The difference between can't and won't

But we, as a nation, we are left with some hard questions. Someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around. With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves -- our child -- is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice. And every parent knows there is nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet, we also know that with that child’s very first step, and each step after that, they are separating from us; that we won’t -- that we can’t always be there for them. They’ll suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments. And we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear.

And we know we can’t do this by ourselves. It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize, no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself. That this job of keeping our children safe, and teaching them well, is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community, and the help of a nation. And in that way, we come to realize that we bear a responsibility for every child because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours; that we’re all parents; that they’re all our children.

This is our first task -- caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we are meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children -- all of them -- safe from harm? Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know that they are loved, and teaching them to love in return? Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer is no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.

Since I’ve been President, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by a mass shooting. The fourth time we’ve hugged survivors. The fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims. And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and big cities all across America -- victims whose -- much of the time, their only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law -- no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society.

But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that -- then surely we have an obligation to try. 

-- President Barack Obama,
speaking at a Sunday night
memorial in Newtown, Conn.

Emilie Parker and dad

I agree with the president's sentiments, that we cannot accept that we are the kind of society where the wanton mass murder of little schoolchildren and other innocents is just the price of admission to "the greatest country on earth."

In fact, I would argue that any country where atrocities become commonplace -- and this is territory upon which the United States has trodden for some time now -- is no great country at all, much less the greatest. "American exceptionalism" may be alive and well, but it may well be an entirely different story than the propaganda spread by its most ardent cheerleaders

But then you have states like Louisiana, already perched atop the nation's gun-violence and child-welfare s*** lists, yet striving for greater perfection in sucking hard. Just in the last month and change, the state's voters have amended the constitution to make effective regulation of firearms all but legally impossible, while the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal balances the state budget on the backs of those lacking the decency to become well-off before losing their minds:

The reductions mark the fifth year of budget cuts in the middle of the fiscal year. The trimming started at the end of the governor’s first year in office, coinciding with a rare snowfall in Baton Rouge.

For the latest round of cuts, the governor was able to fill the gap without needing legislators’ approval. Nichols outlined a combination of spending cuts, found money and streamlining savings to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget.

Among the deepest cuts were at the state Department of Health and Hospitals and the state Department of Children and Family Services.

Doctors, hospitals, mentally ill patients, pregnant women and dying patients will be affected by the state’s financial problems.

State Sen. Sharon Broome, D-Baton Rouge, complained that the reductions affect departments that deal with the state’s most fragile residents. “I hope we can see these reductions with faces on them,” she told Nichols.

Nichols said the administration avoided across-the-board reductions that would have dealt heavier cuts to health care and higher education. Instead, she said, the governor made cuts and drew in dollars from a legal settlement, a prison closure and a self insurance fund.

Higher education received $22 million in reductions. Nichols said that is softened by tuition increases producing more money than expected.

Other reductions include:

• Contract reductions for health care providers who help the poor, the mentally ill and the drug-addicted. 

• A 1 percent cut in the rate that doctors and hospitals are paid by the state to care for the poor. 

• The elimination of dental benefits for pregnant women relying on the state for health care. 

• Possibly laying off 63 state government workers.

Additionally, the administration will use money in a maintenance fund to operate state parks. Domestic violence victims will move into hotels or seek shelter with their families, reducing the cost of residential care. Some children at risk for mental illness might not receive treatment.

Several legislators zeroed in on the hospice program cut.

State Sen. Dan Claitor, R-Baton Rouge, said the cut amounts to the state not assisting people on their death beds unless they are in a nursing home.

“That’s pretty rough,” Claitor said.

SO, I GUESS the answer to the president's question Sunday night would be that there's no question America can do better in preventing atrocities involving firearms, but that there's also no question that whole swaths of this country won't do better in that regard.

Not can't do better -- won't do better. There is a difference.

That difference is as big as the one between life and death.

American idol

“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss."

-- Ignatius J. Reilly

Teabonics

From the "you can't make this s*** up" department, we have the Tea Party Patriots' poetry corner:

I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW
BLIND OBAMA
YOU HAVE WAKEN UP A SLEEPING GIANT
WE THE PEOPLE UNITED WE STAND
AS ONE NATION
TO SAY NO
YOU MUST GO
WE THE PEOPLE SAY
NO YOU MUST GO
IMPEACH OBAMA
AND BRING HIM TO JUSTICE
IMPEACH IMPEACH
BRING HIM TO JUSTICE WITH ALL THE OTHER TRADERS
TO WE THE PEOPLE AND THE CONTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHO STAND TOGETHER AND WILL NOT FALL
PLAY WE MAY BUTT WHEN NEEDED WE COME STAMPEDING PROWD AMERICANS READY
TO FACE ANY ENEMIES FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC
WE THE PEOPLE SAY
THE CONTITUTION IS IN OUR HEARTS
ONLY A TRUE AMERICAN KNOWS ITS TRUE PATH AND WILL DEFEND UNTIL DEATH
YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOW'N FREEDOM WILL STAND FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE

Simply '70s: Hard-won wisdom born of sin

I always thought this was the best speech Richard Nixon ever gave.

Nearly 37 years on, I still remember watching it. And I remember being incredibly sad, though not as sad as my mother, who thought Nixon was the bee's knees and got railroaded by the communists.

But it was sad. It's never a happy affair when a man is brought to his knees, no matter how richly deserved and no matter how much his own doing.

IN AUGUST 1974, the republic was saved because the Constitution worked. Back then, no man was above the law. Even the president.

What was remarkable about this, Nixon's best speech, is that he could not have given it just days before. This was the speech of a broken man, a hated man, one who deep down inside knew he had done wrong.

It was a speech born of the wisdom of a sinner. It was the same wisdom David found after Nathan confronted him with his murderous sin -- the same grief later born of a heart broken by Absalom, the son who died in rebellion against him.

The wisdom of sin. And a heart softened by its brokenness.

We are a nation presently full of tragedy, and one that has seen much worse. We, however, are a nation with little sense of the tragic, but plenty taste for anger, strife, hatred and alienation.

We have yet to learn the one hard lesson Richard Nixon learned from the bitter fruit of his own sin:

"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."

Only we can do that to our pledges

Oh, boo f-ing hoo.

House speaker-to-be John Boehner says the president disrespected him by saying he took the taxpayers hostage so the rich could get their tax-cut due.

Did I mention "Oh, boo f-ing hoo"?

On one part of the Politico website, Boehner is whining about how mean Obama and the Democrats are to himself and the poor, poor Republicans:

In an interview with Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” for broadcast Sunday night on CBS, Boehner said Obama showed him “disrespect” by calling him a hostage-taker.

“Excuse me, Mr. President I thought the election was over,” Boehner said, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “You know, you get a lot of that heated rhetoric during an election. But now it's time to govern.”

MY HEART BLEEDS for the House minority leader. Frankly, I think Obama let him off too easy.

Look it, the guy ought to thank his lucky stars that the president didn't treat him like Republicans treat their own. One click away -- on another part of the Politico site -- there was this little item from Minnesota, you see:

In a dramatic display of the new Republican order, Minnesota’s state GOP banished 18 prominent party members — including two former governors and a retired U.S. senator — as punishment for supporting a third-party candidate for governor.

The stunning purge, narrowly passed by the state Republican central committee last weekend, suggests more than just a fit of pique: by banning some of the state’s leading moderates, the Minnesota GOP moved toward extinguishing a dying species of Republican in one of its last habitats.

Those exiled warned that the measure, which bans the 18 former members from participating in party activities for two years and bars them from attending the 2012 Republican National Convention, may provoke a backlash that undercuts the party’s competitiveness in a state that’s voted for the GOP presidential nominee just once in the past half century.

“The Republican party is trying to become ... you would call it introverted totalitarianism,” said former congressman and Gov. Al Quie, a onetime vice presidential prospect who plans to stick with the party despite the penalty. “It’s just plain dumb on their part. ... In the long run, if the party persists with this, [it's] going to just become smaller and smaller and eventually something else would come in its place.”

Among those rebuked along with Quie were former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger, former Gov. Arne Carlson and former state House Speaker David Jennings.

WELCOME to politics in the world's first nuclear banana republic.

We have Republicans in the provinces fighting an ideological war -- the "country clubbers" vs. the "totalitarians." Meanwhile, in the capital, we have the leader of the insurgency complaining that El Presidente said mean things while giving him what he wanted, instead of exiling him to Elba . . . or Saint Helena.

Take your pick.

Meanwhile, on Dallas TV

WFAA television in Dallas. Nov. 22, 1963.

A day in November in 1963

It's a big day in Dallas-Fort Worth this late November day in 1963. The president, vice president and first lady are in town.

WBAP radio is providing complete coverage of the presidential visit. An exciting day in the history of any city, to be sure!

North Texans will long remember this Nov. 22, I'll bet.

Never mind the bollocks

When a high-profile consultant in your own party starts recycling jokes he told at your expense during the 2008 campaign -- when working for your archrival -- you may be in some political peril, Barack Obama.

Especially when it's a really, really funny joke.

And even more so when it kinda, sorta has the ring of truth about it.

Then, when the White House gets all pissy and thin-skinned about a joke -- especially a good one that people think is kind of close to reality -- the butt of the joke just starts to look like a butt, period.

A rather humorless one, actually.


TAKE THIS story from CNN, for example:

Democratic strategist James Carville compared President Barack Obama to his democratic primary rival and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday, implying Obama needs to toughen-up.

"If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he'd have two," Carville said at a "Christian Science Monitor" breakfast discussion.

His comment was a response to whether Obama is taking strong enough stands on taxes and repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy.

Carville made a similar comment to "Newsweek" during the 2008 campaign season when he compared Clinton and Obama's toughness.

"If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two," he said.

He reacted to the comment on CNN's "John King, USA" Thursday.

"If I offended anybody, I am not sorry and I do not apologize," Carville told CNN's Chief National Correspondent John King.

THE WHITE HOUSE and senior Dems, according to King in the CNN video, "are outraged tonight (Thursday)." Well, that certainly violates a basic rule of politics, and life: "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."

President Obama can stop digging any time now.

The proper way to handle this would be 1) not to look like something traditionally paired with "balls," and 2) step out of character and summon your sense of humor. (Like, everybody's supposed to have one of those, right?)

An example: Pop in at the daily briefing and announce to the White House press corps -- in a basso profundo voice -- that you'd just had a productive meeting with the secretary of state. A good laugh defuses much.

Face it, when the most celebrated Democratic strategist's response to reports of your outrage over his political funny is "I am not sorry, and I do not apologize," you'd best start doing all the defusing you can regarding that H-bomb in the middle of your presidency.


P.S. TO CNN: If you're going to quote somebody -- especially somebody telling a a joke -- get the quote straight. All you had to do was . . . watch the videotape. Doesn't YouTube come through your Internets tubes in the CNN newsroom?

Obamma showinge his treu collors!!!

The following message is paid for by Outrage for Outrage's Sake 2010:

I think this videow showes the supposd "presiddente" Barak Hoosaine Obamma's treu collors!!! When the presiddentshul seel fell off the podiom, our Socshulist in Cheif thought it was funney!!!

"All of you no who I am." What arrogunce! Who does this Communiss impostur think he is? He thinkes he is funny and just has no respekt for the symmboles of our country!!!!!

This is bechuss, like a treu Muslin, he has no respekt for the offise of the presiddentcy and thinks America is a big Joke! THIS IS PRUFE THAT THIS MAN IS NOT A REEL AMERICAN-HE WAS BORN IN KENYUH!!!!!! He is juste like his Communiss African Father and thinks America is a Joke but thee last laufgh will be on him the Tea Party will take our Country back in thee elecshun!

And then thee peeople will overthrow his crooked Communiss dictator state in 2012!!!

Palin-O'Donnel 2012!!!!

The prez is shocked, SHOCKED. . . .

Given the appointments, actions and inactions of the Obama Administration over the last 10 months and change, the president's remarks to CBS' 60 Minutes seem to be, at a minimum, somewhat incongruous.

THIS IS the polite way of saying what a lot of people must be thinking right now, which goes something like: "You gotta be f***ing kiddin' me! He thinks anybody is f***in' buying this s***?!?"

The importance of not listening to what people say but, instead, watching what they do is highlighted by Matt Taibbi's magnum opus in the latest edition of Rolling Stone.

A socialist Norwegian conspiracy, no doubt

President Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Folks didn't think he had a chance so soon after becoming president. But you know what the campaign slogan was, don't you?

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which is in charge of the peace prize, cited Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." I am not entirely sure, but I think this means he won for being the "anti-Bush."

FROM AN EARLY dispatch by The Associated Press:

The stunning choice made Obama the third sitting U.S. president to win the Nobel Peace Prize and shocked Nobel observers because Obama took office less than two weeks before the Feb. 1 nomination deadline. Obama's name had been mentioned in speculation before the award but many Nobel watchers believed it was too early to award the president.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

The committee said it attached special importance to Obama's vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.

"Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play," the committee said.

GOOD ON our president. It would be nice if we could all take satisfaction in such an honor bestowed upon an American head of state and leave it at that.

Of course, you know that's not going to happen, right?

No, instead expect lots of wild-eyed conservative paranoids to start speculating about Scandinavian socialist plots. Cringe as nutty-ass Christian-radio ranters begin speculating about whether this means Obama is the Antichrist . . . not merely the anti-Bush. It will happen because that horse named Meme already has busted out of its stall.

AND WITH the country in the state it's in -- meaning it's in a "state" -- the president ought to grab all the early plaudits he can and revel in them. They may turn out to be of some consolation during what's sure to be a rocky, rocky ride the next few years.

Louisiana strikes again

Everything may be up to date in Kansas City, but it didn't even take a day after the inauguration of our first black president for Louisiana to reassert itself as the closest thing this country has to a Jurassic Park for crackers.

ONE WOULD THINK it'd be hard to top political consultant Mike Bayham's dismissing the Rev. Joseph Lowery -- co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and dean of the civil-rights movement -- as a clown:

I had a ticket to go, but my attitude was “been there, done that” during President George W. Bush’s two inaugurations. I would have probably been beaten, or to use the Old Testament manner of executing non-believers, stoned to death for erupting in laughter after the circus clown…I mean preacher…delivered his benediction, but more on that latter in this column.

(snip)

And then there was the money shot: not Barack HUSSEIN Obama’s inaugural address, but the closing prayer of Reverend Joseph Lowrey in which he ended it with a crude nursery rhyme that asked brown to stick around, the red man to get ahead, yellow to be mellow and, my favorite and what caused me to almost fall off the treadmill, for white to embrace what is right.

It was good to see the Reverend Jeremiah Wright was there in spirit if not in body. Nothing like spitting in the faces of white folks whose support was instrumental in putting Barack Obama in the Oval Office.

THERE'S NOTHING LIKE playing the racial-grievance game, only to prove the point to which you object. Oh . . . and it wasn't a nursery rhyme. It was the blues -- Big Bill Broonzy's "Black, Brown and White," to be exact.

And nothing says "circus clown" like the resumé of Joseph Lowery.

One of the organizers, with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955. Co-founder of the SCLC with King. Organizer of the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965.

Yeah, what a clown. And I guess the civil-rights movement was just a joke, right?

Republicans are such an erudite, tolerant and even-tempered bunch -- and none more so than Louisiana Republicans. I can't understand how it is they'll end up relegated to the sidelines of politics for years and years.

OF COURSE, the blog rantings of a cracker politico is jes' a warm up act in such a stet as the Gret Stet. The main "Fergit, hell" act came Wednesday in Baton Rouge, as chronicled by The Advocate:

State and federal authorities are investigating an incident in which a twine noose was found Wednesday morning on a black employee’s chair at the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

“This type of hateful behavior and hateful crime will not be tolerated,” said Mark Cooper, the agency’s director, during an afternoon news conference.

Cooper dubbed the noose a “gross violation of an individual’s right to work in a safe and positive environment.”

A female supervisor and her male coworker, both black, found the miniature noose, Cooper said.

Both were “rattled” by the discovery, he said.

State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson said at the news conference two State Police detectives and an FBI agent are interviewing everyone who had access to the office on Florida Boulevard.

Cooper said Wednesday was Homeland Security employees’ first day in their new offices after moving into a two-story office building from the four-story office next door.

The noose, which measures 8 inches long and 5 to 6 inches wide, was placed sometime between late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, Edmonson said.

OFFICIALS SAY there's no evidence of a link to Obama's inauguration but, given the timing, how could there not be?

It would make just about as much sense as saying there's no evidence of a link between disproportionate numbers of crackers, a lingering antipathy to the notion that "all men are created equal" and the state's permanent residency at the bottom of everything.

1963: A tale of two cities

I know fellow pro-lifers who are so verklempt about the pro-choice Barack Obama becoming president that they're going on a "media fast" this week.

Count me out. In other words, count me in the viewing audience when Obama becomes the 44th president of the United States.

I wish the incoming president well. I am praying for him.

LIKEWISE, I am praying that Obama might come to understand that the sort of bodily "autonomy" for some that can deny others the right to be born -- the very right to exist -- is a philosophical body blow to all that made it possible for him to become the first African-American to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And not only that, but a mortal blow to a political and spiritual metamorphosis that has allowed our new president even to be regarded as a human being . . . with all the rights and sanctity that accompany one's humanity.

That a black man could be regarded as a true human being wasn't always a given -- not even in my lifetime. When I was born in Baton Rouge, La., in March 1961, affording people of color all the rights and privileges of American citizenship was a flat-out ludicrous proposition.

And Louisiana, along with a host of other Southern states, went to the wall to preserve that wicked status quo.

WHAT AN AMAZING JOURNEY from then to now. To the inauguration of a black man as president -- as de facto leader of the free world. Despite our serious disagreements with soon-to-be President Obama on abortion, pro-lifers especially ought to rejoice in where that journey has taken us thus far.

We should praise the Almighty for the world of difference between Jan. 20, 2009, and the late fall of 1963, when I was not quite 4 and Barack Obama had just turned 3.

To illustrate how far that remarkable national journey has brought us -- and we're still not yet where we need to be -- it might be useful to review the tale of two cities. One would be Omaha, Neb., where I live now. The other would be my hometown, Baton Rouge.

Here's some of an article from the Dec. 17, 1963, issue of Look magazine. The headline:

THE NEGRO FACES NORTH

OMAHA, NEBRASKA:
THE NEW MOOD
SHOCKS THE CITY

BY SAM CASTAN
LOOK SENIOR EDITOR

Omaha, Nebr., has an easy-going temperament. The people who get along best there learned long ago that you don't ask for anything outright until you've passed the time of day. So Omaha was scarcely ready for the Negro Summer Revolt of 1963, and most folks were plumb shook when it hit.

"Why here?" many asked. Omaha has had a Negro state senator for years. One of the town's most prominent surgeons is Dr. Claude Organ, a Negro, who had no difficulty getting office space in the Medical Arts Building downtown. Negroes hold well-paying jobs in the packinghouses, Omaha's main industry. There are colored bus drivers, mail carriers and policemen. Mayor James Dworak in July set up a biracial committee of top-level white and Negro leaders to investigate and resolve alleged discrimination in housing, jobs, etc.

Why then, in the summer of 1963, did pray-ins, sit-ins, picket lines and threats of a boycott disturb the social and economic tranquillity of a solid town like Omaha?

"This town is sick, that's why," says the Rev. James T. Stewart, director of Social Action for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Omaha. "I'm not speaking of open sores, either — nothing as simple as the ghetto on the 'Near North Side,' where all but a handful of 30,000 Omaha Negroes live. No, our sickness is in the bloodstream — in our inner posture. We are an undemocratic city."

"It's worse than that," declares a Negro, the Rev. Kelsey Jones, pastor of the Cleaves Temple (Christian Methodist Episcopal Church). "There's no place Negroes can turn without being denied right of access. No house, no school, no job opportunity —except for those in the Near North Side, or the 'Neighborhood,' as we call it."

Last May, the Rev. Mr. Jones and several other young ministers formed the 4CL, or Citizens' Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties. "They barged into my office," angrily recalls Mayor Dworak, "with a series of outrageous demands. I offered to appoint one of them, the Rev. Rudolph McNair, to my biracial citizens' committee. Apparently, that wasn't enough, because they picketed the very first meeting of the committee. We won't stand for that here in Omaha."

Made up of Omaha's most influential citizens, the Mayor's Bi-racial Committee claims it is carefully laying the groundwork for the correction of Negro complaints. Says Morris E. Jacobs, a prosperous Omaha businessman and one of the leaders of the committee, "We're trying to set up an ideal that can serve as an example for the whole United States. And what happens? They picket! I got wind of it beforehand, and phoned Reverend McNair. I said. 'We didn't know about your grievances. Now that you've made them known, give us a chance to settle things and redeem ourselves with dignity — don't crowd us.'

(snip)

A handful of men control most of Omaha's money and businesses and set the city's political, social and moral climate. Almost everyone agrees that atop this small pyramid sits Peter Kiewit, the personable, easy-going native Omahan who presides over Peter Kiewit Sons' Co., one of the nation's largest construction firms. Kiewit, with Morris Jacobs, heads the employment subcommittee of the Mayor's biracial group. "We called in the heads of Omaha's 125 largest businesses," he says. "We requested more jobs for Negroes and complete cooperation in the Mayor's project. Jobs will be coming — we already have pledges from the business community.

"As for housing, I've seen little solid proof that Negroes want to move away from their own neighborhood. I happen to know that 135 FHA-owned houses are up for grabs in Omaha; each of these medium-priced houses is available to anyone who wants it. Not one Negro has applied. In time, I feel, as their leaders prepare them for better jobs and higher educational goals, many will apply. I don't think that certain activities of the 4CL are going to help at all. These demonstrations are bound to cause resentment, and there is a real danger that harassment and intimidation of businessmen will hinder or even set back their cause."

Between the urgent militants of the 4CL and the plodding moderates of the Mayor's Bi-racial Committee stands a Negro, Dr.. Claude Organ. Texas-born Organ, 36, and the father of six, is a distinguished academic surgeon, a professor of surgery at Creighton University, president of Omaha's Urban League and on the board of the Catholic Interracial Council. Organ lives in two worlds — the white one owned and operated by Omaha's power elite, and the black one enclosed within his skin. He has managed both skillfully.

It was Dr. Organ who, early last year, suggested to members of the Negro Ministerial Alliance that the time was right for a more concerted push than either the Urban League or the Omaha branch of the NAACP was equipped to make. The result was the 4CL, which splintered off to become the most active arm of Negro leadership in town. Organ himself, as a man deeply respected by both whites and Negroes in Omaha, is a member of the Mayor's Bi-racial Committee. "I know some people say I wear two hats. I just do what I can," he says.

In Omaha, the rules of the race game are known to everyone. Alfred C. Kennedy, the city's leading realtor, has said that he would inquire about property for a Negro buyer in a white neighborhood, but would not participate in the closing of the deal or accept any commission, to protect his firm against possible reprisals.

Daniel J. Monen, chairman of the Mayor's biracial housing subcommittee, adds, "I've run into a damned lot of inflamed white people." He urges his group to avoid extremism.

Thus, the ghetto way of life goes on in Omaha, and Negroes there grow increasingly impatient.

Peter Kiewit and Morris Jacobs have become special targets of the 4CL. In early September, Kiewit's newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, was silently ringed by picketing members of the group, which accused the World-Herald of employment bias and slanted reporting.

Jacobs called the demonstration "unfair," but Omaha Public Safety Director Chris Gugas, who had threatened to invoke the city ruling that prohibits unlicensed demonstrations, made no arrests.

According to Elizabeth Davis Pittman, an attractive Negro attorney. "The powers in this city are not so much angry as they are resentful because it is their consciences that are being picketed."

Those consciences are getting a workout. Though there is comparatively little social interaction between whites and Negroes in Omaha, the town's ordinary Negroes, so long docile and silent, have begun to speak out, now that the 4CL has prodded white Omahans into listening.

Last summer, when Omaha school superintendent Dr. Paul Miller cited "126 Negroes" in the school system, Mrs. Mildred Brownell challenged, "One hundred and twenty-six teachers?" As it turned out, the figure 126 included some 78 teachers; the rest were employed in custodial and other nonprofessional jobs.

Signs of change are small but promising. Sixteen Omaha clergymen of various faiths last July issued a "statement of purpose for action and a basis for involvement." Laymen, too. are beginning to see the problem as basically a moral one. A white newspaper reporter confides. "We've let ourselves be led by men who are business leaders — people who stress land values, property values, aesthetics — none of which have allowed us, so far, to see the reality of the Omaha Negro's plight. Well. we can't avoid seeing it now."

NOW, HERE'S WHAT it was like 1,000 miles to the south. From an article in Monday's edition of The (Baton Rouge) Advocate:

“When Obama takes the oath of office on Tuesday, part of Dr. King’s dream will be realized — we are finally judging a person by his character and not by the color of his skin,” said Freya Anderson Rivers.

Rivers, 62, principal of a Michigan elementary school, was one of four black students to integrate Baton Rouge’s Lee High School in 1963.

“So many people died and suffered to get Obama where he is today,” Rivers said. “What if we’d never had the bus boycott and Dr. King hadn’t come to Baton Rouge to find out how we’d been so successful, would we be where we are today? I don’t think we would.”

(snip)

Now with Obama’s election, those involved in the civil rights movement say the suffering they endured to change the law of the land and to change people’s hearts and minds was worth it.

“For so many years, I didn’t think that it was,” Rivers said. “But now I know our suffering was not in vain. I have hope that the country is changing. For years I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance, but I started saying it again the day after Obama was elected.”

In August 1963, Rivers planned to attend the March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have A Dream” speech.

“But we had to cancel the trip when the school district said I had to register for school on the same day as the march,” she said.

Rivers, who was a 16-year-old senior at the time, was one of four students — all of whom had top grades and came from stable families — to integrate Lee High School.

And that year of school was a harrowing, nightmarish experience, she said.

“The four of us were pushed and shoved when we walked down the hallways, we were called names, the other kids spit on us, and when we sat down at a desk in a classroom, all of the other students moved away,” she said.

When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, U.S. marshals, who feared for the Lee High School Four’s safety, removed the students from school that day.

“As the marshals tried to get us out of the school, a mob surrounded us. The teachers and the marshals had to encircle us to get us to the car,” Rivers said.

As they pulled away from the school, someone threw a bucket of feces and urine at the car, she said.

A first-chair clarinetist at her former school, Southern High School, Rivers had to fight to get to play in the Lee High School band.

When Rivers won a gold medal for a clarinet solo at a state competition, her name was never announced with the other winners’ names.

And Rivers brought her mother to tears during one graduation activity.

“Everyone was walking out in pairs,” the high school honor graduate said. “But no one would walk with me. So, I stood there until everyone else walked out and then I walked out alone like a bride. The crowd booed me.”

Rivers said she will attend Obama’s inauguration.

“You couldn’t keep me away,” she said. “I missed the March on Washington and I plan to make that up by going to the inauguration. There’s a lot of justice to that.”

YES, there is.

The difference between Chiquita and plantains

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(snip)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn pity, that.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSA

I don't know how to beat a dead horse with any degree of panache, nor do I have the inclination to try, but the dead horse of America's present proto-fascist torture regime -- alas -- does still require more flogging.

And it needs to be kept up until the impeachment proceedings and criminal trials begin -- or until the war-crimes trials begin in the Hague, Netherlands. Whichever comes first.

That is the ugly business of democracy which, unfortunately, we have no stomach for at present. Along this present path lay tyranny.

I really have nothing else to add. I'll just let MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and law professor Jonathan Turley fill you in on the particulars.

HAT TIP: Catholic and Enjoying It.

You can fool all the people some of the time . . .

I remember when I first came to the wilds of eastern Nebraska 20 years ago . . . the wife an' me polin' our flatboat up the Missouri River to a spot where we could unload our gear just upstream of the rough settlement of Omaha.

FROM THERE, we would stake out our little homestead a few miles to the west. Yeah, we did have a little skirmish with some hostile savages, but their bows and arrows were no match for the missus' and my bolt-action 30.06 deer rifles.

We built a nice sod house out here on the prairie . . . only had to live in our buffalo-skin teepee for three or four months that winter. It's amazin' how warm a wigwam can be when you have 30-foot snowdrifts for windbreak and icy insulation.

Ah, I miss the homesteadin' days of '88. It hasn't been the same since we got runnin' water, e-lectric lights and a flush toilet.

Who knows? Maybe with my resume of sod-bustin', Injun fightin' and conquerin' the wild frontier, I could get myself e-lected president.

Politics makes you stupid

This, from the New York Times, is a perfect example of why I have an almost visceral negative reaction to political activists of any sort.

It is, in a word, "idolatry":

But Mr. Richardson stopped returning Mr. Clinton’s calls days ago, Mr. Clinton’s aides said. And as of Friday, Mr. Richardson said, he had yet to pick up the phone to tell Mr. Clinton of his decision.

The reaction of some of Mr. Clinton’s allies suggests that might have been a wise decision. “An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.

“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.

Mr. Richardson said he called Mrs. Clinton late on Thursday to inform her that he would be appearing with Mr. Obama on Friday to lend his support.

“It was cordial, but a little heated,” Mr. Richardson said in an interview.

BETRAYAL? JUDAS ISCARIOT? That kind of nuclear language over a freakin' political endorsement?

James Carville -- and, frankly, the rest of Washington, D.C., too -- needs to get a damn life. What we have here is a failure of perspective.

It's not like Richardson betrayed his lord and savior. One, Hillary Clinton -- it is obvious -- cannot even save herself, and her ex-prez hubby ain't gonna raise her campaign from the dead.

Two, Barack Obama ain't the savior, either. Saviors have no need of Bill Richardson's endorsement.

Three, Carville needs to go home, pour himself a double of something mighty fine, pat his child on the head, put on some sweet music, make out with his wife and thank God for his blessings. In that is found the meaning of life.

In the Washington fever swamps is found a bad case of nothing good.

Southerners know exactly what this is

Andrew Sullivan, over at his Daily Dish, thinks the above anti-Barack Obama video is an instance of GOP "swift-boating" of the Democratic presidential candidate in the wake of the hullabaloo over his ex-pastor's sometimes-incendiary sermons.

It's not that.

"Swift-boating," named for the ginned-up controversy over 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry's days as a Navy "swift boat" commander in Vietnam, is an ideological assassination. The above hit on Obama is racial.

That makes it race-baiting, not "swift-boating." Down in Oxford, Miss. -- home of one of the video's creators, former Laura Ingraham Show producer Lee Habeeb, now an executive with the right-wing Salem Radio Network -- there is a more "colorful" term for the tactic, which is as old as Jim Crow.

The difference between "swift-boating" and race-baiting boils down to what we don't see in that odious little YouTube offering -- a single white face.

IF HABEEB and his cronies merely meant to send the message that the U.S. senator from Illinois is a wild-eyed, unpatriotic lefty, why not juxtapose the video of Obama's interviews and Wright's red-hot rhetoric with egregious clips of at least a few egregious white people through the ages?

You know, like hippie anti-war protesters from the '60s waving Viet Cong flags. Like Abbie Hoffman. Like Jerry Rubin. Like Jane Fonda in Hanoi. Or Sean Penn with Saddam.

Like the Dixie Chicks on foreign soil cracking on the neocons' lord and savior, George W. Bush.

No, instead we get "unpatriotic" images of "ingrate" black men -- Tommie Smith and John Carlos, fists raised at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City . . . Malcolm X . . . all to a Public Enemy rap soundtrack. All we needed to make the argument ideological and not racial was just a single honky.

Somewhere.

We didn't get one.

And Habeeb and his fellow anonymous White Citizens' Council wannabes aren't fooling this Southern boy with bull hockey like this. From Jonathan Martin's blog on the Politico web site:

Asked directly if he believes Obama is a patriotic American, Habeeb said "absolutely." But he added that "his patriotism is not my kind of patriotism."

"I believe he is hiding his Marxism from the American people," Habeeb said.

And despite the inclusion of Malcolm X, the black Olympians and a rap song by Public Enemy, Habeeb claimed he was not being suggestive.

"I didn’t do this to make him like a scary black man."

LOOK FOR the head fake. The White Citizens' Councils were all about fighting commies and pinkos . . . whose tactics, we were to believe, centered on wrecking America from within through the mixing of the races.

This YouTube video was all about the "scary black man." And you can blame it all on some scary white men.

Maybe Mother McCain coulda fielded that one

Remember the pathetic spectacle of Ronald Reagan, in videotaped depositions, trying to keep straight exactly what the hell had gone on in the Iran-Contra affair?

Well, at least the poor old man knew that it involved a) the Iranians and b) the Contras in Nicaragua. This gives the late president a leg up on presidential wannabe Sen. John McCain, who has demonstrated he has absolutely, positively no idea what the hell is going on in our latest Middle Eastern mess.

The New York Times reports on why we ought to be very, very afraid:

Senator John McCain’s trip overseas was supposed to highlight his foreign policy acumen, and his supporters hoped that it would showcase him in a series of statesmanlike meetings with world leaders throughout the Middle East and Europe while the Democratic candidates continued to squabble back home.

But all did not go according to plan on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when Mr. McCain, fresh from a visit to Iraq, misidentified some of the main players in the Iraq war.

Mr. McCain said several times in his visit to Jordan — in a news conference and in a radio interview — that he was concerned that Iran was training Al Qaeda in Iraq. The United States believes that Iran, a Shiite country, has been training and financing Shiite extremists in Iraq, but not Al Qaeda, which is a Sunni insurgent group.

Mr. McCain said at a news conference in Amman that he continued to be concerned about Iranians “taking Al Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.” Asked about that statement, Mr. McCain said: “Well, it’s common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.”

It was not until he got a quiet word of correction in his ear from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was traveling with Mr. McCain as part of a Congressional delegation on a nearly weeklong trip, that Mr. McCain corrected himself.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. McCain said, “the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda.”

Mr. McCain has based his campaign in large part on his assertion that he is the candidate best prepared to deal with Iraq, and the Democrats wasted little time in jumping on his misstatement to question his knowledge and judgment.

I KNOW THE GOP wants to be taken seriously -- despite its track record of corruption, cronyism, horndoggedness and staggering incompetence in governance.

Putting forth a presidential nominee that leaves thinking voters unsure of whether to start laughing hysterically or start thinking seriously about emigration is not the way to recover lost respect.

Back when I was 4 . . . and cruel

I am why the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is so angry.

I also am why it's such a tragedy that Barack Obama's friend and former pastor has let his anger -- and he does have every good reason to be damned angry -- define him.

I am white. I grew up in, and was indoctrinated by, the segregated South. I went to a legally segregated public school until fourth grade. And, as a child, everybody I knew was about as racist as a late-June day is long.

Black folks were "niggers" -- at least in the lexicon of the common . . . like me and mine. You didn't go to school with them, it was illegal to marry them, they got all the jobs that were "beneath" white people and -- when it was your time to go -- you didn't get sent on your way via the same church, funeral home or graveyard.

It's just the way things were in Baton Rouge, La., when I came on the scene 47 years ago next Monday. It remained that way, in slowly diminishing thoroughness, up to the time I reached adulthood. And some of it hangs on to this day.

THIS MORNING, the Democratic presidential candidate -- in so much hot water over what his pastor said and when did Obama know he said it -- gave a masterful speech on race relations in America. It may have been the most blunt and honest speech on the matter I've ever heard a politician give.

Louisiana Gov. Earl Long may have given a more succinct, more colorful, more imperfect and more courageous version of that speech before a wild-eyed bunch of segregationists in the state Senate, but that was nearly two years before I was born. It got him thrown in a Texas nuthouse . . . so he couldn't exercise his gubernatorial power from his rubber room.

Barack Obama, at long last, has said what so long has needed to be said . . . in the manner it needed to be said. It's important, and his life -- and my life -- testify to why it's so important.

Having been born into a racist family in a segregated state, I was indoctrinated into America's original sin from my first moments of awareness. I did about the worst thing you could do to an African-American man -- at least, the worst thing short of murder or extreme physical violence -- by the time I was 4 years old.

I remember that I was sick, and that the doctor had called in a prescription to Andrew's Rexall Drugs. In the mid-1960s, drugstores still delivered. And we all know who the "delivery boys" were, at least in the segregated South.

SOON ENOUGH, there was a knock at the door. Back then, our house had no air conditioning. On that warm day, all the windows were wide open, and there was little fear that someone was going to burst through the screen door to rob, rape and kill you.

So the delivery man heard well when I ran toward the kitchen, yelling at the top of my lungs.

"Mama, the drugstore nigger's here!"

I think my mother had decency enough to be embarrassed as the man took her money and handed over the prescription as he muttered, "I'm not a nigger." I wonder what that poor man must have felt -- what a man old enough to be my father felt -- when this little white boy was blithely, naturally as he breathed in the air, running around the house announcing the presence of the fill-in-the-blank "nigger."

What does it do to a man to be so cavalierly dehumanized even by a small child? What does it do to a small child to so cavalierly dehumanize a man he ought to be calling "sir"? At least in a more rightly ordered society.

What does it do to a country when so much of what is considered "normality" is in reality cruel and inhuman?

It warps it, is what it does. It perpetuates an endless feedback loop of dysfunction.

I grew up in a sick society, as have many in this country. It takes a lifetime of hard work, introspection and (frankly) grace to overcome that. I'm still working on it.

Barack Obama's working on it, albeit from a different angle than I am. So is, I suspect, Jeremiah Wright, who comes from the perspective of that ill-fated drugstore delivery man . . . though it's obvious he has more work to do. Hurtful things -- the immense human tragedy of America's original sin -- have molded the retired pastor and led to anger that is righteous . . . to an extent.

BUT WHEN IT defines a man -- when it defines large segments of society -- it is no longer righteous. It just adds to the tragedy. Like the tragedy of a presidential candidate potentially going down in flames because he gave an angry old friend the benefit of the doubt.

Race (and racism) always has been a complicated matter in this country. And nowhere in this country has it been more complicated than in the Deep South.

I, the Caucasian son of racist children of racist parents in a racist land, just might be -- for all I know -- related to the angry (and black) Rev. Wright. I mean, if Barack Obama is kin to Dick Cheney, anything is possible.

A great uncle of mine was disowned by his family for marrying a Creole woman in New Orleans. Disowned by my grandfather who, I'm told, used to laugh about sleeping with black women who were good enough as sexual playthings but just not good enough to be a wife.

Or to treat as a human being.

I JUST FOUND OUT I have a black first cousin on the other side of the family. I wonder how many African-American aunts or uncles I might have on the philandering grandfather's.

And I wonder whether, in some cruel twist of fate, I might have been calling my own flesh and blood "nigger" when I was 4 -- back when evil was normative.