Bull Conner lives

Plus ça change . . .



. . . plus c'est la même chose . . .



. . . et plus c'est la même chose.

Capitalism's storm troopers

Me on Oct. 12:

Contrary to the propaganda on the right, the Occupy Wall Street people aren't just a collection of angry Marxists, anarchists and free spirits looking for an excuse to take off their clothes. From what I can see, there are a lot of "normal" people out there, too -- folks who tried to play by the rules and got burned by a system with an ace up its sleeve.

Their dignity is under assault, their checking accounts are depleted, and their options are few amid the Great Recession. It is them I feel for. I feel for the eccentrics, too -- just more in a "That's just Junior. Don't hurt him -- he's odd, but he's harmless" kind of way.

Now here's what I fear.

Some Angry Marxist Guy -- or maybe some Breitbart vigilante, some self-appointed defender of capitalism and Americanism -- is going to do something stupid. And then some cop is going to do something stupid.

And then some ordinary Joe -- peacefully taking it to the streets because the street is all that's left for the redress of grievances -- is going to be the one killed by the cop's stupidity.

I remember the '60s and how cities burned after just such a scenario. Think of what could happen in this tinderbox of a country we've built for ourselves, where those at the top have everything to lose and too many down below have nothing left to lose.

AND NOW cops in Oakland, Calif., have fired a tear-gas canister -- point blank -- into the skull of an Iraq War veteran peacefully protesting the thus-successful insurgency by crony capitalists against the principles of social justice and equality under the law.

From Digital Journal:

Scott Olsen, a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war, suffered a cracked skull during a police crackdown on Oakland Occupy protesters Tuesday. Now, demonstrators are taking that up as a central rallying point, mulling over calling for a Nov. 2 general strike.

An Occupy protester in Oakland carried a sign saying, "Ask Scott Olsen What He Thinks about Homeland Security". The 24-year old Olsen was critically injured Tuesday night when he was hit in the head with a projectile either thrown or shot by police using tear gas to clear protesters. He suffered a fractured skull in the incident.

And although the New York Times reports that Mr. Olsen’s condition is improving, his injury and the symbolism of a Marine who faced enemy fire unscathed only to be attacked at home is resulting in a surge of sympathy, as well as calls for solidarity among the scores of Occupy encampments everywhere. The Iraq Veterans Against the War, of which Olsen is a member, say that Thursday night, camps in some major cities including New York, Chicago and Philadelphia are going to participate in a vigil for Mr. Olsen. The groups director says,

“I think people would have been outraged even had this been a civilian, but the fact that he survived two tours of duty and then to have this happen to him, people are really upset about that.”

WHEN WE make an idol of an economic system -- in this case, capitalism -- it is no surprise when its high priests start offering up human sacrifices to their god. What the Occupy movement is is the realization that the sacrifice is us -- the "99 percent."

Eleven score and 16 years ago, Americans took up arms against those who would sacrifice them to the great mercantile gods of the British Empire. Today, homegrown tyrants in Washington, on Wall Street and in Oakland's city hall dare frustrated, overwhelmed and angry Americans to do the same.

Now we see the corrupt puppet masters who pull the strings of our dysfunctional American empire setting local "internal security forces" even against veterans who survived multiple tours in this nation's disastrous wars fought for specious reasons. May they all -- somehow -- reap exactly what they've sown before a bloodbath begins.

Oily rags waiting for a lit match

Violent Marxist Revolution Now Guy, meet Andrew Breitbart and the Water the Tree of Liberty People.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right . . . here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Who knew Gerry Rafferty was a prophet?

Ultimately, all of life is a big version of a college Free Speech Alley. Of course, this is no debating society or bitch session in the sheltered world of the American university. No, this s*** done got real.

This is the America of soaring unemployment and political warfare. This is the America where dreams go to die and outrage comes to live.

In this Era of Ill Will, where massive consumerist appetites and burgeoning corporate greed face off with minuscule wallets and fading hope for the future, something's gotta give. We don't know just yet what that will be.

But something will.

And some freak show on the fringes -- either one -- is just waiting to throw a lit match into a pile of oily rags.


CONTRARY to the propaganda on the right, the Occupy Wall Street people aren't just a collection of angry Marxists, anarchists and free spirits looking for an excuse to take off their clothes. From what I can see, there are a lot of "normal" people out there, too -- folks who tried to play by the rules and got burned by a system with an ace up its sleeve.

Their dignity is under assault, their checking accounts are depleted, and their options are few amid the Great Recession. It is them I feel for. I feel for the eccentrics, too -- just more in a "That's just Junior. Don't hurt him -- he's odd, but he's harmless" kind of way.

Now here's what I fear.

Some Angry Marxist Guy -- or maybe some Breitbart vigilante, some self-appointed defender of capitalism and Americanism -- is going to do something stupid. And then some cop is going to do something stupid.

And then some ordinary Joe -- peacefully taking it to the streets because the street is all that's left for the redress of grievances -- is going to be the one killed by the cop's stupidity.

I remember the '60s and how cities burned after just such a scenario. Think of what could happen in this tinderbox of a country we've built for ourselves, where those at the top have everything to lose and too many down below have nothing left to lose.

DO YOU think that a country in which "terminating" defenseless fetuses is a constitutional right and "Let him die!" passes for somebody's health-care policy isn't much up for an ideology-driven bloodbath between the able-bodied? You'd better think again. It's in our DNA, both as Americans and members of a woefully fallen human race.

All it takes is 1 percent to start a fire that consumes the other 99.

Apocalypse Night in Canada

O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot rage in all thy sons command.
With flaming cars we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
God help our lads burn Vancouver, B.C.!
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.
O Canada, we lose our s*** for thee.

Remembering

Before we end this anniversary night, let us remember. . . .

Happiness is a pissing match over a warm gun

“Expanding the context of the attack to blame and to infringe upon
the people’s Constitutional liberties is both dangerous and ignorant,” she added. “The irresponsible assignment of blame to me, Sarah Palin or the TEA Party movement by commentators and elected officials puts all who gather to redress grievances in danger.” “Especially within hours Limbaugh railed against the left’s attempts to “massage” the shooting “for their political benefit,” saying Democrats were just waiting for an excuse to “regulate out of business their political opponents. . . . I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in the Obama administration or some FCC bureaucrat or some Democrat congressman has it already written up, such legislation, sitting in a desk drawer somewhere just waiting for the right event for a clampdown. . . . They have been trying this ever since the Oklahoma City bombing.” And David Brock, CEO of the liberal watchdog Media Matters, wrote an open letter to Rupert Murdoch calling on him to fire or rein in Beck and Palin for their use of violent rhetoric on Fox News. “Beck and Palin are two of Fox’s most recognizable figures,” Brock wrote. “Before this heartbreaking tragedy in Arizona, you were either unwilling or unable to rein in their violent rhetoric. But now, in the wake of the killings, your network must take a stand.” “I’m not playing politics,” Beck said on his radio show Tuesday. He said he had “softened” his rhetoric over the past two years. “Nobody wants to recognize this. Why? Because it hurts their dialogue.” "There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal. And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those “calm days” when political figures literally settled their differences with dueling pistols? In an ideal world all discourse would be civil and all disagreements cordial. But our Founding Fathers knew they weren’t designing a system for perfect men and women. If men and women were angels, there would be no need for government." While it would be impossible to top the self-centered offensiveness of today's Sarah Palin video -- where she used the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords to peddle her message of victimhood -- Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) gave it his best shot, but could only manage a trifecta of stupidity. of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Should we have expected anything else? Four days after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that left six dead and fourteen wounded, and on the day that Congress and the President will honor the victims of this tragedy, Sarah Palin just happens to choose today to assure America that she is among the victims. In a carefully orchestrated video, complete with a large American flag that apparently flutters next to her fireplace, Palin quickly gets her sympathy for the victims and their families out of the way so she can get to the real reason for her message -- to attack the debate that has arisen about the role violent rhetoric so commonly used among elected Republicans, their media surrogates, and of course Palin herself, may have played in last Saturday's tragedy. A California man was arrested on Wednesday morning for threatening to kill Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington State, as the shootings in Tucson sparked impassioned conversation about Congressional security on Capitol Hill. Charles Habermann, 32, of Palm Springs, Calif., was arrested for phone calls he made in December to Mr. McDermott’s office in which he threatened to kill Mr. McDermott, as well as the congressman’ss friends and family, and to put the congressman “in the trash.”

"What we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other."

-- President Obama

Nice thought. Too late.

We can only imagine

Surveying the west Omaha landscape on a snowy Sunday night, one could contemplate the quiet, feel the biting January chill and mistake the world for one at peace.

One might imagine his fellow Americans -- all of them -- gazing at the powdery comforter pulled over a manicured suburban scene, grateful for the beauty of it all.

One might get lost in the nature-imposed tranquility of such a night and imagine that an anger-crazed teenager hadn't, just a few days ago, shot and killed his assistant principal.

Hadn't shot and wounded his principal.

Hadn't shot at and missed a custodian as he fled the scene of the crime -- a high school just miles away from this peaceful sight.

Lost in a gentle snowfall, engulfed in the soft glow of a leaden January sky, one's thoughts have difficulty embracing the notion of an anger so intense, so soul-deadening, so hope-destroying it would demand that a young man jam a Glock up against his own head, then pull the trigger in a bid for oneness with the abyss.

TAKING IN this wintry vista, one struggles with the vision of a paranoiac snapping an ammo clip into another handgun, in another American city far away, then taking aim at a congresswoman, then pulling the trigger, authorities say. Pulling it again, and again, and again, we hear -- like some sort of self-appointed destroyer of entire worlds.

Appearances can deceive. We are tempted to think the falling snow might somehow forever bury -- mystically obliterate -- the blight upon our land. That the ugliness within us might not survive the beauty without.

Eventually, though, the snow clouds exhaust themselves. Eventually, the light shines upon the illusion and melts it away.

Eventually, we must deal -- Might deal? Can we deal? -- with the muck and the grime.

Maybe.

Maybe we'll just close our eyes, trying not to notice the stink of that which molders around us. And we'll wait for the next snowfall . . . for the next blessed illusion.

Your Daily '80s: You say goodbye, and I say. . . .

It was 30 years ago today, the world stopped to pray . . . and though I don't really want to stop the show, I thought that you might like to know that the singer's going to sing a song, and he wants you all to sing along:

All we are saying is give peace a chance. . . .

All we are saying is give pizza chance

LSU's 459 Commons. Wednesday, 1:30 p.m.

A billion years ago, when I was a poor student, this kind of behavior was reserved for the student section at Tiger football games. No, really. When I was a freshman in '79, a fight broke out and someone went flying past my head. Down the steps.

Airborne.

I blame the spread of this kind of bad behavior to campus dining facilities -- and note that the video contains many F-bombs . . . screamed, no less -- on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his budgetary broadax.

Why?

WHY THE F*** NOT?!?

Your Daily '80s: All the lonely people

The morning after, on Good Morning America.

It's 7 a.m., Dec. 9, 1980. Here's David Hartman.

Meanwhile, in the U.K. . . .

Hours after John Lennon's murder in New York, a shocked Great Britain sat down to watch this memorial on BBC 1's Nationwide program.

Roll the videotape. . . .

A terrible day in the life

I always heard these things in my bedroom in Baton Rouge -- news of shocking deaths in the dark of the night.

In 1978, I was in high school, up late and listening to the radio when I heard the pope was dead. A month and a half later, I was up late working on homework and listening to the radio -- WFMF -- when I heard a report that the pope was dead. I thought somebody had screwed up and put on an old newscast.

In 1980, I was a sophomore in college. The night of Dec. 8, I was up cramming for finals, listening to the radio. The DJ came on with the shocking bulletin -- John Lennon was dead, shot outside his apartment building in New York. He read the news today . . . oh boy.

Oh, God, no.

Please, God, no.

The death of the pope was big (as was the death of the other pope), but I wasn't Catholic then. The murder of John Lennon was shattering.

The pope was an old man in Rome. He was the vicar of Christ, but he was a distant one back then -- a guy you read about in the papers, or perhaps saw on the TV news once in a while.

John Lennon . . . the Beatles . . . they had been a daily presence in my life -- a pervasive part of the culture in which I had marinated since the age of 3. John, Paul, George and Ringo were the soundtrack of my earthly existence.


IN 1964, my Aunt Sybil and Uncle Jimmy gave me a copy of Meet the Beatles. I had me some Beatles singles, too.

In 1966, John told an interviewer the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, which arguably was true. Truth, however, is no defense against public indignation when veracity meets unpopularity -- people like funhouse-mirror images of themselves a lot better when everybody knows the mirror is all screwy and not him.

Then, John Lennon suddenly was a communist or something, and Mama busted up all my Beatles records. That's how we showed our esteem for the second person of the Holy Trinity back then, as opposed to going to church.


WHEN I was old enough to think for myself -- and to buy my own damned record albums -- the Beatles were back. Big time.

John was always the challenging Beatle. The one most likely to piss you off -- and to make you think. I rather like how he'd sometimes mess with your head, and it was funniest when people didn't get how funny it all was.

Like "Imagine." It's funny to see religious Republicans enthusiastically singing along with "Imagine," a song Lennon once described as "virtually the Communist Manifesto." (Well, OK. Not every Republican.)

We didn't always agree with this presence in our lives -- hell, we didn't always understand this musical fixture of ours -- but we always had to give him credit for honesty, just like we always had to give him credit for amazing songs. We couldn't not give him his due for the music of of our lives.

And now, Dec. 8, 1980, at about 10 o'clock at night. . . .

Suddenly, it was like the soundtrack of my life had been left sitting in the rear window of my '76 Vega. It had warped. It didn't sound right.

A constant presence wasn't, not anymore.

I heard the news 30 years ago today. Oh boy, nothing has been the same since. And it hurts.

Still, it hurts.

More politics today

To be scrupulously fair, it ain't just the teabaggers behaving very badly.

Above, in a St. Louis incident quickly picked up by Fox News Channel a year ago and capitalized on by tea partiers as an example of Barack Obama's "goon squads," we are shown an incident that put the "thugs" in the term "union thugs."

And, a year later, that Missouri "town hall beatdown" is being dragged out as an example that the mainstream media is playing up the Rand Paul incident while ignoring liberal violence. Guess who's saying "Well . . . they do it, too!"

You get three guesses. The first two don't count.

WHILE I'M at it, here's another video of what seems to be an SEIU organizer attacking a supporter of a rival union at a California hospital last February:


WHY IS IT the more everyone bleats about "tolerance," the more intolerance we get of . . . well, everything.

Somehow, someway Americans will learn to live up to what we like to tell foreigners about the United States, or we are going to make Bosnia in the mid-'90s look like a walk in the park.

Politics today

Don't listen to them lib'ruls in the lamestream media -- it wasn't as bad as it looks.

Oh, OK.

The volunteer with Rand Paul's Republican U.S. Senate campaign who stepped on the head of a liberal activist and pinned her face to the concrete said Tuesday the scuffle was not as bad as it looked on video and blamed police for not intervening.

"I'm sorry that it came to that, and I apologize if it appeared overly forceful, but I was concerned about Rand's safety," Tim Profitt told The Associated Press.

A judge will decide whether Profitt should face criminal charges.

YOU HEARD the Rand Paul militia. Everybody move along; nothing to see here.

By January, we'll probably witness the caning of lawmakers on the Senate floor. Again.

Abandon hope

Here's a bit of Monday's Channel 2 news from home -- "home" being Baton Rouge.

Some other news involved downtown Baton Rouge becoming something of a free-fire zone -- toll so far, two dead, one wounded -- a local school system allegedly in violation of state contract-bidding laws, the question of whether or not Hawker-Beechcraft will up and move its aircraft plant to the city from Wichita, the state's ongoing fiscal nightmare and the ongoing dismantling of Louisiana State University and the rest of higher education.

THIS is what people care about, however, and thus it led the evening newscast:


ABANDON HOPE all ye who enter Louisiana.

Or, as Kenny Rogers says, "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away and know when to run."

Forget that lede. Baton Rouge is home in the sense I was born and grew up there. In that, I had no choice. I do, however, retain just enough affection for the home of my youth to be furious at what I observe from the safe distance of 1,100 miles.

And though Baton Rouge is "home," I live in Omaha now -- a Nebraskan by choice for more than two decades. There are reasons for that (see above).

And I am home. Unabashedly, unequivocally and without quotation marks.


UPDATE: Originally had the wrong clip for the second video. That's fixed now.

As feds move in, snitches get . . . sued?

If not for the tireless efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice, Louisiana would. . . .

Sorry, finishing that lede would take my imagination to places no man's imagination should have to go. The U.S. State Department would have to issue urgent "travel advisories."

So, without scaring ourselves by speculating on a Gret Stet without ongoing, massive intervention by the feds, let's just say the dance card of Justice lawyers and FBI agents just picked up one more two-step. And it all has to do with the "proactive policing" Baton Rouge cops engaged in after Hurricane Katrina.

NATURALLY, the locals have taken offense at the offense taken by New Mexico and Michigan troopers over Baton Rouge cops' "law enforcement" practices after the storm, accounts of which -- more than four years later -- have led to the federal civil-rights investigation. Today's story in The Advocate has this choice passage:

Asked why law enforcement officers from other states would lie about what they saw Baton Rouge police doing, LeDuff has said he suspects the troopers wanted to be where the action was.

“Everybody who came here wanted to be in New Orleans, where all of this was going on, to rescue, to stop the looting, to stop the people from shooting at helicopters,” he has said. “I don’t think people wanted to come to Baton Rouge. We weren’t the story.

Cpl. Cleveland Thomas, one of the officers disciplined because of the troopers’ complaints, told Police Department investigators the allegations lodged against him were false and the New Mexico officer made them because he was “scared and wanted to go home.”

Olson, the New Mexico spokesman, said Thursday he found the comments in the newspaper’s story “very disturbing” and “that clearly is not the case.”

He said his officers volunteered to leave their families and jobs to come help the people of Louisiana and that “it’s difficult when baseless accusations like that are made.”

Olson said he hopes the U.S. Justice Department has a “thorough and successful” investigation.

He added he’s heard from various Baton Rouge media outlets that the Baton Rouge Union of Police Local 237 is considering filing a lawsuit against his agency because of the complaints it filed against the Police Department.

Chris Stewart, president of the police union, said during the March 24 “Jim Engster Show” on WRKF radio that the union is “researching every possible avenue that we can pursue in order to clear the names of our officers.”

“If it involves a lawsuit, then we are going to do that,” Stewart said on the radio show. “We are waiting now for our attorneys to come back with some decisions or opinions.”

Stewart told WAFB-TV on March 23 that “to be called racist and just rogue cops and all the allegations that were made, it’s offensive to us to be called this. We needed to clear the air with the public as best we can.”

BASICALLY, what we have here is the bizarre confluence of a total breakdown in "Southern hospitality" and Baton Rouge cops internalizing the ghetto code of "snitches get stitches." Being that a) the Yankee cops went home long ago and b) the feds are watching, the locals are considering trying to, alternatively, just shake down the "snitches" in a court of law.

Or what passes for one in the Gret Stet.

After reading the Advocate piece, my wife and I were discussing our shared incredulity at Baton Rouge's official incredulity that outsiders might say awful things about how its Bubbas in blue roll down there on the bayou.

That's when it occurred to me that my wife's incredulity stems from being a native Midwesterner, and that mine stems from, after 20-plus years up here, having turned into one myself. "My God," I told her, "they think they're normal!"

OF COURSE they do. They think it's not only normal to harass and "beat down" whom they please when they please -- and, to be fair, this isn't a Louisiana-only cop pathology -- but that it's absolutely incredible that anyone would take exception, which pretty much is a Bayou State pathology.

And, hell, that might be absolutely normal-- in a Caribbean, banana republic-y kind of way -- except for that little Louisiana Purchase thing a couple of centuries back. But this ain't Haiti, and it ain't In the Heat of the Night, either.

It's the United States. It's 2010. And, God willing, the Justice Department will be pointing out to the special-ed students of constitutional democracy -- yet again -- that's just not how we Americans roll nowadays.

On Twitter today

Click on screenshots to see at full size.

As the health-care reform bill nears an up-or-down vote in the U.S. House, the right-wing moonbats have come out in full force.

And some of them are threatening . . . force.


Below is a close up of the tweet-madness afoot in the land. I think federal law may have been broken here.

There's something about Iowa

Make up your own Iowegian toilet joke here:

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

HERE'S The Associated Press' attempt:

Iowa City police have arrested a woman who allegedly attacked her sister with the lid of a toilet tank.

Nitasha Johnson, of Iowa City, was arrested early Sunday. She's charged with domestic abuse assault causing injury and interference with official acts.

OH . . . that video atop this post? Any old excuse for British toilet humour, wot?

America's next great bad reputation

Click on pictures for documents

What is it that people say about never having a second chance to make a good first impression?

Yeah, Baton Rouge never heard that one. Or much about the Constitution of the United States.


AND JUST from a pure public-relations perspective -- forget basic issues of police practice, justice, race relations or jurisprudence -- what I'm sure has happened in the case of Baton Rouge officials' "Wyatt Earp meets David Duke" fetish is that New Mexico and Michigan state troopers who witnessed this stuff told some people.

Who told some people.

Who told some people.

Who told some people.

Who told some people about what redneck mongoloids the people were in Baton Rouge, La. And what abject racists. And how you don't want to go there.

Especially if you're of the Not White persuasion. Or the Not From Around Here persuasion.

And then the newspaper in Baton Rouge finally got a hold of the Michigan and New Mexico troopers official reports . . . which Baton Rouge police officials found myriad reasons not to do much about.

And then -- especially in the wake of the FBI getting to the bottom of the post-Katrina Danziger Bridge massacre perpetrated by New Orleans cops -- some national news outlet (or outlets) are going to pick up on the Baton Rouge incidents as a nice sidebar to the main atrocity in the Big Easy.

And they're going to tell their readers and viewers.

Who are going to tell some people.

Who are going to tell some people.

Let me know how that's going to be working out for America's Next Great City (TM).

America's next great banana republic

Was it embarrassment over their ugly cop cars?

Were Baton Rouge's finest just having a bad hurricane-hair day?

Or are basic tenets of U.S. constitutional law just foreign concepts in America's next great banana republic?

Whatever it was that caused Baton Rouge cops to get so out of line in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that more than a few out-of-state counterparts recoiled in horror as they rode shotgun with the locals, apparently none of it was so horrible that official Baton Rouge couldn't offer up embarrassingly lame excuses. As only officials in banana republics can.

TAKE THESE incidents uncovered by The Advocate newspaper after a four-year legal battle to obtain reports filed with the Baton Rouge Police Department by officers from New Mexico and Michigan. Here's what police from New Mexico alleged:

New Mexico state police Agent Nathan Lucero said he saw “subjects being stopped for no reason, searches being performed with no probable cause and people’s civil rights being violated.”

Lucero said he also “witnessed officers referring to African Americans as animals and that they needed to be beaten down.”

Lucero said one officer told him that after the hurricane, police had gone into black neighborhoods and “beaten them down.”

That officer, Lucero said, would point a spotlight in black people’s faces during the patrols and say: “What are you doing standing in the road? Are you stupid? Get out of the road.”

“The black civilians were on the sidewalks and were not bothering anyone,” Lucero added.

Lucero said police working in Tigerland near LSU, an area he described as “white and wealthy,” were much more congenial. The officers would say things like “Hello and how are you” or “Have a good night and be careful,” he said.

Lucero did not name any of the officers.

New Mexico state police Agent Patrick Oakley said Baton Rouge Police Officer Tim Browning used the term “heathens” to describe a group of black men they encountered.

“Officer Browning made contact with these subjects with no reasonable suspicion or probable cause, performed pat downs and extracted items from the pockets of these individuals,” Oakley said.

New Mexico state police Officer Gregory Hall said he rode with Baton Rouge Police Officer Chad King on two occasions.

“King is a good officer but seems to handle black people differently than he would a pretty Caucasian woman,” Hall wrote. “Each time Officer King would make contact with a Caucasian person he would be friendly and pleasant. But when he spoke to a black person he was very loud, rude and demeaning.”

Hall said that while he believes most of the Baton Rouge officers are good, he perceived a racial bias among many.

“I do feel that most of the night officers that I had contact with had some type of comment or attitude towards black people in general,” he said.

OR PERHAPS you could take a look at these eyewitness reports by police from Michigan on Katrina duty in Louisiana's capital city:

Michigan State Trooper Jeffrey Werda said officers offered to let him beat a prisoner as a thank you for helping out with relief efforts.

“I was told that I could go ahead and beat someone down or bitch slap them and they would do the report,” Werda said. “I was told this was my gift from them for helping with the hurricane relief efforts.”

Werda reported seeing several incidents of excessive force.

One man walking down a street ran into his house after seeing a patrol unit, Werda said. The Baton Rouge officer chased the man into the house and arrested him, then forced him onto the hood of the patrol unit, the trooper said.

“The officer then began telling him that the next time he runs from the police, he will get beat down,” Werda said.

The man complained his wrist was hurting, Werda said. Another Baton Rouge officer bent the man’s wrist and threatened to break it if he didn’t shut his mouth, Werda wrote.

Werda said he asked the man why he ran if he was not doing anything wrong, and the reply was that “he did not want to get his ass kicked by the police, as this has occurred to him before.”

In another incident, Werda said, police were called to a bar near LSU because of a fight. He said the fight was over and everything was calm when an officer approached a man and “suddenly hit the subject in the side of the head with his forearm and took him to the ground in a head lock. “

“I observed this subject the entire time and at no time did he pose as a threat or mouth off at the officers,” Werda said. “In fact, he was so intoxicated he could barely stand up on his own.”

Werda did not name the officers involved in any of the incidents he reported.

AND YOU THOUGHT stuff like this only happened in the movies. Or in Juarez.

What in the world could the police chief say about his department in the wake of such allegations from sworn officers from two other states? Well, this:

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff defends his department’s performance after Katrina, noting that the city was full of evacuees and rife with stories of looting and shooting in New Orleans.

“We had a charge to hold the line and balance this city and keep it from being overrun and looted and fired upon,” he said.

He denied giving orders to run evacuees out of town, noting he had family members staying in his own home.

Asked why law enforcement officers from other states would lie about what they saw Baton Rouge police doing, LeDuff said he suspects the troopers wanted to be where the action was.

“Everybody who came here wanted to be in New Orleans where all of this was going on, to rescue, to stop the looting, to stop the people from shooting at helicopters,” he said. “I don’t think people wanted to come to Baton Rouge. We weren’t the story.”

NO, I WOULDN'T believe this s*** either if I weren't from there. But really . . . believe it.

Officialdom in Baton Rouge not only believes you, the rest of America, will buy the load they're trying to sell, but -- on some warped level --they actually believe it themselves. And except for the unfortunates who got their faces slammed into the hood of one of Baton Rouge's ugly-ass cop cars for no good reason, Louisianians will believe it, too.

After all, a state doesn't work its way to the top of all the bad lists and the bottom of all the good ones without being able to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Take Mayor-President Kip Holden, for example. Every morning, he gets up and tells himself that his stagnant, middling Southern capital is "America's next great city." This amid a crumbling school system, an astronomical murder rate, endemic poverty, crumbling infrastructure and an ongoing brain drain.

Then, after he tells himself that, he tells The Advocate this:

East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden denied ordering police to run people out of town, though he acknowledged wanting them to be aggressive.

“I was not going to let Baton Rouge be overrun by some people from New Orleans who were hell-bent on committing crimes,” he said in an interview last week.

He said his message to those “thugs who are robbing, raping and looting in New Orleans” was that he would provide them shelter, but “it will not be at the Red Cross — it’s going to be in jail.”

“If there’s a blame to be placed on aggressive enforcement, blame it on me,” he added.

YEAH, YOU RIGHT, CAP. It's the s***s when da slums a Noo Orluns escape, well . . . da slums a Noo Orluns.

If Holden had been any more proactive, he would have directed all the New Orleans-to-Baton Rouge vehicle traffic to facilities where the evacuees could take "showers."

But the bottom line you, the rest of America, need to remember is this: Both the mayor-president and the police chief are African-Americans. And when a city's black folk can be just as big a bunch of rednecks as your average Bubba. . . .