'When I was in high school, I was a motherf***ing beast'

Like they say, all of life is high school. And it looks like one substitute teacher in Baton Rouge, La., is still doing pretty well in the "motherf***ing beast" department.

I wish I were shocked by this. I am not. I was educated in the public schools of East Baton Rouge Parish.

No, I didn't have any teachers -- substitute or otherwise -- this profane. Then again, it was the '60s and '70s, not the "bitch and ho" new millennium. But I did have a couple of teachers this malevolent.

Naturally, the main concern of Glasgow Middle School's principal is that the parent of the kid who shot the cell-phone video went to the media and not to her. Something tells me that concern was more on "airing dirty laundry" grounds than on "wasting no time in the dispatching of a 'motherf***ing beast'" grounds.

WAFB television reports on this slice of what passes for life in an utterly destroyed school system:

The video shows a full-time substitute teacher in front of an 8th grade class at Glasgow Middle School shouting obscenities. The rant and tirade goes on for about five minutes.

In one part of the cell phone video, the teacher says "I ain't gonna argue with your ass. I'm gonna pop your ass in the mouth, I'm gonna drop your ass."

She was also recorded saying "This is my last time cussing or fussing with this class, because on Wednesday I'm writing your motherf****** asses up."

"Disbelief – I just couldn't believe it. I was like in shock," said Terri McLendon, mother of the student who recorded the video. "My son had been punished behind this lady and he had just gotten his phone back Sunday, and this was recorded on Monday. So I just couldn't believe it," McLendon added.

It appears she was upset about her students not willing to be taught. "You don't wanna learn? Get the f***- That's how I feel," said the teacher in the video as she pointed to the door.

"I don't talk to my child like that, she has no good right. She has to handle those kids accordingly. Like you know, send them to the principal's office. None of them deserved to be cursed out like that," McLendon said.

The teacher was also recorded saying "If you're sitting here looking at me in rare form, and you should know, when I was in college and when I was in High school, I was a mother f***** beast."

"For the parents benefit, we don't want the parents to believe that this is something we would condone nor is it something that any school would ever condone," said Glasgow Middle School Principal Dianne Talbot.

When asked if substitute teachers are prepared for what they may encounter in a classroom, Talbot responded that every teacher in the parish system, substitute or not, must undergo an orientation process.

THAT MUST be some orientation process. And I really want to see someone's ass get popped in the mouth. Unless she's speaking to a classroom full of donkey owners, I really hope she doesn't teach biology or health.

If she is talking to a classroom of donkey owners . . . somebody call the humane society.

By the way, ask me sometime to tell you why I hate math now when, once upon a time, I liked it.

Whither North Dakota?

Apparently, the government shutdown has dried up all funding for education.

But if you're going to have an epic geographical fail, you'd just as well put it on Facebook. Especially if you're the chief meteorologist for a local Fox affiliate in Florida. Which we all know is somewhere between Cuba and Egypt.

Rare is the government that is smarter than the people who put it in power. In other words, to quote Dr. Zachary Smith, "We're doomed! We're doomed! We're all going to die!"

FU2, Bo. Now, with the pleasantries all done. . . .

I can't get too mad at Nebraska's football coach and undisputed-champion F-bomb dropper, "Mad Man" Bo Pelini.

Yes, after a big comeback against Ohio State in 2011, the coach had some choice words about Husker fans and a couple of Omaha World-Herald sports columnists, as reported (and illustrated) by the website Deadspin. Then again, what the hell do you think I was saying about him Saturday afternoon?

Nebraska's second-half performance against UCLA would have been enough to make the pope drop a few choice expletives. I wonder how you say "stupid #@!*#+% a-hole" in Spanish? Or Italian or Latin . . . whichever.

Pelini's real problem is that his teams keep having UCLA-game meltdowns. Or is that Wisconsin-game meltdowns? Ohio State-game meltdowns? Maybe Texas A&M- or South Carolina-game or Georgia-game meltdowns.

You get the gist, I presume.

 Audio is exceptionally NSFW

ONE HAS to wonder whether Coach Bo's infamous id too often mucks about with his coaching superego. Whatever the reason, though, it looks like we have a foundational failure in the Nebraska football program, which follows on the heels of the somewhat more spectacular foundational failure that was Bill Callahan's Reign of Error down there in Lincoln.

That's no way to keep the fans streaming into Memorial Stadium, and no way to keep the Huskers' legendary home-sellout streak alive through Year 51 and into Year 52. Mess that up and you've just screwed up the one thing Callahan's benighted tenure as Nebraska coach couldn't.

That. Would. Be. Bad.

When you couple meltdowns on the gridiron like Saturday's with behavioral meltdowns like Pelini occasionally has both in public and in private (or in private that goes public), you're flirting with both Public Relations Armageddon and Sellout Streak Apocalypse. Especially when you insult the very fan base that's stuck with the Huskers through a lot more thin than thick for the past decade.

BARRING a drastic turnaround -- and a drastic change in the on-field character of his Nebraska football squads -- I think Coach Bo is gone. Involuntarily, despite his threat to walk on the leaked 2011 audio.

Pelini's foundational problem, to put it in LSU terms, where he was defensive coordinator before heading to Lincoln as the head man, is that he seems to be Gerry DiNardo following the abject disaster of Curley Hallman -- an improvement, but definitely not the guy.

I think this is as good as it gets under Pelini, and that's not where NU needs to be . . . and certainly not where Nebraska football has the potential to be.

The big question here is who's out there to get the Huskers where they need to be without sacrificing all the values that make Nebraska football special and keep the program's nose clean with the NCAA. Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst has some hard thinking to do as this season, like most of the rest under Pelini, remains mired in the muck of mediocrity.

Expect a rousing victory this week against South Dakota State. Whee!

Not The Onion

Iowa is a nice enough place, but Iowans are just, well . . . different.

After reading this story from USA TODAY, I eagerly await news of the Hawkeye State's first visually impaired, gay shotgun wedding.

Here's some news that has law enforcement officials and lawmakers scratching their heads:

Iowa is granting permits to acquire or carry guns in public to people who are legally or completely blind.

No one questions the legality of the permits. State law does not allow sheriffs to deny an Iowan the right to carry a weapon based on physical ability.

The quandary centers squarely on public safety. Advocates for the disabled and Iowa law enforcement officers disagree over whether it's a good idea for visually disabled Iowans to have weapons.

On one side: People such as Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington, who demonstrated for The Des Moines Register how blind people can be taught to shoot guns. And Jane Hudson, executive director of Disability Rights Iowa, who says blocking visually impaired people from the right to obtain weapon permits would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. That federal law generally prohibits different treatment based on disabilities

On the other side: People such as Dubuque County Sheriff Don Vrotsos, who said he wouldn't issue a permit to someone who is blind. And Patrick Clancy, superintendent of the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School, who says guns may be a rare exception to his philosophy that blind people can participate fully in life.

Private gun ownership — even hunting — by visually impaired Iowans is nothing new. But the practice of visually impaired residents legally carrying firearms in public became widely possible thanks to gun permit changes that took effect in Iowa in 2011.

"It seems a little strange, but the way the law reads we can't deny them (a permit) just based on that one thing," said Sgt. Jana Abens, a spokeswoman for the Polk County Sheriff's Department, referring to a visual disability.

Polk County officials say they've issued weapons permits to at least three people who can't legally drive and were unable to read the application forms or had difficulty doing so because of visual impairments.

And sheriffs in three other counties — Jasper, Kossuth and Delaware — say they have granted permits to residents who they believe have severe visual impairments.

"I'm not an expert in vision," Delaware County Sheriff John LeClere said. "At what point do vision problems have a detrimental effect to fire a firearm? If you see nothing but a blurry mass in front of you, then I would say you probably shouldn't be shooting something."

IN A RELATED development, the Iowa Legislature has just sent a bill to the governor that would require violent criminals to continuously beep during assaults and robberies.

Well, not exactly. That was a joke . . . today.

Tomorrow, who knows?

Elvis has left the cellblock

Facebook

 

Spider Murphy's still playin' the tenor saxophone, and Little Joe's still blowin' on the slide trombone. 

Except now, the jailhouse is rockin' to an instrumental.

Elvis has left maximum security. Rather, a reasonable facsimile of the king of rock 'n' roll has been sprung from the Lafayette County Jail in Mississippi.

The lawyer for Paul Kevin Curtis says he was caught in a trap -- framed amid a slew of suspicious minds. But now he can walk out after the feds dropped charges against him, because there's no proof Curtis gave any poison-pen letters to the postman, or that he put them in his sack, says Reuters:

Prosecutors dropped charges on Tuesday against a Mississippi man accused of sending ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama, a senator and a state judge, according to court documents.

The surprise decision came hours after Paul Kevin Curtis was released from a Mississippi jail on bond.

Prosecutors said the "ongoing investigation has revealed new information," but provided no additional details, according to the court order dismissing the charges.

Curtis told reporters he respected Obama. "I would never do anything to pose a threat to him or any other U.S. official," he said. "I love this country."

He said he had no idea what ricin was. "I thought they said 'rice,' I told them I don't eat rice," he said.

Curtis, who is 45 and known in Mississippi as an Elvis impersonator, had been released from jail on bond earlier on Tuesday after a judge indefinitely postponed a court hearing on his detention. The case was later dismissed "without prejudice," meaning the charges could be potentially reinstated if warranted.

Later on Tuesday federal law enforcement officials searched the house of a second Mississippi man, Everett Dutschke, Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson told Reuters.

It was not clear if the search was related to the ricin case.

A representative for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oxford, Mississippi, did not return calls for comment.

Dutschke is "cooperating fully" with the FBI, his attorney Lori Nail Basham told the Northeastern Mississippi Daily Journal. Dutschke has not been charged in the ricin case, she said.

(snip) 

Christi McCoy, Curtis's attorney, told CNN she believed her client had been framed.

"I do believe that someone who was familiar and is familiar with Kevin just simply took his personal information and did this to him," McCoy told CNN. "It is absolutely horrific that someone would do this."

Curtis was arrested on April 17 at his home in Corinth, Mississippi. He was charged with mailing letters to Obama, Republican U.S. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Sadie Holland containing a substance that preliminarily tested positive for ricin, a highly lethal poison made from castor beans.

BACK at the jailhouse, Nos. 47 and 3 couldn't be reached for comment on the Man Who Would Be the King's sudden release. According to fellow inmates Shifty Henry and Bugs, they were otherwise occupied.

Boom goes the dynamite!

 NSFW alert: There's a reason the new anchor only lasted a day

If you haven't seen this viral video yet, crawl out from under your rock. The fresh air will do you good, as will taking a break from fighting off the grubs and the armadillo bugs that keep encroaching on your personal space.

That said, this is about as bad a first day on the job gets for a TV news guy, barring being sent to cover a fire at the local ammonium nitrate plant -- up close and personal.

On the upside, this poor guy is still alive. On the downside, when A.J. Clemente, now formerly of KFYR-TV in Bismarck, N.D., mixed the F-bomb with the S-word while forgetting that guns are always loaded and microphones are always "hot," he may have just blown his nascent career to smithereens.

Boom goes the dynamite!

Look, if you can't make it a day on local TV in Bismarck, where is there left to go? "F****** s***!" indeed.


HAT TIP: NPR's The Two Way blog.

Nostra culpa, nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa

Well, I think Pat Buchanan certainly summed up the Iraq War pretty thoroughly on the 10th anniversary of its start:

So, how now does the ledger read, 10 years on? What is history’s present verdict on what history has come to call Bush’s war?

Of the three goals of the war, none was achieved. No weapon of mass destruction was found. While Saddam and his sons paid for their sins, they had had nothing at all to do with 9/11. Nothing. That had all been mendacious propaganda.

Where there had been no al-Qaida in Iraq while Saddam ruled, al-Qaida is crawling all over Iraq now. Where Iraq had been an Arab Sunni bulwark confronting Iran in 2003, a decade later, Iraq is tilting away from the Sunni camp toward the Shia crescent of Iran and Hezbollah.

What was the cost in blood and treasure of our Mesopotamian misadventure? Four thousand five hundred U.S. dead, 35,000 wounded and this summary of war costs from Friday’s Wall Street Journal:

“The decade-long [Iraq] effort cost $1.7 trillion, according to a study … by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Fighting over the past 10 years has killed 134,000 Iraqi civilians … . Meanwhile, the nearly $500 billion in unpaid benefits to U.S. veterans of the Iraq war could balloon to $6 trillion” over the next 40 years.

Iraq made a major contribution to the bankrupting of America.

As for those 134,000 Iraqi civilian dead, that translates into 500,000 Iraqi widows and orphans. What must they think of us?

According to the latest Gallup poll, by 2-to-1, Iraqis believe they are more secure — now that the Americans are gone from their country.

Left behind, however, is our once-sterling reputation. Never before has America been held in lower esteem by the Arab peoples or the Islamic world. As for the reputation of the U.S. military, how many years will it be before our armed forces are no longer automatically associated with such terms as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, renditions and waterboarding?

As for the Chaldean and Assyrian Christian communities of Iraq who looked to America, they have been ravaged and abandoned, with many having fled their ancient homes forever.

We are not known as a reflective people. But a question has to weigh upon us. If Saddam had no WMD, had no role in 9/11, did not attack us, did not threaten us, and did not want war with us, was our unprovoked attack on that country a truly just and moral war?

THERE'S NOT really anything to add to this, is there? Except that a lot of us -- me included -- should have learned our lesson after Vietnam. But no . . . we f***ed up. We trusted our government.

The degree of the catastrophe we set in motion a decade ago wasn't exactly the sort of "shock and awe" we were counting on, now, was it? May God forgive us, because He's the only one who probably has it in Him.

Brent Musberger: Dirty old man

All that needs to be said about Brent Musberger's dirty-old-man faux pas during ESPN's coverage of the Alabama-Notre Dame game last night was said by a friend on Facebook this afternoon:

So THIS is what it took for ESPN to finally apologize for Brent Musburger?

Musberger is just silly and superficial, not to mention ignorant. Gals who look like A.J. McCarron's Miss Alabama girlfriend are a dime a dozen in the SEC. And I'm assuming you don't have to be a national-championship college quarterback to snare one.

If that's what you go for.

Me, I think tons of women are stunningly attractive. Much of that comes from the inside, not from a beauty spa or something. Not that that's dawned on Brett and Kirk Herbstreit, who are idiots. Did I mention that?

I'd trust their judgment a little bit more if they had made their pronouncement after talking to Katherine Webb for 20 minutes. Is what I'm saying.

Congressional cliff diving

This country, at least on a national level, has really, truly become ungovernable.

And we are Thelma and Louise, putting the pedal to the metal as we steer straight for the edge. Here's some of the story of Congress' fascination with the abyss from CBS News:

"[W]e'll see what the President has to propose," McConnell said in a statement. "Members on both sides of the aisle will review it, and then we'll decide how best to proceed. Hopefully there is still time for an agreement of some kind that saves the taxpayers from a wholly preventable economic crisis."

Meantime, on a conference call with the House GOP Conference this afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told Republican lawmakers to be prepared for votes on Sunday night.

All of this action is not indicative that progress is being made on the tax hikes and dramatic budget cuts set to go into effect next Tuesday, however.

On the same conference call, Boehner reiterated to his conference that the ball is in the Senate's court. He called on Senate Democrats to pass legislation the Republican-led House passed earlier this year that would extend tax rates for all wage earners and another measure that would replace the across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs with targeted cuts.

"The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass - but the Senate must act," Boehner said.

But Reid had a similar message for Boehner earlier in the day: "Take the escape hatch we left you."

Reid called on Boehner to take up a bill the Senate passed weeks ago that would extend current tax rates for all wage earners making less than $250,000. "The way to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' has been right in the face of Republican leaders for days and days and days...," he said.

On the floor of the Senate this morning, Reid said Boehner "seems to care more about keeping his speakership" than avoiding the tax hikes and federal spending cuts set to go into place in just five days.

ON ONE LEVEL, one sees the outraged secessionist petition-signers' reasoning, such as it is, in wanting out of a country that no longer can organize a one-car cortege, much less manage the decline of a morally, intellectually, militarily and economically spent empire.

On a more realistic level, do you really think a country whose leaders can't control the urge to jump off a "fiscal cliff" -- despite all that would mean for a shaky economy and future unemployment -- could manage letting various states go their own uncertain ways without a river of blood and a sea of ruin?

Even if such a thing were constitutionally possible, that is?

In such a country, I suppose it's also pointless to think that we the people might consider for a second, as we behold this pathetic spectacle staged by politicians we put into high office, that we have exactly the kind of self-destructive, chaotic and silly governance we so richly deserve.

Of course it is. We're Americans. Pointless is what we do these days.

Oklahoma: It's always somethin'

If you're considering pulling up stakes and pointing your Sooner Schooner toward Tulsa, Okla., you may want to delay your trip until after cold-and-flu season.

Or indefinitely. Whatever.

Hey, I'm just passing along what's out there on Facebook. And if it's on Facebook, it must be so.

A date that will live in the infirmary

It's a day that will live in infamy, and a day that Greg Camp's aging father has never forgotten.

That's why today, Camp will sit down for lunch with his 92-year-old dad and four more survivors of the brutal Dec. 1, 1941, aerial attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese bombers.

-- Story in Columbus, Ga., Ledger-Enquirer

SURE, it's fun to cut school and smoke weed all day long, and there's always someone you can pay to take the ACT for you . . . but then you end up getting a job at a newspaper in BF Georgia, and you can't pay some smart dude to write your feature story for you because there aren't any, and there you are.

Stuck.

"Pearl Harbor Day . . . Pearl Harbor Day . . . that's like in December, right? That crippled president said something famous about Pearl Harbor back in the day, dude.

"Uhhh . . . 'Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1943, a date that will live in the infirmary . . . .' THAT'S IT!

"OK, I got this. Kewl."

FILE UNDER: If You Can't Laugh . . .

A confederacy of dunces . . . on the make

I . . . well, you see . . . uhhhhhh . . . the . . . ummmmmm . . . well, dat's Loozi . . . errrrrrr . . . I . . . ummmmm . . . HOLY CRAP!

I . . . I . . . I . . . errrrrrr . . . I . . . it . . . the the . . . ohhhhh . . . ummmm, well. . . .

Aw, hell, here's the story from WWL television in -- of course -- New Orleans:

The Quicky's convenience store in Mid-City takes its parking lot rules seriously. Very seriously.

About 4 p.m. Friday, New Orleans paramedics rushed inside the store for a man with a life-threatening medical issue.

They worked on the patient with chest pain, put him inside the vehicle, then started to speed off.

The paramedics “heard a loud noise,” and the vehicle came to a screeching halt, according to Jeb Tate, spokesman for New Orleans Emergency Medical Services.

The medics stepped out and found a boot on their ambulance.

Convenience store employees allegedly put a restrictive parking boot on the ambulance. And now it was stuck.

The paramedics were perplexed.

Tate said the ambulance had its emergency lights on the whole time.

Store employees didn’t want to talk about it. They declined requests for comment.

Apparently one of the employees took the boot off. The tire was left flat.

And so the paramedics and the man with the emergency waited.

“We actually had to delay that patient's care by calling another ambulance out here to come transport this patient,” Tate said.

 
BUT THERE'S MORE . . .

The man who booted the ambulance was a Quicky’s convenience store employee and New Orleans Police cited him for simple criminal damage to property for putting the boot on the ambulance.

Eyewitness News saw workers continuing to boot cars in their parking lot Monday morning. A worker at Quicky's convenience store said the employee, identified in a police report as Ahmed Sidi Aleywa, who booted a working ambulance Friday has been fired.

“The guy that did this, he came from another country. He didn't even know what an ambulance looked like. He's been fired,” said Ali Colone, a man identified as a worker at Quicky’s. The owners declined to comment, but Colone said the owners are sorry it happened.

“We just have rules and regulations that we have to follow by. There are signs out here for our regular customers,” Colone said.

Those rules and regulations are self-imposed. Quicky’s parking lot is private property. Signs posted read, “If you leave the property your vehicle will be booted."

Akesha Allen is a private investigator and in September, she stopped to get a drink at Quicky's. Before getting out, she climbed to the back of the van to secure her equipment when it started shaking.

“I said, what are you doing? I'm not illegally parked. He goes, yes you are. You didn't pay the fee. I said I never got out of the van to pay the fee,” Allen said about a $5 charge for parking in the lot.

They gave her a sheet that said she owed them $120 to remove the boot.

“We had to come out there with cash. They wouldn't take a check,” said Mark Avery, Allen’s employer at Deep South Investigations.

SO, do you need any more proof that New Orleans is not of this country, if indeed of this world? It's not just anywhere that you will find such a perfect storm of abject stupidity plus people always, always on the make and looking for somebody, anybody to shake down.

Even an ambulance trying to take one of your deathly ill customers to the freakin' hospital.

It says a lot about the folks who run Quicky's that they think it's a defense that their now-former employee was so out of touch with modernity that he didn't know what an ambulance was and, one assumes, couldn't read or comprehend "New Orleans EMS" painted on its side in giant letters.

"Eems? Wha iss theese eems! Theese eems no park here!"

Really? They think they'll look better because they hire flippin' morons from BF Egypt? That booting an ambulance is somehow less abjectly criminally insane because they hired a moron mystified by an ambulance parked in the convenience-store lot, emergency lights flashing?

God Almighty.

Well, at least somebody at Quicky's knew the number for 911. That's something, I guess.

Cheap grace: The football edition

You ever notice how football coaches are quick to say, after a big loss, "It's all on me. I'm responsible." 

You ever notice, likewise, how snippy and defensive football coaches get when a sportswriter has the temerity to suggest that what happened just might be due to some shortcoming of theirs?

In other words, "It's all my fault; how DARE you suggest this is my fault?! Now where's my raise."

You ever notice how Nebraska's Bo Pelini pulls this cheap grace act over and over again after his Huskers lay egg after egg in a Really Big Game? Here's Pelini doing it yet again, getting snippy with a favored target for his wrath, Omaha World-Herald sportswriter Dirk Chatelain. 


70-31.
 
The Huskers fell to a five-loss Wisconsin team 70-31 in the Big Ten championship game. You know what a team that loses to a five-loss Wisconsin team in the Big Ten championship would be called if it played in the Southeastern Conference, as opposed to one of the weaker major conferences? 

Kentucky.

This year, the Wildcats went 0-8 in the SEC, and head coach Joker Phillips was forced to take real responsibility for his team's poor performance. He got fired.

LISTEN, I don't know whether Pelini ought to be canned. or even how you could explain getting rid of a coach who won 10 games, even in a notoriously weak conference. But I do know a pattern when I see one -- this particular one being meltdowns in big games against beatable opponents.

I also suspect that another pattern's emerging -- that this is as good as it gets for Nebraska football now, that this is the new normal. Tom Osborne's gone, and he's not coming back. 

Go Big Red! But make a trip to the liquor store before the next big game -- we're all going to need a drink.

Staten Island today

New York is not the kind of place you want to be if you're barely getting by, I think.

And if you get wiped out by Sandy the Superstorm. . . .

This is Katrina writ smaller, and it seems to me the concern of officialdom for working stiffs like this waitress is about the same as that for the poor folks of flooded New Orleans before the media began making a big stink. The trouble in this case is this little election tomorrow that's overshadowing a situation that's almost like the old movie Escape From New York.

Only these folks can't afford to escape from New York. Just as they can't afford to stay.

Did I mention the Northeast is going to be hit by a nor'easter this week? Lord, have mercy.

Yep, this is Bo's team, all right

You know how a football team ostensibly takes on the personality of the head coach?

Well, I think this little moment at Saturday night's 63-38 Husker implosion at Ohio State explains a lot -- about both the personality thing and why Nebraska's big-game meltdowns just keep coming and never get fixed. Long story short, this is Bo Pelini's team, and Bo's boys are just as clueless as their coach.

Who, for pity's sake, goes out on the field to warm up while the marching band is still playing . . . and marching? 

Who in the world takes the field to practice field goals when the Buckeye marching band is doing the sacred "Script Ohio" to close its halftime performance?

Who, for the love of Johnny Rodgers, is that clueless? Or maybe arrogant? Or, most likely, arrogantly and willfully clueless?

Bo's boys.

WHAT'S a little interfering with your opponent's most revered tradition on its home field when your coach can say this about the hiring of Nebraska's new athletic director: "You know, I've been concentrating on Ohio State. I don't know anything about that."

No, why should Bo know anything about that after serving on the chancellor's AD-search advisory committee? More importantly, though, what kind of clueless idiot fails to even fake some sincere enthusiasm for the guy who will have the power to fire his underperforming self?

That would be Bo Pelini. I'm a little surprised it took the Omaha World-Herald's Lee Barfknecht until this morning to put in print what Husker fans have been saying since Clueless Bo stepped in it Thursday afternoon.



I SWEAR, letting that man in front of a live microphone is like handing Barney Fife a loaded gun. Or letting Bo's boys on the field for a big game on national TV. Or, for that matter, letting 'em anywhere near Ohio Stadium when the Buckeye band is practicing its scarlet-and-gray penmanship.

"Look, Daddy! Teacher says every time a gunshot's fired, one of Bo's boys needs a new pair of shoes."

Teacher! There's a bug in my soup!

Guess who came to lunch today at some Omaha-area elementary schools.

Er . . . make that what.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that the unplanned-upon addition to kids' daily dietary requirements really bugged the lunch ladies.

A surprise ingredient in the soup caused a buzz Wednesday in one metro Omaha school district.

Bugs were discovered in some batches of soup delivered to the lunchrooms at nine Papillion-La Vista elementary schools and St. Columbkille Catholic School.

District spokeswoman Annette Eyman said possibly up to 150 students ate the soup before school officials discovered the contamination and recalled the soup.

The soup was prepared at Papillion-La Vista South High School. Food service workers found bugs in a pot of soup there before it was served to any students, Eyman said.

The bugs were discovered during lunch at Carriage Hill, Patriot and Golden Hills Elementary Schools, she said. No bugs were seen in the soup at the other seven schools, but it was removed anyway.

Officials took samples of the bug to the Douglas-Sarpy Cooperative Extension Service for identification.

It was identified as a sawtoothed grain beetle, she said. “They’re very common, and they don’t carry any diseases,” she said. “They’re not harmful if they’re consumed.”

ASKED FOR COMMENT on whether feeding beetles to kids was an appropriate function of local governments, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney saw the incident as yet another spasm of bitching and moaning by the "47 percent." 

"Listen, let me be clear," Romney said, clearly agitated by the query. "If you're going to be dependent on government and expect that taxpayers, the 'makers' of our society, have a responsibility to feed you at school every day, you can't be that gosh-darned picky about how you get your protein."

One 7-year-old boy at a Papillion-La Vista grammar school, was sanguine about the lunch controversy and the ensuing political scuffle upon hearing of Romney's comments.

"I like bugs," he said.

NEW AT 6 on your First Eyewitness Action News station, Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle eats some maggoty gruel, vows to "work the process" of keeping his lunch down.

Off the traks in Rail Town USA

You'd think that in a city that bills itself as "Rail Town USA," the daily newspaper would know that it's "Amtrak," not "Amtrack."

You'd think. You'd also be wrong.

Thus goes the sad decline of what used to be a damned good little newspaper in North Platte, Neb. I know. Once upon a time, I was a reporter there.

And I daresay everyone who mattered at the Telegraph then knew how to spell "Amtrak" just as well as "Union Pacific," the railroad that's the reason North Platte can call itself Rail Town USA. (The newspaper, however, calls it "Railtown USA" in a Sunday news story. Whatever.)

Actually, it was construction of the UP that gave North Platte its reason to be at all. And with the world's largest rail-classification yard in town -- yep, Union Pacific -- it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask that Telegraph web editors know something about railroads.

For instance, how to spell "Amtrak."

AMTRACK?

Amtrack???

This is what happens to a good newspaper when it inevitably falls under the dark spell of mediocre people beholden to an out-of-town corporate owner. When "community journalism" is just another job for just another editor and just another publisher, and the bottom line is just another entry on a balance sheet in Omaha.

They don't make editors like Keith Blackledge anymore -- or hold newspaper staffs to standards as high as his, either.

THEN AGAIN, why should Rale Towne USA be any different from anywhere else today.

Freak-lovers flout convention, burden airlines

If Joan and Robert Vanderhorst had just gotten with the program 16 years ago, two U.S. airlines would have avoided a lot of bother.

Particularly in the age of terrorism, the last thing pilots, flight crews and air travelers need to deal with are unusual-looking youth with low IQs who, frankly, could be duped into carrying backpack nukes onto domestic U.S. flights in a Tehran second. That is what American Airlines was faced with Sunday at the Newark, N.J., airport, forcing the pilot and airline into quick action to ban a 16-year-old boy with Down syndrome from a flight to California and possibly avert a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.

Or at least spare the crew and passengers from having to stare and point for hours on end at an exotic-looking male with a low IQ who, heaven forfend, would want to act all weird . . . and interact with the normal people.

This is what American Airlines bravely nipped in the bud with its bold and decisive action, action made necessary by the selfish refusal of the Vanderhorsts more than a decade and a half ago to abort the abnormal problem child and spare the world a possible terror threat at worst and certain discomfort at best.

Some 92 percent of women have abortions after a Down syndrome diagnosis, so one has to wonder what Joan Vanderhorst's problem was.

Religious freakery? Antisocial tendencies?

What, is she nuts? It would seem she'd have to be to inflict such misery on herself and everyone else.

A SOCIETY must have standards, lest mayhem rule. If we start letting the retarded live -- not to mention fly -- it won't be long before the country is overrun by huggers, smilers, wavers and Special Olympics competitors . . . to disastrous effect.

But according to the New York Daily News, it's mayhem we have, and American and United airlines are on the front lines:

Joan and Robert Vanderhorst, of Bakersfield, Calif., said they intend to sue American over the "humiliating" incident at Newark Airport, in which they were told their special needs son posed a "flight risk."

"It's defamation," Robert Vanderhorst told the Daily News. "It's a violation of his civil rights and its defamation."

Joan Vanderhorst pulled out her cell phone and started recording the incident on Sunday in which Bede is seen quietly playing with his hat and an American Airlines official warns that she was prohibited from filming "in a security-controlled area."

At one point, Port Authority police were even called on the confused family.

"Nothing like this has ever happened to us before. That's what's so shocking. He's usually our good luck charm. Good things usually happen when Bede is with us," Vanderhorst said.

Bede and his parents had been in Jackson, N.J., visiting family and were eager to make the long return flight home. On a "lark" they had even upgraded their seats to first class, shelling out an extra $625 dollars.

"My wife said, 'oh Bede's never flown first class,' he'll be so excited."
Vanderhorst said Bede, a freshman in high school, has flown "at least 30 times" through his life and has never caused any trouble.

Nothing was different before Sunday's flight, he said. Bede was sticking close to his parents and was not acting unruly, nor was he upset.

But as the family waited to board, an American Airlines official pulled them aside and said the pilot had observed Bede and didn't feel safe allowing him on the plane.

Joan Vanderhorst quickly snapped on her video camera and can be heard sobbing. "We are being singled out," she said. Robert Vanderhorst, an attorney, calmly pleads with the airline official. "He's behaving. He's demonstrating he's not a problem."

The agitated American Airlines employee instead called Port Authority police to escort the family away from the gate.

(snip)

Vanderhorst said he has spoken with his attorneys about a lawsuit, accusing the airline of violating Bede's civil rights and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

"My son cannot defend himself," he said. "I expect that American Airlines will not give their pilots the ability to discriminate against anyone; gay, black disabled," he said.

The family's trip home deteriorated even further when they were loaded into a full United Airlines flight and placed in the very back row.

"For a second time, we were discriminated against. Segregated."

SO? That's what you get when you don't take care of your problems when they're small.

They eventually let Rosa Parks sit in the front of the bus, and now look at America's inner cities. They're trouble with a capital "T," which rhymes with "B," which stands for "Bad." And "Black." Am I right? Am I right?

What the Vanderhorsts need to learn is that 92 percent of retarded-baby-bearing women can't be wrong. Just like 92 percent of white Southerners had it right back in the day and 92 percent of National Socialists in Germany before that!

Right?

Right?

Habe ich Reich . . . er, recht?

Bobby Jindal's Louisiana

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said,
and it still is news
Mama may have,
Papa may have
But God bless the child
that's got his own
That's got his own . . .

The University of Louisiana System Board of Supervisors heard Tuesday that state budget cuts caused a wide range of dismal conditions in the state’s higher education system, from low morale and program cutbacks to tuition hikes and faculty layoffs.

Board members for the system that oversees nine public universities received testimony that state budget cuts may be the cause of an increase in employee thefts on campuses, particularly the institutions that haven’t been able to keep a full-time internal auditor on staff.

Board members learned about the increased thefts moments before adopting a $762 million operating budget, which leaves the system’s nine universities with about $38 million less than last year.

“There is a lot of cash on campus and we’re starting to see where the cash is not getting into the bank,” said Robbie Robinson, UL System vice president for business and finance.

Yes, the strong gets more
While the weak ones fade
Empty pockets don't ever make the grade
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own . . .

Without going into specifics, Robinson mentioned an ongoing investigation on one UL System campus, where administrators believe an employee diverted about $40,000 into a credit card account.

Robinson said something that auditors call the “fraud triangle” comes into play when times are tough.

The fraud triangle is a term coined by sociologist Donald Cressey. The points of the triangle are made up of the three most common factors that occur in cases of fraud. They are incentive, or financial stress; rationalization, where the person believes the money won’t be missed; and opportunity, where a person may see a weakness within the organization.

Money, you've got lots of friends
Crowding round the door
When you're gone, spending ends
They don't come no more
Rich relations give
Crust of bread and such
You can help yourself
But don't take too much
Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own . . .

UL System President Randy Moffett said some employees have spouses who have lost jobs, making them more prone to stress.

“Their financial situation has changed,” Moffett said. “Most of them haven’t had an increase in pay for four years.”

Moffett, however, said the system’s campuses have “done a great job” reporting when money isn’t accounted for.

On the budget, the UL board sat through a presentation that showed largely the same trend Louisiana’s other three college systems have been going through.

The reduction in state dollars is a continuation of a familiar trend in Louisiana’s higher education system that has seen state funding cut by $426 million since 2008.

Cuts to the UL System have totaled $207 million during the same period.

Mama may have, Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his own
He just worry 'bout nothin'
Cause he's got his own

Song: "God Bless the Child" -- Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr., 1939
News story: "UL budget cuts cited as thefts rise" -- The Advocate, 8/22/2012

He has met the enemy. . . .

I hate it when this happens. . . .

As a rising star in Hungary's far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his incendiary comments on Jews: He accused them of "buying up" the country, railed about the "Jewishness" of the political elite and claimed Jews were desecrating national symbols.

Then came a revelation that knocked him off his perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi himself is a Jew.

Following weeks of Internet rumors, Szegedi acknowledged in June that his grandparents on his mother's side were Jews — making him one too under Jewish law, even though he doesn't practice the faith. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labor camps.

Since then, the 30-year-old has become a pariah in Jobbik and his political career is on the brink of collapse. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

At the root of the drama is an audio tape of a 2010 meeting between Szegedi and a convicted felon. Szegedi acknowledges that the meeting took place but contends the tape was altered in unspecified ways; Jobbik considers it real.

In the recording, the felon is heard confronting Szegedi with evidence of his Jewish roots. Szegedi sounds surprised, then offers money and favors in exchange for keeping quiet.

Under pressure, Szegedi resigned last month from all party positions and gave up his Jobbik membership. That wasn't good enough for the party: Last week it asked him to give up his seat in the European Parliament as well. Jobbik says its issue is the suspected bribery, not his Jewish roots.

Szegedi came to prominence in 2007 as a founding member of the Hungarian Guard, a group whose black uniforms and striped flags recalled the Arrow Cross, a pro-Nazi party which briefly governed Hungary at the end of World War II and killed thousands of Jews. In all, 550,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during the Holocaust, most of them after being sent in trains to death camps like Auschwitz. The Hungarian Guard was banned by the courts in 2009.

By then, Szegedi had already joined the Jobbik Party, which was launched in 2003 to become the country's biggest far-right political force. He soon became one of its most vocal and visible members, and a pillar of the party leadership. Since 2009, he has served in the European Parliament in Brussels as one of the party's three EU lawmakers, a position he says he wants to keep.

-- The Associated Press