Signing off

The United States of America comes to the end of another broadcast day. The United States of America is wholly owned and operated by the Russian Federation, and operates on a frequency determined by President Vladimir Putin, with the explicit backing of Junior President Donald J. Trump, because sex, lies and videotape.

The United States of America invites you to join us at 6 a.m. tomorrow for the alternative news by Russia Today, and for another day of the best in oligarchy and a hot bowl of borscht.

On behalf of President Putin, Junior President Trump and the Russian Federation, the United States of America bids you good night and an obedient tomorrow.

Now, our national anthem.

'Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?'Or . . . where is Delta Tau Chi when you really need it?

White House policy director Stephen Miller doesn't like Deltas, either.

In liberal Santa Monica, students in the city's largest high school tended to hold progressive ideas, to be environmentally conscious and open minded.

But Miller went the other way. He quickly stood out as a contentious and provocative student whose conservative and ultra-nationalist politics put him continuously at odds with teachers, administrators and students.

Univision Noticias spoke with several classmates who said Miller had few friends, none of them non-white. They said he used to make fun of the children of Latino and Asian immigrants who did not speak English well.

Early on, Miller began to write opinion columns in conservative blogs, the local press and the high school's own newspaper, The Samohi. He also contributed at times to the national radio show of Larry Elder, a conservative African American, and once invited him to speak at the school.

Displaying his hostility toward minorities, Miller complained to school administrators about announcements in Spanish and festivals that celebrated diversity.

In his third year at the school, the 16-year-old Miller wrote a letter to The Lookout, a local publication, about his negative impression of Hispanic students and the use of Spanish in the United States.

“When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills. There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school,” Miller wrote.

“Even so, pursuant to district policy, all announcements are written in both Spanish and English. By providing a crutch now, we are preventing Spanish speakers from standing on their own,” he added. “As politically correct as this may be, it demeans the immigrant population as incompetent, and makes a mockery of the American ideal of personal accomplishment."

In that article, Miller also complained about his school's celebration of Cinco de Mayo, the existence of a gay club and a visit by a Muslim leader.

School Board member Oscar de la Torre said he had numerous verbal clashes with Miller, and recalled that Miller turned up one day for a meeting of a committee created to help Hispanic and African American students. But Miller was not there to help, de la Torre told Univision Noticias.

“He wanted to sabotage us,” de la Torre said. “He confronted everyone, denying that racism existed. He said that was a thing of the past.”

Univision Noticias requested an interview with Miller through several White House press officials, but received no reply. Subsequently, the White House rejected the veracity of this article and requested a rectification. But Univision has verified the credibility of the sources used in addition to Miller's own writings. Univision again requested an interview with Miller to express his point of view, but did not receive a response.

Miller wrote about those meetings years later, during his time at Duke University. “I was quickly labeled a racist, and after the session de la Torre became combative. He, like countless others during my time at Santa Monica High, tried to convince me that blacks and Hispanics were all victims of inescapable discrimination, deeply ingrained in the white ruling class and all public institutions,” he wrote.

Natalie Flores, another student who witnessed Miller's evolution from middle to high school, said he displayed “an intense hatred toward people of color, especially toward Latinos.” She and other students interviewed for this report recalled that Miller became angry whenever he heard students speaking Spanish in the hallways.

“I think his big problem was the Latinos. He thought they lived off welfare,” said Flores, now enrolled at the Teachers College at Columbia University.

REALLY, this guy is the honest-to-goodness second coming of Doug Niedermeyer. Just look.

Driving angry

It probably won't be long now before Steve Bannon and his furry little friend Donald Trump drive the United States over the edge and way down, down, down into the quarry.

We might be OK.

BOOM!

Well, probably not now.

That's what we get for electing a president -- take your pick, Bannon or Trump -- who drives angry.

Just Wednesday, word came of two road-rage incidents with foreign leaders. In a Friday phone call, Trump apparently threatened President Enrique Pena Nieto with a U.S. invasion if Mexico's military couldn't take care of that country's "bad hombres."

I am not making this up.

"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there," the American commander in chief told his Mexican counterpart, according to a partial transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press. "You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

If Trump was offering assistance, that's a mighty strange way to put it.

A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided only that portion of the conversation to The Associated Press. The person gave it on condition of anonymity because the administration did not make the details of the call public.

The Mexican website Aristegui Noticias on Tuesday published a similar account of the phone call, based on the reporting of journalist Dolia Estevez. The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.

Mexico's foreign relations department said the report was "based on absolute falsehoods."

Americans may recognize Trump's signature bombast in the comments, but the remarks may carry more weight in Mexico.

Political analyst and former presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar notes Pena Nieto had enjoyed an apparent spike in his low approval levels, as Mexicans rallied around him for publicly challenging Trump in the border wall dispute.

The latest remarks could undercut that, if Pena Nieto is viewed as "weak," he said.

Trump has used the phrase "bad hombres" before. In an October presidential debate, he vowed to get rid the U.S. of "drug lords" and "bad people."

"We have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out," he said. The phrase ricocheted on social media with Trump opponents saying he was denigrating immigrants.

THE NEXT DAY, it was Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who got Trumped. Or Bannoned. Does it really even matter? Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me.

The Washington Post, which hasn't seen this much crazy since Watergate, has the story:

It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief — a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America’s staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week.

Instead, President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refu­gee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day — including Russian President Vladi­mir Putin — and that “this was the worst call by far.”

Trump’s behavior suggests that he is capable of subjecting world leaders, including close allies, to a version of the vitriol he frequently employs against political adversaries and news organizations in speeches and on Twitter.

“This is the worst deal ever,” Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.

Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was “going to get killed” politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers.”

Trump returned to the topic late Wednesday night, writing in a message on Twitter: “Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!”

THE UNITED STATES should have bought life insurance from Ned Ryerson when it had the chance. Maybe Canada could have gotten a little something from Mutant of Omaha ("When the world's in ashes, we'll have you covered.").

But we didn't, and Canada won't. And as we become Krispy Kritters in the flaming wreckage of Pickup One at the bottom of a quarry, there'll be no do-over for voters who figured that what Washington really needed was to be blowed up good -- real good.

The alarm clock won't flip from 5:59 to 6:00, and it won't be morning in America once again. We're a midnight kind of country now.

How low can you go? Not sure Trump has a floor

 
A Facebook friend wanted to know why I seemingly only post political stuff now.

In this age of Trump, to even ask the question says nothing good about oneself. Still, I'll answer the question by posting this latest outrage from the malignant butt sore residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On Saturday, a 5-year-old boy whose mother is Iranian was reportedly detained for hours by himself at Washington Dulles International Airport as President Donald Trump’s immigration order was enforced.

Asked on Monday whether Trump’s order — which critics have called a “Muslim ban” — should apply to 5-year-old children, White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave a clear answer: yes.

“That’s why we slow [the process] down a little,” Spicer said at the daily press briefing. “To make sure that if they are a 5-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat. But to assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”

The argument, essentially, is that basically anyone from the restricted Muslim-majority countries can do dangerous things, so we should carefully vet and potentially ban even young children from entering the US. It shows the breadth of Trump’s order: It truly is meant to affect any traveler from the seven countries (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen) on the order’s list.

WHY DO I post so much political stuff now? Because when you have an administration that can send its flack out to tell the American press THIS with a straight face, what you have is an administration that is systematically destroying the very idea of America.

This is a cancer upon the DNA of this country. This is quite literally anti-American. This is demonstrably a grave attack on basic human rights. This is without question -- veritably, blatantly, plain as opening your Bible and beginning to read -- anti-Christian and blasphemy against Almighty God, inviting divine judgment against this land.

One could credibly argue that, indeed, Donald Trump IS divine judgment against this land.

This is naked evil, and to acquiesce is to risk eternal damnation.

Would you like me to be more clear than this?

OK. Resist.

The alternative facts of (pro-) life

Some folks find it "very, very encouraging" that the Trump Administration "has given the pro-life movement more support at the March For Life than any other administration in history."

I guess you could fairly say that if the "alternative" definition of "more support . . . than any other administration in history" happens to be "blowing smoke up willful dupes' asses at a rate 'unpresidented' in modern political history."

No, I am not happy at all that the Trump Administration is so openly “supportive” of the March for Life . . . or of the pro-life movement, such as it is today.

And when I speak of the “pro-life movement,” what I mean is the old, institutional and political primarily pro-birth movement, which has shown precious little interest in continuing its support of human life once the child emerges from the womb. That “pro-life” movement has sullied itself by becoming a de facto arm of the Republican Party and spending too much of its time and resources in support of politicians who have done precious little to actually stop abortion in this country.

What those lawmakers have done, however, is push manifestly anti-life positions like repeated cuts to social services, as well as reductions to welfare and food stamps. The old “pro-life” movement has sold its soul to a party that backs the death penalty and gave us “enhanced interrogation” — the “alternate fact” designation for torture, which happens to run just as afoul of the Geneva Conventions and U.S. criminal law as it does Christian teaching — and an insanely foolhardy, unjust war in Iraq.

The old “pro-life” movement has sold its soul to Donald J. Trump, who got elected in no small part by scapegoating Muslims and Mexicans, demonizing the American press and otherwise summoning the blackest instincts of the human psyche and spirit.

IT HAS SOLD its soul to the man who vows to give us The Wall — the big, beautiful wall on the Mexican border — which now, we learn, is to be built at American-taxpayer expense and will be defeated as easily as digging a tunnel or hopping on an airplane and overstaying one’s tourist visa.

It has sold its soul to the president who intends to publish a list of crimes committed by immigrants in “sanctuary cities,” a move taken directly from the Nazi playbook in Germany.  Look up The Criminal Jew on Google.

It has sold its soul to — endorsed and campaigned for — the candidate who now, as president of the United States, is ending the refugee-resettlement program and banning all Muslim immigration from countries “linked to terrorism.” Thumb through your Bible (Old Testament and New) to see what the deity of our “Christian nation” has to say about that.

And it has sold its soul to a candidate who campaigned through the Big Lie and now is governing by the Big Lie, which now has been rechristened as “alternative facts.” Joseph Goebbels would be so proud — the March for Life organizers invited Kellyanne Conway, who invented the term “alternative facts” to alternative-fact marchers to death today.
 

“Pro-lifers” today are hailing their impending political victories at the hands of our new, all-GOP political order. If any victories are ever realized here, which I rather doubt, I fear they will be wholly Pyrrhic ones, because when this unstable, budding fascist of a president is done bringing this country to ruin, tyranny or both, “God’s name will be reviled among the Gentiles” because of the sycophancy of these “Good Christian People,” as a liberal, gay high-school classmate derisively refers to right-of-hedonist followers of Jesus Christ.

And those of us Christians who fought this present darkness are going to get it just as good and hard as those who sold out their faith and their cause to a short-fingered vulgarian.

The name of God is reviled among the Gentiles

It's a clear biblical precept, and not a particularly complicated one, that when you count yourself as one of God's own yet persist in evil, there will be repercussions in this world, and then the next.

America's Finest Christians (TM) are quick to throw out Bible verses for their own ends, yet their prooftexting of Holy Scripture never seems to be directed at their own misdeeds.

In the more than a year that we had to learn exactly what kind of a man President Donald Trump is, and be told of the manifest evil he himself promised to commit as leader of the Free World, many American Christians found all manner of justifications to ignore God's holy word and turn this amoral vulgarian into a modern-day, flesh-and-blood Golden Calf (more like a golden ass, alas).

Then they proclaimed it God's will and forbade all dissent as un-American, un-Christian or both.

Again, this is not rocket science.

All who sin outside the law will also perish without reference to it, and all who sin under the law will be judged in accordance with it. For it is not those who hear the law who are just in the sight of God; rather, those who observe the law will be justified.

For when the Gentiles who do not have the law by nature observe the prescriptions of the law, they are a law for themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the demands of the law are written in their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even defend them on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge people’s hidden works through Christ Jesus.

Now if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast of God and know his will and are able to discern what is important since you are instructed from the law, and if you are confident that you are a guide for the blind and a light for those in darkness, that you are a trainer of the foolish and teacher of the simple, because in the law you have the formulation of knowledge and truth — then you who teach another, are you failing to teach yourself?

You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who detest idols, do you rob temples? You who boast of the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? For, as it is written, "Because of you the name of God is reviled among the Gentiles."

-- Romans 2:12-24

THE EXTENT to which Trump manages to do what he promised -- building "the beautiful wall" on the Mexican border, deporting the undocumented en masse, using America's military as an instrument of vengeance or irrational pique, making torture into government policy, turning away the persecuted and suffering and targeting immigrants on the basis of their religion -- he will be doing evil in the name of all Americans.

By extension, those who enabled him and supported his wickedness will be just as guilty as the president. And they will cloak their iniquity with the mantle of God's righteousness.

That sort of blasphemy likely would be a bridge too far even for the areligious Trump.

At last, when the string has played out and our dysfunctional, unstable commander in chief has visited ruin upon our land, God will be blasphemed among those who know Him not -- an ever growing percentage of the U.S. population. And those who fought Trump's lies and misdeeds, for love of God and the God's honest truth, will suffer the coming wrath -- for His slandered name's sake -- right along with those who gave themselves over to the spirit of blasphemy.

Jesus wept. Satan laughed.

I just threw up a little in my mouth

OK, a lot.

God save the United States.

Iowa uber alles

Iowa's crackpot congressman, Steve King, always has marched to the beat of a right-wing drummer.

He now apparently is goosestepping to an Anschluss beat, hobnobbing with a far-right leader of a political party founded by ex-Nazis in old Österreich. The candidate of the ironically named Freedom Party lost Austria's presidential runoff, but apparently its leader, Heinz-Christian Strache, still ist Nummer Eins in the heart of the Hawkeye State's korncob kommandant.

Strache, you see, will be attending the inauguration of Donald Trump as the guest of King. Let that sink in for a moment.

Rep. Steve King

Various media had reported that Hofer and Strache had been invited by Washington's conservative republican deputy, Steve King. King, who had already supported Trump in the election campaign, visited Vienna last October, where he met the then-Presidential candidate, Hofer. Now the confirmation.

Facebook knows about Strache:

"I was invited to Washington this week. As usual, I am accompanied by a Freedom Delegation on this trip.

On the margins of the US presidential election, a series of talks with interesting US political representatives is on our tight schedule."

(Translation by Google)

A STORY on an English-language Austrian news site is here.

Of course, this isn't the 4th District representative's first flirtation with the outrageous.

In 2010, King said he could "empathize" with a domestic terrorist who flew his small plane into an Internal Revenue Service field office in Austin, Texas, killing himself as well as an IRS manager and injuring 13 others.

That same year, during the final House battle to enact Obamacare, The New York Times quoted him as saying this:

“Let’s beat the other side to a pulp!” Rep. Steve King, Republican of Iowa, shouted to the last stand of Tea Partiers on Sunday night. “Let’s chase them down! There’s going to be a reckoning.”

In 2016, King attracted attention when a television report showed a small Confederate flag on his desk in Washington. Earlier, he had defended the Rebel flag as a "symbol" of Southern pride and decried efforts to ban the banner from official display:

“A huge price has been paid. It’s been paid primarily by Caucasian Christians. There are many who stepped up because they profoundly believed they needed to put an end to slavery,” said King. “This country has put this behind us.”

And less than a week later, on TV at the Republican National Convention, der Kongressabgeordnete went all master race on an MSNBC panel when someone mentioned the last gasp of "old white people" in the GOP.

This 'old white people' business does get a little tired, Charlie," King said. "I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about, where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization?"

"Than white people?" Hayes asked, clearly amazed.

"Than, than Western civilization itself," King replied. "It's rooted in Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and every place where the footprint of Christianity settled the world. That's all of Western civilization."

The other panelists objected, with Hayes trying to keep the peace. Panelist April Ryan, who is black, asked, "What about Asia? What about Africa?"

"We're not going to argue the history of Western civilization," Hayes said. "Let me note for the record that if you're looking at the ledger of Western civilization, for every flourishing democracy, you have Hitler and Stalin as well."

WHEN IT comes to Steve King, I haven't even scratched the surface of the lowlights here. Believe me.

And now this.

Let me summarize "this": A congressman who can do nothing outrageous enough to alienate his constituents in Bumf***, Iowa, happens to be an enthusiastic supporter of Donald Trump, who could do nothing outrageous enough not to become the 45th president of the United States.

Then, the outrageous right-wing congressman invites an outrageous right-wing politico of a Nazi-birthed Austrian party (who late last year signed a cooperation pact with Vladimir Putin's United Russia party) to the swearing in of Trump, who has his own thing going with the Russians, whose geopolitical aim is to blow the Western alliance to hell and achieve complete Eurasian dominance.

No, nothing to see here. Move along to the showers for delousing.


IT WOULD SEEM to this schlub sitting at his computer in Omaha, by God, Nebraska, that the problem isn't that Steve King and Donald Trump are going to turn America fascist. It seems to me instead that the reason we have public disgraces like Steve King and Donald Trump at the forefront of American public life is because large swaths of our land already have gone fascist.

Folks hereabouts would deny that till the cows come home, and they'd probably want to sock me "in the goddamn face" for saying it. Of course, the other plausible explanation is that an electoral majority in Iowa's 4th and a winning electoral-college coalition nationally elected these two little Hitlers because they were too effing stupid and racist to manage otherwise.

If I were an King voter in western Iowa or a Trump enthusiast nationwide, I'd just cop to fascist.

For the rest of us, the Resistance begins Friday.

Trumpiana

Alas, alas . . . whither my poor alma mater, Louisiana State University? Yet another semester, yet another budget cut, in all likelihood.

Bigly.

With cuts right around the corner, the president of LSU warned Louisiana lawmakers Wednesday that his university cannot handle many more budget reductions.

“Another cut to higher education furthers the dire straits that we're in. I don't know how much more efficient we can become,” President F. King Alexander told the House Appropriations Committee.

For the 16th time in nine years, LSU is once again preparing for the legislative knife.

“It's endless, it's like Ground Hog Day,” said Rep. Larry Bagley, R-Stonewall.

In order to fix the state’s $313 million shortfall left over from last year, higher education will like have to endure another multi-million dollar cut. Back in November, the governor proposed about $18 million in cuts to higher education overall, with more than $8.5 million from LSU. Those could be enacted through executive order. Any changes to that plan could be announced Thursday, at which time legislators could also vote to increase cuts to education.

Over the last decade, LSU has cut back on courses while freezing faculty salaries time and time again, according to Alexander. Meanwhile, competing universities have lured away their LSU faculty by offering them better pay. Overall, Alexander said budget cuts have led to a net loss of 500 faculty members over ten years.

“We would take notice if we were losing football coaches,” Alexander told the committee.

With regards to how much the university spends per student, LSU currently ranks near the bottom. The school is 46th out of the 50 flagship schools across the country and 12th out of the 14 SEC schools, according to Alexander.

“This day is the worst day of hearings every year because we talk about what should be the hope of the future of our state, and then we talk about how dramatically we've dis-invested in it over the last nine years,” said Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans.

Added to that, the shortfall is holding up maintenance projects. The LSU system current has a backlog of $750 million in upkeep projects that cannot be completed under current budget restrictions. About $500 million of those projects are on the main campus.

When it comes to TOPS, which is only partially funded in the spring, Alexander said it is unclear how it will impact enrollment. His bigger concern, he said, is next fall and beyond.

“The uncertainty of all this has the potential to drive the best and brightest out of the state,” Alexander said.

THERE REALLY isn't much to be said about this ongoing tragedy any longer. It all has been said, and we're all getting tired of repeating ourselves.

Here, though, is one thing I don't think has been repeated to the point of ineffectiveness.

You want to know the best way to describe my woebegone home state? This way.

Louisiana is just like its favorite politician, president-elect Donald Trump: It spends its life acting like a stupid asshole, then it goes bankrupt.

Trumpiana, for short.

That is all. That's enough.

Cause and effect

If you say this . . . 

Expect this.

Mean, stupid and voting for Trump is no way to go through life.

It's official. GOP nominates the Donald

“I put lipstick on a pig. I feel a deep sense of remorse that I contributed to presenting Trump in a way that brought him wider attention and made him more appealing than he is. I genuinely believe that if Trump wins and gets the nuclear codes there is an excellent possibility it will lead to the end of civilization.”

 -- Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter,

The Art of the Deal

Crazy Billy's Louisiana fire sale

Click to see full size

If at first, going behind your governor's back to try to broker a flim-flam scam with Iraq doesn't succeed in bringing instant riches to your bankrupt Third Worldish state, fire your state museum's well-regarded director and go for eBay instead.

Most places, folks would call that some insane s***.

In Louisiana, that's just called another day in the lieutenant governor's office.

Tucked inside an unmarked, nondescript corner building on Chartres Street in the French Quarter are hundreds of thousands of carefully cataloged artifacts spanning more than three centuries of Louisiana’s cultural heritage.

The Louisiana State Museum system, with five nearby facilities that are open to the public, uses the four-story, climate-controlled storage facility to house the rest of its vast collection of historical records, gilt-framed paintings, period clothing and other artifacts that date back as far as Louisiana’s colonial days.

As state lawmakers have grappled with an estimated $600 million shortfall in next year’s budget, the museum system’s financial picture appeared bleak — an initially scheduled 37 percent drop in its state appropriation on top of years of funding cuts that left the museum system with its lowest budget and smallest staff in more than a decade.

Nungesser

After six months on the job, Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been looking for ways to cut costs and raise revenue for the museum. One idea he’s exploring: selling the system’s storage building, which sits on 7,700 square feet of prime French Quarter real estate, and some of its more than 400,000 artifacts — those that are deemed to be of limited value.

“Why are we storing art in the middle of the French Quarter in such a valuable building?” Nungesser said. “That’s such an expensive building to maintain. I’d much rather see that cost going into maintaining and improving our museums.”

YOU JUST KNOW that Billy Nungesser is going to bring the same common sense, expertise and attention to detail that he did in his James Bond mission to do a world-class deal with a shady go-between to realize riches for Louisiana by refining Iraqi oil and building Iraqi supertankers to transport it.

One small detail slipped by Nungesser, though. Nobody in authority in Washington or Baghdad knew what the hell he was talking about.

Oops. But this museum deal will work out a lot better, just trust him. And besides, he's learned his lesson about doing sketchy stuff behind the backs of folks who need to know:

A former two-term president of Plaquemines Parish, Nungesser was elected lieutenant governor last fall and took office in January. By law, the lieutenant governor oversees the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, which includes the Louisiana State Museum — a system that includes museums in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and other cities.

Last month, Nungesser dismissed the system’s director, Mark Tullos, a Baton Rouge native who took over in 2013.

In interviews, several board members — who declined to comment on the record — said they were surprised to learn about Tullos’ departure only after the fact. They saw Tullos as a decent guy who held the system together despite steep budget cuts and additional challenges, like last year’s mold outbreak at the 1850 House — a house museum that is part of the Lower Pontalba Building — and the collections building.

Nungesser was vague about why he fired Tullos, but he said museum leaders didn’t have a well-thought-out budget and seemingly “just went from one fire to another fire.”

“Not that Mark didn’t do his best job, but we needed — you’ve got to have somebody at the top setting the rules, the goals and what’s expected of people,” Nungesser said.

UH . . . just do what Nungesser says, because lieutenant governor. Really, this'll work. Just ask Nungesser's predecessor, Jay Dardenne, who's now Gov. John Bel Edwards' commissioner of administration, who described selling the storage building . . . as an iffy proposition..

“If — it’s a big if — but if that building were sold, it would have to be declared surplus," he said, "and there’s a statutory scheme that governs what would happen.” In other words, the money wouldn't go to the state museum; it would go into the general fund of a state that has bigger problems than raising money to run the state museum.

Uh . . . what does Dardenne know? People say he's a RINO anyway -- a Republican in name only. He's probably not even voting for Trump.

No, we need to talk to an expert. Yeah, that's the ticket.

But if he wants to start listing items from the collection on eBay, he’s going to have a hard time convincing [longtime museum-board member Rosemary] Ewing.

“If it’s valuable on eBay, it’s valuable to us, too,” said Ewing .

Ewing was part of the board that hired Tullos. She “thought he did a really good job” and would have appreciated a heads-up that he was being dismissed.

Others once involved with the museum contend that Baton Rouge politics plays an outsized role in the system’s management.

“I’ve been a director at five different institutions, including the Louisiana State Museum, and it’s the only place that I’ve ever worked where there was incredibly and completely unprofessional interference in the day-to-day operation of the museum,” said David Kahn, who now is executive director of the Adirondack Museum in New York.

Kahn was forced out of the local director’s job by then-Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who pushed for legislation giving him the power to hire and fire the director. Not long afterward, he forced out Kahn, who had been hired two years earlier.

(snip) 

On the surface, Kahn said, selling the warehouse building is feasible. He recalled ill-fated incidents involving Formosan termite swarms and a fire years ago in a first-floor restaurant, Irene’s Cuisine. The museum recently told Irene’s its lease will not be renewed after 2018.

But such a sale, others say, may offer only a short-term solution.

“We may sell this place, but we’ve still got four stories of collections that we’re going to have to save and store somewhere,” Ewing said. “You don’t (display) everything all the time. You rotate it. That’s the attraction of a museum.”

WHAT the hell do they know?

Yes, it is good that the good people of Louisiana have a lieutenant governor who sweats the details. Oh, wait. Maybe he just sweats.

It's Spectra-Sonic!

In 1959, Liberty Records represented "the most EXCITING sound in the world." Said so right there on the record sleeve.

In 2016, do we get excited about anything anymore?

By the time you have porn sites cutting off access to North Carolina perverts because the smut-purveyor is morally offended that the state passed a law stating that human persons with XY chromosomes -- and a tallywhacker -- really should use the men's room and human persons with XX chromosomes -- and lacking an appendage -- really should use the ladies' room, you as a society probably have lost the emotional chops to get anything but outraged. 

I mean, when did this become a thing? And you thought this post was going to be about old records.

I'll tell you what I'm not excited about. The future. The future is going to be dreary, and joyless, and overwrought, and angry . . . and we're all going to end up killing one another. Perhaps we can stave this off a couple more years by outlawing urinals and mandating doors on bathroom stalls.

For now, I think I'll just hide out in a time when we still had something to get excited about.

Laughing ourselves to death

You think your editor is tough on you? You don't know tough. (from the wonderful vol.2 of @LettersOfNote) pic.twitter.com/N8Tke8xxce

— John Dalton (@johndalton) January 5, 2016

Click on the image for readable version

That I laughed and laughed and laughed at this letter from Hunter S. Thompson made me realize that I totally understand the political appeal of Donald Trump, mad as that might be.

The Donald shows appropriate disrespect for our political system, the feckless weenies in charge of his own political party and the Stalinist pall of political correctness that's stifling our debate and rotting our minds.

Unfortunately, though, with the satisfying comes the strychnine -- the malicious stereotyping of Mexicans and Muslims . . . his willingness to ban people from the United States solely on religious grounds . . . egging on a mob mentality at his rallies and among his supporters . . . the nasty remarks about a female fellow candidate and a disabled journalist.


IT ALL demonstrates Trump's uncomfortable shouting distance to the over-the-top epithet Gore Vidal hung on William F. Buckley in an infamous 1968 television debate -- "pro-crypto-Nazi."

Hunter S. Thompson was entertaining -- warped and high as a kite but entertaining. Sometimes, he skewered those who sorely asked for the insertion of a spit. Sometimes, it all was quite satisfying. I can see how some might feel that way about Trump, taken out of his particular toxic context.

But it would have been a horrible mistake to let Thompson anywhere near political power on any national scale. Ditto for Donald Trump. Not all that entertains us is good for us, particularly when it feeds upon what's bad in us.

Coincidence? I think not

Of all the things Nebraska's bazillionnaire governor could throw his fortune behind that actually might benefit his state, what does Pete Ricketts choose to bankroll to the tune of $200,000?

Education initiatives for the state's poorest residents? Nope.

Higher education?  Nope.

Job training for the chronically unemployed? Nope.

Food banks? Nope.

After school programs for underprivileged kids? Nope.

Antiviolence efforts in north and south Omaha? Nope.

A petition drive to restore the death penalty, which was eliminated by the Nebraska Legislature over the veto of the governor, who likes to tout his pro-life Catholicism? Bingo!

Proceed to "GO" . . . and pick up a batch of black-market execution drugs on your way there. Gov. Pete still has hope.

FROM Saturday's Omaha World-Herald:

Gov. Pete Ricketts has doubled his monetary backing of the petition drive to restore the death penalty in Nebraska.

A report filed Friday shows the governor gave $100,000 to Nebraskans for the Death Penalty in early July, which comes on top of the $100,000 he gave to the campaign in June.

His donations account for nearly one-third of the funds raised by the group, which has less than a month left to gather signatures on a petition seeking to put the fate of capital punishment on next year’s ballot.

The referendum petition would ask voters whether they want to undo legislation repealing the state’s death penalty. 

Ricketts’ role in financing the petition drive appears to be a first, at least in recent decades. Past governors have signed petitions or thrown their political support behind them but have not been top contributors to the drives.

PERHAPS the governor's parish priest needs to have a loooooooong talk with hizzoner. For a "pro-life" kind of guy, Pete Ricketts surely does seem to be quite enamored with killing.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people's rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people's safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.
2267 Assuming that the guilty party's identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people's safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity "are very rare, if not practically nonexistent."

AUSTIN POWERS, call your office. Nebraska needs your help.

This ever-changing world in which we're livin'

For those with eyes to see, it has become rather clear that intolerance in the name of tolerance is no vice.

One circuit clerk in Mississippi is learning the hard way that acting like an adult in the face of a court ruling one finds intolerable -- and, in the process, respecting the rule of law and acknowledging the legal duties of public officials -- is no defense against accusations of thought crime.

Amid Southern governors seeking to obstruct the Supreme Court ruling mandating gay marriage in all 50 states by asserting that public officials' religious rights trump their duty to uphold laws with which they disagree, Grenada County Circuit Clerk Linda Barnette did an intellectually honest thing -- and in the process gave the rule of law its proper due -- when she determined she could not in good conscience as a Christian issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. She resigned.

In a letter to the board of supervisors, Grenada County Circuit Clerk Linda Barnette announced her resignation on Tuesday, citing the Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage.

Barnette has been the circuit clerk for 24 years, and announced that her resignation is effective immediately.

"The Supreme Court's decision violates my core values as a Christian," she wrote. "My final authority is the Bible. I cannot in all good conscience issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples under my name because the Bible clearly teaches that homosexuality is contrary to God's plan and purpose for marriage and family."

Barnette has not yet been available to take phone calls.

"I want to thank the citizens of Grenada County for giving me the honor of serving as their circuit clerk," she wrote.

Aquaintances said Barnette's husband is a pastor who worked with Billy Graham Ministries for many years.

"I choose to obey God rather than man," Barnette wrote.

Grenada County voter Lue Harbin said she is disappointed in Barnette's decision. She said she has voted for Barnette in every election since she got out of the Army in 2001.

"I was kind of shocked, I don't know her personally but I never thought she was that way," Harbin said. "She's given marriage licenses to people who have committed adultery and stolen and lied, and when their parents haven't approved... it's just crazy the way she's thinking. That's her job and she's not there to judge people."

OUT OF RESPECT for both the law and her God, this wife of a pastor willingly sacrificed a post she'd held for 24 years. She now is unemployed.

But that's not enough for the forces of tolerance, who see Barnette's crime as having thought the wrong things in the first place. From the Facebook  blog Drop of Blue in a Sea of Red:

It's so funny. They only want separation of church and state when someone does anything involving the church, but when it's purely governmental (IE THE CONSTITUTION AND ITS AMENDMENTS) they lose their fucking minds and cannot separate the two. "Oh my stars and garters, this here goes against my religion!" Fuck you. You're functioning as a state employee, not as a church employee.

When I say funny, I really mean it's sad. But, it's also kind of amusing. All these bigoted, hateful people are going to die alone, as bigoted, hateful people. They will forever be known as bigoted, hateful people. I can only hope that if there is a God, that upon their arrival to those pearly gates, St. Peter points to a sign that says 'No Homophobes Allowed'.

Now look, I'm all for standing up for your beliefs, no matter how outdated or misplaced I think they are. That's really not my business. But your beliefs have no place interfering with your ability to function at your job, especially as a state employee.

So, goodbye, Linda Barnette, former Mississippi Circuit Clerk. I hope you wallow in your misery as the rest of the world comes together and works towards true equality.

"TRUE EQUALITY." Heh. Translate that as "Truly, some are more equal than others, and why don't traditional Christians just die already?"

"Live and let die." Maybe that, in the name of truth in advertising, should be the new inscription on the Great Seal of the United States. Obviously, the day of "E pluribus unum" has come and gone . . . in a puff of rainbow smoke.

And the unceremonious demise of "In God we trust" as our national motto goes without saying.

***

 

UPDATE: I forgot this one going around Facebook. Just what we all need, to take our moral guidance from "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Because wrestlers are so much more authoritative on these things than, you know, Jesus . . . or the Bible . . . or the pope . . . or catechisms . . . or the great philosophers and saints.

Because stupid.