get the leadership we deserve, and we get the society we tolerate. Boosters, hookers, football gods, rogue "collegiate" athletic programs and all the rest.

A banana republic . . . if you can afford it

We're high for a poor country, in terms of inequality, and we're a rich country. We're about the same level of inequality as China. And, of course, China, half the population are rural peasants who are not part of the modern world.

And if we were to compare us with African countries, dictators in different places, you know, taking a lot of the wealth from normal people, we would be among the top half of the African countries of inequality. So, the U.S. really has reached an extraordinary level of income inequality.

-- Richard Freeman,
Harvard economist

This . . . is London

Somewhere in hell, Adolf Hitler is kicking himself right now for wasting all that time and effort on the Blitz.

This works just about as well and proves to be much more demoralizing for the British public than Luftwaffe air raids.


FOLKS, THIS IS what it looks like when people have no morals, no taboos and no hope for the future. The Brits are no more or no less virtuous than we in the States, and now we're entering the Age of Austerity, too, with fewer jobs, fewer social services, less welfare, less hopefulness, more materialism and more nihilism.

Take a hard look. This is the next new thing, coming soon from Austerity Britain to Tea Party America.


P.S.: I agree with the British public. Mark Stone has two of them.

The next big thing

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

When I was young, the wave of the future rolled in from the east across the North Atlantic.

The British Invasion, it was called. First, the Beatles . . . then everybody and everything. That's where we got "mod." That's where we got New Wave, too.

Now, from NBC News' World Blog is a foreshadowing from Austerity Britain about what may well be coming to Austerity America.

Again.

As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here's a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent?

"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you?"

The TV reporter from Britain's ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. "Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Eavesdropping from among the onlookers, I looked around. A dozen TV crews and newspaper reporters interviewing the young men everywhere.

The truth is that discontent has been simmering among Britain's urban poor for years, and few have paid attention. Social activists say one out of two children in Tottenham live in poverty. It's one of the poorest areas of Britain. Britain's worst riots in decades took place here in 1985. A policeman was hacked to death. After these riots, the same young man pointed out, "They built us a swimming pool."

Police and local leaders in Tottenham made real progress in improving community relations in the intervening years and that's true about all of Britain. The best way to prevent crime, the theory goes, is to improve the lot of the people, then they won't need to commit crimes. But caught in a poverty and joblessness cycle, young people in many British urban areas have little hope of a better life.

So when a local 29-year-old father, described by police as a gangster, was shot dead by an officer, the response came quickly.

AS AN ANCIENT GREEK philosopher once wrote, "When the people lose hope, the fit hits the shan . . . but good."

Sadly, causing the people to lose hope is something American government and society have learned to do very, very well.

Rome, sweet Rome

I am half of a Waltons family.

My wife and I both were devotees back during the television series' first-run days in the 1970s and early '80s, and we try never to miss our daily, syndicated trip back to Waltons Mountain today.

The only trouble is this: The channel where we get our nightly fix of Mama and Daddy, John-Boy and Mary Ellen, Jason and Erin, and Ben, Jim-Bob, and Elizabeth also features some of the worst low-budget commercials to ever curse a television screen. The only ray of light is that the faith-based INSP channel doesn't air Enzyte ads.

So, during commercials, I flip over to CNN or MSNBC. And something has become clear to me during these word-from-our-pathetic-sponsors interludes -- The Waltons represents programming far more serious and intelligent than anything on the cable-news channels.

TONIGHT, I kept cutting away from Jason fighting the Nazis in Germany in the run-up to VE Day to talking heads speaking in grave tones about Rep. Anthony Weiner's wiener. More precisely, I kept dropping in on Lawrence and Rachel and Eliot seeing the Republicans' attacks on a Democratic congressman and his junk, then raising them Sen. David Vitter's hooker problem and Newt Gingrich's scandal of the day from back in the day.

Then I would return to The Waltons and a world of homefront sacrifice and battlefield tragedy, circa 1945.

Ike and Corabeth struggling with keeping their customers in food and gas in the age of wartime rationing. Jason trying to hold a shellshocked soldier together as they hunted German holdouts. The shellshocked soldier coming to himself not in the service of killing, but in risking his life to avoid killing a young German infantryman who didn't believe the war was over. John-Boy, meantime, was falling in love with the prettiest woman in France, but ended up torn away from her when the war in the Pacific intruded, landing brother Ben in a Japanese POW camp and calling the first-born son back to Waltons Mountain . . . to his family.

MEANWHILE, on Piers Morgan Tonight, the worldly travails of Sarah Ferguson -- one of which was, apparently, being injected with so much Botox that the upper half of her face has ceased to move whenever she talks . . . which, as it turns out, is much too often.

Of course, one doesn't have to retreat to Waltons Mountain, 1945, to encounter ample tragedy, human drama, and existential gravitas. There's plenty of that today.

Americans find themselves at war, one way or another, in no less than four Middle Eastern countries. In fact, young Americans junior-high age and younger have no memory of a time when this nation was not at war in that region.

Those wars, during that time, have played no small role in bringing the United States to the edge of insolvency. So has a decade of living beyond our means. So has several more years of dealing with the economic collapse Wall Street's (and our) excesses precipitated.

Tens of millions of Americans now owe more on mortgages than their homes are worth. Tens of millions more are out of work. The economy continues to tap dance along the edge of a bottomless chasm.

Not that any of that matters when there are Republicans to bash and Democrats to paint as enemies of God and man. Not when we have Anthony Weiner's wiener to wield as an X-rated weapon in political combat -- which just happens to double as kinky infotainment in a country as polarized as it's been since 1865.

I WONDER how many of those condemning the congressman from New York are guilty of the same thing. I wonder how many of those defending him truly don't see what the big deal is, anyway.

I wonder how many see the whole sordid mess as just another excuse to engage in tribal warfare -- not over any grand principle, but just because they hate Them.

While Americans were otherwise occupied, we stumbled so far off track into decadence and internecine warfare that even columnists for London's left-leaning Guardian newspaper openly wonder whether their American cousins are standing at the crossroads of Britain, 1914 and Rome, A.D. 200. And still we cannot see the forest for the . . . well, never mind.

I suppose it is ever thus in societies a lot nearer The End than they think.

If you're not lame, don't act it

Flyover by Archrival from Nebraska Entrepreneur on Vimeo.

The tragedy of Nebraska is that people in some of the lamest places on earth think the Cornhusker state is lamer.

"Flyover country," they call us.

Our usual response is to act all insecure. Act like it's reasonable they'd think that. Like they're not stereotype-addled morons for being surprised that everything's up to date in . . . Omaha. And Lincoln.

Even Grand Island.

The guys at Archrival marketing in Lincoln have had about enough of that crap. In this video, they suggest a makeover.

ONE CAVEAT, though. The Archrival folks bring up the state's 2011 license plate as a marketing disaster, saying professional designers could have done better and saved the state the humiliation of a completely botched contest to pick the "winning" design.

What folks need to realize is that "professionals" can suck just as badly as anyone -- and cost a lot more. Also remember that, in designers, we're dealing with "creatives." You get what you get. Sometimes, it's Charlie Sheen.

Here, I present Exhibit A, part of the "design community's" protest over the suckage of the plate. I bring this up, because Clint! Runge and Charles Hull make it sound like the "design community" single-handedly saved us from bumper Armageddon. (I also bring this up because Runge puts an exclamation point behind his first name. Really?)

The "creatives" saved us from nothing. The "dull" old newspaper journalists at the Omaha World-Herald saved us from the abomination of stamped-tin desolation by reporting on the vote-rigging and demanding to see the state's data. The pols quickly got with the program.

Remember, it's all about excellence, not necessarily professionalism for professionalism's sake.

BUT ALL THAT is kind of beside the point, because the larger point of the presentation is dead on. In this world (and our postmodern economy), intellectual capital is destiny, perception is reality . . . and outsiders' perceptions of Nebraska fundamentally conflict with most Nebraskans' day-to-day reality.

If you want the world to beat a path to your door, don't be lame at marketing.

Duh.

An Omaha man, covered neck to God-knows-where with tattoos, complains that he can't find a job in his chosen profession.

KETV television in Omaha has the stunning exposé here:

Michael Mitchell is a 30-year-old college graduate, but he's still trying to nail down his dream job.

"Right now I deliver pizzas for a living, but I'm a personal trainer," Mitchell said.

He's found the creative expression of his tattoos are hurting his chances in the job market.

"It turns out a lot more people have a problem with my tattoos than I thought 10 years ago," said Mitchell.

He said a recent job offer to be a personal trainer was revoked. He said the reason is written all over his body.

"It's not like they're discriminating the color of my skin, because I chose to do this," said Mitchell. "I understand they have the right, but maybe they should get with the times."

AND WHILE tattoo dude is waiting for employers to "get with the times," I'm going to hold him to that 30-minute delivery guarantee.

Really, is it really so hard to limit your "body art" to those areas easily covered by a shirt and pants?

Your Daily '80s: Plus ça change . . .

. . . plus c'est la meme chose.

1989.


2009.

It'$ a Wonderful Life in 'the real Bedford Fall$'

Wednesday in Wilmington, Ohio . . . unemployment rate 15.8 percent:

Glenn Beck Meet & Greet Breakfast
and Radio Show Ticket Package

Breakfast and Meet & Greet at 7AM
Radio Show at 9AM
Ticket Price:
$500.00

Package Includes:
* Breakfast at the General Denver Hotel
* Meet & Greet with Glenn Beck
* Photo with Glenn Beck
* Premium Ticket to the live Radio Show Broadcast at the Murphy Theatre

All Ages
Reserved Seating


Glenn Beck Live Radio Show Broadcast

Doors: 8:00AM
Radio Show: 9:00AM (Must be seated by 8:45AM sharp)

Ticket Price:
$125.00

All Ages
Reserved Seating

HAT TIP: PoliticusUSA.

Mr. Sanders gives it to Washington

Can't add anything to this, except perhaps for "Amen!"

Oh, all right. I can add this one thing: It's a damned sad day in this sad land when it takes a self-proclaimed democratic socialist to do something seemingly as simple as go onto the floor of the U.S. Senate and tell the God's honest truth.

Contra America's tea-party "patriots," maybe what this country needs is more socialism, not less. Especially if the alternative is plutocracy -- a veritable banana republic . . . with nukes.

Borrowing your demagoguery

The trouble with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is that he's just so very unoriginal.

He stole his name from Bobby Brady and The Brady Bunch. He stole his response to President Obama's 2009 congressional address from Mister Rogers.

And now he's stolen the bright idea of demagoguing university sabbaticals from the Iowa Republican Party. He picked up that idea, no doubt, during all the time he's spent in the Hawkeye State -- as opposed to his own.

In November, as reported by The Daily Reveille, this was the Jindal Administration's party line against such "bad values in education" as the state's flagship university, LSU:

State Commissioner of Administration Paul Rainwater says Gov. Bobby Jindal's office is looking into University faculty workloads to see if students are getting the best return for their tuition.

"It's important to make sure resources are focused on the classroom and the students and taxpayers get the most value from investments," Rainwater said.

Rainwater said instructors in the LSU System are teaching 77 percent more credit hours than tenured professors. Instructors at the Baton Rouge campus teach 133 percent more, he said.

One area where faculty members do less teaching than instructors is in sabbaticals — a leave of absence to focus on research, writing or acquiring new knowledge. Rainwater said tenured faculty earn the right to have a sabbatical but not during a budget crunch.

"At a time when we're facing a very large deficit, I think it's important that we justify what sabbaticals are taken," Rainwater said.

NOT ONLY is Jindal unoriginal, he's milquetoasty. He's an Iowa Republican watered down to the point of BLECCH!

Watered down and nine months late.

In February, the Republicans in the Iowa House sought to eliminate every single sabbatical at its regents universities -- Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa -- for the next year at a savings of . . . $6 million.

The Iowa Board of Regents had considered canceling sabbaticals in December 2009, but ultimately decided such a move would harm recruitment and retention of faculty, as well as create disruptions in research and a logjam of future sabbatical requests. There were 111 requests for sabbaticals across the three universities for the 2010-11 academic year -- down 25 percent from the previous year.

The University of Iowa led the pack with 52 sabbaticals for professors. Iowa State requested 37 and Northern Iowa 18.

A year later, the ascendant Iowa Republicans are at it again. The state's GOP lawmakers propose -- again -- banning all university sabbaticals. And the new House speaker, Kraig Paulsen, is leading the charge against the eggheads, saying taxpayers just can't afford to give profs a paid "year off."

From an Associated Press article Wednesday:

But professors said the savings Republicans are promising won't materialize, and the move would cost universities in grant money and productivity.

Sabbaticals -- a paid semester or year off from teaching to write books, conduct research, create classes and write grant proposals -- are standard practice at major research universities across the nation. But at a time when other employees are facing pay cuts and furloughs, they have become an easy target for critics and an area where universities can cut to show they are making sacrifices, too.

Several schools across the country have already reduced or canceled sabbaticals, according to the American Association of University Professors. The University of Iowa has cut its sabbaticals in half over two years.

John Curtis, director of research and public policy for AAUP, said he was unaware of any case where lawmakers rather than schools themselves have cut sabbaticals, and he doubted that it would become a trend because of the tiny amount of potential savings.

"I'm sure they feel it has great symbolic value," he said. "But the loss, of course, is what the whole purpose of sabbatical is: to allow faculty members to do research, to engage in understanding new developments in their discipline and then to bring all of that back to their teaching."

A potential fight is already brewing in Iowa, where its three public universities have asked the Board of Regents to approve sabbaticals for professors in the budget year that begins July 1. Details are expected to be made public Thursday.

The regents could approve the requests next week, but Paulsen said they should allow for public debate on the plan to cancel them first.

"It seems to be tough budgetary times. Why should the taxpayers of Iowa be paying to basically give these folks a year off from teaching?" asked Paulsen, a Hiawatha Republican who will lead a chamber that flipped to Republican control in November. "It's as simple as that."

Board of Regents President David Miles said through a spokeswoman that he will withhold comment until next week's meeting. Last year, he urged presidents of the three public universities to ensure any sabbaticals "serve to enhance the core missions of the universities."

The University of Iowa has asked the regents to approve 58 sabbaticals for next year, a slight increase after two years of sharp cuts, said Faculty Senate President Edwin Dove, who defended the practice. UI professors wrote 26 books in 2009 while on sabbatical, published 147 research articles, created and updated nearly 100 classes, and submitted 50 grant applications, Dove said.

SO IN IOWA, we have a debate over highly debatable savings in the mid-seven-figure range. But hang on a second:

House Republicans have said their plan would save $6 million and be part of a budget-cutting package introduced next year. But their projected savings apparently includes salaries that professors will earn whether they are on sabbatical or not. The actual savings would be the roughly $250,000 universities spend to hire replacement teachers, university officials said.

THE STATE'S GOP legislative contingent would appear to be disingenuous here, at a minimum. Some might say they're just playing the booboisie for a bunch of suckers, trying to appear as if they're doing something while proposing next to nothing.

At a minimum.

So, back in Louisiana, what to make of Jindal's quixotic demonizing of LSU professors?

Well, let me put it this way: Remember the number of sabbaticals Iowans have been fighting over? Keep that figure -- 111 . . . 50-something of that total at UI -- in mind.

This year, LSU has 19 professors on sabbatical. Nineteen.

One-nine.

One less than 20.

That's what the Jindal Administration has seen fit to harp over whenever someone frets about a worst-case $60-something million cut to Louisiana's flagship university next year. We're probably not even talking about a million bucks in highly debatable savings, here.

One thing, however, has become crystal clear. What Louisiana's absentee governor lacks in the originality or comprehensiveness of his demagoguery, he certainly makes up in audacity.